Whipped Cream Wonders
Drew demonstrating the famous whipped cream trick!
Chapter 19
My brother Mick invented the game.
It was something we played only during the summer. We played it at our cabin. It was a game we’d enjoy once the sun had set, while our parents sat outside on the patio with a nightcap—enjoying the sound of crickets and the gentle flow of waves made by a passing pontoon boat.
It was a game played only by the children—much to the disgust of the mothers.
The game involved slingshots. And toads.
At nighttime, our beach became infested with literally hundreds of toads. They were attracted to the area by the three floodlights that were attached to the eves of the simple, one-story cabin. As little kids, we would find great joy in catching the toads with our hands, and placing them in a small, plastic, rectangular bucket of water that always sat at the edge of our patio. It was the “dip” bucket, the bucket you’d step into as you transitioned from the beach to the patio—to rinse off all of the sand that was stuck to your feet.
But at night, the “dip” bucket became the toad jail.
Depending on the size of the toads—and they did have an enormous range in plumpness and girth—we could probably put anywhere from ten to thirty toads in the dip bucket.
Our goal was to trick one of the mothers to unknowingly step into the dip bucket full of toads. Just thinking about it made us giddy. I’m not sure if a mom ever fell for the trick, but it was certainly fun preparing for it.
Somewhere along the line, however, Mick came up with a different idea. And that’s where his game was invented.
It started innocently.
Really.
Family friends were visiting, and we had finished dinner, which consisted of hamburgers and hotdogs on the Weber grill, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and Jell-O. That was our routine dinner when we had company. As dusk was setting in, and the parents were cleaning up in the kitchen, I grabbed the two little kids and told them to join me in our evening tradition of catching toads. Hesitant at first, they quickly realized that the act of catching toads was fun, and they squealed in delight as they began to help place toad after toad in the rectangular dip bucket.
Enter Mick.
He and my brother Kevin were down at the lake, standing on the sandy part of the beach that stayed wet from the steady sway of waves made by the passing boats. They had slingshots and a mound of balls made from the wet sand below their feet. One by one, they would take turns shooting the “sand balls” and laugh as each one exploded into millions of pieces of sand.
That’s when it happened. That’s when the new game was invented.
“You guys want to see something cool?” Mick asked us.
“Sure!” we all replied.
“Bring the dip bucket down here,” he said, wearing a grin on his face as he whispered something to Kevin.
There we all stood: our two visiting friends, Kevin, Mick, and me. A couple of slingshots. A bucket of toads. And the water before us.
Mick bent down and grabbed a toad as we all watched. He placed the plump thing in the middle of his slingshot—between the prongs—and in a split second sent the little guy on a first-class transatlantic trip!
After the shock of what we had just witnessed, and when we could see the toad start to swim back to us, we all giggled and tried our turns at the new game.
Toad slingshotting was born, and we played it every summer with numerous unsuspecting guests.
Our cabin was home to countless parties, a revolving door of gatherings. It was a place to connect with family, friends, and people to whom my parents wanted to extend the reach of their embracing arms.
Sometimes it would be one family. Sometimes it would be multiple families. Sometimes it would be an older couple who lived down the street. Or it might be our priests. It might have been a sleepover where I invited a friend or two to spend the night. Perhaps the guest was a widow whose bare feet hadn’t touched sand in over thirty years. Or it could have been a party just for the teenagers—with lots of food, music, and fun.
But there was almost always some kind of a celebration in the works at our cabin. My parents could turn anything into a celebration. They believed in the importance of sharing with others. They made a conscious effort to do so.
Most of the time, that effort only involved picking up the phone and calling someone.
Celebrating is really quite simple.
When Kevin, Wallis, and Drew were younger, I used to have a “trick” I’d do for them when they had friends over to the house.
It was called the “whipped cream” trick.
And like most tricks all good dads do, there really was no trick involved. It was nothing more than pure silliness.
The trick involved a can of aerosol whipped cream. Every family with kids has one. It’s a metal canister with a long-necked plastic cap. It looks like a spaceship. And it has a flexible plastic nozzle. After you shake it up, you can squirt out the most fantastically frothy-luscious cream. We always seemed to have at least one can hanging out in our refrigerator.
The trick involved having the child lie on the ground as I dropped little bits of the whipped cream from the can into their mouth.
First from about six inches away. Then twelve inches.
Then more.
And, of course, the higher the can rose above the children’s heads, the more likely the dollops of whipped cream were to land on their chins.
Or on their noses.
Or in their eyes.
All the while the child would laugh uncontrollably. As would all those who witnessed the trick.
Inevitably, everyone in attendance would beg to have a chance to participate.
Our family has a long-standing reputation as fun, creative entertainers.
We have put together some pretty memorable parties over the years for friends. Croquet tournaments. Cookie decorating “Olympics” at Christmastime. We could come up with a fun theme for any occasion. The same standards of creativeness applied to our celebrations for Christmas, Easter, birthday parties, and even the team baseball party. They became a trademark in the Higley House.
Over the years, I actually became a blend of Martha and MacGyver. With enough newspaper and tempera paint, I could make the back deck look like a circus tent or the sunroom look like a pirate ship. While I’m confident everyone in attendance had fun, these parties were exhausting to put together, and the cleanup wasn’t much fun either.
But cancer, surgery, and recovery helped bring a wrecking ball to any form of over-the-top entertaining that summer. However, there was always a steady flow of people coming and going out of the house. And everyone always appeared to be having a darn good time.
Which brings me to one of the favorite things I learned that summer. I learned the difference between entertaining and celebrating. Entertaining can be a lot of work. Celebrating, on the other hand, needs only one other person and some good attitudes. The rest just happens.
Thanks to Drew, a fair number of those celebrations that summer included the untapped potential in that can of aerosol whipped cream. It had been patiently waiting in the refrigerator for us behind the pulp-free orange juice and the spare gallon of 1 percent milk.
Drew was a master at setting the stage for friends of all ages.
“Hey Dad, you should do the whipped cream trick tonight!”
It was a line that always got a response from our guests.
“What’s the whipped cream trick?” they would ask. So easily would they walk into our trap.
“No, no, no,” I would reply. “It’s too late. Really.”
“Come on, Dad. Please!” Drew would plead.
As with dangling a nice big juicy worm in front of the mouth of a fish, our guests were about to be hooked.
“OK. OK. But I’m going to need a volunteer to help.”
And I would always get a guest to volunteer.
The evening usually would include most everyone taking a turn, lying on the floor and getting covered with whipped cream. Yes, it was a mess.
But we had something to celebrate.