Skippy is not just a peanutbutter

Choosey Mutha !  My mother would have said "Big Chief is good enough for you", that's like baking soda instead of Crest toothpaste.

How we view things differently.  Like from completely different planets.



We were invited to a cookout / swim with some friends.  Friends (friend) my husband plays golf with.  I didn't really know the wife but thought this would be a nice break since we had two very small children at the time and they had a daughter the same age as our young son.

Now when I say we were invited I mean my husband said " Mark said to come by with the kids and we'll cookout and swim after we get done with golf."  I said, okay. The kiddos and I were to meet him at the golfer friend's house.

I dressed my small middle class suburbia rugrats in their swimsuits with shorts as cover-ups and headed out to the address my husband gave me.   Which turned out to be in a rather upscale neighborhood.   The kind you don't even pretend to house hunt in.  As I approached what I feared was the correct house in my ultra chic beat up Toyota Camry with 2 missing hubcaps on one side I realized there were cars more expensive than our current house lining their driveway. Like, lots of cars.  Like cars I'd have to be fluent in Italian/German/Spanish  to pronounce.   I'd like to point out that none of these cars were missing a single hubcap , much less two.  I marveled at their ability to miss potholes.  Which is why it took me 20 minutes of driving around the block and figuring out how to position my car where you couldn't see the less adorned side. 

After swearing an oath to kill the man I loved and adored and then explaining to his children that I wasn't really going to run over him in my ultra chic Toyota  we got out of the car and headed up the driveway.  Walking in their back gate I was immediately struck by the number of families  And then I was struck by the fact that they all color coordinated.   Like they had all fallen out of a Polo ad.  Not a hair out of place.  All the of children were called Buffy or Brinna or Skippy or  Jacksonhole or some other yacht club name.  Each with little monogrammed initials that matched what their mommies were wearing which matched perfectly with what Skippy Sr was wearing.  We had crashed a planned BBQ.  I'm not sure the wife even knew her husband had invited us. 

The pool was large enough to hold the Olympics in with a couple of floating islands and this was the first outside kitchen I'd ever seen. With real ovens and refrigerators.  Not like some of my relatives that had them outside for other reasons. Along with chickens and trucks on blocks.

I locked eyes with my beloved.  Who jogged over to greet me.  He was having a fabulous time.  He's smarter than me and has never , not once that I'm aware of, been intimidated by someone else's social or monetary status.  It's a blindness I wish I had.

I think I said it would have been nice to know there were going to other people here besides us.  He just laughed like I'd said something really funny.  Which I do all the time when he NEVER laughs.

As I was sitting by the side of the pool watching my kids swim Skippy Jr threw a ball at Skippy Sr while he wasn't looking and smacked him just above the eye opening a rather nasty gash complete with uncoordinated red blood flowing freely from said wound. Mrs. Skippy said something like "oh that Skippy Jr. , he's a wild one."  And my husband and the host ( who was a medical doctor) were so excited that they were going to take Skippy Sr. to the host's medical office and sew him up together. Men are weird.

Leaving me and the rugrats with fifty or so people I'd never seen before.  And after feeling unworthy to  park in their presence I knew that at least I didn't have to wear a helmet in fear of one of my kids nailing me with something.  So it became a people watching expedition.   

I found out that most of them had never even heard of Home Depot and one said not only that but that I would never see their name on a check written to that place.  I wasn't sure what that meant , but the umbrella drink made me not care as much.    Then one of the other Skippy Srs asked if I was a friend of the host's husband and I said yes.  And he said he figured I wasn't the wife's friend because my hair wasn't the right height.  ..........I had another umbrella drink because I could still see and hear.

I drug my walmart bathing suited body over to the bar and started ordering anything with an umbrella in it and sat and drank the afternoon away waiting for the self proclaimed EMTs to return. Fortunately my kids didn't drown which would have been a little hard to explain to my sweetheart - who'd left me for a bloody wound.  But I survived as did Skippy Sr. and I learned alot about Skippys - which is why I still choose Jif.