"Feel the beat from the tambourine"

It was a good wedding. One of the best I've known. It rained, but I was told that was actually a good sign on a wedding day. A blessing or something such. The affair was inside, anyway.

But with the wet blessing came melancholy breezes. The best man didn't make it. He's a Marine and his leave was cancelled because he's heading back to Iraq soon.

To keep him with us through the wedding, another groomsman bought a bag of plastic army men and passed them out to the wedding party, then later placed them on all of the tables at the reception. The bride pinned one up under her dress. I ended up with the metal detector guy in my tux pocket.

At the reception, somewhere between whiskey sours and cream cheese icing, I noticed that surplus army men had been arranged with plastic sandbags and barbed wire on the wedding party's table up front. A brown tank had started to take a table cloth hill not far from my fork while "Dancing Queen" moved us onto the floor as if we all had Shaun Cassidy hair.

We should all have Shaun Cassidy hair. And zebra print dresses. And dance like Ann-Margret. We should always meet in bars and stagger to "You Shook Me All Night Long" until our glasses burn.

I wasn't able to drink enough to wash down the lump that had come when the deacon mentioned our Marine during the ceremony.