Possumblog

Lions and lions and lions, oh my!

I had a nice meal last night--Oldest's had her Leo Club banquet at the fancy Mexican place over by the not-quite-so-fancy Chinese buffet place over by the locked-in-a-death-spiral K-Mart. Frankly, I had forgotten we were supposed to go, but was reminded. Several times, in fact.

And thankfully, this year Reba was able to go along as well. If you recall from our chat last year, I had to attend this shindig (at the swank barbecue joint down the road in the swank Target shopping center) with just Oldest and Me, which meant I had to endure a total lack of Adult Interaction, and sat across from two young ladies whom I call "ladies" only to be painfully polite, seeing as how their table demeanor would actually remind Miss Manners of a pack of rabid curs. At least last year, there was room at the table.

This year, we were placed in the back "room" of the establishment, which seemed to actually be more of a dead end corridor. Or torreador. Or something. But it was narrow, and dim, and loud, yet remarkably heighty, with several strings of festive multicolored Christmas lights, and a mural on the wall that provided a nice cautionary tale about trying to paint a mural while vision-questing on mescaline. A long line of tables were set up end to end, and pressed about six inches from the wall of the "room," meaning anyone who sat with their backs to the wall, or in the center, were trapped like, like--BADGERS! [Insert joke about not needing no steekin badgers here]

Wisely, we sat on the outer side of the tables, which was just as entertaining, seeing as how scalding hot plates got passed between and over us to the people on the other side, who actually dared not eat for fear of not being wedged in by their gullets and not being able to get up afterwards.

The across table view was nice, though. Which is wrong of me to say, so forget I said it. But my goodness, I don't ever recall girls looking like this when I was young. Although, the view was somewhat disturbed by the fact that one of the young ladies from the past year was across, and still had the most intriguing method of using dining utensils and conveying food to her mouth that I believe I have ever seen.

MOTHERS! FATHERS! Would you PLEASE teach your children how to hold a knife and fork! And how to use them! And how to chew properly! Holy Emily Post, Batman, can you not SEE what they're DOING!?

Anyway, food was brought, which consisted in our family of a beef and a chicken chimichanga (whatever that is) and a dish called Veracruz enchiladas for me, containing two corn tortillas full of shrimp and covered with melted cheese. Mmmm. Also had rice and gooey bean goop.

As for Adult Interaction...well, since Oldest was on the other side of Miss Reba from me, and since Oldest (having as she does the same attitude at school as at home) has very little to say to any of her compatriots, Miss Reba's entire time was monopolized by said daughter, leaving me to sit and eat and try not to act like I just came by myself.

I must admit that there was not a TOTAL lack of Adult Interaction--pressed together as we were, I was constantly jabbed in the ribs by the highly attractive and needle-sharp right elbow of my bride, whom I believe thinks that she was attempting to qualify for a position in the WNBA with her under-the-basket, elbows-flailing, rebounding skills. And doing a darned fine job of it.

Obviously, I could not allow this thought to break free of my lips, so I merely stuffed in more shrimp and tried not to grunt too loudly when another blow came my way.

After a fine meal, it was time for the installation of officers by the Exalted Lord High Muckety-Muck Gabby-Jawed Leonine Prince of Clubby Get-Togethers, which was nice, aside from the fact that the officers were unable to stand, given that they'd all taken seats on the wall and were passing out from lack of oxygen.

Despite my ill-spirited snarkiness, it was actually not bad--nice, even, in the way that such civic club meetings are. Everyone's in a pretty good mood, and you pretty much know everyone, and it's for a good cause, and no one fights, and you get to eat. I just wasn't in the mood for it, I suppose.

Nor for having to go next door to Kmart afterwards.

Seems Boy is doing some kind of weird social studies thing at school with a group, and they're making a silent movie of all things, and Boy is supposed to be an Old West undercover lawman, who tends the bar and overhears stuff and is able to nab the robber, or some such stuff. I knew nothing about this until last night, and Reba had already talked to one of the other moms who's helping out the boys, and Jonathan needed a hat, and a badge, and an shirt with sleeve garters and handcuffs, and Reba was nearly feverish with desire to go get all this stuff from a costume place or something.

"I have a hat. We can make a badge out of foil. It's not like it's the Great Train Robbery, for Pete's sake. We can use a couple of the girls' pony tail holders for his sleeves, and he can wear that blue-striped shirt we bought him for church. It has big sleeves."

The let-down was palpable. I will never figure this out--she always rushes in and says we need all this junk, and when I suggest that we already HAVE most of the junk, she pouts and acts like I'm some sort of beast. Which I am, obviously.

Anyway, after convincing her that my straw hat would be JUST FINE, we still needed some little plastic handcuffs. I was going to relent on the badge for the sake of peace, but we couldn't find the OFFICIAL one--in her mind, it HAD to be the shiny Magen David with balls on the tips, or else it wasn't a REAL Old West sheriff's badge. [Again, enter with the steenkin badges jokes, if you please.] But, they didn't have one, so we got a little cheapy set of stuff that had some plastic cuffs in it, and wound up getting all the other kids from her parent's house around 8:30 or so.

Meaning, yes, they were up late getting bathed and put to bed, and since I had an early meeting this morning, I'm certain they were a handful to get out of the house this morning.

As for the badge? Well, I printed out a big 400pt six-pointed Wingding star from MSWord that I had added the requisite round tips to, taped it to a heavy disposable aluminum roasting pan, cut it out, rounded the edges a bit with a pencil, then used the pencil to engrave "Sheriff" onto the front of it. The final thing was the attachment--in my haste, I had thought we had some pin backs, but didn't. So I grabbed a pair of extra-strong magnets off the refrigerator and glued one on the back, and mated it with another magnet that will be worn inside his pocket.

I suppose we'll see how this turns out. For my sake, I hope well.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at October 26, 2005 12:11 PM