I believe it was Andy who first discovered that a small plastic container of jelly could be launched into one of the hanging plants above our booth by placing one on the edge of a spoon handle and pounding the other end with one’s fist. The first few shots were wild, with little plastic tubs of strawberry, grape, peach and apricot jelly landing on top of the buffet bar and in other vacant booths. Jeff was the first to master the trajectory, consistently landing jelly after jelly in the potted plant across the aisle from us.<\/p>\n

We were eighteen, nineteen, and had only just discovered that the world didn’t shut down at 10 P.M. It did in Yukon of course (I think it’s actually a law…) but in neighboring Oklahoma City we had discovered twenty-four hour restaurants, like the Kettle just off I-40 and Meridian. All three of us worked the late shift at fast food restaurants. Wearing dirty restaurant uniforms and smelling of pizza the three of us would arrive at the Kettle sometime after midnight but before the 2 A.M. bar rush drunkards. It was there we talked about the past, the present and the future while drinking never-ending glasses of Dr. Pepper and devouring plate after plate of rubbery scrambled eggs. <\/p>\n

Oh, and launching little packets of jelly up into the hanging potted plants.<\/p>\n

Jeff and I had already dipped our toes into the waters of community college. Neither of us were sure if college would pay off or if we would even finish. None of us knew what we wanted to do when we grew up, and yet we were beginning to be mistaken for them (grown-ups, that is). By then we were old enough to live on our own. All of us knew the commands to load Commodore 64 games from diskette. None of us knew how to do our own laundry. Everyone was telling us we could do anything and yet we weren’t doing much of anything. The only thing all of us knew for sure was that Andy and Jeff would never, ever get rid of their Camaros and I would never part with my Firebird.<\/p>\n

When we talked about the future we talked about stupid things, like going on trips together or all moving into a lake cabin together. A time or two we wondered what it would be like if one day all of our kids got together to play. I can tell you from experience, it’s pretty great.<\/p>\n

We never talked about what it would be like to sit together on a leather sectional that cost more than my old Firebird did and reminisce about old times while all of our kids played together. That’s what we did a couple of months ago for New Year’s.<\/p>\n

We never talked about what it would be like to attend Andy’s dad’s 70th birthday party. I did that the weekend before last.<\/p>\n

We never talked about what it would be like to attend Jeff’s grandmother’s funeral. That’s what I did yesterday.<\/p>\n

Of all the things I imagined the three of us doing together someday when we were grown-ups, I never once considered the possibility that someday the three of us would actually grow up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe it was Andy who first discovered that a small plastic container of jelly could be launched into one of the hanging plants above our booth by placing one on the edge of a spoon handle and pounding the other end with one’s fist. The first few shots were wild, with little plastic tubs of strawberry, grape, peach and apricot jelly landing on top of the buffet bar and in other vacant booths. Jeff was the first to master the trajectory, consistently landing jelly after jelly in the potted plant across the aisle from us. We were eighteen, nineteen,… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}