After you receive your table assignment at a wedding you proceed cautiously to your table. The tables are usually decorated with a very inventive design or with flowers that are arranged beautifully.

If you arrive first then you are entitled to sit anywhere at that table. Usually you try to sit facing the dance floor so you call all the dancing, jumping and shaking. As the other assigned people arrive, you introduce yourself and your spouse and shake the hand of the gentlemen. It is an awkward period and the exchange of small talk is a must. A congenial atmosphere promises a lovely evening.

On this particular occasion I was sitting next to a beloved cousin of the parents of the groom. He was very pleasant and we got along extremely well.

I vaguely remembered the groom's mother telling me something about her cousin. For the life of me I couldn't think about what she had disclosed to me. It didn't matter as we were getting along famously. We were telling each other innocuous stories about our individual lives. He seemed like a bright guy and he was fun to converse with.

We ate our green salads and watched the young dancers doing their stuff on the dance floor. I did notice that the table's waiter kept filling up his glass with larger and even larger glasses of Bourbon. I, too, was imbibing, but nowhere near the quantities that my close tablemate was downing.

It was all very subtle. As we started on the main course, he seemed to have donned a new personality. Gone were the societal barriers of caution and standoffishness one uses with strangers and people you have just met.

They were replaced by slurred speech, loud beckonings to the waiter and his tapping my arm roughly to make a point to a story. It was then that I remembered what the groom's mother had told me in confidence.

"My cousin is a very heavy drinker," is what I now remembered. She added, "But I love him because he has a heart of gold." His personality had changed during the course of the evening. From a cordial guest he had become a bit too loud and a bit too friendly and there was now a slight stagger in his step. He was still ordering humongous drinks. I liked him and I wished I could have stopped him.

We finished the dessert at the Viennese table and we shook hands. I had seen him at his best and also at his worst. The party was over and we each now were destined to go to our separate worlds.

I probably will never see this gentleman again, but at this table, at this wedding, at this time, we had met, exchanged a bit of ourselves and passed an evening together.