Episode summary
A church picnic at Rio Vista waits on a grill that was supposed to arrive at ten and shows up at ten forty. Two phrases for a deadline you barely make, and for the separate pieces that still become one day.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless.
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Have you ever needed something to show up at an exact time, watched the clock get closer and closer with no sign of it? Then, just when you’re about to give up hope, it arrives and everything works out just fine. That happened to me not that long ago.
There’s a phrase for that in English: cut it close. Cut it close.
On Saturday I organized a picnic for my church. We planned to have the grill at the park by ten o’clock. It didn’t get there until ten forty. We wanted to be ready to eat by eleven. That’s cutting it close: a narrow gap between the time you needed and the time you actually had. Though it may sound like we’re talking about a short shave at the barber, this phrase is not about a haircut. It’s also not a complete miss. You did make the deadline, you just didn’t have much room to spare.
That forty minutes felt a lot longer when I was standing in the pavilion with 50 hungry people, a bunch of raw meat, and no grill in sight. We were definitely cutting it close, but let me start from the beginning.
The city of San Marcos, Texas, where I currently reside, has a river running straight through the middle of it. The headwaters, meaning the place where the river comes out of the ground, spring up from an underground system on the Texas State campus, in a protected area the university manages. From there the river runs through town and out toward the Gulf. It’s one of the main attractions here, with spots where you can swim, kayak, or tube. Our church activity was being held at Rio Vista Park, which is just one of the many access points to the San Marcos River. But it’s one of the most popular points partially because of Rio Vista Falls, three in-stream structures that make artificial rapids: rock formations placed to narrow the river, creating a series of funnels and a stronger current where the water slides over smoothed-out rock. In the summer that whole stretch is packed. This was the end of September, so we had a little more breathing room than we would have had earlier in the year.
I didn’t have much time to actually enjoy the view, though. I kept glancing at my phone, then at the empty patch of concrete where the grill was supposed to be, trying to work out the timing in my head. We’d asked one of our grill masters to bring the grill by ten to give us enough time to cook up all the meat and be ready to eat at eleven. For me, this picnic didn’t start that morning. It started back at the beginning of August, when I was first asked to plan our church summer party. September 26th is already past the official start of fall, but Texas weather still feels like summer well into October, so it still counts, I think. I reserved the pavilion more than a month ahead of time, and then it was multiple weeks of planning after that, which is not exactly my favorite kind of work. I hate planning activities, and I’m not very good at it, but I’m going to do my best anyway.
My jobs were specific. I decided what food people needed to bring, made the sign-up sheet, and made sure that sheet got passed around on Sundays, in Sunday school and in our men’s and women’s group meetings. By the way, in my church the men’s group is called the elders quorum and the women’s group is called the Relief Society.
On the morning of the picnic, I picked up the meat, the buns, the plates, the utensils, and the drinks, which included bottled water and soda. Everyone who signed up was supposed to bring the rest: hot sides, cold sides, chips, desserts. I’ve been the grill master myself before, for the elders quorum’s annual guns and buns activity, where we eat hot dogs and shoot shotguns in someone’s backyard. This time we’d picked a couple of guys from the quorum to run the grill instead, so I wouldn’t need to cook.
Which brings us back to ten o’clock, and an empty pavilion spot.
If our grill master was a no-show, meaning he just never showed up at all, we were in real trouble. I complain about the Texas heat a lot, but unfortunately it’s not quite hot enough to cook those hamburgers on the sidewalk. The other man planning this with me had already texted him three times with no response. Most people didn’t start arriving until about ten twenty, so for a stretch it was just the two of us, standing there with a car full of food and nothing to cook it on. Around ten twenty-five, we finally got him on the phone. He said he was running a bit late, but he was on his way. He finally pulled in with the grill around ten forty, forty minutes after he was supposed to, and forty minutes after I’d started standing around wondering if I’d need to rig up some kind of giant magnifying glass to get those patties sizzling. We started cooking right then, and once he was there, everything went smoothly. He and his partner on the grill did a great job.
By eleven, with most people already there, the grill going, and the smell of it finally drifting over the tables, we sat down to eat. I had the grill masters bring the meat out in batches so we could get started eating quickly. The sign-ups had mostly come through: beans, chips, mac and cheese, a lot of fruit, desserts, plenty of other hot and cold sides. The one thing missing was condiments. I’d put those on the sign-up sheet instead of buying them myself, which in hindsight was a mistake. People kept walking up to the table looking for squeeze bottles that just weren’t there. No ketchup, no barbecue sauce, no relish, no mustard, no cheese. The burgers got eaten well seasoned, but otherwise plain. Someone had brought a really good chili, though, and most people ended up spooning that over their hot dogs instead.
The day was mostly cloud cover, which meant I didn’t need to worry about a sunburn, and the occasional breeze did wonders to cool me down when it started to feel too hot. I was still dripping sweat, though whether that was just from the heat or from the stress remains to be seen. I stayed out of the river myself, but plenty of other people didn’t. They were down at the water off and on through the whole afternoon, not just at the end.
Eliana spent the day running around and having a great time, which mostly meant waiting for a moment when Emma or I looked away and then making a break for it as fast as her legs would carry her. First she went for the grill. One of the counselors in our bishopric, the main male leadership of our local church, caught her before she got too close. Later she made a run for the parking lot, and one of our friends cut her off before she reached it. It really does take a village sometimes. Luckily, no babies were harmed in the making of this picnic.
I’d planned for eighty people. Somewhere between fifty and sixty actually showed, which meant we never had to ration anything. We told people to go back for seconds and thirds, and by the end there wasn’t much left. I’ll call that the exact right amount of food.
We wrapped up eating and talking in the pavilion around one o’clock. The people who wanted to keep going headed down to the river together. Everyone else went home. Emma, Eliana, and I stayed behind. We cleaned up the pavilion, gathering the leftover water bottles, plates, napkins, and utensils to take back to the church for a future activity, and finished around two.
The burgers got eaten plain and may have been missing cheese, but they got cooked! The hot dogs might not have had ketchup and mustard, but we did have chili. We all had a good time chatting and laughing and swimming for those so inclined. All in all, it was an enjoyable time.
Which brings me to today’s second phrase: Come together.
In English, when we say something comes together, we mean that separate pieces join into one thing that works. A pavilion booking, a sign-up sheet, meat and buns I bought that morning, sides other people brought, and a grill that did show up, if not exactly when I had planned: none of those makes a picnic by itself, but they all came together to make a pretty great picnic. There’s a pretty famous line, “I love it when a plan comes together.” This comes from an old show called The A-Team. It’s been repeated and referenced across other shows and movies, so you may hear it if you enjoy that sort of thing.
Cutting it close that morning didn’t stop the day from coming together by the end.
Have you ever cut it close? Did things end up coming together for you in the end? Whether it came together or fell apart, I’m sure you’ve got a good story to tell.
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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