My plan to write every day this year went awry on January
3rd. Somewhere between wedding planning and long-distance phone calls and,
well, general laziness, the majority of my personal written words have been
reserved for Facebook posts and Thank You cards. This seems as good a time as
any to get back on the horse.
One of my favorite unexplainable groups of people I’ve met
are “Ephemeral Folks”. I define this
group as people you meet for maybe ten total minutes in your entire life but
for some reason just make you smile, laugh, cry, uncontrollably pee, etc.
Kim and I had our first mutual Ephemeral Folk experience.
It must be shared.
We were up in Healdsburg a few weeks before our wedding
doing the last few mundane To-Do’s. Okay fine. We were wine tasting, but it was
still hard. I’m not saying who got a bit tipsy, but someone forgot to start
pouring out her, I mean “their”, wine whist tasting. Food was obviously in order after the tasting
(Quick alcoholic’s tangent: we had a Chablis and a cocktail with brown butter
whiskey – individually – during the tasting. Highly recommended.), so we headed
to a nearby restaurant called Mateo’s for some tacones (tacos in cone form) and
tamales.
And that’s where we met our Ephemeral Guy. Well, he was
probably more of an Ephemeral Dude because, well, he was a super stoner. We sat
and the bar and started chatting with him. Everything about him was just
tickling us. He’s having fun with the rest of the customers, speaking horrible Spanish
and being just generally a stoner.
We mention we’re getting married in town and all. Then he
asks Kim “So, you guys been through a lot, huh?” We kind of look at each other
and she responds “Uh, not really…” What a strange question!! I mean, that’s the
first thing I think to ask when people tell me they are getting hitched. Anyway,
we wrap up eating and take off.
End of story? Not so much.
On our wedding day, we were outside our reception venue
waiting to enter. We notice a guy riding a skateboard towards us. As he gets
closer, I notice it’s the dude from Mateo’s! I say this to Kim and we both
proceed to just stare at him as he rides past. He sees us and yells out “Hey,
guys! Congratulations!” and just continues cruising. Another perfect little
event o add to a perfect day.
The presumable end of this story came last weekend. We
returned to Mateo’s with some family and friends. I arrived after everyone
else. I walked in with my sunglasses on and got about half way through the
restaurant when our Ephemeral Dude spoke up from behind the bar.
“Hey, you just got married, right? I even recognize you
behind the shades!”
People recognizing me in and of itself is not strange (we’ll
get into this another time), but this specific guy recognizing me – even behind
my “shades” – was the cake topper. As we left, he again said congratulations to
us and then told us it was his last day of work as he was moving to Mexico to
start making tequila. I can’t even say I was the least bit surprised that our
Ephemeral Dude was making this sort of life decision.
