Aloha!

Today there was a BBQ at Ella's new daycare center, so go-Daddy-O picked me up from work at 4:00, and we headed up to SFU. I was pretty excited--this was my very first visit to the center, and this was my first BBQ of the year.

The theme: Hawaiian. Sounds simple enough, but since my wardrobe consists mostly of jeans and t-shirts, I found myself seriously lacking in the appropriate attire. I went through my checklist: no floral shirts, and no grass skirts. And definitely no coconut bras. Luckily, after digging around in some boxes, I found a plastic lei. Perfect.

The food: potluck. Go-Daddy-O assembled a salad, and baked some brownies. While he was doing this, he mentioned that everyone else who had signed up for the BBQ was bringing a salad or dessert of some kind.

Hmmmm. An all-salad, all-dessert BBQ! This should have raised some red flags, but I figured that the daycare must be providing us with hotdogs or burgers to throw onto the grill.

Well, you can probably guess what happened next. We arrive at the daycare, and indeed, there was an assortment of mouth-watering morsels on the barbeque. Skewers of chicken, beef patties, Bavarian smokies...all heaped onto separate plates at a table near the back.

I approach the table. Now, while I am a carnivore, I can go without meat for long periods of time--no problem. But since we've never owned anything besides a George Foreman grill (one of the old ones that is a bitch to clean), and since most of our friends either live in apartments or are vegetarians, going to a BBQ and eating meat is a real treat.

As I reach out to take a chicken skewer, one of the parents turns her head and gives me one of those looks. You know the one--the "I've been slaving over these flames in order to feed my family and DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY MEAT" look. Uh-oh.

It turns out that this was a Bring-Your-Own-Meat BBQ, and somehow, somebody missed the memo. Of course, go-Daddy-O swears that there was no memo, and that nothing was written on the sign-up sheet. "I can't be expected to read between the lines," he says.

Q: So was this a simple miscommunication, or is it a tacit rule that you're supposed to BYOM to such a function?