lighter fluid We finally got the tree planted last night. Eric, he of spermy swimming ability, stopped over and helped Esteban dig the hole. He was a great help. Scotty Boom Boom was held late at work because he is 26 and all Type A personality, therefore didn’t join us until we were at the pizza joint. He feels bad, but we understand and I fully intend to tap that guilt to the best of my ability. Esteban halted Eric’s attempts at desodding the area I marked for the landscaping bed because it was after 7 o’clock at that point and he didn’t want half a bed sitting there for a week.
All of the boys will be attending the annual ‘Men’s Camping Weekend’ this weekend. As you might have gathered from their creative name, this is a weekend in which many men drive hundreds of miles to ‘camp’ on someone’s brother’s lawn and drink. You’re not allowed to attend with more than one X chromosome. Apparently, the presence of women would incite rampant bathing or fewer incidences of crotch adjustment. Or whatever they do. Maybe sit around naked and beat on drums made from their preserved foreskins or something. Gah. I just made myself gag, thinking about some of them naked.
This weekend, historically, has been fraught with’oh’ not disaster necessarily. Let’s just say bad judgments. And it is no surprise.
I have been Camping With Men. I have been the only female Camping With Men. Not on Men’s Camping Weekend, mind you, just before the Men in question started finding mates. Camping With Men makes the only female an automatic den mother. Perhaps I should have come equip with badges, but no, instead I figured ‘Badgees? We don’t need no steenking badgees!’ At one point, I gave two of them a job to scrub the potatoes, wrap them in foil, put them into a cast iron Dutch oven and start a couple of coals on fire, and then place the coals around and on top of the Dutch oven, to slowly cook the potatoes. No biggie. They dutifully washed and wrapped the potatoes and put them in to the pot. However, they overstuffed the pot two inches too full, leaving the lid setting on top of a mountain of potatoes. Then, they decided that instead of starting a bunch of coals on fire and then moving them around and on top of the pot, they could make a more artful and therefore efficient coal structure if they put the briquettes around and on top of the pot and THEN lit them on fire. With lighter fluid. You know, directly onto the food that we were going to later eat. I watched them silently, like a patient mother, only saying stop when one was unstopping the can of lighter fluid and the other was searching for his lighter. That was the day that I learned that two boys will do very stupid things if they both agree upon it. I still remember the sheepish guilty look upon their faces.
I mean, I don’t mean to take the high road here. I am the same woman who once told two tent neophytes that setting up a new tent in the dark would be no problem because, hey, we had flashlights, right? The same woman who forgot to pack PANTS for a camping trip when the average temperature ranged in the low forties.
Thus, I can only imagine Men’s Camping Weekend. They get to pee wherever they want, on anything they want. They make homemade potato guns and shoot things over the lake. They blow up watermelons. They stupidly throw fireworks into campfires. There is usually a theme of some kind. A few years ago, they made a bonfire so large that it could be seen from space.
And with so much free floating testosterone, fire, Deepwoods OFF with Deet, and fermented grains, you can imagine that things degrade to Cro-Magnon level fairly quickly. Last year, there was apparently a skirmish. Las Vegas odds are that something more intense will develop this year.
I warned Esteban to not get into a brawl. He’s large and menacing, but has the heart of a pussy cat. Most of the guys going up are role-playing gamers, but there are a few ‘good old boys’ in the mix. And my experience is that the ‘good old boys’ are a bit more seasoned in the ‘shit stomping’ arena than the role-playing gamers. I tried to explain to him that the Mullet Nascar Set isn’t going to wait around for him to roll die-8 to find out if he gets to punch him or not. Esteban pshawed me. I took a high moral stance and told him that I didn’t want him to get hurt. Of course, this was in front of Eric and Scott, which was probably the same as having his mother remind him to wear clean underwear.
Then I declared, ‘You don’t see me getting into fights. I’ve never been in a fight in my life.’
Eric piped up. ‘Ahem’ .skinny bitches.’
Then I blushed and sputtered, ‘Yeah, but’ but’ I knew going in that I would win. I don’t get into a situation that is questionable. I would have flattened them. Both of them. As long as they weren’t wearing rings or something.’
Scotty Boom Boom, my favorite friend, agreed. ‘Yeah, Weetabix doesn’t go writing checks her ass can’t cash.’
I nodded. ‘Damn right. My ass has two forms of identification for that shit.’
The boys then degraded into an entire discussion about using the picture of Scotty Boom Boom’s ass on one’s drivers license and yanking down trou when pulled over by the police.
Because, you know, they’re boys.
My plans for the weekend are fairly minimal. I have laid the smack down and stated that Esteban will finish his dish duties or I shall become very grumpy indeed. Kim V, Cheri and the always adorable Kim V Baby, plan to go to Milwaukee on Saturday morning to attend the Renaissance Faire.
While I was walking this morning with the Lovely Carissa and Pretty Penny, though, a slight kink fell into that plan. It seems that the three of us will be free this Friday night. And I, being the hip hip wiggly temptress that I am, suggested that we go to the bar.
The Bad Retro Bar. The Bar of Drunken Weetabix Badness.
It actually incited me to shout ‘Dooooood! Dooood!’ with excitement, as only the prospect of Malibu and sweaty barstool dancing can do.
Lord help us. I can just see it now. Kim V knocking on my door at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning and me crawling from my nest on the sofa, where I had fallen four hours earlier, to greet her, my makeup still on, my hair smelling like smoke, sticky colorful candy necklace marks all over my body, telling her in a hoarse-from-shout-singing-to-the-Partridge-Family voice ‘Go on without me. I’ll meet you down there in a few hours. Or something.’ It’s probably good that I’m not a single woman and Esteban is such a stable law-abiding kind of guy. I’d be having keggers every weekend and making out with the drummer from the Love Monkeys.
Sometimes I think God made me a curvy round kind of girl to keep me from being evil. And sometimes I think His plan isn’t working out so well.
