For those of you not in the know, This weekend, one of my best friends, Pounders is getting married. I’m standing in the wedding as one of the best men. As this speech was posted I’ll be standing there watching him get married. Below is my best man speech.
I’m Shawn Foret, aka Picklescoop, one of the best men and one of Adam’s best friends. When I was asked to be a best man today, for starters I was honored, but then I started to think what should I say about Adam here today. So I did some research about writing a good wedding speech on the trusty El Internet-o. After 6 hours, my Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare, Youtube, Myspace, Website, Instagram, and Craigslist profiles have all been updated. I also found out in an email that my long lost uncle who was a businessman in lands afar passed away and I’m the LONE heir to his $65 million dollar estate. They just need my name, address, phone number, SSN, credit card number, birthday, and blood sample, and I’m in.
Eventually I got around to why I was on the Internet. To find tips on a good best man speech. One site recommended that I mention things about his birthday. So, I looked up his birthday on good ole Wikipedia.
Adam’s birthday, March 10, is a day known throughout history to bring feared men into this world:
Vasili II of Russia. Ferdinand I of the Holy Roman Empire. Toshitsugu Takamatsu, Grandmaster of Ninjitsu. NFL Hall of Famer Rod Woodson. Former college football coach Bobby Petrino. Chuck Norris. And as we already covered, Adam Pounders. It’s also the day they did the formal ceremony for transferring ownership of the Louisiana Territory to America from the Louisiana Purchase, which was signed in New Orleans, just a few miles down the river from here. It’s also the day the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848 to end the Mexican American War. And it was the day that Alexander Graham Bell made the first phonecall by saying “Mr Watson, come here, I want to See you.” That’s actually ironic about the phone thing, with Adam’s massive love of his cell phone. For those of you that haven’t seen it. Adam has a cell phone that he recently got. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and all, but it’s about the size of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. This thing is massive. When he first brought it over. I thought he got an iPad.
Oh… Also, they found out in 1977, that there’s rings around Uranus. (I said Uranus..)
Another Site said talk about where you met the groom and good times you’ve had with the groom. So, I met Adam working at Scout camp in 1994, where actually Hopper here was Adam’s tent-mate. Adam was a CIT on staff. For those of you all that don’t know, CIT stood for Check in There, as in: “Where’s Adam? I dunno. Check in The back of camp, he’s probably fishing.” That year, there was a group of us all that really clicked and it wasn’t irregular to find us all either cutting up and playing some form of cards in the admin building till all hours of the morning, or cutting up and playing pranks till all hours of the morning. We’d all ride to camp together in GHOTI’s car when we were working random events at Camp. I remember one year going to Winter Camp, Adam had a brand new shirt on, AND we had our fireworks already. Adam was riding shotgun. He lights these jumping jacks and proceeds to throw them out of the window of the moving car. They fly back into his lap and start going off in the car burning his shirt mere hours upon receiving it. Then there’s that time when he started a forest fire. But that’s another story for another time…..
Besides coming up through Scouting together, Adam and I also were on local dialup bulletin boards together. On the boards, we met another slew of folks as we experienced some of the first implementations of “real time” chat via computer with T-Conference and gang chats in games like Trade Wars and Major Mud. We shared times playing Laser Tag, tormenting Celebration Station and it’s golf course characters, and keeping ourselves wired with nicotine and Jolt cola.
I also lived with Adam. Not so long ago, Adam, Dave, and I lived together right on Claiborne Ave. The biggest selling point for us about the house was that it literally was on the parade route for Mardi Gras. That Mardi Gras we were able to wake up, look out the window and see Mardi Gras. Truck floats for hours on end. That year, the truck parades went on for so long, we had time to watch the first 50 floats, go back to the house and eat Popeye’s, take a nap, wake up, watch 60 more floats, go back up stairs, eat more chicken, watch a movie, and come back down to still catch a million more trucks. I believe it was that year also that I started doing my parade run, where I go to as many parades as humanly and inhumanly possible. Of course, my copilot was Mr. Adam Pounders. We immediately figured out this joining of forces was simply so we could plan how to get tasty alcoholic drinks for enjoying the parades, without those pesky lines at the bar by the parade. We’d roll past Port of Call (which miraculously was empty because the parade we caught at the start of the route was starting to reach down by the quarter), “tuck and roll” the person in shotgun, they’d run in and get us 2 Monsoons, and the other would simply drive the block, and pick them up on their way around, without skipping a beat. And it worked. That first day we made 7 parades. And we would have made more if Adam hadn’t skinned his knees tucking and rolling at every place. I told him I’d stop in front on the third time, but he was insistent….
Yet another website said compliment the bride. Enny, of course, it goes without saying you look beautiful today, and I can’t be happier that you and Adam are officially husband and wife. Some people here may not know this, but, Enny refers to me as Adam’s first wife. I think it’s because when he’s telling her the stories of our adventures, she’s misunderstanding them to be horror stories and with his reluctance he keeps coming back for more “punishment”.
The last thing I found in my research of writing a good best man speech, was to leave you with words to live by. And I found two quotes that I’d like to remind you of.
“Don’t pet the sweaty stuff (unless it’s Hennessey) and Don’t sweat the petty stuff.”
And in the simple, yet effective words of Dr Spock, “Live Long and Prosper”. And with that, on behalf of Hopper, the Groomsmen, Bridesmaids, the Great Dali Lama, the Queen of England and other esteemed guests in attendance, I raise my glass to you and wish ya’ll years of success and love. Congratulations.
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