Troubles and Treats (Chocolate Lovers 3)

“No. Absolutely not. You are not putting him in that shirt.”

I walk over and snatch the onesie out of his hand and put it back in the drawer, searching through Billy’s clothes for something appropriate.

“How do we not have one good shirt for our son to wear?”

“What are you talking about? These are ALL good shirts,” Drew argues as he pulls out a red onesie that says, “I shit my pants when ugly people hold me.”

“These are nice people who invited us over for a nice dinner. He needs to wear something nice,” I state as I keep digging through the drawer.

“Boooo. Nice is lame,” Drew states.

“Fweaks are lame,” Veronica pipes up.

“Yeah they are! High five sister!” Drew exclaims as he puts his hand in the air for Veronica to smack.

At the very bottom of the drawer I find a shirt that says, “Pooping in progress” with a percentage line under it showing forty-five percent.

“This will have to do. Can you get Billy dressed so I can do my hair?” I ask as I lay out the shirt and a pair of tiny little jeans to go with it. “Also, you need to change your shirt. You are not wearing the shirt with a picture of Jesus and a crying Virgin Mary that says: Bitches be trippin’.

“I just want to state that for the record, I do not think this is a good idea,” Drew yells as I walk out of the room.

“Doodly noted,” I yell back.

~

“Okay, everyone, it’s game time!”

Seven seconds after walking across our yard and stepping foot onto the neighbor’s back deck I realize I’ve made a mistake. This isn’t just a fun get-together with our neighbors and a way to make new friends and hopefully learn from them about how to make a marriage work. This is the Twilight Zone and we are never going to escape. We are surrounded by women wearing ankle-length jean skirts and their hair in braids down to their asses. They pray before dinner, they pray in the middle of dinner, and they pray after dinner. They pray so much I can almost imagine Jesus himself sitting up there on a white puffy cloud saying, “Oh for the love of my dad, shut the f**k up already. I heard you the first eleven times.”

Drew keeps poking me in the side and snorts every time someone says, “Let’s bow our heads and give thanks.”

“If they ask us to drink the Kool-Aid, grab the kids and run,” Drew whispers as everyone pulls their chairs into a circle in the middle of the deck.

“But I like Kool-Aid. Grape is my favorite,” I whisper back in confusion.

“We’re going to go around the circle and everyone has to tell an embarrassing story!” the hostess announces.

“Oh this cannot end well,” Drew says quietly.

I elbow him in the side as one of the jean skirt women starts to tell her story about her husband playing a trick on her. When she had asked him to get her a glass of grape juice, he had handed her a glass of prune juice instead.

“Oh my fu-fart!” Drew states loudly as everyone around us laughs.

It’s been a challenge trying to curb our language throughout the night. At least Drew is managing to catch himself before he lets something awful fly out of his mouth.

“That’s not embarrassing. That’s just sad,” Drew whispers. “You realize that every single one of our embarrassing stories ends with one of us naked, right?”

Thankfully, halfway around the circle, people start running out of stories to tell, and I don’t have to try and find a way to clean up the story about how we experimented with popsicles and chocolate sauce and had to use a blow dryer to unfreeze the popsicle from the inside of Drew’s thigh.

“So, how did you two meet?” one of the men asks as everyone turns their attention to Drew and I.

I look over at Drew in a panic and wonder how I’m going to explain to these God-fearing people that we met after a sex toy party.

“Um, well…we, um have these friends. And they have a store that sells…um, Tupperware,” I flounder. “We met after one of their Tupperware parties.”

Everyone smiles and nods and Drew starts to giggle.

“Yeah, they have GREAT Tupperware. Every shape and size you can imagine. Jenny likes the great big Tupperware,” he says with a snort.

“Ooooh I love Tupperware too!” one of the women states excitedly. “I use it every single day. It really is a life saver.”

I just smile and nod, trying to mentally telephone to Drew that he needs to shut up.

“Do you like to use the gigantor Tupperware or the teeny tiny Tupperware?” Drew questions seriously.

“I like to use both at the same time,” another woman pipes up.

“Yeah you do!” Drew smiles and nods, giving her a wink.

“My husband takes Tupperware to work and everyone is always asking him if Tupperware is better than GladWare. I tell them that Tupperware can fit in all sorts of places and can be used for your pets,” someone else says.

“Wow, that’s disturbing. But good for you,” Drew says.

“GladWare is the poor man’s Tupperware, that’s what I always say,” one of the men pipes up.

“Amen brother!” Drew shouts.

A chorus of “Amen’s” is muttered all around the circle and I have to cover my face with my hands because I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Tupperware really has saved our marriage,” one of the women says with a laugh. “Before I filled my pantry with Tupperware, Steve was using Zip Lock bags and his stuff was just spilling everywhere. He made such a mess!”