In May of last year, my son Bret got married to his wife Pam in St. Augustine, Florida. I very much wanted to deliver a toast at the wedding as the father of the groom.
It brought back memories of the toast I gave at my daughter Rachel's wedding to Mike back in April 2004. Then I mentioned Rachel's birth at Long Island Jewish Hospital on December 7th many years before.
At one point a nurse from the delivery room wrapped newborn Rachel in a towel and carried her down a corridor to another room where she cleaned her body with water from a faucet. I followed at a discreet distance as I wanted to make sure Rachel did not disappear from my view.
In preparing for Bret & Pam's toast, I was trying to remember some special anecdote from his youth. There was an obvious choice.
When Bret was about eight years-old, the two of us would often go to nearby Alley Pond Park after I came home from work to watch men's slow pitch softball games. He enjoyed being up close at a sporting event, even if it was amateurs.
One day, the shortstop on one team was being super critical of the umpire. Eventually, the umpire had quite enough of this abuse and stopped the game.
He shouted at the shortstop, "One more word out of you and you're out of here."
The shortstop responded, "One more word...I'll give you two. Fuck you."
I immediately turned to Bret and told him that if he repeated such language at home, we couldn't continue coming to the park to watch the softball games. And he didn't. So, we came back again...and again...and again.
I was very pleased that when I repeated this story as part of my toast at Bret & Pam's wedding, it got a lot of laughs. It was what I had hoped for.
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