Woosiepalooza was a rounding success. There was croquet. There was basketball. There was a pool. There was a water balloon fight. There were hot dogs and hamburgers. There was fireworks.
And there was badmitton.
Not your ordinary badmitton, mind you. This game was set up so anyone could play, regardless of your age, health or state of inebriation. There are 6 players on each side. Normally having 6 people with rackets aiming at a shuttlecock flying thru the air is a prescription for injury. However, there was a caveat that made 6 on a side possible. And that caveat would be lawnchairs. Yes, lawnchairs. Everyone must sit in a lawnchair and their butt cannot leave the chair while the shuttlecock is in play. The lawnchairs are positioned 3 in the front and 3 in the back (if you want a lot of action, make sure you sit in the middle chair of either row). Now this may not sound like a lot of fun, but you can play with a racket in one hand and a drink in the other and not have to worry about spillage. We also took a few liberties with the rules. Normally, the game is played with only 1 or 2 people on each side. Our rules allowed 12 people to play at once. We allowed 3 hits per side to get the shuttlecock over the net instead of just one hit. I'd say 95% of the time it was hit over with just one hit. Also, you could only get a point if you served. And we only played to 15 instead of 21.
I left Woosiepalooza at 10:30, near the end of the fireworks. I wanted to get home before the local fireworks near my house concluded. There is a lot of construction in the area and most of the side streets have barracades to prevent access to the main road (where the construction is located). That was going to make leaving the fireworks a massive traffic problem. And I would be the one person going in while everyone else was coming out, so I wanted to get home before that happened. I beat the end of the fireworks by about 5 minutes. Both of my cats were off hiding because of all the boom-boom.
I did not have an alcoholic drink at all yesterday. That may not be the case today.
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2 comments:
Once'd I played badmitten wid two balls in my mouth.
Signed, Sackmouth
P.S. Don't block me.
Lowell,
You captured the excitement of lawn chair badminton wondefully (interestingly enough, there is a You Tube video someone, let's call her "TL", posted to verify your account), but you left off all the descriptive detail of Lange and Woosies' fireworks display. (Who can forget Crystal Fountain?). Although many fireworks share the same colorful show, the different names of the minor explosives keep us coming back every year. (giant sunflower, anyone?)
Thanks, Lowell, for letting us all relive Woosiepalooza. I don't know how he does it,but each year surpasses the next. Your account captures the magic!
TL
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