Archive for October 24th, 2009
Be it at a Wedding or in the Octagon: Never. Tap. Out.
Well the big news on my end is my sister got married last weekend. The wedding was great – pomp and pageantry and heartfelt sincerity, tied together with more food than you’d find on a cruise ship full of American BBQ enthusiasts – a proper Jewish wedding, then. Better still, any doubts I had of my new brother-in-law’s coolness were assuaged at the party when he, unprompted, did “the worm.”
It was a black-tie affair, and it was only on the morning of the wedding that I realized I didn’t know how to tie a bowtie. So, in what I’m sure was supposed to be one of those seminal father-son moments, my dad showed me how to tie a bowtie. As my dad only knew how to tie a tie around his own neck, he attempted to tie mine the same way; by standing behind me and tying the tie around my neck.
The problem with this setup was that my father had developed a sizeable paunch over the years – sizeable enough to make it difficult to get his arms around the neck of his son. This problem was made apparent when he wrapped the tie around my neck and started fumbling. His arms struggled to get around my neck – sort of like a nervous UFC fighter trying to force a sloppy chokehold. I wondered, does my father want me to “tap out“? The joke would be on him, because I wouldn’t give up. Reitmans don’t quit.
Sure enough, I became light-headed, at which point I suggested to my dad that it wasn’t too late to seek a clip-on replacement at Ogilvy’s up the street. My dad ignored this plea, and the frantic fumbling continued.
A minute passed and I started to feel seriously faint, and so I began to weigh the pros and cons of passing out at my sister’s wedding (pro: I get wheeled out on a stretcher – stealing my sister’s thunder on her big day – and get home early enough to catch Inside The Actor’s Studio on Bravo, Con: this week’s interviewee is Christian Slater…not worth it.) Luckily, before I could decide, Dad released his death grip and revealed a bowtie so beautifully tied that it would have made James Bond look like a filthy hobo. It was that good. Needless to say, the wedding was a success.
