Are you a crasher?

It's on many people's bucket lists - crash a party/wedding/event. I can say, I've now crashed all three.

THE EVENT CRASH: About 8 years ago, The Husband and I were driving through a small New Mexico town called Mora. For anyone who hasn’t been through this area, let me describe it for you (at least how it looked at that time). It is quite an economically diverse town…okay not really. From the main street, it kind of looks like Juarez and Detroit had a child. My personal favorite aspect was the alarmingly high number of people who didn’t appear to have doors on their homes.

So, as we are driving through town to get to another area in New Mexico, we notice there is a large number of people on the side of the road with lawn chairs. Then we notice the emergency vehicles with blaring sirens and flashing lights. It finally occurs to us that this is some celebratory parade and we have somehow managed to get smack in the middle of it.

What did you do you ask? You guessed it…we rolled the windows down, smiled big, and waved to the crowd. I doubt we even stood out. I mean really, think about small town parades. Pretty much anything can be in it. Even a sweet 2001 Camry can make someone smile.

THE WEDDING CRASH: So we had these friends that we spent a pretty good amount of time with from 2002 to 2005. We attended the same church, we participated in the same small group bible study, we celebrated the 4^th of July and Columbus Day together. We even road -tripped it a couple of times. Suffice it to say, we knew each other well. When the time came for them to get married, we spent hours talking about the wedding plans and helping them get ready. So of course we just assumed we were invited to the wedding. On the night of the big event, we got dressed up and headed to the church to watch our good friends tie the knot. As we opened the door to the sanctuary we got that sudden feeling like something wasn’t right. There were about 7 people in the sanctuary. Seven. Total. We knew it was going to be small, but this was a bit of a shock. Turns out they had only invited their immediate family as this was a second wedding for one of them. They wanted just a small, private affair. However, once you’ve walked into a church and you are obviously dressed for the event at hand, you can’t really sneak back out – especially when there are only 7 people in there. So we sat through the wedding – which was beautiful – and then bolted for the door so we wouldn’t have to explain our arrogance at assuming we had been invited. Of course, they caught us once they returned from their honeymoon and said we should have stuck around, but we felt like total dorks. Not the wedding crash of the century for sure.

THE PARTY CRASH: The Husband and I attended West Texas A&M University and were highly involved throughout our college careers. He was even student body president at one point. However, one group neither of us ever joined was the President’s Ambassadors. This is a really prestigious group on campus that helps the campus president with special events. Although we never applied to this group, many of our friends were members. This past year was the university’s 100^th year anniversary so, of course we all rushed up to celebrate. Our little group of friends each had things to attend, but since so many over lapped we did a lot of it together. When it came time for the PA party after the football game, the group got ready to head over. The Husband and I said we weren’t ever members so we were going to head home. The group said we should just come with them and crash the party. So we did. It was kind of fun actually because the sponsors knew both of us very well and knew that we were never Ambassadors. When we walked in the door, one smiled big and threw arms around us. The other looked at us like we were unwelcomed houseguests. The expression was classic. We had several people come up to us and say they didn’t remember us being in the group…we just said, “We weren’t…aren’t these little smokies delicious?”

Those are my crasher experiences. They may have been accidental. They may have been small events. However, for someone like me, each was a big deal (I’m a rule follower to the extreme most of the time). Big or small, I can say I’ve crashed a parade, a wedding, and a party.

So…are you a crasher or is it still on your bucket list?