I wanted to share this extract from a past Best Man speech with you. Not because there’s much to learn from it, I just think it’s a fabulous example of the brotherhood of man. How we’ll be there for one another, even if it’s really not in our best interests. I was amazed to learn of a caper that involved a car crash, a hospital, nurses, drugs, an escape, a toilet, and the Best Man coming worse off in all instances. And besides all that humiliation, horror and actual physical pain, the guy is there, representing someone, who anyone with any sense, would run a mile from. Such commitment to friendship truly warms the heart.
“…we thought we’d get a pair of rollerblades and attack the tarmac. Unfortunately, I took a jump too high and the tarmac attacked me. When the agony of humiliating myself in front of a teenage audience subsided, the agony of a dislocated shoulder began. It’s moments like that when you need to have someone who knows how to make the right choices and correctly manage a situation... I had James. The correct thing to do in that situation would be to not move me and call an ambulance. However, James decided to drag me through a barbed wire fence and lob me into the back of his car. At the hospital, they popped my shoulder back, gave me painkillers normally dished out in war zones and told me I’d have to spend the night in one of their beds where I could be monitored. James was having none of this; a comfortable bed and the attention of a plethora of nurses weren’t good enough for an employee of his. What he considered best for me, would be for him to bundle me back into his car and let me spend the night on his floor… where I could be monitored… every time he stepped over me on his way to the toilet.”
Whadda-guy.