PICNIC!

WHAT’S ON: Yankees Encore..Yanks win 6-2 over Toronto



A company picnic...has there ever been contradiction in words like that? When is your company ever a picnic? Worse yet, how about a company picnic intended to entertain referral sources?

What do you do?...How do you act?...Do you drink?...Not drink? Do you ask them to participate in picnic like activities or do you let them make the gestures? Is eating acceptable!?

Is it worse that our referral sources are doctors? The snobby and phony factors can go right off the charts!

All week long my secretary Kathie and I have been dreading this event. We even debated once or twice not going. We set a time limit of 90 minutes we were going to spend at this event certifying this as a token appearance and say we were there.

We drove there and it was hotter than snot, even though it was on the beach. There was nobody there yet and we just kind of putz around figuring our hour and a half would come and go.

Then one of our bosses, Pete has his jet ski on hand and Kathie says she’d like to try it out. So they go off toward the water and I was socializing with another co-worker from another office. A young hot chick (age 18) from the same office said outloud, “I wish I brought my baseball glove.”

It just so happens, I brought two with a baseball. She looks at me and says, ‘YOU DID?”

Then she gets a somber look and says, “Yeah, but I’m left handed.”

“So I am.” I replied, ‘I have two lefty gloves!” I had a new friend.

We passed the baseball for about 45 minutes, chasing fly balls and what not. She was clearly well schooled baseball-wise. Someone came by and said, “Hey Dave, you could’ve used a friend like her about 25 years ago, huh?”

The girl looks at me and says, “How old are you?”

I don’t answer as the person says, "All of his kids are older than you!”

After the ‘Oh my God’s” and ‘'I never would’ve thought thats’’ were out of the way, I found out she has a bad home life and someone said later on, “I think she wishes you were her dad now.” That to me is the ultimate compliment.

Soon people filtered in and I introduced myself to one or two, and wound up having a football pass with one of the people we were there to entertain. My throwing arm was growing really tired and just as my luck would have it, his beeper went off and he had to go the hospital. For once a beeper saved me.

Next more people filtered in and as it turned out, many of the people I was supposed to meet for the first time, I already knew and even wound up introducing my bosses to a few people and usually a party wallflower, I was company social butterfly.

“How do you know these people?” Pete asked. After 17 yrs in the medical community...I replied

“Do you think my ass just crawled in here an hour ago?” Pete is a lot younger than me and he laughed. Then he heard about the baseball gloves and it just so happens, he is left handed as well. He smiled and said, “That’s Dave, always prepared for something! How many people would have TWO gloves for a lefty?”

We also wound up playing some doctors in horseshoes and by the time we knew what was going on, I asked Kathie what time it was, and it turned out we had stayed 4 hours!

We didn’t just have a token appearance, we had like...I dunno...FUN?

We were driving home and Kathie saw a sunset over the water, one I had seen there many times before. She wanted a picture and I told her to go photograph it. When she was done I told her to send me a copy of it.

For some reason I think I’d like a souvenier of an evening well spent as well as a reminder that things we think are going to be bad can often be really good..