Larry, everyones Best and Worst Friend

During my two week vacation, I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of new and interesting people.  Friends were made, bonds were formed, and a lot of male comradery was expressed in the forms of beer passing and the occasional disposition of flatulence.  However, no bonds were formed to quite the same extent as with Larry.

Meet Larry Elephanto.  Larry is a exceptional little creature – you’re never too sure if you love or hate him.  He flew in from Vancouver with a buddy at the beginning of our week long lake adventure, and never really skipped a beat.  He has partaken in all our week long parties, however he’s not always in the foreground.  To see Larry out in the open you have to find him first, and that comes with a price – you *must* chug a brand new, unopened beer.

Ok, sounds childish, right?  Well yes, yes it is.  At first.  There’s actually a bit of skill when it comes to Larry’ing someone.  First off, if you are in possession of him, it’s because you’ve been Larry’d.  Now, its up to you to hide him for either revenge on the one who got you, or to anyone else involved.  You can even play the ‘hey Bill, lets get Tommy’ card, just to turn around and double cross Bill.  It’s a nasty game of betrayal that leads in no one passing anyone anything out of the fridge in fear of running into Larry sitting in the beer box.  Or crisper.  Up top here you can see after a good night of boozing, we’re on the road the next morning heading out to the lake when I try to grab a coke out of the cooler…only to run into my hangovers worst nightmare.  Larry.  My friends were nice enough to pull over for me so I could shotgun a quick beer before heading back out.  Such chaps.

I however was nice enough to return the favour to my cousin later that evening at the cabin, after he consumed enough food to kill a small elephant (the irony is painful).  However when he opened the dishwasher to start a load…pow.  There was Larry, already forgotten by the rest of the crew, who gladly tossed my cousin another can to down before he took his roll in the dish pit.

The following morning wasn’t so nice when I found the little camper sitting in my golf clubs.  At this point I had thought the game was over, but that was mistake number one.  Larry never quits.  And neither could I.  That was an expensive round of golf, as Larry made a stronger golf presence than any one of us.

Probably the most creatively played all week was setting up Larry on a fishing rod and gently dipping him into the lake, and asking my cousin to ‘move the rod’ as I came down the dock carrying the cooler onto the pontoon.  He is only smiling in this picture because we were running low on beer and he chose to down a Palm Bay.  And he’d only been Larry’d one other time all week.  The jerk.

So what have I learned?  Well, no matter how old you are, men will always be immature and have horrible, horrible ideas.  Unfortunately, said ideas are most always hilarious and where not always intelligent, will generally gain the vote of the crowd to go ahead with them.  So farewell Larry, you are already back home in Vancouver from whence you came.  You will both be, and not be missed.  Until next time we meet (if ever again), fair well!  Ugh.  I’m getting too old for this shit.