Barbeque Fiesta!

I'm not ashamed to admit my siblings are probably my best friends. Even if they dislike it, they've provided me with much-needed support (and entertainment) all throughout my life.

As we grow older, we oftentimes talk about things we remember.

One instance, in particular, is the sibling renowned "Barbeque Fiesta".

Now, close your eyes.

Well, don't close them but just imagine.

There are three children in a dining room. They are huddled around a table complaining about being hungry while a mom hurriedly tries to fix food. Then, she gets an idea!

Across the counter, she spots it: Goldfish.

The true gold of any American household is that little snack that smiles back. But don't get it confused with any regular, boring Goldfish. No, it is the golden chalice of all Goldfish: flavor-blasted.

She quickly tosses the bag onto the table. The children jump in and voraciously tear into the packaging. In mere seconds the bag is split among the three of them, but something is missing.

The eldest child stands up and proclaims "But we need barbeque sauce! It's so good with it!". The middle child then rushes the fridge, snatching the barbeque from the fridge shelf. The littlest then abruptly demands that she be the first to get barbeque. Against the other two siblings' wants, they begrudgingly agree to give her the barbeque first.

And that, of course, is when shit hits the fan.

To be clear, my brother is the middle child, my sister is the youngest, and I'm the eldest. My brother goes in to give her a dollop of barbeque sauce and the UNTHINKABLE happens.

He thinks it's those little squirt bottles with the small opening that allows you to get just the perfect amount with each squeeze. How wrong he was.

With one foul squish, the entirety of the bottle comes rushing out onto the plate. Waves of barbeque sauce splash along the edges, before settling into a gooey glob that starts to bleed over the edges of the plate. Sweet, sweet sauce began to pepper the table and we could hear our mom muttering "No...." beneath her breath as she watched the horror unfold.

To add to the utter horror, we had already poured out a LOT of Goldfish onto her plate. Now, some of them were floating in the sickly sweet viscous sauce, looking almost as if they were covered in blood.

Oh, the fish-manity.

The three of us just stared at the plate, then guilty looked to our mom for some sort of reaction. She just eyed the plate, eyed us, eyed the plate again then shrugged.

"Well, you did want barbeque with your Goldfish..."

She turned around and went back to cooking dinner while we were left to stew in both confusion and awe. This was the coolest thing any of us had ever seen, and not to mention, even though we messed up, we weren't in trouble.

My brother, being the brilliant child he was, deemed it the most iconic memory to date:

The Barbeque Fiesta.

He started singing some stupid jingle he came up with loosely based on the "La Cucaracha" song we had heard multiple times played by bug display at our local museum when you guessed the cockroach correctly in their matching game.

Needless to say, we finished a whole bag of goldfish that day, and likely at least a half bottle of barbeque sauce. When my mom tried to clean off the plate, she couldn't get all the gunk off so she put it in the dishwasher.

For weeks, our entire house smelled like barbeque. But it was so worth it. It was such a small, insignificant memory in the scheme of things but all of us look back on that day with such fondness.