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Nice thread idea.
When I was in my teens I did some catering work, weddings mostly. I usually was put in charge of the host table... Father of the bride and their family. One thing I always noticed were the wedding toasts. Most of the time it was a lame attempt at rhyme, or something sappy and blatantly copied from a book of toasts or hallmark card. The waiters, bartenders and I would make jokes in the shadows and try not to laugh loud enough to be noticed as these idiots in tuxedos tried so hard to sound formal and dignified instead of speaking from the heart.
One night I'm working a very high end wedding in manhattan. High end enough that the singers and band were broadway performers and the flowers alone probably cost a small fortune. People there were in tuxedos and the whole room looked like something out of a big budget movie. The crowd was full of overly self-important assholes. Nasty looks from people who felt the rest of the world was beneath them, men in their 30s who couldn't behave themselves around female waitresses and this one guy, maybe in his late twenties is at the host table wearing a $50 suit with wrinkles and a bad haircut.
That one guy looked so freaked out and nervous, you'd have thought he had a bomb strapped to his chest. It turns out he was the bride's brother and when it comes time to give toasts they hand him the microphone. Every waiter in the room got this awkward look like we cant make fun of this guy he's clearly handicapped somehow. Then the room got quiet as the crowd looked at him. There were 300 people there and you could tell not more than 20-30 of them knew the guy by name. He starts stuttering into the microphone and his own father lets out a loud sigh like he wants to get up and take the mic away. The crowd is snickering at him. There's spit flying out of his mouth and it sounded like his tongue was three times too big for his head.. He's trying to say 'I love my sister and I'm proud of her...' Yet his own sister won't even look at him. The stepmother, who is thirty years younger than his father, actually takes out a nail file and starts doing her nails.
You can see the bride starting to look skittish and the groom feeling awkward. It was such a sour moment. His own family acting as if they were all embarrassed by him and wished he would just die quietly. That's when this little old lady who had to be in her late 80s or early 90s stands up and walks over to him from the host table. She had a massive diamond ring on her finger that I can still see in my mind to this day. I'd be willing to bet she was wearing 200K in jewelry. She pats him on the shoulder gently and says to him just barely loud enough for the mic to pick up her voice "Relax David, they only act this way around you because they don't know yet that I'm making you my only heir. Say whatever you want." She smiles at him and slowly walks back to her seat.
It was the loudest silence I've ever heard in my life. The look on the father's face when he heard he is being skipped over and the fortune was going directly to his son was grotesque. He wasn't breathing and his face turned purple. The stepmother puts her nail file away and scurries off to use the ladies room. The bride stands there with her mouth open in a silent scream wanting to run over and try to convince her grandmother not to disown her, but she has 300 people looking at her and a spotlight on her. Just thinking about it makes me feel uneasy. Then from her seat the old lady barks out 'Now they understand how you feel David!"
This little old lady had enough and she took down an entire room full of people with two sentences. The guy gave his speech and suddenly the asshats were hanging on every word. He finishes the speech and two dozen people came up to introduce themselves, nobody could get enough time around David all of a sudden. Now he wasn't some embarrassing retarded guy to be ridiculed or ignored, she made him into an instant bazillionaire who just happened to also be retarded.
That old lady didn't give me a penny but she did a lot for me, even unintentionally, at a time in life where I could have gone down the wrong path. That moment taught me the difference between being a 'nobody' and being a 'somebody' can be instantaneous and very fragile. People rise and fall, but what matters is your character, not how high up or low down you are at any given moment.
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