You Know You're in Idaho When…

OK, about a week after we moved in, we were invited to a get together with about 15 other couples. I thought, “Great. An evening away from the kids and a chance to meet new friends”. We’ve been to lots of these get togethers in our almost 15 years of marriage. With the exception of the guests, the format is usually the same:

Arrive about 20 minutes “fashionably late”.

Set your pot luck dish on the appropriate table with the cookies, M&Ms, chips and Costco artichoke dip, and assorted liters of “pop”.

Find someone you know and strike up a conversation about the weather to ease yourselves into the small talk.

Mingle

Eat

Mingle. At some point during the evening you’ll be likely to hear such questions as:

“Who’s watching the kids for you tonight?”

“Do you have any travel plans this year?”

‘How’s work going?”

Then you’ll probably engage in a “get-to-know-you” game that involves one or more of the following:

A fact about yourself that nobody knows

toilet paper

A dating story

At 10 pm sharp, and a quick check of a watch, the guests begin filing out with their leftover pot luck dish and a mention of having to get the babysitter home.

That’s usually how it goes. And I’m not complaining at all. I actually love these parties. Any excuse for an evening away from the house and the kids and to get together with friends is cause for celebration, no matter the agenda.

So, we went to this party with the same expectations. And for the most part it did not disappoint. The agenda was comfortably similar. WIth a few exceptions:

We arrived 20 minutes “fashionable late”.

We set our pot luck bowl of rice and bean salad on the table with the chips, dip, M&Ms and cookies.

We made small talk about the unseasonably cool spring weather as other guests arrived.

Here’s the monkey wrench. The men all gathered, not in an adjacent room to talk politics, cars, and the stock market. They all gathered in the adjacent pasture to shoot bows and arrows at a big tower of hay with a large red bulls eye stuck smack dab in the middle! These weren’t your run of the mill bows and arrows an average Jane like me would picture at the mention of a bow and an arrow. No, these were state of the art, highly technologically advanced, compound archery machines. And these guys were good. I kept looking over to make sure my husband hadn’t been mortally wounded or hadn’t mortally wounded anyone or anything else out there in that pasture.

Meanwhile I:

Mingled

Ate

Mingled some more. Like previous get-togethers, I asked or was asked all the usual questions. In addition, other questions I heard asked included:

“Have you ever eaten horse?”

“Have you thought about getting a calf? We’ve got one. He’s cute. Black with white spots. He’s our food storage.”

I wish I had been able to hear the conversation the men were having. From what my husband told me, much of it had to do with castrating calves… with their teeth.

Of course we engaged in a “get-to-know-you game” later in the evening. And it involved the usual suspects:

A fact about ourselves that nobody knows

toilet paper

and a dating story

At 10 pm, there was no watch glancing or filing out as is typical. No, we were still playing games, eating and getting to know our new friends. We still have much to learn about living in the country. But we are loving the journey and look forward to gaining some new found skillz.

Bow-hunting anyone?