Tailgaiting Fail

Last night, IU football played Indiana State.  Doug, Cameron and I were really looking forward to it and our first tailgate of the year.  Brett was even going to be able to join us after work.  When we moved to Florida, we had left our black foldable table, four chairs, the IU tent, our red cooler and the IU corn hole boards in Brett's storage unit for the fall.  We realized, however, that we still needed a large crock pot and a portable generator before our set was complete.  We didn't want to use the ones from Florida as we would need them there.  I spent a bunch of time last weekend researching the perfect ones for a tailgate and ordered them to Grandma's.  She and I even tried them out to make sure that they would work.

Doug and I arrived at the grass lots at 3 p.m. yesterday.  IU Athletics had changed the parking in our favorite tailgate spot.  They had individuals parking the cars which we noticed were way too close together to set up much of a tailgate.  We did our best to get out our table, tent, chairs and corn hole boards, but it was pretty tight.  We made the best of it, however, and were looking forward to Doug's Italian Beef.

Cameron arrived close to 4 p.m.  He had talked about bringing a few friends, but decided to come out on his own.  We had a lot of fun talking about IU football and playing corn hole.  We each had a sandwich along with the chips that we had bought and some of Grandma Jane's cookies.  While we were enjoying our afternoon, all of a sudden, some jerk from the other tailgate went running at his friends, dove and missed them.  Instead, he knocked over our table, spilling all of the food including the Italian beef and severally dented the crock pot.  I was dumb founded.  He tried to apologize, but Doug told him to get out of our area.  I don't think that I have ever been that mad at someone that I didn't know.  Brett arrived shortly after it happened.  I didn't know what to say.  We had spent a lot of time, effort and money to have a nice tailgate and someone acting stupid almost destroyed it all.  I think what I was most mad about in the end was that the adults with him didn't even offer to help clean up or to share the abundance of food that they had brought.  They just stared at us as if it was a normal occurrence.

Thankfully, we didn't let the incident ruin the night.  There was enough Italian beef left for Brett to have one sandwich.  Grandma had duck taped shut the lids on the cookies so they were still safe as were the chips.  Thus, no one went hungry.  Cameron said that he was so mad that he almost left, but then decided to make the best of it.  We did put the corn hole away as we didn't want that damaged.  Brett left shortly before football started to go to Sean's.  Cameron headed to the game to sit in the student section with his friends.  Doug and I enjoyed an IU victory and appreciated that Cameron spent the third quarter with us.  Overall, it was a fun evening, and I was proud of us for not letting an epic fail get the best of us.