Not quite Velociraptor yet, but as the day approaches we'll see
I've thought of this matter as a distant thing since the happy couple chose a date, but weeks out it is a strange thing that strikes me. It is a strange mixture of anxiety and anticipation. Anxiety because I am me, but anticipation because the very vague portion of me that is legitimately competitive with non existent other best men for pulling off a decent best man speech. Take it with a grain of salt that I am using this blog as a vague sounding board for the general ideas I have been toying around with for the speech.
The general plan is to get to the speech before too much grain alcohol and cigarettes have been funneled into me. I will probably do something similar as the moment comes, and glasses chime.
My brother met this girl, after having been in a semi-serious relationship for a few months, not anything entirely committal but long enough that you may owe an explanation beyond saying, "I think we should see other people." It didn't seem to take him more than a moment's notice to get beyond that girl, after his now fiancee agreed to see him. To hear him say it, "I knew within moments of meeting her, that there was something there, I just never had the opportunity."
While I am unclear as to the circumstances under which that occurred, there was a marked shift in how he started behaving from minute one of this girl. To use a tired speech-ism(?), my brother was no slouch, but his disposition with regards to this one, was the stuff of grocery store aisle romance novels. A complete and utter 180 from what I had seen over the course of the preceding years.
His previous approach, summed up in gif form
So drastic was the change in my brother that six months or so into this grand experiment, the two moved in together. This happened under my own protest, as members of my family is not one to make such decisions lightly. This is when things went from serious to, oh shit. Oh shit for the simple reason that I felt I was apt to lose what my brother had been to me for the majority of my life.
Sure he had been into yoga, and done cleanses in the year prior, but never did he receive praise or domestic support for such unhealthy behaviors. Alright he did for the former, but a cleanse is the social equivalent of telling people you plan on shitting a lot for the next 2 weeks in a polite, socially acceptable fashion. So to a certain extent, I resented the change.
"Want to get a beer?" was greeted with she and I have plans, "oh, ok," in reply. You could tell though, as difficult as it was to get the two alone, that something had clicked in a very real way.
I am no expert in human emotion, I make no claim to have had the sentiment, or the shadow of a thought, that I need another human in my life like my brother did and or does, at least in the sense that he knew within moments. I think I can honestly say without reservation I am more excited for what he is starting than what he is leaving behind.
So while I am nervous, anxious, and all the emotional, neurotic cluster fuck of things I am on any given day for the speech itself, I guess I am excited for my brother this next week. This blog wasn't my normal run of things, I very much needed to have some type of place to free form a bit, and put somethings down that I could turn to when I needed.
I don't know what will wind up in the speech on the day of, I like ideas, you can change an idea, a speech is something entirely different. We'll just have to play it by ear, not drink too much up into that point, and pray we don't offend the townie, soon to be in-laws (extended, not father etc, the latter is alright really.) that are to be imported for the occasion next week.
Thanks for the moment TL.