The great Ohio flip-out redux

NOTE: This is a rerun from a few years ago. It's raining and it's Monday and I have already written a guest blog post today. I am too lazy to write one more original word. Besides, this involves me and gravity, which usually makes for compelling reading.

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Once upon a time TG, I, and our kids lived semi-contentedly in a small town in central Ohio. In that burg was a park where we liked to go for picnics and generalized recreation.

Buckley.Our second Beagle, Buckley (RIP 1997-2005) loved to run free there, run like the wind until he could barely wiggle.

My recent spill at Finlay Park in Columbia, South Carolina, reminded me of the day in the late '90s when many extended family members showed up in said small Ohio town, and as a unit we retreated to the park for a cookout.

It was a beautiful summer day. As I recall there were a couple dozen assorted Webers there; it was sort of like a reunion minus nametags, matching t-shirts, speeches, and feudal activity.

Also there was no beer.

Pick Your Spot And Land On It

After appropriating a picnic site consisting of a few wooden tables and a grill, we busied ourselves embellishing the pastoral landscape with coolers and hampers and blankets and lawn chairs and kids and pets and so forth and so on.

You know ... the kind of deal where you've brought so much stuff from home, it would have been much easier to stay home. And yet not at all the same as having a cookout in the great outdoors.

So there we all were, laughing, chatting, getting caught up on familial gossip as we arranged the assorted vittles for easy access.

Which generally meant, the men lugged the heavy stuff from the cars and then stood around and talked about golf while the women hauled out the potato salad and baked beans and deviled eggs and bags of chips and sandwich buns and condiments and homemade desserts and two-liters of soda pop, plus all the accessories: paper plates, plastic cutlery, napkins, cups, et cetera, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

We were nothing if not prepared.

You Provide The Food, I'll Provide The Entertainment

So that our al fresco feast could boast a freshly-cooked main course, my brother-in-law fired up the grill and threw on enough hotdogs and hamburgers to feed Patton's Third Army should that venerable company advance over the nearest knoll, demanding provisions.

To the delicate verdancy of the atmosphere we added pungent greasy smoke, and the party was truly on.

I was wearing a casual summer lounge-type dress. Comfortable and, you know, cool and forgiving. The kind of dress that feels like a bathrobe but doesn't look like one. I've always been real prissy so it suited me well.

My legs were bare and I was wearing flip-flop shoes with sequins on them. (I'm just not the plain rubber flip-flop type.) And yes, I had on full makeup and my hair was done. Like I said: real prissy.

(You need to know this or you won't fully enjoy the next part of the story.)

A Hotdog By Any Other Name

Eventually, the burgers and dogs having been charred to perfection, we converged upon the food table and did our best to get our plates piled up right on the first try. For me that meant lots of mustard and ketchup on a still-smoking hotdog, and all that goes along with it.

Balancing everything carefully, I picked up a plastic cup of something soft and fizzy. As I headed for a lawn chair that had been placed by TG on the perimeter of our staked-out quarter-acre, I'm pretty sure I was talking nonstop and probably laughing too, because that's just what I do.

I can't be sure, though, because no sooner had I turned my back to my chair and sat down, than I reached cruising altitude and just kept on going.

I mean, going all the way back, onto my back, with all the grace of a drunken Hottentot.

Yes! My skirt, at least for a moment before my legs flopped to the side, ended up around my waist! Ahem.

There was a moment of darkness. I literally saw stars and I don't mean like Johnny Depp.

A Fallen Woman Evokes No Sympathy

My lunch was sprawled all over me, to include my face and hair. I might have been hallucinating but I'm pretty sure I heard an ant family tittering in the grass. Their voices are so tiny!

"She lost her hotdog," one said. "She is a hotdog," declared another.

Ha Ha! So funny, so small-town ant-like.

TG immediately -- immediately -- turned and walked in the opposite direction. It was as though he wanted to completely forget who I was and the reason I might have been invited to share in the festivities, and having developed amnesia, oh-so-smoothly insinuate himself into the family occupying a neighboring picnic site.

(Thanks again, darling! Next time we have hotdogs, remind me to marinate yours in cyanide!)

Hands Across The Ketchup

I began struggling to my feet. What it was, was painful. And my considerable ego was not the only thing bruised.

What it was not, was pretty and what it was also not was elegant, but what it was, was interesting.

It was memorable.

And my sort-of motto -- after try not to fall down -- is, if you can be nothing else, be interesting and be memorable.

Invite ridicule; invite criticism; invite all-out contempt. At least you'll be remembered for having inspired something other than brain-addling boredom!

Anyone can do that.

Our darling niece, Sandra, rushed over to help me up. As in, she was the only one there who offered assistance.

I Never Forget A Kindness

In my will I have bequeathed to Sandra a small but significant piece of jewelry. She may get my Pirates of the Caribbean DVDs too.

My once-cute summer picnic dress resembled a Georgia O'Keeffe canvas -- Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills with Condiments -- which someone had decided to make the object of a food fight.

Plus which, my head hurt.

But I survived to prink and preen and party again, and what's more to tell about it, so there y'all. No harm, no foul.

Just a little flip-out on a summer day in Ohio, is all.

Comments

[Mari]

Hahaha! I knew I liked you! This is sooo something I would do.
At least we can laugh at ourselves, right?

[irene]

This is really a memorable incident. I hope you didn't have after incident pain. Don't you just love husbands that leave the scene of a memorable event. I think your niece certainly deserves that little something in your will.

[Debbie]

Oh sweet, sweet, sweet. That face! You know I'm partial to Beagles. We had a stray male Beagle come to our house. We had several females of other breeds at the time, so we found him a good home. But he touched our hearts and we got a tri-color female Beagle of our own, Miss Prissy. Also as you know, we had to put her to sleep two years ago, that's when we got our current Lemon Beagle, Penelope. I love that dog.