I mentioned my best man speech in my DjangoCon post mortem post today, and I linked the words best man to a post I had made on this blog about the preparations for Hession's wedding.  I realized when I did it that it was a bit of a pump fake.  Not a full up and down traveling violation, which it would have been had I linked the words best man speech, but a pretty heavy pump fake nonetheless.

It made me think about why I haven't written that story down.  The speech story.  The Mongolia story.  The story of Gans and Bhat and the horseman and the tent.

And I'm not sure why the reluctance to write.  Maybe garden variety laziness.  Maybe a commitment to the oral tradition, a desire to keep it liquid, keep it flowing, keep it from coagulating, from stiffenning.  I'm not sure.

But, later this evening, when I checked in on Fluther, a Q&A community and a Django project founded by two of my college classmates, inspiration struck.  I was having a good time, asking more silly questions and going through the silly responses this afternoon's silly questions had collected, when, all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, over on the right hand sidebar, I saw a question I couldn't resist.

What's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?

Mongolia, I thought.  It's time.

So I wrote.  Part of the story.  Part of the speech.

And here it is:

Our last night in Mongolia, my friend Hesh and I were staying at a Mongolian friend's family's summer homestead, and he and his parents prepared a feast. Course after course of sheep.

Back in the office and in what I think is a pretty high gear considering the fact that time away from The Carrot Project and Acorn lets me sleep less than work work. 

Wondering about collaboration and the speech I gave on Saturday.  I was best man for one of the people I love most, and the festivities were arranged such that my toast happened at the absolute last moment before the party erupted onto the dance floor and never looked back.

Between the post-ceremony photo shoot and the exodus from the front lawn to the tent out back, I pulled my most trusted advisors (my sister and cousin) aside, went through the speech, and asked for last minute advice. 

Their feedback was beautifully specific.  They pointed to a moment at which an extra drumbeat of pause might help.  They asked for extra emphasis on a word that they thought had the potential to get a huge laugh.  They told me to repeat a line.  And they suggested a tighter ending, one that circled gracefully back to the introduction and tied it all beautifully together.

Somehow, I took the advice.  I paused.  I emphasized.  I repeated.  I trusted their instincts, and the audience loved it. 

But I didn't take it all.  I didn't end it the way they thought I should.  I could have.  I thought about it.  And it would have been fine.  But I went instead with a third ending, something not far from either my initial idea or their suggestion, but something certainly different.  And it worked.  Worked well enough, in fact, that my sister told me she was glad I hadn't taken her advice.

It was collaboration that worked.  They listened well enough.  I listened back well enough.  They made reasonable and implementable suggestions.  And I incorporated them, fully embracing many and partially accepting another, letting it inform a key adjustment to my initial idea.

Maybe this is way too obvious.  It's just the way editing works, and there's nothing exciting here to find.

Maybe it makes no sense outside the context of the speech.  I'm writing to myself only and shouldn't expect this to inspire any thought of any kind in anyone but me, unless maybe they happened to have been at Matt and Becky's wedding on Saturday.

But maybe in here somewhere are some essential elements of collaboration.  Maybe I can get better at listening by returning to those moments before we joined the receiving line.  Maybe Giuls and Zach can get better at giving advice by considering the specificity of their ideas and the ways the time urgency of the moment forced them to focus their thoughts.  Maybe we can all learn from the advice not taken: learn that there's nothing wrong with imperfect suggestions, that two suboptimal ideas might merge to form something much better, that it might be important to have a single owner of a collaborative effort, a final deliverer of the speech, someone naturally seeking to maintain what was good and authentic and originally intended about the first stab ending even after recognizing its overall failure and need for adjustment.

And maybe this only applies to best man speeches when the groom is family enough to invite the minds most in tune with that of the best man.

Regardless, however, I've been thinking about it, and I figured I'd write it down.  Just in case.

I'm really excited to be Matt's best man. It's truly a great feeling to be asked to be there for someone I love while he puts the finishing touches on a very big moment. I've always much appreciated it when people have asked me to help, seen me as part of a solution.

48 hours in, all is well. We have a big 24 ahead of us, but we've had smooth sailing so far.

Or smooth enough sailing anyway.

I've completely destroyed the pull out couch in the cabin Matt's parents are renting. The mother of the bride might not trust me handling her plants anymore. And I have no idea where the rings are. But somehow I think it's all going to be just fine.

A healthy silliness has emerged.

A lot of organizing today. A lot of setting up. A lot of cleaning up. A lot of bustle. A high strung mother of the bride. A stress cloud chasing the soon to be newlyweds.

But.

Laughter might be taking over.

People are talking about gnomes. We're generously describing the site of tomorrow's rehearsal dinner as "extremely rustic." We've mentioned jackalopes multiple times in the past few hours. There's a highly entertaining and spectacularly mustachioed guest we're affectionately referring to as von Klunker. And this pull out couch is one of the most hilariously broken pieces of furniture I've ever experienced.

Tomorrow the numbers quadruple. We're ready.

Jerry Seinfeld thinks it's strange to call the guy standing next to the groom the BEST man. If he's the best man, then why's she marrying that other guy? He reckons there ought to be the groom and a pretty good man.

On Saturday, my friend Hesh will be a groom, a I get to be his pretty good man.

I drove to New Hampshire today to pick him up, and, tonight, we crossed Vermont and Champlain and headed into the Adirondacks to rendezvous with the bride and her family.

It was great to get some time alone with Hesh. Fun to hear his thoughts, feel his excitement. Fun to share his nerves. And fun to remind him that I'm working for him this weekend.

Anything gets crazy (drunk people, lonely guests, collapsing tent, grumpy old ladies needing dance partners), and I'll be ready.

I'm hoping for some adventure. Not heaps. But nothing's as fun if it goes perfectly according to plan.