Fight Food

Thud. 

Should have been ready. But I wasn't.

I had put off washing dishes only to get pelted.

As the soft, cylindrical pillow of pretended deliciousness sailed through the air toward my head, I slow-played the trajectory of decision-making that resulted in the purchase of "Throw, Throw Burrito" - a card game-dodge ball mashup that brings new hope for old food fights.

"At least it's not messy," yelled my daughter over the delighted shrieks of her brother, whose 13th birthday presented the occasion for her to give him such a game.

Also ... he was winning.

And devilishly so.

Perhaps all these months of video games honing his hand-eye coordination had trained him to scout the whereabouts of the projectiles while keeping his eyes on his opponents' decks. He's become skilled at simultaneously gathering points and picking off the competition.

I can barely take a card from one pile and discard onto another.

My best strategy is to duck.

The rules seem complicated - you get cards, try to make matches to earn points, and determine which players will get to throw something that looks like a dog's toy at the person across from them when the person on the diagonal matches three cards.

The boy doesn't so much care about winning as he does about getting to bean his father harmlessly, in a three-paces duel without repercussion.

Also, the rules permit him to hide behind his sister.

The whole thing is over in two lightning rounds, and the hardest part is wrestling the dodge burrito away from the jaws of the family retriever.

Twenty minutes of heart-racing fun spilled from the dining room into the kitchen, bouncing off the cabinets, we even managed to avoid breaking any of the dishes piled up next to the sink.

Even if there was breakage, anything that shatters pre-washed has to count as a win.

Quarantine hasn't changed us much. Made us softer in some places and sturdier in others. But it's made us see things what's important a little differently.

Honestly, like so much of the year of our "Good Lord, 2020," I couldn't have imagined that some of the best moments would be so snugly wrapped up with the worst ones. And how guilty pleasures seemed so much more redeeming.

It is my most sincere hope that the memories we take with us into the hereafter will be seasoned with at least a hint of silly.

Sure, we can't really go back to normal, but who needs regular when your neighbors introduce you to a thing called "walking taco" whereby you add beef, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa to a snack-size bag of pulverized corn chips and call it dinner?

Is there any other way to respond than offering melon-ball-sized dollops of ice cream, thimbles-full of chocolate sauce, and whipped cream to a crumbled up bag of sandwich cookies?

I think not.

Turning avocados into guacamole has to be the moral of this story.

Also … no need to wash dishes.