Walking on eggshells at the picnic in Hell

“Hey, it’s 104 degrees outside, let’s have a picnic!”

If my family had suggested such an outing, it would never happen. For one, my family wouldn’t suggest it. For two, if they did, I would be sure to tell them no way I’m doing that. You see, I can tell my family no and assume that they understand me. If not, we’ll talk it out and they will either get it or they won’t, but we will have expressed ourselves.

The picnic in hell suggestion, however, came from my wife’s side of the family.

And for some reason, nobody voices dissent in my wife’s family. Majority rules and nobody wants to run the risk of alienating or offending anyone, so they just agree to things even when they don’t want to do them. Walking on egg shells so as not to upset the apple cart.

And that’s how we found ourselves at a picnic yesterday in the 125 degree, humid Florida heat.

My wife was in my camp on this one — she did not want to go to the picnic. Our son, E, doesn’t handle the heat all that well. I swear, the kid turns pink almost immediately and he breaks out in heat rash. But my wife, being my wife, didn’t want to say no to the picnic. After all, both her sisters and their kids are in town and all that jazz.

And since her mom had bought chicken for me, I was also obliged to go. Suddenly, I was caught up in the eggshell walking!

Usually, if I don’t want to do something, I don’t do it. As simple as that. Why put myself at the mercy of other people’s whims to do stuff I don’t want to do?

So there we were at the park, in the 150 degree heat, sweat drenching our clothes as we battled mosquitoes the size of, and as lethal as, hand grenades and flies large enough to carry squirrels away.

The kids were kids — they can have fun pretty much anywhere, especially when there’s lots of dangerous things to climb, balls to throw and space to run. I had fun pushing E and some of the others on the swings. E LOVES the swings!

About an hour in, my sister-in-law asked me to go to the store to get marshmallows. Eager to get back into the cool air conditioned comfort of the car, I said yes and was halfway down the road before she even finished her request.

Odd moment of the day:

I was standing inside the grocery store, drenched in sweat, hair a mess, and holding a bag of marshmallows. I lifted the bag to my nose, and breathed in deeply, thinking, Man, I love the smell of marshmallows! It reminds me of the simpler days of childhood before responsibility, bills to pay and parental responsibilities. I’m not sure how long I was standing there sniffing the bag, but suddenly, I noticed I was being watched.

A cashier, standing nearby asked, “Is that all you’re gonna buy?”

“Um, no, I have to get some cheese,” I said, embarrassed as she likely called security on the marshmallow sniffing freak.

Back to the park

Everybody sat at the picnic tables, chowing down food with one hand, swatting flies with the other. Meanwhile, I was obsessed, watching as the flies landed on everybody’s food, on soda bottles on containers where food was, mentally marking each surface that a fly touched so as not to touch it myself.

Disgusting! Why would anybody have a picnic outside? That’s where all the insects are!

It makes no sense to me at all. Especially when it’s 200 degrees outside, it’s raining fire and trees are exploding into flames all around us.

I considered taking my food to the car to sit in the cool air, listening to the radio, and occasionally glancing up to wave at the rest of the family.

“Hey, how ya’ doing?” I would say with a big smile on my face.

Of course, I didn’t do that.

But as I sat there, I could tell that my wife was miserable. At least one of her sisters was also miserable. It seemed like nobody really wanted to be there, yet here we all were, walking on eggshells.

As if the buzzing flies weren’t gross enough, about halfway through my sandwich, my son choked on a piece of bread and proceeded to puke all over the place.

He handled it well, though, and immediately wanted to continue eating. Even if nobody around him wanted to.

Funny thing about this post. It started as a rant about the annoying picnic, but as I went through and found pictures from today, I found myself smiling. Maybe I should do more things I don’t want to do. Who knows what kind of memories I have been missing out while sticking to my solitary lifestyle?

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