The Millcreek Picnic

A picnic in Millcreek Canyon:  Sam and Sarah and kiddos are here, and so we met with Charles and family including Anne and Spencer, the fiance.

Tom and I drove up two hours early to claim a spot.  We emptied the car, set a table, and sat creekside waiting in pleasant repose in our old fogey chairs with a couple of diet Cokes.

They all arrived, mostly cheerful, except for Murgatroyd, who looked like she'd swallowed a live toad.

We spread out the food and ate, but not at one table as I had planned, but at two tables.  And this is the part that really hurts me to write:  I was not at the fun table.

When did I become the person who sat at the loser table? (Tom and me).  Everyone else drifted to the fun table.

  Sam made a fire in the pit.  We gathered round.  Murgatroyd vomited live toad two feet from the fire pit while the rest of us tried not to do the same.

Tom covered the vomit with ice cubes.  Charles covered that with dirt and scraped it off the cement with part of a cardboard box.

Erica, who was part of the fun group, took Murgatroyd home.

Let's eat smores, people!

Charles is writing a memoir, which is beginning to sound like Mommy Dearest.  He says I didn't speak to him for a week when he was seventeen.

"I think it was you who didn't speak to me," I say.  At seventeen, his frontal lobes were the size of garbanzo beans.

We eat smores, but I am depressed.  "If ten is high,  I give this party a six," I say.  I've always been an easy grader.

"It's a five," Charles says.  "You can't get higher than a five if there's vomit involved."

I'll go with that.