Tuesday, October 15, 2013

DC RDR is Just Like Apple Pie

After 20 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the red dress run is exactly like a homemade apple pie. I know it’s a crazy comparison but let’s work this thing out on paper, shall we?

About a month ago Little Big Man and I were at the mall. All of a sudden I realized we need to get some red dresses so he and I head over the ladies section and there we stood. We went digging through the racks to find just a few red dresses, none of which really made the cut. But we took them out, we touched them, we checked the sizes and Little Big Man then asked me out loud in the middle of the women’s section, “Mom, what size dress do you think I am?” That might send some normal moms into a complete mental freeze and a small pucker up the backside as mom thought about telling dad of this new turn in their lives.
But not I.
I sized him up and told him probably a 16 or an 18 to be safe.
And then I watched as a few people sized us both up and moved away from the ladies section quite hurridly.

As one goes to the store to find apples for this homemade pie, we head to the produce section where we’ll stand there for the next few minutes groping apples like our prom date groped us in the back of his daddy’s Ford F150.
Oh.
Was that just me?
We pick up each kind of apple and we feel for firmness, we smell them, then we try to figure out how many to buy and do we want any to simply eat as they are?
You may stand there awhile feeling up the produce and oohing and awing about the macintosh orthe red delicious or even the pink lady. In the end, I always buy a few granny smiths and then whatever else looks appealing and feels good to the touch.

When we finally get our dresses home we hang them up and maybe try them on for size and then start to plan the rest of the outfit. For many a man that I saw at DC RDR this year this was half the fun. I secretly think that men like to dress like women – hell – I only saw men throwing glitter all over the place this year and if men are spending time going to Michaels to buy glitter then they are working way too hard to be like a woman. I saw many a male hasher with matching purses, hats, jewelry, hosery, topped off with a full panel of mani-pedis to boot.

All The Way In looked like he could have made a fortune that evening if only he just went outside and stood on the corner. I passed him three times before I realized She was a He and a He that I knew.

We get our apples home and we wash them and we trim off the skin. We dice them up and throw them in a bowl, add lemon juice and then add all of the spices – nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, salt, some flour and some sugar. We mix all that up and then try a few pieces. Yeah that’s pretty good so you have a few more. Then you have to cut up some more apples because you’ve stood there eating half the apples. We finally put them all in the pie shell and cover it up with the other half of the pie shell then egg wash the top, add sugar to the egg wash and put this massive masterpiece in the oven to bake for 40 minutes or so.

We don our new red dress finery and we show it off to 600 other hashers who have just done the exact same thing. Everyone looks great – they surely made the 20th anniversary extra special. The glitter this year made everyone more fabulous than normal. I saw more sparkly man sweaters than I care to admit. “Man sweater?” you ask.
That’s the cro magnum dude you saw with the spaghetti strapped red dress and all his manfur hanging out.
And yes I mean on his chest AND on his back - all being shown off with a nice smattering of red glitter stuck in and amongst the fiberous mansweater. How these hashers went home alone, Ill never know.

We take our apple pie out of the oven and leave out so everyone can admire how good it looks – minus the red glitter, of course.

We then sample what red dress has to offer. We walk around the venue, checking it out. Music was thumping and everyone was hanging out with friends and having a great time! We spy the two bars fully loaded with a fabulous selection of beers that were available this year – fat tire and 60 minute IPA among two of them!
“what?”
“for real?”
Sweet red dress of yore! This is awesome!
Did you stick to your coors light or bud so you could have more and not get so wasted?
I can guarantee that process didn’t work out so well for about 25 percent of the young hashers there. One in particular had 7 beers before even leaving for the run.
Many of us took our new personalized red fleece coats and put them in our hash bag so we could be sure and not leave them behind as they were way too nice to lose.

We then leave on the hash and meander our way over to the beer check where more dancing, more drinking, more hanging out with friends occurs. Or maybe some wayward red dress harriette , who obviously has no idea how frightlfully bitchy, loud and scar, who lives up the wall plaque in her kitchen “if the broom fits ride it !” Dual Airbags is, looks at Little Big Man and asks, “hey, you wanna make out?”
Mommy isn’t real sure if there was an answer or this chippy harriette just slams your baby boy up against the wall and jams the devil tongue of hers down his throat like she was trying to get to his family jewels THAT ARENT FOR SALE from the inside.
Or so I’m told.
Several times.
By several different hashers.
And by his dad.
Who, by the way is smiling and high fiving this freak little side show that is now a main attraction at the beer check. “yeaaah, that’s MY boooouuuuuuuyyyy!” And who will sleep with the dogs for allowing this manhandling to even happen.
How many times have I said to not to manhandle the produce?
You little chippie whore of a harriette?

We head back to the original bar where food was set up but no venue every really gets it when we say have a lot of food and plenty of it.
What was there plenty of? Beer.

As the hours pass you may not quite remember where the people you came with are.
Or maybe one of you is lost.
Or maybe one of you is passed out and maybe one of you hasn’t come back from the beer check yet.
Or maybe now the beer goggles are starting to get fuzzy and you cant be sure if you saw who you were supposed to be seeing or not.
Or maybe you remember what just happened at the beer check and to avoid any questioning or any unpleasant conversations with Mommy, you stay kind of lost.
In any case what doesn’t happen very often at red dress run is uttering or even hearing the following question to any red dress attendee save for one poor little Over The Hump hasher …

Slippery When Wet spies Little Big Man somewhere in the nightclub and asks

 “Have you seen your mother?”

Back at home our apple pie has cooled off. We take a sample of what this pie has to offer – we cut it into it and we take a huge slice and put it on our plate. We take out the vanilla ice cream and put a great big dollup atop the pie. We take our spoon and dip into the melty coldness of the vanilla ice cream is it meets the crunchy goodness of the sugary crust with the gooey warmness of the cimmamony baked apples.

But remember, you can have too much of a good thing. Two slices, or God forbid, three slices will give you that very sick, holy crap, ive gone into a sugar coma type of feeling.
Too much beer in too short of time with not enough food can also put you into a coma..
Too much tongue sucking by chippie harriettes will also put you in a coma.

In any case, you end up asleep on the couch, all the while saying, I should really learn to pace myself.




On On
Dual Airbags
Great job DC RDR MM 2013!!

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