The Blue Cooler Wars-The First Great Battle Is Fought

Blue Cooler Recap: I and my then wife gave it to Tony and Carrie and forgot about it. That Christmas they tricked us into taking it home again. War was declared. They thought living in another state made them safe. They learned that was not the case.

So the following months when we got together it went something like this: Check their car, is the Cooler in it? Did you look in our car? Open the trunk and make sure it's not there. Lock the doors and hide your keys. Did you search the house? Check behind the shower curtain. Will it fit under the bed? The Blue Cooler changed possession a couple of times. Other plots to give it away were discovered and foiled.

So in April of 2005, when My Bro bought a new house in Oregon, we put into action our plan. We had the Cooler at this point and spent many hours in our War Room implementing a scheme to not only deliver the damn thing but do it in a way to demoralize the enemy as well. We had directions to their new place but we did not go directly to it. We did some recon and searched for ways to spring our trap. I parked the truck two houses away and my wife jumped out with the Cooler and ran up to their house from the one side that had no windows looking out. She then hid the Cooler in a big clump of bushes beside the house and ran back to the truck. I then parked next to the house and we got out and rang the bell. Tony came out, told us to stay where we were and then searched the truck. Even though he didn't see The Blue Cooler, he was still suspicious. He would get nervous when one of us left the room. We of course knew this, so we would go out of our way to go outside or disappear upstairs and watch him scramble to make sure that no treachery was afoot.

To her credit, Carrie wasn't as crazy as Tony. Her problem was that she is nice and trusting and didn't take this as seriously as the rest of us. What that meant for Tony was that he was outnumbered and facing very motivated opponents. We were staying for the weekend and that night we set the plan in motion. Whenever my Bro and I get together we play Mario Party into the wee hours of the night. I will write a post on the Mario Parties later. This also includes some adult beverages. Well, many beverages. So when we finally retired for the night, Tony and I were feeling no pain. About four in the morning the linchpin of the whole operation woke up. My ex was an early riser. Very early. Butt crack of dawn early. She put on a robe, drank some coffee and went outside. She grabbed the Cooler and took it to the garage. Anyone who has ever moved knows what the garage looks like three weeks after the move. Their garage wasn't any better. She unstacked a bunch of stuff, placed the Cooler down and stacked all of the stuff on top of it. As part of the plan, the things she used to bury the Cooler were sleeping bags and other summer gear. Stuff that they won't touch for awhile. She then went into the kitchen and cleaned up after the Mario Party to cover up the treachery. How could someone who cleaned the kitchen do something like hide The Blue Cooler in your garage?

I don't know how long it took them to find the Cooler, but Tony did not acknowledge that he had it for months. My guess is that it stayed hidden for awhile, just sitting in the garage to whole time. This is also the time that Carie turned to the Darkside and decided that we were going to pay. All that summer and fall, they tried to get us back but we stopped them every time. We even managed to find the Cooler and smuggle it back in their truck before they left our house. They found it while driving home. Tony must have been so proud of himself thinking that they got us, only to find it in their truck 20 minutes later. That phone call made us laugh for days. They were final able to get us in November, about a year after the whole thing started. We found it outside of the house in some bushes. Ironic I suppose.

But that wasn't the end of it by far.