David Sampliner - Lucky Bastard

 

 

So, two weeks before my partner Rachel was due to give birth to our son, I decided that we should get married. And Rachel always wanted to be married before we had a child, but she got pregnant first. And so, we'd sort of permanently put on hold the idea of ever having a wedding. But it was the 11th hour and I decided I'm going to surprise her with this notion of going down to city hall, going to the justice of the peace, and getting married before our son arrived. And so, I broached the idea with her and she's ecstatic about it. And we decide we're going to go the very last day that we can go before our baby is due to arrive. And it's going to be Friday, May 1st. And I say, “Honey, I'm going to take care of everything.” So, I call up the wedding bureau and I get a woman on the phone and I say, “What do you have to bring downtown to get married in front of the jest of the piece?” And she says, “All you need is a picture ID and just make sure that you get there before 3:45 and the doors close.” I say, “Fantastic.” I hang up the phone. Wedding planned. [audience laughter]

 

So, Friday, May 1st arrives and Rachel and I are getting all gussied up in our Sunday best. And it's 2 o' clock and we're about to saunter out the door. We have plenty of time to get down to the wedding bureau. And Rachel turns to me and she asks, “Are you sure, honey, that all you need is a picture ID to get married downtown?” I said, “Yes, I'm positive.” And she immediately goes back into the apartment, turns on the computer, goes to the wedding bureau website. And as she's looking down the website, it starts to dawn on me that my research wasn't as thorough as it needed to be.

 

It turns out you don't just need like a driver's license to get married. It turns out you need a wedding license to have a wedding in New York State. And also, New York requires a 24-hour waiting period in between the time that you get your marriage license and the time that you're going to have your wedding to discourage any rash decisions. And I realize that we've got less than two hours before the window permanently closes on the idea that we can get married before having our child. And so, I do the only thing that I can think of doing, which is to project this aura of extreme confidence to mask this inner sinking despair. [audience chuckles] And I turn to Rachel and I say, “Honey, it's going to happen.” And I grab her by the arm, we go out the door and we hail a cab. We get down to the wedding bureau and we kind of collar this agent there and we tell her our story. And she says, “Well, it is possible to get a judge's waiver and eliminate that 24-hour waiting period. But the thing is, it's 2:30 right now, our doors close at 3:45 and the line that you need to get into to get your marriage certificate is an hour and a half.”

 

So, our hearts sink again. And she says, “Your only option is to trade up.” And she hands us this little paper ticket with a number on it like you get at the deli counter. So, Rachel starts parading her pregnant belly up and down the aisles of the wedding bureau. And she finds someone and they're willing to trade, but it only gets us 30 minutes ahead. So, we realized we got to trade again. So, we take our new ticket and we walk down the aisles of the wedding bureau and Rachel's parading her pregnant belly. She finds somebody else. And suddenly the hour and a half wait has shrunk to 20 minutes.

 

And we wait our 20 minutes. We go to the front, we get our marriage certificate, and it's now 3:10, and we still need to find a judge and get him to sign a waiver and get back inside the wedding bureau by 3:45. Well, the state courthouse building is actually right across the street, which should be no problem, except that Rachel's about to give birth. And so, across the street is like Mars. [audience chuckle] And we are crawling across the street and up what seems like 400 marble steps to the courthouse and up three flights of stairs. And we end up in the judge's chamber, and there's no judge. And the clerk takes one look at Rachel and says, “I'm going to go help you find the judge.” It's 3:36, and in walks a guy who looks a lot like a judge. [audience chuckles] And he glances over at Rachel's belly and he says, “I'll sign.” [audience laughter]

 

And so, we grab the sign waiver out of his hand and we rush back to the wedding bureau. And just as the clock strikes 3:45, we slide inside the door. We're ushered immediately back to a room where there's a justice of the peace. And we say our vows. And as soon as we finish saying “I do”, the lights go off in the room. [audience chuckles] We were the last wedding of the day in New York City. And so, as we're walking outside the wedding bureau after all of this and walking off into the sunset, our first moment as husband and wife. And Rachel turns to me and she says, “You are a lucky bastard.” [audience laughter] And I look back into her eyes and I say the three words that really are the only three words a husband should really ever say to his wife. And that's, “You're right, honey.”