The Great Ohio Flip-Out

Once upon a time The Gregory, 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. Our second Beagle loved to run free there, run like the wind until he could barely wiggle. Recently something reminded me of the day many extended family members showed up and we all decided to retreat to the park for a cookout. It was a beautiful summer day ... puffy white clouds, warm breezes, droning insects, and dappled shade. As I recall there were about 25 of us there; it was sort of like a reunion minus nametags, matching t-shirts, speeches, and feudal activity. Also there was no beer.

After appropriating a "campsite" consisting of a few wooden tables and a grill, we busied ourselves embellishing the pastoral landscape with our 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, and so of course there you are. Time to live it up because, as history teaches us, deathbeds are coming!

So there we all were, laughing, fooling around in a pointedly civilized way, 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 over-prepared.

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 suddenly 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 ... a light blue background with flowers on it as I recall. Real 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.

The burgers and dogs 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 swung by the beverage concession and 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! Good thing I shave above my knees! The back of my head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. I saw stars, and I don't mean like Johnny Depp. 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. HaHa, 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 the neighboring picnic site, where there was beer (or at least hard lemonade). Thanks again, darling! Next time we have hotdogs, remind me to marinate yours in cyanide!

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 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 mind-numbing boredom! Anyone can do that.

My dear sweet niece Sandra rushed over to help me up. She was the only one. I have left her a small but significant piece of jewelry in my will and she may get my Pirates of the Caribbean DVD's too. My dress -- my cute summer picnic dress! -- looked like a Georgia O'Keeffe canvas -- Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills with Condiments -- on which someone had become violently sick.

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.