The Wedding

What happens when you are the first one out of your high school crew to get married? A lot of drunken debauchery to say the least. One of my college roommates, A-dog recently got married (well I guess it has almost been a month now) and we decided to celebrate it in grand fashion.

I met A-dog freshman year at college, when I aimed to meet as many Indians as possible. Growing up, I had only a couple Indian friends - my boy, “Krime”, who I have known since birth and some other family friends. My town was mostly asian and my high school was 60% east asian.

Don’t get me wrong, it seemed that eveyr family party I went to, there was another kid my parents wanted me to be befriend. Truth be told, I really did not get along with any of them - they were alot more spoiled than me, so I never found a common ground. While they were rocking the new Jordans, I was rocking whatever Pops found on sale at Big 5. Of course now, I look back and laugh, but back then it was a big deal. It was like we spoke different languages. They had a super nintendo and a genesis by the time I got my regular nintendo.

I remember in junior high, I did not even have the “right” backpack. I had an Outdoor backpack, while all the cool kids rocked Jansport. I guess my dad was right back then – I could never win and compete with these guys. (As a complete sidenote, did you guys hear that they came up with a bulletproof backpack? What is the world coming to?)

In any case, Krime and I made our own world and had fun doing our own thing making our own games. Two vivid games/memories were “Hide Face” and “Nga Ball.”

Hide Face: Krime and I used to go to the same elementary school in Pasadena. Unlike my high school and the main reason I moved from Pasadena to Arcadia, my elementary school was @ 75% African American. Anyhow, during the time I was going there, kidnappings were happening more frequently.

I used to live only a couple blocks from my house, so Krime and I used to walk back from school. In any case, for some reason we became very concerned that we were going to be kidnapped. Rather than just having our parents pick us up (my mom did not work, so this was an easy fix), he came up with the idea of “hide face”.

Whenever a car would pass us, we would hide our face so the would be kidnapper could not see our face. Somehow we believed that if he could not see our face, we would be safe. I don’t know what gave us the idea that by hiding my face, I would become invisible, but I believed it with all my heart.

In fact, I remember telling my kid sister to do the same thing. Being that she was smarter than me even back then, she called me an idiot and told my parents. That ended our freedom of being to walk home. Instead I had the pleasure of waiting 30 minutes for my mom to pick me up, knowing I could walk home in 5.

“Nga ball”. Again for those who don’t know me, I am not racist. Given that I was surrounded by kalus as a kid, we sort of felt entitled to use that word.

The game was stupid now that I look back at it, but man was it fun. The rules were simple. One guy had “the ball” and he is on one side of the room across from other people. The goal is to get across the room. Anything goes – you could punch, kick, and hit the guy : everything was legal. You actually did not even need a ball. A cup, a pillow, or even just a book could be used.

I think half of the fun of the game was the actual name itself. Can you imagine now the sheer satisfication, if someone now at work asked me “G – how was your weekend? What did you do?” and I responded “Nga ball.” The reaction would be priceless. Fuck me.

So back to the wedding. A-dog has a huge crew of friends from his childhood and through his high school, as well as couple stragglers he picked up in college like T and me. The problem is that he was the first to get married in that circle. While this was a momentous occasion for him and want to give him a shoutout, I felt that to a larger extent, we used this occasion to celebrate our status as unmarried bachelors. This meant we could do whatever we want without any wives taking drinks away from us or making us go home early. We could be as obnoxious as we want– and from the pictures, it looks like we were.

From drinking schapps in the parking lot during the garba to grabbing drinks till 4:30AM after the reception, the weekend was filled with memories. One of the most vivid ones was the near fight that resulted playing the shoe game. Its hard to put it into words what happened, but it was near mayhem. Yat was upside down at one point, and I was near ready to throw a punch. These guys took all the fun of the game. Maybe I am just saying that because we werent willing to stoop to their level and eventually lost not only A-dog’s shoes but they took my shoes as well.

I was sitting in the ceremony surrounded by the groom’s friends holding the shoes. Midway, believing I was protected, I left the shoes on the ground. Somehow, a girl started crawling on her hands and knees amongst all of the grooms friends and grabbed the shoes from underneath my seat. I thought it was a rat at first, but when I saw that it was a girl from the female side, I jumped over my seat and started wrestling her for the shoes. Mind you, this is all happening in the MIDDLE of the ceremony. She had a surprisingly strong grip and so I began to tickle her. Then some uncle came out of nowhere (he was prolly the girls dad) told me to let go, so I was like fuck it.

I was pissed as hell as I felt I let the groom down. While I was to blame somewhat, I feel like all the people watching this girl crawl down the aisle should have said something as well. I did feel better when I saw the girl reenter the hall with a bandage on her arm. Apparently I am not the gentle wrestler that I thought I was.

In any case, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to pretend that she did not grab the groom’s real shoes and instead had grabbed my shoes. Yat held up my shoes, which actually matched the groom’s outfit pretty well, and we all made it seem that the bride’s side had grabbed the wrong pair. Apparently we were too convincing, as they literally attacked Yat, and they ended up with both pairs.

The reception itself was sweet. I don’t get to see these guys too often so it was nice to get the crew together. All of jokes from the past came out. Old girlfriends, Sheetal’s lack of game, clowning each other’s basketball game, the whole gambit. We all got faded and danced the night away. Surprisingly the bride’s side did not have any cute single girls – its not like I had a shot, since I developed a reputation of being a "wife-beater", but it would have been nice to have some eyecandy. After the reception, we rolled down to the pool for the afterparty, which was fun. Yat almost started another fight, and T, Nuj and I shared liqs with some cholos.

Afterwards, we rolled up to find Smitty, Yat and Sheetal passed out. While we could have been gentleman and let them sleep, we decided to fuck WITH [Thanks Yat] them. While none of us got ass that night, seeing Smitty this pissed might have been worth it. That annoying girly sounding laugh is actually me. I think it is pretty awesome that we are all 27/28 and we are still putting 6 guys in one room. Check the video.







Btw, ever see that commercial with the tag line – “life comes at you fast”? That is exactly how I feel about the summer and last week. It still boggles my mind that the summer has almost come and gone. It is already mid-august and I really have not done any summer-esque events. Whoever is coming up for labor day wknd, I have requested those days off, so lets do it right.