A Guys' BBQ

I thought for my post on humor I'd tell a you a little real life story. I hope it brings a smile to your face as it did mine when my son recounted the events of his car meet.

What do you get when you gather two dozen young men who are car enthusiasts together for a barbecue and to show off their treasured automobiles? An adventure in cooking.

There are potato chips, burgers, buns, condiments, lettuce, tomatoes, sodas, paper plates, plastic flatware, a grill, fire. They had it all…or so they thought.

The fire is lit. The grill is hot. Stomachs are growling. They are ready to cook, so they throw the burgers on. Tssss!

Cookin’. Cookin’. Cookin’. Can you smell them? Let’s flip those burgers. Oops! “Anyone got a spatula?”

So being the creative and ingenious young men they are, someone comes up with the bright idea to use one of the plastic forks. They’ve got plenty.

Oops!

Melted!

Can you picture the curling white tinges of the fork?

Strange, who would have thought that fire would melt plastic?

In a frenzy to save the burgers some other bright bulb furiously tears up one of the boxes the soda cans are in. Cardboard won’t melt. Maybe not but it wasn’t really stiff enough to cram under a burger stuck to a hot grill...and kind of caught fire. Who would have thought?

They say necessity is the mother of invention. And two dozen hungry young men have needs. So they rooted around in their cars and one out-of-the-box thinker came up with the winning tool………….

A clipboard!!!

It worked beautifully and saved the burgers.

Now you mothers out there might be wondering if they cleaned the clipboard, because we can assume it hadn’t been shrink-wrapped and was probably lying on the floor in the backseat or trunk of one of these treasured cars. This is a question you don’t ask after the fact.

So the next time you go to a barbecue don’t forget a clipboard because plastic melts and cardboard burns.

Final note: Since the fork melting/cardboard burning/clipboard incident, my son has always brought a spatula to these events. The clipboard spatula has been retired if not thrown away.

And I will be using this in a story one day. Children create some of the best humor. I don't know that I could have made up a story like this.