First Fridays

Camille and I took in Ashland's First Friday celebration. Ashland closes off a city block, opens up the local art galleries, provides live music and some street vendors. There were cornhole games behind the band audience area.

Camille and I decided to try out the cornhole game. I've never really played it but I think Camille has a time or two. I don't know the game rules but they had two cornhole boards, very far apart, almost four lanes of traffic. Camille got at one end, I at the other.

She's only 6. On top of that she was acting very goofy Friday evening. These factors combined for a pretty ridiculous cornhole game. She would wind up her arm to throw the bean bag and it would go straight up into the air then land about 3 feet away from her. Several times her stray bean bags hit the musical audience. One time a bean bag knocked off a lady's hat...behind her.

We were both giggling in the street as we threw the bean bags. The music was really good so we also danced while we played. I was pretty pleased with my cornhole performance. Almost all bean bags landed on the board and about 1/5 went in the hole. My record might have been better if Camille didn't try to catch the bags as I tossed them. She repeatedly stood in the way and gathered up all the wayward bags, making a mountain of them right in front of the hole. I don't know the rules but I don't think that was allowed.

The bean bags were color coded for each game. Ours were green and white. Next to us was yellow and orange. There was also red/blue and purple/pink. I think Camille thought the game's goal was to collect as many bag colors as possible. Every now and then she would disappear, dodge hard flying bean bags from the other cornhole games and try to snatch some of the other game's bags.

I knew she shouldn't be doing that but it made me laugh so hard I hadn't the air to stop her. Now before you cornhole fanatic purists so pish poshing this position, you gotta know that, with the exception of me, all four cornhole games were made up of kids. Camille and I were the only girls. The rest were boys who seemed to think the game was dodge bag rather than cornhole. They were having all out wars with the bean bags, like a painful snowball fight.

Eventually we tired of the game and left the multicolored bean bags in a heap on the street. Jerry arrived and the three of us went to listen to the Pendleton jazz musicians and look through the art studios.

While Jerry was enjoying the music, Camille and I went to the ladies room. She had to poop. She was really straining on the pot, told me she couldn't seem to make any progress. She was straining too hard and her face turned red. With a red face and strained voice, she oddly asked me, "how did Elvis die?" I tilted my head. "I don't know, how?" "No", she said, "how did Elvis die?" Again, I said, "I don't know, how did he?". She relaxed her strain and gave me a puzzled look.

When it dawned on me, the situation's funny factor increased. She wasn't telling me a joke, asking me a question so she could set up the punchline. She really wanted to know how Elvis died. I gave her all the information I had available to me. I said, "he was overweight, took too many drugs and had a heart attack I think". "Oh", she said, then went back to straining, her face turning red again. I encouraged her to stop trying so hard, pinch it off and let it brew.

Later, when I was tucking her into bed, she told me that she thought Elvis died when he tried too hard to poop, causing something to break inside him. Apparently she feared this same fate. She also apparently had more information about Elvis' death than I did.