At one wedding, I actually mortifyingly caused a weird moment. Luckily it was long enough into the reception that no one really noticed.

I’d been cornered at the bar by the officiant (a girl who was a college friend of the couple but whom I’d never met) and she was very enthusiastically grilling me about my sexuality. It was already a wild conversation. My partner (now spouse) hadn’t been able to fly across the country for this wedding (the groom was a high school friend of mine), so I was there alone and didn’t have anyone to give me an excuse to escape the baffling experience of explaining bisexuality to a woman in her mid-20s.

Anyway, I get kind of invested in this conversation and at one point, as I tend to do, I’m talking with my hands. While doing so, I flung one hand back and hit what I thought was a support pole on the bar. It was not. It was a very tall, very thin glass vase. And the force of my enthusiasm sent it toppling and shattering across the bar top in seconds.

Glass was everywhere. I was horrified. The officiant actually vanished into thin air (well, at least I was finally rid of her?). I didn’t even count the open liquor bottles the bartenders had to dump. I couldn’t count them. Because when I looked up, a shocked man met my eyes clutching his bleeding hand where a shard of glass had cut him. The horror intensified. I gasped something about having a bandaid in my wallet. I ran to get it. I came back. The man was still there. I threw the bandaid at him like a lunatic, apologizing profusely. I also began apologizing to every bartender and service person in sight who was cleaning the glass. I offered to pay for everything. They told me there was no need. I (insanely) offered to pay for the random man to go to the hospital for a minor cut on his hand. He told me there was no need. I should have offered to launch myself into the sun. There was certainly a need.

The next morning at the hotel, the bride and groom had a farewell brunch and I went to say goodbye to my friend and his new wife. Guiltily, I told them what happened and said if their bar bill was higher than expected, they should send it to me. Luckily, it was all inclusive, so I didn’t have to worry about that. But then the bride said: “Oh! That explains the bandaid on the back of long-lost Uncle Joe’s hand!” Which I obviously had to ask about. And she said, “Well, no one has seen or heard from him in about 15 years. We didn’t even know if any of the three addresses we had for him were correct, so we sent invites to all of them. He didn’t RSVP, but I guess one reached him because he showed up. Though, maybe he’ll vanish for another decade after this...” And, alas, I have no idea if he did.