STA-PUF PRO SPORT

Gene glared at me, wounded. He was hurt – mostly that I was laughing at him, because who likes to be laughed at? And there I was, tears streaming, shaking with laughter, doubled over with silent guffaws and unable to stop, or even catch my breath without a braying rasp. To be fair, he was also actually injured. There was no blood or anything, but there was a raised welt blossoming red above his left eyebrow. A dusting of powdered sugar from the marshmallow surrounded it. Who knew that sweet, soft confection would sting so bad when it hit? Well, to be completely honest, I did. I’d been hit before.

My date was experiencing his trial by fire in the Miller household. We had only been out a few times, but I was taking a chance and bringing him to my family’s 4 th of July barbeque. My divorce was not yet final, but we had been separated for a year, and my husband had been engaged to a cocktail waitress from Hooters for ten months. The photo of him proposing in front of a group of my old friends told me we wouldn’t be “working things out,” so I was cautiously dipping my toe in the dating pool. My friends were supportive. My family was ecstatic. They were hoping that this new guy might at least have a sense of humor. We were about to find out.

My family loves games, and that Independence Day, we were throwing ourselves whole-heartedly into our family’s made-up game of “Sta-Puf Pro-Sport,” which is more active and just as dangerous as lawn darts, so who wouldn’t want to play that game? The back yard had been divided in half with the garden hose, and sides had been chosen. We were a fairly lawless bunch, but we had rules: you couldn’t be on the same team as your spouse, each team had a good mixture of men and women, and if you got hit three times, you had to sit down. Last person standing wins, and we all have a glass of iced tea and rest before the next round.

Hit, you say? Well… yes. Our ammunition was Sta-Puf Marshmallows, and everyone was armed with a bag. Our weapons were old wooden tennis rackets, repurposed into slingshots with surgical tubing and leather patches. It was a hilarious, rollicking game with people running and dodging the sweet missiles, rolling on the ground and bouncing up to try and get off a shot, racing to the line to fire a marshmallow point blank at an opposing player, and ducking behind bushes to regroup. My dad’s dogs would make occasional forays into the melee to gobble up the ammo, so my mother tied crepe paper streamers to her biceps and, claiming Red Cross neutrality, ducked in to collect stray marshmallows to redistribute as we depleted our supply. This resulted in a new rule: always, always respect the Red Cross. Aggression against a neutral party is not only not cool but could result in mealtime sanctions.

My cousin Veronica has a particularly ferocious long shot, and her husband Doug has the height advantage, so he’s hard to dodge. My sister likes to rush the garden hose and shoot point blank, which makes us all happy that we use marshmallows and not rocks. You would think that a marshmallow would be a fairly innocuous projectile, but when launched from our homemade Sta-Puf Pro-Sports, those little rockets could sting! We all had faint red marks from enemy fire. Gene had dodged one of Ronnie’s shots and was rolling up to his knees to fire back, when he came face to face with my sister. I think she was as surprised as he was when he popped up in front of her, and without thinking - or aiming - she fired. A collective gasp rose from the onlookers, and a cease-fire was called. The Red Cross rushed in, and glaring at my sister, I hurried across enemy lines to make sure she hadn’t put my date’s eye out. It was quickly determined that it was only a flesh wound, and play resumed. It was his third hit, so Gene joined me at the DMZ on the patio, where I was in exile after being hit myself.

I looked at my new boyfriend. His slightly receding hairline made lots of room for the welt to swell and spread, and he looked like a sad clown with makeup gone awry. I started laughing. Surprised, because he expected some sympathy, he stared at me. So I laughed some more. And then I was off to the races, gasping for air and slapping my knees. It was like laughing in church – you know you’re not supposed to, but you can’t help it, and that only makes it worse, and then you’re just so consumed by the absurdity that you have to keep laughing. To his credit, after his initial shock at my hilarity, Gene began to laugh too, cementing his place in my family and my heart.

As it turned out, my instincts were right. Gene was a happy man, and his general contentment with the world was evident. He sang in the shower, varying his repertoire to fit the circumstances of the day. A stormy day might yield “Singing in the Rain,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” ”Stormy Weather,” and oddly, “Thunder Road,” while fine weather could produce “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” “On a Clear Day,” or even “Sunshine Go Away Today.” Over the years I listened to shower concerts from many generations and genres, often laughing out loud at his choices. He was an outdoorsman, who loved hiking and flyfishing, and in our time together, we fished the rivers near his childhood home in western Colorado and explored the foothills and mountains near mine.

Although he was a bit of an introvert and never truly comfortable in a crowd, Gene gave himself over to being in a relationship with a woman known as “Sam and Donnie’s girl,” and who, by virtue of owning two downtown businesses, could barely walk a block without being drawn into conversation. He would complete our grocery shopping alone while I was chatting in the produce section about when the new library building would be finished, or if I was planning to keep my coffee house open during the Christmas tree lighting. He was a patient and thoughtful man on so many levels, and would cook dinners when I was so busy I could barely remember to feed myself. He would read aloud to me on winter evenings, incorporating various voices and accents for the characters just to make me smile. He once spent a whole weekend with me, babysitting a seven-month-old during my friends’ medical emergency. I have tender memories of him jiggling that fussy, teething baby and providing color commentary of a televised golf tournament while drool soaked his shirt.

Our romance lasted half a decade, but our friendship endured more than thirty years. It’s been a strong and solid friendship, one that we could both count on. A thirty-year friendship says something, - to the friends and also to people that circle around the friendship. Long after we were no longer a couple, our names remained linked in our small town as old sweethearts who had become good friends.

In 2020, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, Gene died from Covid-19. It was my first real brush with the pandemic, the first person I lost as we all began working from home and distancing ourselves from those we care about. While I wasn’t looking, a huge hole gaped open in my life. I was bereft. A year and a half later, as we started to emerge from isolation, I gave a eulogy at Gene’s memorial service. I didn’t mention the Sta-Puf Pro-Sport game that brought us together. It was too silly and too much fun for such a sad, solemn occasion. I said the right things, even told some good stories, but not nearly all of them, and although I tried, I couldn’t possibly convey how much I miss Gene’s presence in my life. I keep searching for words to describe my feelings about the loss of that fine, funny man and our long friendship, but so far, my memories are like those long-ago marshmallows – soft and sweet…and stinging when they hit.

Bit by bit, that’s all she wrote…