This was my best man’s toast/speech at Aaron and Kate’s wedding.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Roger. I’ve known Aaron for quite some time now. We first met through a mutual friend, actually my roommate at the time, about 12-13 years ago when we were both attending UCSD. I generally have a hard time remembering the first time that I meet anyone, but I actually have a fairly good recollection of the first day that I met Aaron.

Aaron and my roommate had just come out of class and were walking by while I was studying out in the sun. I don’t remember much of what was said, but what I do remember is being somewhat taken back by Aaron’s appearance. Believe it or not, Aaron actually had a full head of hair at one point in his life, and at this particular point in his life, he not only still had his hair, but he was determined to flaunt it. When I first met him, he was sporting this long, heinous-looking mane to his shoulders. I thought to myself, “Who is this ’80’s glam rocker wannabe?”. If you’ve ever seen pictures of Aaron with his long rocker do, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that male pattern baldness can most definitely be a good thing with some people.

Shortly after that disturbing incident, I had another interesting experience with Aaron. I still hardly knew him at all, and my roommate had invited Aaron over to study. I happened to be cooking dinner at the time, a beef and vegetable stir-fry. Not wanting to be inconsiderate, I asked Aaron if he wanted any. He asked what I was cooking and so I showed him. He took a look at the dish and made this face like uggghhh, I wouldn’t eat that if you paid me. Now, my cooking’s not that bad, but even if it were, that’s a pretty rude reaction, especially since I was just trying to be nice in offering him the food in the first place.

So my initial impressions of Aaron, were, shall we say, not very favorable. First, he’s got this ridiculous ’80’s rocker hair which alone is a pretty big strike against him. And now this rude attitude? Hmmm… I don’t know about this guy.

Soon thereafter, I found out that Aaron was a vegetarian which, of course, is yet another strike against him, but at least that explained his rudeness towards my cooking. Over the next few months, we got to know each other better and I found out that he was not all that bad and that we actually had a lot in common. We had a lot of the same classes so we started studying together and hanging out. And fortunately for me, he soon cut off his mane so that I no longer had to hide my face while in public with him.

Aside from the fact that we were both in the Mechanical Engineering program, we both liked outdoor activities and spent a lot of our free time rock climbing, surfing, playing volleyball, and a bunch of other stuff. Unfortunately, we didn’t just spend our free time doing this stuff, we ended up doing this stuff when we probably should have been studying, which inevitably resulted in many a late night study session as well as a few all-nighters.

We graduated from UCSD together, then both got jobs at Hughes which is where Aaron met Kate.

I think that Kate and Aaron make a good couple. They certainly complement each other well. For example, Kate has a high-paying, successful career with a bright future while Aaron… doesn’t. On the other hand, Aaron is a bit more adventurous and daring than Kate which is good because Aaron encourages Kate to do things that she might otherwise not do. They admire each other, respect each other, and as a couple, they’re very happy together and seem to genuinely enjoy the time that they spend with each other. And that, after all, is what’s really important. So with that, let us all raise our glasses to toast and congratulate the newly wed Kate and Aaron Palumbo-Head!

Posted by Roger at 11:32 pm.