Don’t let the title of my post mislead you – you aren’t going to get to see any boobies or anything.  If you were going to get to see some mommy boobies, your best chance may be with this fine lady who is starring in my post.  She used to be notorious for allowing her cleavage to make appearances at parties with close friends.  Her chest was a well-known guest at barbeques, baby showers, and other functions of ours.

Those days are over now.

Sorry.

I have to share these pictures with you, because when we were on our annual camping trip this summer with friends, this friend was the one who got in trouble because she dared step too close to the all-important horseshoe tournament.  Last year it was ME in trouble.  Of course.

So I loved that another woman felt belligerent about this very NON-inclusive game the men spend a whole day playing every year.

Let me back up.

We have an annual camping trip that is called “The Reunion” – even though it is with just friends, not family.  But sometimes friends feel like family, right??  Especially when they are like crazy Uncle Larry who falls in the fire because he is overly enthusiastic when telling stories and who also has had way too much whiskey in twenty-four hours.

My friend Kimmie and her husband Troy plan the trip every year, and most everyone in the group are Troy’s friends best friends from high school and college.  Families come from all over the place to this event up in the mountains of Utah.  Since we are old, we all bring our RV’s and pop-up campers to maximize our sleeping comfort for our bad backs.  We let our kids roam the campground in large, sugared-up, raggamuffin gangs on bikes.  The adults sit around and drink camping cocktails, read magazines, play Scrabble, sit near the river, and eat.  We eat a lot.

One of the most active things that occurs every year at the Family Reunion is the horseshoe tournament.  Wait, let me clarify: THE MEN’S HORSESHOE TOURNAMENT.  This annoys me greatly, because I am a competitive person and I want to try to win $160 too.  Last year I got tired of watching and threw a huge stink.  A big old tantrum.  Because somehow this matters more when you’ve had a lot to drink in the middle of the day.

This year Troy said on our email itinerary that we were going to have a CO-ED horseshoe tournament on Friday night, the day before the “real” tournament.  And guess who entered?  Me and Brad.  That’s it.  NOBODY ELSE COULD GET THEIR VAGINAS AND HUSBANDS OVER TO THE HORSESHOE PIT ON FRIDAY NIGHT.  I mean, is it that hard to get your vagina and your twenty dollars to support another sister in her fight for equality??

Saturday afternoon was spent, as usual, entertaining all the kids while the guys played horseshoes and drank whiskey for over five hours.

Not only were the women entertaining the kids, but we were also trying to get ready for the big group dinner that we always have on Saturday night.  Mike the Chef was playing in the finals of the horseshoe game, so we were trying to help him out a bit.  This year dinner was a Hawaiian luau, and we had pig served four ways.  Beatty was hugely disappointed when the plan changed from having a whole pig buried buried in the ground on coals to multiple dutch ovens full of pig – but he understood when Chef Mike explained that he couldn’t figure out a way to drag a gigantic pig carcass up to the mountains.  Since none of us had a casket, the pig was brought up in pieces.

Instead of me having one too many cocktails and getting fired up about women not being allowed to play in the horseshoe tournament, it was my lovely friend below.  They yelled at her for interfering in the game, or stepping too close to their line of fire, or SOMETHING.  So she went and put on her Luau outfit and decided to have a protest dance-party.  A protest of one.

She danced and twirled and ran around the guys and their horseshoe game, a whirling vision of Hawaiian wonder and lovely leaping distraction for the men.

This kind of stuff is very dear to me.  I had to document.

Then she had the great idea that if she braided her skirt into what resembled a straw penis, she might be allowed to play in the tournament.  The real penises might be fooled.

Fat chance, sister.

But I AM on your side.  I am.  I’m hoping to convince Kimmie – because of her organizer status – to put some sort of game on the agenda next summer for chicks ONLY.  A game which involves prize money and many, many hours of our time.  Since we can’t call the ACLU on this, it’s the closest we can come to making the men as equally bugged as we are with their horseshoe-throwing, whiskey-swilling sausage party.

WOMEN, UNITE.