Friday, August 19, 2016

The Tortoise and the Hare

They told me seeing a turtle on your wedding day would bring good luck. Boy was I wrong. I wouldn’t say that I’m an inherently superstitious man, but I’ll take my luck wherever I can get it. So, when I was driving down the interstate on my way to the wedding and happened to see a tortoise crossing the road in front of me, I took it as a good sign. I was sure that the wedding was going to be as perfect as we imagined it. If only that were the case.

I was extremely nervous on the ride over there. I grabbed my rabbit’s foot hoping it would make me feel better, but my hands were shaking so bad I dropped it in front of my feet. I silently cursed and bent down to pick it up. I clumsily wrapped my hands around it after a fumbling around with it, sat back up in my seat and had to jerk my steering wheel to avoid a band of people walking in the road. I narrowly missed them and in my rearview mirror saw them yelling and making signs at me. The one in front with a yellow hat looked especially angry. I tried to brush it out of my mind and chalked it up to my luck that allowed me to miss mowing them down on the road. Eventually I reached the wedding location.

Everything started out great. I even saw a 4 leaf clover while I was walking into the wedding. Kristen and I decided that we didn’t want to have a traditional wedding in a church, so we arranged it to be outside. We set everything up in a beautiful clearing in a small forest right outside of our town. The sunlight pouring through the trees creating scattered rays of light, helped illuminate the array of different colored flowers. The lazily flowing stream and birds chirping created an ambiance that helped calm my nerves. The faint scent of evergreen let my mind wander to my earlier days, spending long summer nights at my grandfather’s cabin.

The time flew by in a haze as I readied myself for the wedding. Before I knew it, the time had come. As if watching though somebody else’s eyes, I was walking down the aisle. I stopped at the end of the aisle next to the preacher and heard him offer comforting words as if I was underwater. As soon as I saw Kristen walking down the aisle everything snapped into focus. I was there in that moment absorbing every little detail about her, knowing that I would remember this moment for years to come. I was so focused on her, I was a bit surprised when I heard the screams. I saw an entire herd of deer crash into the crowd.  Screams pierced the air as people tried to scramble away from the chaos. Birds were swooping down from the sky to attack people’s hair. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if every animal in the forest had decided to crash my wedding. There were deer, rabbits, squirrels, foxes, you name it.

Snapping out of my confusion and shock, I dashed down the aisle to Kristen. I grabbed her hand and told her to follow me. Making my way to the car I had to fend off birds and even had to shake a squirrel off of my arm. As we neared my car, I narrowly missed being trampled by a deer. We finally reached my car and as soon as we got in, I peeled out of there. I started driving back home since I didn’t know where else to go. I tried to comfort my fiance, telling her that everything would be alright. Although it seemed like my luck had completely turned against me it was about to get worse.

I was driving down the road trying to comprehend what exactly had transpired when I was attacked by a rabbit. It had jumped on my head and was gnawing on my nose. I yelled in pain and tried to get it off of me. That moment I felt my car slam into something and it felt as if I had gone over a number of incredibly large speed bumps. The rabbit was flung from my head and slammed against the windshield. I noticed a yellow hat on the outside of my windshield. Still recovering, I looked behind us to see what we had hit. As my mind began to wrap around what had just happened, my body rejected it. I opened the door and began heaving out the side of the car. Kristen was sobbing uncontrollably. Slowly, I dialed 911 and waited for help to arrive. Now I’m doing 10-20 in federal prison. Stupid rabbit.

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