Recently, I worked a wedding where the client hired a videographer who filmed most of their nuptials while riding on a small hovercraft scooter.
It was kind of like a cheaper-looking, tackier Segway scooter, except that the center column only came up to the rider’s knees, and the platform had several tiny strips of colored disco lights lining the back and along the hubcaps. The unit didn’t seem all that sturdy to me, yet I’ll be the first to admit, this videographer was pretty good at zipping around on it like a bumblebee on speed while holding his hand-held video camera up to his face. First, he’d scoot backward…and then he’d zoom forward, and then, very dramatically, he’d lean in for a wide, sweeping turn while holding his camera as steady as he could to get his desired “gliding shots.”
The videographer was kind of a character, to begin with — he was foreign and so his accent was a little tricky, and, when he arrived, the planner I was working for that day said he was sporting frameless, stemless sunshades that made him look like a guy who just got is pupils dilated, only back in the 1990s. One observer at the wedding called the guy, “Paul Blart” — which was kind of spot-on, however, this guy seemed to be stuck in a distant time warp of sorts that made him much more mysterious than a boring old mall cop a Segway could ever be.
A few days after this wedding, I was texting with my great friend, Walt, who is a professional cameraman who has been freelanced out to networks like ABC and NBC for shows like 20/20 and the Winter Olympics. So when I sent Walt a short video of our Segway-riding wedding videographer, I thought he might be impressed. Instead, Walt replied with this link:
In case you couldn’t see the video, it’s a clip of Usain Bolt getting hit by a cameraman on a Segway scooter in Beijing China in 2015! It’s just horrible to watch, and even before the drama unfolds in the video, I had the same exact reaction as I had at the wedding when our video guy first rolled on the scene:
What could possibly go wrong?
Thankfully nothing bad like that happened at our wedding — albeit, the video guy was the source of some painfully awkward moments throughout the day. And, a very dark side of my personality — which I’m not proud of — was kind of hoping for a major wipeout. I realize how horrible that must make me seem, but the ridiculousness of a wedding videographer on a hovercraft is really just begging for a disastrous moment in the mix somewhere, don’t you think?
But my combined thoughts about that wedding videographer and what happened to Usain Bolt did trigger something a little deeper in me to ponder. It’s the idea of how easily a moment you’ve been living so much of your life into can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. There’s no way to totally prepare for some of the things that end up happening in life — even though every wedding planner I know has probably tried to think of a way to be just that prepared for their clients — and, every Olympian must have that kind of singular conviction for the one race that will ultimately define their entire life.
Sheesh. That kind of thinking puts a lot of pressure on “one moment,” right?
It might just be my age, or perhaps its the never-ending series of life lessons I’ve been experiencing for the past decade or so, but these days, I can’t let myself “live for any future moments” like I used to.
I feel kind of sad admitting this, but I think part of the reason I’ve been stuck for so long is because, in the past, I was very busy forecasting plans, ideas, and expectations into my future that all required that things go the way I believed they should so I could get the outcome I wanted. Then… when my proverbial Segway rider from nowhere misses his maneuver and takes away my moment, I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.
I don’t want to always go to the sad or gloomy side with my pondering posts, but for me at least, there is always some juicy morsels to chew on that can help stop repeating things I keep doing! When I think about the idea of living for a big moment in your life — like your wedding day or the race you’ve been training your whole life to win — I realize how valuable it is to have a goal, and how blessed it feels to have a plan with all the trimmings in mind.
But one of my favorite things about that wedding with the Segway-riding videographer is how funny my memories still are to me. And aren’t the moments worth remembering — even if they don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life — some of the best ones of all?
