Last night we dismissed our plans to view a movie after being invited across the alley to a BBQ.  Since so many were arriving, we brought our BBQ over to help handle the giant mass of food to be cooked.  Our neighbour’s son’s fiancee was celebrating her birthday so we had a few new faces in the mix.  Early on in the evening, the boys pulled down the tailgate on a truck parked in the driveway to add extra seating.  Drew, Amanda and Ryan had plates of food on their laps and had been sitting on the back of the tailgate for a while when there was a loud banging sound.  There they were, flat on their asses on the concrete with the tailgate at their backs.  The chains holding the tailgate to the back of the truck had separated.  Amanda had a look of deep shock across her face while Ryan was nearly rolling on the ground in tears – laughing of course.  Drew, true to his natural reaction, took one look down at his plate of food in his lap, picked up a chicken kabob and continued to eat as if nothing had happened.  None of the three of them are overly large indivduals and I’d be shocked if their combined weight reached 600lbs.  Apparently that was enough to break the tailgate however.

Between bouts of loud laughter the others in the area kept asking if everyone was alright.  Thankfully, aside from a few bruised egos, everyone was fine.

Later, Les brought out a screaming monkey to throw around the yard.  It’s a stuffed monkey with elastic arms and a small electronic device in the chest that “screams” when the monkey is sent flying.  The boys proved they had rotten aim – usually off by a mile when trying to send it from one to the others.  Then Mariah got her hands on it.  Years ago she was a champion marksman and has competed at the national level.  While her fiancee jokingly told her to “aim for the head” she let loose a monkey flying at 3-5x the speed of anything the boys had previously managed.  Drew, in what we assume was an attempt to catch it, deflected the monkey off his wrist and into his eye.  Within minutes he was developing quite a shiner!

A few hours later while he was cleaning up the BBQ grills, Drew dropped the cover on his hand and jammed his thumb.  ‘Twas a night of bruises and abuse for a guy who’d barely had anything to drink.  I think I may be able to relinquish my standing clutz title to him.  If nothing else, we have some great stories to tell on Monday morning.

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