"At least now you'll have a story to tell"

A story to tell I have, indeed. It's April... Flowers are a-bloomin'... Sun's a-shinin'... and that means... PICNICS!! Yesterday, for Easter Sunday, Butthole decided (I KNOW!!) we were going to have a picnic. Surprisingly, his parents were on board with the idea, and in fact, they wanted to come along. He picked me up and we stopped by the grocery store to get some food.
We arrived at his house and layed everything out on the kitchen table in order to prepare said food. In my expert picnicker opinion it's best to take all sandwich building material with one to the picnic destination and prepare said sandwiches on sight. Unfortunately it's was a 4 to 1 on the amateurs' side who wanted to assemble the sandwiches prior to departure. I can give you plenty of reasons why sandwiches should be prepared AT the picnic sight:

1. Picnics are ALL about making the sandwiches while sitting on a blanket and fighting the bugs off your mayo.

2. A perfect excuse to buy the mayo in the squeeze bottle

3. No chance for the tomato to soak through the bread as ingestion is immediate following assembly.

4. How do you know how hungry you'll be when you get there? What if you don't make enough? What if you make too much? Then you're stuck with a pile of soggy sandwiches no one wants to eat.

5. Balancing a paper plate on your lap while you try not to drop the bread mayo-side-down as you reach for the turkey is FUN *Bonus points if it's slightly breezy and the plate keeps trying to fly away with your piece of bread while you put mayo on the other piece.

But what do I know? It's not like I've been picnicking (YES I am making that into a verb) my whole life. *Back to the tangent-free time line* At first there was a debate on whether the bread should be toasted. Cue Butthole for a pronounced *SCOFF* "But of course it should be toasted!" As his mother rummaged in the cupboards for the toaster and argued with Butthole as to it's place of residence (they have like 3 toasters apparently... WTF?) I commenced slicing tomatoes while Peace Chick brought forth the necessary items out of the fridge. His mother (after finally finding the toaster)declared the necessity for an assembly line. She toasted the bread, Peace Chick spread the mayonnaise, I added tomato and lettuce, Butthole took care of the meat and cheese and his dad took care of the wrapping. As you know we aren't poor 3rd world 6 year olds assembling shoes for Nike in order to support our families of 6 so we weren't exactly efficient and there were plenty of traffic jams and duty-crossing. At any rate... We made an inordinate amount of sandwiches, gathered all of our snacks, and headed out. We got to the park, picked a shady spot, and set up. So far, so good.
After eating (not nearly half the sandwiches me made) and relaxing for a while Peace Chick and I decided I was going to learn how to long board. It's surprisingly easy. See?



Let it be noted that I was NOT wearing the appropriate attire for anything other than sitting still and looking pretty. Those aren't even my shoes, they're Peace Chick's (matching was unintentional) as I was wearing sandals and we figured it wouldn't be safe for me to try to skate in my sandals, adorable as they may be. Then Peace Chick encouraged me to go up the street and coast down the hill. Easy enough, right? WRONG. I should have seen that one coming.
The thing about Peace Chick is that she was a zen-like aura about her that makes you forget about the possibility of consequences. In all honesty, she should be selling used cars because anything she suggests automatically sounds like a good idea. She manages to make the words "You should go down the hill" make sense. Never mind that you're wearing an adorable new dress and sandals. When she suggests something there's a little voice inside your head that suddenly perks up and whispers: "Nothing could possibly go wrong, after all, this is the first time you've ever tried this."
As I stood there preparing for take off a bunch of kids zoomed by as if to say "Come on, Julia, look how easy we make it look, this is a totally good idea, you should totally try to do it!" Well the subliminal messaging sunk in and I took off. As Peace Chick narrated "And this is the part where she starts screaming" I felt myself gaining speed. I, did, indeed start screaming, much to Peace Chick's amusement. The world was becoming a blur as I panicked on wheels. Peace Chick was screaming "Don't jump! Don't jump off!!" And then... I was flying! No, really, I flew all across the pavement. I still can't say with certainty whether I panicked and jumped off or if I just lost my balance. Either way I did considerable damage to my body, my clothing, and my ego. I landed right on my hip (which is now twice as big, thank you very much), scraped my left elbow, my knee, my right forearm (WTF?), my boob (WTF? X 2- those were covered!), my hand, and even chipped my toe-nail polish. I laid on the ground trying to make sense of it all and then the board rolled at me. People were running. Peace Chick was yelling/laughing/saying "OH DUDE!" Butthole was angrily screaming at me "What were you thinking!?!?" It was a blur. A painful, humiliating, bloody blur. Adrenaline was pumping through me. As every one's screams of "Is she ok?" reached my ears I became so high on the adrenaline that I could do nothing but laugh. Now I was the manic psycho bleeding everywhere and laughing about it.
His mom (OH GOSH! HIS MOM!!!) came running both with maternal AND doctor instinct. We drove back to Butthole's so that I could get cleaned up and bandaged up. His mom came along to clean me up. Now, I've gotta say, for a doctor, she was not well equipped for injuries of the magnitude I had induced upon myself. I guess that makes sense, though, considering in an ideal reality she no longer has small children who have no concept of cause and effect regarding the risky shenanigans they deem "fun." All she had was hydrogen peroxide (OUCH!!!) and band-aids. She patched me up and I apologized over and over for ruining the afternoon. Peace Chick laughed and apologized both for laughing and for encouraging me to pull such a thoughtless stunt. Butthole stood by holding my hand and shaking his head in disbelief at my stupidity. I noticed I ripped my (NEW) dress and had to safety-pin it to keep the strap in place. Good times... NOT.



So yes... Peace Chick apologized as she tried to contain her laughter, Butthole kissed the owie once he got over the a. shock and b. anger at my stupidity, and I sat pretty for the rest of the afternoon. Like Peace Chick said, at least now I have a story to tell, though I learned no matter how good her ideas seem, I should never, ever listen to her.