First Day Bird

I think it’s important to have people in your life who possess strengths that play to your, “areas of growth”, because honestly, I need to grow in a lot of areas. Example: most of my waking hours are spent looking for things I just had a second ago.

Person X is one of those people who never loses things, always calm, deliberate, etc. I can’t remember a time when he misplaced his keys. I lose mine at least once a day because they are never in the “rabbit bowl” – my designated key place. Honestly, I should just throw the bowl in the trash because in 20+ years of owning the rabbit bowl, my keys have never been in it. *it’s not a bowl FOR rabbits, it has rabbits on it.

Anyway. Person X grills a batch of chicken on Sundays for lunch the upcoming week. I don’t know how he gets through the week eating the same thing with no surprise treats or the *exciting* thrill of throwing together a lunch consisting of a quarter sleeve of crackers, some sketchy grapes, emergency cheese sticks and the blueberry pop tart from the back of the pantry purchased on a whim three minutes before leaving for work but whatever…if he wants to Adult, fine, I can accept it.

So. Back to the Sunday grilling. We call it First Day Bird (I can’t remember why we started calling it that. Immaterial). One Sunday, first day bird was prepped and on the grill. All was normal. Or so he thought.

Somehow time got away from him and all of a sudden, it was 9:45. As a PCA (Practicing Certified Adult), he let the dog out (right on schedule) and he smelled something grilling and/or burning.

He was outraged in a way that only linear, logical thinkers can be. “What’s burning?”, “Who on EARTH would be grilling at this hour?” and so on and so forth. He thought it was a neighbor doing some reckless, late night (9:45 pm!) grilling. He was in full blown rant until the source of the smell hit him.

It was his very own First Day Bird, placed on the grill at 6:30. Only now it was almost 10 pm. I have never, in all my years of knowing him seen him in a flap about anything but in this instance, he was flapping and I was DELIGHTED. I had a front row seat to a flap that, for once, was not my own.

He rushed to the grill and howled (ok, not exactly a howl, more of an, “oh noooooo!”). I could not stop laughing, could not get it together at all. Here is what the bird looked like on the grill (bear in mind that they started as the chicken breasts pictured above);

I absolutely love it when people who Have Their Act Together have some minor mishap due to distraction because I am never NOT distracted and I think it’s healthy for them to see what it’s like in my brain, provided it’s only for a minute and doesn’t cause actual harm or distress and is temporary. Also provided they have a sense of humor, which Person X most certainly does.

I don’t know exactly how long we laughed but it was long enough that I got a solid ab workout in and tears were running down my face.

He rescued the bird remains and put them on a baking sheet, then photographed them for posterity. I may be biased but I think it could pass as fancy sculpture except they went straight into the trash (after they had stopped smoking and cooled off).

The End