picnic disaster

Picnic disasters. I imagine the propensity was handed down, genetically speaking, by my mother.

To this day, if you mention the word picnic to my mom, she will no doubt tell you about the only time she planned one for my brother, my sister and I. She packed homemade fried chicken, biscuits, slaw, potato salad, etc. and loaded up the family and drove to a park for a picnic. (And she was NO June Cleaver, so this was a big deal!) In her mind it was going to be sheer perfection. No sooner had we gotten there than the gentle spring zephyr turned into gale force winds. The sun was still shining beautifully, but the wind was formidable! Mom swears the crust was blown off the chicken! The memory of this picnic to her is just plain disaster. Sad, really, because I remember what fun it was to be on a picnic (our only) with my family.

I love taking my family on picnics. The funny thing is they mostly are disastrous not unlike the one and only from my childhood. Take today for example. We were planning to go to the Science Center but it was very close to lunchtime, so I stopped and got us McD's salads. We head to the Science Center and find a gorgeous parking spot in the shade. All the picnic tables are empty and shaded. There is a gentle breeze. The perfect day. As we launch into our salads, remarking to one another about how beautiful the day is, we began to feel raindrops. There was not a cloud in the sky, so I figured it was just one of those freaky things that wouldn't last long. We kept feeling drops, but it was still a mystery as to where they were coming from (I thought at one point we were unknowing participants in a Science Center hidden camera experiment) until we noticed that the raindrops were actually soapy and there was the faintest smell of Clorox. Turns out the Science Center, connected to a 15 story apartment building, was being pressure washed today. Even though the pressure washer dude was ALL the way at the VERY TIPPY TOP, those soapy, bleach-laden droplets were raining down onto our lunch. Into our drinks. Onto our shirts.
I was livid.
I cursed.
Out loud!
Then I remembered "The Picnic" and I had to laugh.

Hopefully my children will remember it fondly and with the humor God must have intended. Unlike my Mom, I will not swear off picnics, but I will try to continue to approach them with the attitude that we are together as a family and this will make a GREAT story one day.

So, what about you? Do you have any picnic disaster stories?