Battle of the Insults

Several years ago we were having a birthday party for my oldest son in our backyard. Clay and I were busy setting up an obstacle course for the boys to run through. We were using all manners of junk for the kids to crawl over, in, out, over and basically to exhaust any energy boost they might obtain over the copious amounts of sugar we were going to inject into their bodies.

I usually have a well thought out plan in my head for everything I do, I just don't always like to communicate it to those helping me. So, when Clay started laying the course out all wrong, I did what any good woman would do, I started to whine and complain and call him names. Clay, being a man of great patience, took my belligerent attitude for as long as he could before telling me where he thought the PVC pipes we were using should go and then added that it would be a mighty uncomfortable ride for me to the hospital to extract them.

Once the insults start coming, it takes quite a while for us to get them out of our systems. We are constantly asking the question, what if people heard us talking to each other like that? Would they think we were serious? I mean I don't really want to impale you with a plastic pipe and I really don't mean it when I flip you off and of course you're not as irritating as poison ivy.

We were still in the heat of our one-upping each other when I stepped in the house to get the next load of party favors. I turned to shout over my shoulder, "Clay, you're a MORON!" and as I turned around there stood my church elder and his little boy....."Oh, uh, hi, Joel.." I stammered. He smiled cautiously asked me if they were too early. Then there was a bit of an uncomfortable silence while my mind was replaying the past twenty seconds over and over and wondering how much Joel had heard of our conversation. He never mentioned hearing anything and somehow, he trusted us enough to leave his son at our house. Although, I think he may have been the first parent to pick up their son and from that point on I detected a bit of a wince when I greeted him at church.

When I went back outside to tell Clay what had just happened his response was to laugh hysterically and spend the next five years using, "Honey remember...Oh, uh, hi Joel" to remind me how he won that little battle of the insults.