Butterball
Don’t try this at home, kids.
So, to make this story make sense, you have to know a couple things. It’s my grandma’s birthday, so we went to this fancy buffet restaurant thing. We are spread across three tables. Because of this, we have 3 of those bowls with the coffee creamer that you build castles out of. I am sitting at the “kids table”, at the very end. My cousin is sitting across from me, at the other end. We have grabbed all of the creamer bowls to make the best castle in all of existence. The bowls are metal. There is a chandelier above us.
You got all of that?
Good.
Now, in this fancy restaurant of stuffs, I am the oldest person at this kids table, and thus apparently the best castle builder. So, I’m trying to make my own tower out of the coffee creamer things, as are my cousin and brother. For the past five or so minutes, I’ve been quietly pleading with them to stop stealing the supports of my tower and actually give me some of the coffee creamer, you absolute podges.
“Marcus please.”
“No.”
“Marcus, please.”
“Nope!”
“Marcus, please.”
“Mmmmmmmmm……. nah.”
(A quiet scream of frustration from me.)
I’d attempted to steal them back, but that plan wasn’t going anywhere. The adults were too busy having adult conversations about adult stuff, and I wasn’t petty enough to whine to them. Trying to bribe my brother to work for me didn’t work. As the last of my coffee creamer tower was stolen, I was almost out of ideas. So, I did the only thing I could think of.
I grabbed an empty metal bowl, dragged it in front of me, and yelled down the table, “MARCUS! KOBE!”
Well, apparently that was the right thing to do, because my cousin grabs a creamer and fricken’ chucks it down the table.
And it actually lands in the bowl!
We’re both giggling because oh my god that actually worked, my brother is going, “WHHHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAA!” And the grownups haven’t noticed a thing.
And Marcus decides that we should do it again.
So, “waitwaitwaitwaitwait-” And he chucks another one down the table. This time, and I don’t know if he was going for a trick shot or genuinely too excited to aim (probably the latter), but the creamer hits my face, bounces off my hand, and goes straight into the metal bowl. Marcus just howls with laughter, my brother is squealing with happiness, and I’m looking at the creamer with a kind of blank shock. But, hey, this is fun, so let’s keep going!
“Aw, come on Marcus! Dude, here, h-here’s a backboard-” (I put my wrists together and curl my hands around the bowl, making a “backboard”) “-here, you can SO do better than that!” And with another glance to the side to make sure the adults weren’t watching, Marcus stands up, and starts rapid-fire shooting these creamers into the bowl. It gets to the point where the bowl is full, so with a coffee creamer in midair, I have to slide the full bowl down the entire table, grab anther metal bowl, form the backboard, and catch the shot in the space of, like, two seconds.
It was AWESOME.
Okay, but anyway, at first we called whatever we were doing “basketball,” because that’s what it started off as. But, eventually, we began to call the sport “butterball,” after we realized we had thrown the cream so much, some of it had LITERALLY TURNED INTO BUTTER.
Of course, the grownups eventually noticed.
But d’ya wanna know how they noticed?
Well, Marcus and I had come up with “The Great Butterball Challenge,” which was his name and my stupid idea. We set up all the (empty) bowls at one end of the table with menus and stuff placed behind them to simulate a backboard, and Marcus stood at the other end with his “ammo” of things of cream. The challenge was to shoot the cream up, through the chandelier, and down into the bowls.
May I add these bowls had extremely sharp edges?
So, Marcus takes aim, pulls his arm back, and fricken’ hurls this cream up.It doesn’t go over the chandelier, oh no, that’d be to simple. It hits the chandelier, almost breaks one of the lights on it, causes the chandelier to start swinging, and then crashes down into the bowl with a huge clatter. But it’s too late, because Marcus had already shot the next cream, and the next, and the next. One hit the supporting thread/rope thing of the chandelier, so now the whole thing is shaking and the lights are flickering, another couple creamers fly over my head, out of the contained walls of the booth, and hit other customers in this (very fancy) restaurant in the head, and more and more start clattering to the bowls, to the floor, on my face, on the seats, everywhere. We had around 30 things of creamer and were just throwing them like you would gold coins. The cries of “what the fuck,” from the patrons around us finally alerted the grownups to what were doing.
And just their luck, right as they turned around to look at us, Marcus launches a creamer through the swinging chandelier, and it proceeds to land on the sharp edge of the bowl.
And EXPLODES.
I’m covered in creamer, there’s white bits of plastic everywhere, Marcus is waving around a rack of ribs like it’s a first place trophy, the other patrons are yelling their displeasure at the waitstaff, and the waitstaff themselves are looking befuddled, devastated, amused, and ready to start screeching in wrath at the same time. My uncle shoots up and near bellows, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING”
And my brother, bless his sweet heart, smiles and points to me, while singing, “WE MADE BUTTER!”