The Tale of the Tailgate

Tailgating is as much a part of football as the game.  This weekend the tailgate and the game came out about the same.

Before I go any further in the recounting of the ensuing events, I want to clearly state that I was given one job to do.  I was assigned to go to the dollar store to buy small disposable loaf pans.  The dollar store did not have them, so I went to Stop and Shop and returned with my designated item.  I was also in charge of driving.  There were absolutely no mishaps in this area.  Disclaimer concluded.

We should have known we were fated for failure before we left home.  I was on the phone with my mother.  BP was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper at the kitchen table.  I mentioned to my mother that we had tickets to the Rutgers game and were leaving in a few minutes.  Perry jumped up.  Tickets!  He got them and we were out the door. 

Matt arrived at our home without a chair.  BP grabbed one of our canvas fold-up chairs out of the garage for him.  We loaded up the car with our share of provisions and supplies, and proceded to pick up Terry and Gene.  They put their share of provisons and supplies in the back of our van, and off we went.

Once situated in the parking lot, we procured a somewhat hilly area in the shade, not quite in front of our parking spot.  We immediately set to work setting up our tailgate camp.  I was carrying one of Gene and Terry's chairs and their small table that we use for holding utensils and just-cooked food.  Within a couple of minutes, the group directly in front of our car moved, so we immediately grabbed all our stuff and moved to our rightful turf.  I refolded the small table and relocated it to the new site.  However, by an act of negative divine intervention, the plastic in the workings of the folding table cracked.  We placed the remains in the back of the van.  We would just have to keep everything on the big table, which is actually not so big.

We soon realized that we would have a little extra room because Terry left the paper towels in her minivan.
Gene started the grill.  Terry put out the snacks and condiments.  BP set up the chairs.  He set up four chairs.  The fifth chair that he had taken for Matt was actually my beach umbrella.  So instead we opened up a beach blanket.  I opened two packages of cheese and the onion dip.  When I peeled the tamper proof seal on the dip, we realized that Terry left the garbage bags next to the paper towels.  This wasn't much of a problem because we had a plastic shopping bag we could use for garbage.  We just hung it from a nearby bush, nice and high so the bears couldn't get to it.

Everything was set up.  It was time to sit back and relax.  And I tried.  But the chair just folded up on me.  I sprang back up thinking that whoever set up the chair didn't open it all the way.  I thought wrong.  Upon closer inspection, the plastic footings on both back legs were split across the middle.  We laid the remains in the back of the car next to what used to be the little folding table.

I settled onto the picnic blanket.  The guys were talking around the cooler.  Terry sat, with no trouble, on the remaining chair.  She opened her beer.  V-O-L-C-A-N-O.  Most of it dripped on the ground.  A napkin took care of the beer that landed on the chair.  Then she got a water bottle so she could wash her hands. 

The burgers were grilling and order had been restored.  Then BP wore an expression usually reserved for a man having a stroke.  He left the rolls at home.  And somehow, some way, this was my fault because I did not help him pack the bag.

Terry and I shrugged and declared it a low-carb meal.  But the guys weren't eating burgers.  They had Polish hot dogs with sauerkraut, hot dog onions, and "man's mustard" (spicy Polish stuff guaranteed to put hair on your chest).  And they wanted hot dog rolls.  Gene was determined.  Going to a store was out of the question, so there was only one option.

Perry and Matt were too despondent to move, so I volunteered to accompany Gene.  We surveyed the landscape.  The people to our right were eating premade sandwiches.  The people to our left had knife and fork food.  But past them were a group with a spread similar to ours.  We donned our most pathetic expressions, which at this point, was not very difficult.  We humbly approached these neighbors and Gene, by way of introduction, announced, "We f***ed up.  Do you have any extra rolls?"  We left with three hamburger rolls and sympathetic assurances that this kind of thing happens to everyone.

So the guys ate their hot dogs on hamburger rolls.  Matt briefly rested his plate on the table on the hill.  Perry, across the table, picked up his plate, which hit the mustard, which knocked over the ketchup, which caused the remaining half of Matt's misbunned hot dog to roll off the table and unto the dirt.  Quickly applying the three-second rule*, he brushed it off and ate it.     

* The Three-Second Rule stipulates that if food falls on the floor, it is still edible if you retrieve it within three seconds. 

I thought the meal was done, but the guys were just biding time and making room for another round of dogs.  A debate arose.  They needed more bread.  As everyone knows, you just can't beg from the same people twice.  So they were checking out the people across the aisle.  The people situated behind the truck next to us were finished eating and were packing up.  After repeatedly ignoring Terry's advice to ask the truck people before they put everything away, she just yelled to the guy that we needed hot dog rolls. And it was done.

 We  packed up.  We went to the game.  Rutgers lost.  We came back to the car.  It was hot.  Everyone was thirsty and grabbed a beer.  Terry fished around in the dark for the bottle opener.  She handed it to Matt.  In mid-use the bottle opener fell apart in his hand.  At this point there was nothing to do but laugh and drink.  Luckily Matt was able to strain, through his teeth, the teeny pieces of bottle that broke along with the bottle opener.  He took a different beer.  We laid the defunct bottle opener in the hearse alongside the table and the chair, and went home.

 And that is the woeful Tale of the Tailgate.