Ritual Delayed
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
A Wedding at Shady Rest
Submission by Pansy Meeker-Grimes
Mrs. Margaret (Peggy) Seymour-Smythe-Pride and Mrs. Pansy Meeker-Grimes are pained to announce the wedding of their sister, Florence (Flossie) Rose Klemperer-Hyde-Parkes to Mr. Ross McTaggard with one abstention. A fourth sister, Miss Lavinia Talbot refused to attend the nuptials since she has never been married and as she pointed out in a fiery tirade in the beautiful Willow Room (available for small gatherings, please inquire at the main desk) “Flossie is a greedy witch. This is her fifth trip down the aisle and I have never been married at all.”
As Peggy Seymour-Smythe-Pride explained to the assembled guests while Lavinia was being taken away in a straight-jacket, Lavinia had been engaged to a sailor during the war but he never came back. He wasn’t killed or anything. He just stepped out of Cabin No. 4 at the Bide-a-Wee Resort for a smoke and never came back. There was some discussion at the time whether her errant fiancé was a sailor at all since four young ladies were left in the same position that evening and all the sailors took off in a 1934 Dodge sedan with a University of Toronto pennant flapping from the radio antennae.
As a tearful Lavinia told her parents between sobs, “Of course he was a naval man. As he was removing my petticoat he stepped back and said, ‘Shiver me timbers’ and if that isn’t sailor talk, I don’t know what is.”
The ceremony was held in the main activity room at the Shady Rest Nursing and Seniors Home. The blushing bride was wheeled to the altar and given away by Brigadier Sir Oswald Tiffy (Ret.) from Room 306 East. The bridesmaids were Mrs. Judith Hamilton, Room 227 West and a woman who walked in off the street in search of a public rest room.
Mrs. Millicent Finsterwall supplied the music and was playing
Mendelssohn’s Wedding March beautifully until Mr. Cedric Grosbeak pulled the plug on her electric piano to use the outlet to re-charge the battery on his motorized wheelchair. It is believed he may have licked the end of the plug (a throwback from his days as an electrician’s assistant). We will never know unfortunately since Mr. Grosbeak was fried on the spot and power was blacked out as far north as Timmins, Ontario, most of the Eastern Seaboard, and as far south as Wheeling, West Virginia
The Reverend Dilbert Swires, D. D. of the Grace and Truth Gospel Hall and Soup Kitchen, then delighted one and all with a version of the Whither Thou Goest story from the Bible. Although he could not remember what book it was from nor whether it was Ruth, Naomi or the Virgin Mary who said it. As luck would have it, he never finished the story. When he got to the part where one of them said, “Thy people shall be my people,” he remembered he had left his daughter on the phone who had called all the way from Denver, Colorado. The Reverend quickly ran through the Do you take this woman business, declared them man and wife and took off as fast as a man with one wheel missing from his walker could hobble.
The happy couple will reside in the first two-room suite that comes vacant and will honeymoon in 416 East courtesy of the present occupant, Mrs. Grace Coombes who was rushed to Meadowside Hospital early this morning when a kidney suddenly became available. (Whether Grace had a hand in her brother’s mysterious death by strangulation, we will not know until details of the investigation are released. At the moment the OPP are not commenting but Grace was warned not to leave town.)
Unfortunately the honeymoon of Mr. and Mrs McTaggard will have to be delayed pending the results of a number of tests the groom is undergoing at Meadowside. I don’t know if the reader has met Ross or is aware his short-term memory has gone for a crap, as they say in the medical profession. To ensure a memorable and blissful defloration – if you can call it that when the bride has tripped down the aisle some four times before and wasn’t all that chaste from public school on – Ross took a Viagra pill during the main course, washing it down with a half-bottle of vodka. It was then his short-term memory problem reared its head and he took a second with dessert and a third during the toasts.
According to the cautions on the box, should a gentleman remain erect for more than four hours, it is recommended he get to the hospital immediately. In his case, Ross was not only erect more than four hours; the extra pills accentuated the problem. His blushing and awe-struck bride punched in 911 shortly after 9 p.m.
The ambulance arrived within minutes but ran into an unforeseen complication. Because of the excess Viagra coursing through his veins and other places as well, it was impossible for Ross to fit in the ambulance and he had to be transported to the Emergency Ward in an open convertible.
Just what Florence was saying to the assemble ladies standing in the doorway is not known but we know she was holding her arms out some three feet apart. We have not heard from the hospital as yet, but we understand that a team of nurses has volunteered to work on him around the clock.
