{Chortle}

Bruce has a fascinating post about the intricacies of ice fishing. In it he details the importance of the game of "Asshole" in the ice-fishing hierarchy, which tripped a memory trigger of a memorable (in that I was somehow able to remember it) game of Asshole from my younger daze...

It was the summer of 1992. I was fresh out of college, ink was still wet on my diploma, when a friend from college invited me to go camping with a bunch of his buddies. This was the prelude to the "Greatest Camping Trip in the History of Western Civilization" I reminisced about here. Boils down to a buncha young 20-something guys, a whole lotta beer, and nothing better to do than hang out, drink said beer, and play Asshole...

So..

A little backstory first. My buddy Lou is the one who invited me along. He brought his guitar along, and was entertaining us with acoustic versions of various hard rock tunes with his own little artistic riffs tossed in. Across the campground from us was a family with an aspiring young guitarist in it, whose mother heard Lou playing and came over to check things out. Lou, being an extremely friendly chap (and ever more so whence lubricated), shot the bull with her for a while (what music theories her son studied, what brand guitar he learned on, etc.) and invited her to bring her son over later (he was out riding his bike or something) so they could jam...


NOW...

Flash forward a couple hours. Here we are, about a dozen of us, seated around a couple of picnic tables. We've got an entire Asshole cabinet - president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, etc. My buddy Lou is serving his time as Asshole, complete with a cardboard 12-pack box on his head (the official Asshole hat, natch). You can see what's coming, right?

Yep. Mom and young junior come bounding up to our campsite. Junior has his Harmony acoustic in hand, ready to play with the grizzled college kid just like his mom promised. Except that we've been drinking for several hours now, and heavily focused on the game of Asshole being played to notice mom and Junior right away.

We're all "Yes, Mister President" and "No, Mr. Treasurer". Beer cans are covering two picnic tables and spilling over onto the ground. Our firepit is roaring with cardboard beer cartons.

Lou has the official hat on, and is "Yes, Mr. X" left and right.

Mom looks at the group and, with all honesty and sincerity, asks, "I'm sorry, am I interrupting a meeting?"

It was a full minute before any of us could regain our composure long enough to answer...

(And yes, Lou and Junior played together for over an hour, serenading the campground with everything from Led Zeppelin to Counting Crows...)

That is all.