Every so often, I have the privilege of being invited to a really classy dinner or party.
Most of the time, I’m completely out of my element when I’m at these events, so I do my best to “find a darkened corner” – to quote Johnny Cash - or identify someone in the crowd who looks as out of their element as I do.
Such was the case this past weekend, when Callie and I were invited to her cousin’s 50th wedding anniversary party in south Alabama.
They are as fantastic and hospitable a couple as you’ll ever meet, but I knew this was going to be a really classy event, so I immediately started to formulate a game plan when we arrived.
I want to make it clear. Everyone there was as friendly as they could be. I’ve just never been comfortable in social situations, especially when I don’t know most of the people in attendance.
I grabbed a cold beverage and sat beneath the giant tent in the backyard. This really didn’t help, because in my attempt to dress nicely, I was already sweating through the button-up dress shirt I had on.
A brief Gulf Coast rainstorm forced most of the party onto the porch of this beautiful riverside home. Callie and I, along with Ellie and Sarah and my in-laws, found a secluded screened-in area of the porch, and I was determined to hold my ground.
Just before dark, a buffet dinner was served, and I got up ever so briefly to fix a plate.
When I returned, there was a man in my seat, thumping his cigarette ashes into my empty Michelob Ultra can.
I started up a conversation with the man, who identified himself as Buster.
I could tell right off that this was my kind of guy, or at least we were equally out of our element.
“I would have been here earlier, but I was at church service tonight,” he said, with a thick southern drawl. “I’m an LEM. I’m sort of a bartender at communion.”
I gathered from this short dialogue that he is Episcopalian.
“LEM? What does that stand for?” I asked him, trying to give the conversation some momentum. He was halfway done with his cigarette, and I didn’t want to lose him after the last puff.
“Lay…Eucharistic…Minister?” he replied.
It took him a minute.
About that time, we were interrupted by a really ritzy-looking gent, who was decked out in white slacks, a white dress shirt and expensive sunglasses. He looked to be about 65 to 70 years old and in a much higher tithing bracket than myself.
He started talking to Buster about some excess fish that he had in his freezer that he wanted to donate, I guess for a church event, to which Buster gleefully accepted.
Then the man asked him, “did you get that shirt that I dropped off for you?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Buster said back to him. “I liked it, but my neighbor liked it even more, so I gave it to him.”
“I beg your pardon,” the man snapped.
“Yeah, he told me how much he liked it, so I told him to take it home with him,” Buster explained.
“What, you gave it to him off your back?” the man asked.
“No, it was just sitting there on my kitchen table,” Buster explained. “He said ‘I really like that shirt,’ so I said ‘take it home with you.’”
The man was noticeably offended by this point, and Buster tried with all his might to remove his foot from his mouth.
“You see, I don’t wear shirts without pockets,” Buster said. “I can’t stand them.”
The man and I both looked at Buster’s attire, and what do ya know, he was wearing a pocketless shirt.
Buster looked desperate.
“The only reason I’m wearing this shirt here without a pocket is because my wife made me,” Buster said. It was too late. He had managed to cram both feet in his mouth at the same time.
The man turned around and let the screen door slam behind him, and I continued my conversation with Buster.
“So you’re a lay leader in the Episcopal Church?” I said.
“Yes sir,” he said proudly. “I can give communion, and I can give you your last rights.”
Given how I was in need of just one of those services at the time, I took the conversation down the path of communion.
“Now you don’t have to be Episcopalian to take communion at our church,” he assured me. “Just as long as you’re a baptized Christian, we don’t care. You can be Baptist, Methodist or Orthodox Jew. We don’t care, as long as you’re a Christian.”
By this time, he had finished his cigarette and was getting up to leave, but his parting words were a reminder that he was qualified to give me my last rights should the opportunity ever arise.
That entire sequence of events took all of six minutes, but it relaxed me enough to where I was comfortable mingling about for the rest of the night.
By the end of the night, I realized that even if I did feel out of place, I left with both feet on the floor and not in my mouth.
