Chapter 10 – BBQ sauce for those eyebrows sir?

Chapter 10 – BBQ sauce for those eyebrows sir?

Ahhhhh just the thought of barbeques makes my mouth water. The smell of burning meat on the grill, the sound of that first beer of what normally would be many beers opening. Yes there’s nothing quite like a good ol fashioned barbeque with friends. And to tell you the truth there’s really nothing like almost turning yourself into a human fire ball infront your friends as well, like you will quickly find out.

Sherri is one of my best friends, even to this day. She was and still is the type of person that would go out of her way to make sure her friends were all right. Every once in a while she would invite a bunch of us up to her house for a little get together, whether her two children were around or not cause we all got along with Scotty and Jillian really well.

So on this evening three or four of us showed up at her place to cook a little cow and throw a little cold barley soup down our throats. We sat around long enough for a few of us to get pretty well lit, not polluted by any means, but like Sherri likes to call it, “happy feet.” We totally lost track of time, and before we knew it , darkness reigned and we hadn’t even started the barbeque yet.

Either I was nominated or I volunteered myself to go out and start the fire demon. Said demon was located just outside the porch door at the very back of her driveway. Being as dark as it was, the only way I was able to pick the thing out was because of the small light over the porch door, other than that, it was like trying to look through a pint of Guinness. (nice alcohol euphimism there huh....)

I am reaching around the back of the barbeque turning on the juice when I hear Sherri’s voice ring out from the kitchen.

“Oh yeah Dave, I meant to tell you, the electric ignition doesn’t work, so you have to light it manually.”

"Oh wonderful," I think to myself. The ignition doesn’t work and I don’t have anything to light said demon except for the lighter I have in one hand and a freshly torn beer label in the other.

Just a little side note, if you have been paying attention, you would realize the propane has been on for about 5 minutes now

Somehow, I have to light the beer label throw it on the grill and just pray to god that it falls through and ignites all the while planning my escape route from the impending fire ball. I know you are thinking, why don’t you just turn off the propane for a couple of minutes and just light it then, but only a sober person would think of something that easy.

So I light the beer label and throw it in the general direction of the barbeque.

DAMMIT!!

Just my luck. Sure, the label is lit, but it’s sitting on TOP of the grill. For some reason, even with as much propane that HAD to be in the air at that time, the frickin thing still didn’t light.

So at this time I think to myself, I say "Myself what in the hell do I do now?” Yes the propane has been running for a good 10 minutes by this time, and at any second could ignite and burn Sherri’s house to the ground, or at the very least remove her porch from the rest of the house. I continue to wait. Still nothing. In the meantime I am scrounging around in the dark looking for something long enough (hoping about 15 feet in length by now) to prod the surprisingly still lit label to fall through the cracks and start our fire. Can’t find a goddamn thing.

So I approach it quite cautiously knowing that at any moment the thing could ignite. With my outstretched arm and lighter in hand…yes I was using a lighter, begin to move the almost burned up label around the grill…

WOOOOOOFFFFFFFF!

Everyone else was still in the kitchen still pounding the booze back, other than the light over the sink, there wasn’t a whole lot of light in Sherri's kitchen. That was at least until I lit the barbeque.

Dok was one of the people inside and he told me, the flash from the barbeque was so bright afterwards that for a split second nobody could see anything.

Little ol retarded me was still outside and on the ground by this time. The concussion from the barbeque lighting sent me to the ground in a hurry. The very first thing I hear from the kitchen aren’t voices of concern, IT WAS LAUGHTER! They were all laughing at me. But as the reality of the situation set in, I began to laugh pretty hard myself. But just to be a prick, I decided I would play a little prank on them. But you know what, even though I did fall over, I didn't spill a drop of my beer.

I walked around to the front of the house and ran in the front door with my hands over my eyes screaming, “Ahhhhh, I burned my friggin eyebrows off someone get me some water.” And I quickly collapsed to the ground in pain.

Most of them will claim to this day that they didn’t believe me for a second, but I honestly think I had them. The only thing that gave me away was the fact that I was laughing like a little school girl on acid and tears were pouring out of my eyes.

Not surprisingly, the next time we had a barbeque, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near propane or fire…Oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do.