I Throw it Back to Quench This Thirst

My uncle BJ is a bit anal at times. Other times, he goes completely opposite.

For example, lets talk about his issues with littering the yard.

One day, I was hanging out at their place. I drank a can of Dr Pepper and set my can down beside me.

"You'd better throw that out!" BJ ordered.

Too lazy to get up right away, I brushed him off. "I'll get it later."

As the afternoon went on (which means, every five minutes), BJ would remind me that my can was still sitting there.

"I'll get it!" I kept telling him as I rolled my eyes.

He's like that. He'll keep badgering you until you give in to his demands. But I'm stubborn. So anything he asks me to do usually doesn't get done until just before I leave.

After I got home that night, I called BJ. "I forgot to throw out my pop can!"

"I know! I'm gonna kill you!"

"I can't believe it! I meant to get it! I just forgot!"

"It was like a movie! i saw it and it's like I zoomed in on it!"

No really. He was that angry. He still brings it up several years later.

But then he takes the other road. Like during my first Fourth of July in Wichita.

I was trying to be a good girl and got up from my lawn chair to throw my bottle in the recycling bin. BJ stopped me. "Throw it in the yard like you're supposed to!"

I did as I was told and continued to throw my bottles and cans into the yard for the rest of the night. At the end of the holiday, the yard had quite a display of used fireworks and litter.

You can see, now, how it's hard to tell where BJ will stand when it comes to litter.

At Mitch's graduation party, our family mostly hung out in the back yard. When we would finish a drink, we'd toss the bottle in the corner of the yard. When BJ came back, he flipped out and started picking them up.

Of course we laughed and as soon as BJ turned to walk away, another bottle flew by him. "Who threw that?"

He left to mingle with people in the front yard and we continued to litter the back yard.

Jeremy must be getting old. Instead of joining in the fun, he would pick up our trash and throw it away. Luckily, he couldn't keep up and eventually surrendered.

As the day went on and Jill drank more beer, the more obsessed she got with throwing bottles. She was a maniac! She would zero in on a person getting ready to finish their drink and hover until she could snatch it away and toss it clear across the yard. If anyone left their bottle around for more than five minutes, she'd claim it. And if neither of those opportunities were presented, she'd chug her beer and toss it.

All through this, BJ would yell "Who threw that? I'm serious . . ."

The way he yelled and crouched down to pick the bottles up brought glee to our evil hearts.

I went to the garage to grab another drink and noticed the bottle and can bin was full. I hatched a brilliant plan and shared it with Jill.

"We should go grab the bin and dump it all over the yard!"

Of course Jill was all into the idea. Joe, not so much. He and Jeremy must think they're mature or something. Joe kept trying to talk us out of it.

Like we would listen!

We hurried over to the garage just in time to see BJ bagging the trash. But we didn't give up. We decided to wait for him to bring around the bag and just pull crap from that.

Jingle. Giggle. CLANK! We weren't very quiet about getting the bottles. We grabbed as many as our little hands could hold and rushed off to scatter them in the yard. But that wasn't enough. We went back for more.

As we clanked and clattered with BJ standing just a few feet away in the garage, we laughed our bums off about how clever we were.

"What's that noise?"

We were caught! Somehow BJ had heard our bottles clanging at eleventy billion decibels.. "Who's back there? What's going on?"

Jill and I ran for our lives, still clutching some bottles. We rounded the corner of the house and I, thinking Jill would take the same rout she had before, got rid of the evidence. I dropped the bottles one by one as I ran.

Turns out Jill hadn't gone her old route. She stayed right behind me and as I dropped each bottle, she had to hurdle them to keep from falling. She thought I was trying to pin everything on her.

"Who did this?" BJ demanded to know. Apparently, he couldn't figure us out as the culprits even though we were laughing and peeing ourselves like we did when we were three.

He was pretty grumpy at us when he put it together. "I'll remember this. I won't forget how you treated your poor Unckie."

"Oh please. You'd think it was hilarious if it wasn't your yard!"

Very quietly, BJ admitted "Yeah. But don't do it again!"

This weekend, my dad's side of the family is getting together for the first time since that fiasco. My cousin Chad got married last weekend and we're celebrating this weekend.

Do you think it will be rude if we throw our finished drinks on the Elks Lodge floor?