A Part of My Memory

Zara

Without waiting another second we stepped away from the small group of ladies and made a beeline for the snack table. As inconspicuously as possible, I tasted one of everything, coating it with chocolate from the fountain before popping it into my mouth.

Harley followed suit.

Everything from chocolates to biscuits, and mini doughnuts to cakes. We were definitely going to have a stomach ache by the end of the day, but such was the fate of chocolate lovers.

"Alright everyone, huddle up!" Jess announced. Harley and I glanced at each other before grabbing one more snack and huddling up with everyone else. "We are going to be playing a game now!" The ladies cheered and Jess continued. "It's called 'Guess The Age!"

She made a show of dramatically pulling a white cloth to reveal a wooden board. On the top was a heading with the words "Bride and Groom," and below that were images pinned to the board.

"These images are pictures of me and Elliot growing up. As you can see we get older as the numbers go up," she moved her hand over the images as in illustration. "The first image is of me as a baby, then Elliot, then me, then Elliot and so on as we grow up. Your goal is to guess our age on each image, and the one with the most correct guesses wins a prize."

She continued talking, but I wasn't paying attention anymore. I was looking at the pictures, particularly Elliot. He was a pretty ugly baby. That thought made me chuckle and when the ladies looked back at me I apologised but I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. I was so going to tease him about this later. He had been chubby, which was cute, but his facial features completely changed as he grew. He looked like such a nerd with braces and glasses in some of the pictures. It was cute, I had to admit, but puberty definitely did him well over the years.

Suddenly, someone handed me a card with boxes labelled one to twenty. I focused on Jess again. "You write your age guesses in the respective boxes and when you're done, bring it to me for marking. Good luck!"

The ladies huddled closer to the board to get a better look at the pictures. I considered copying Harley with answers concerning Elliot. She was his sister so she would probably know how old he was in each picture. But I decided it would be much more entertaining to look closely at his pictures and take a guess for myself.

I managed to get close enough to get a good look and wrote down my answers. When I was done I took a picture of the board, for memory's sake of course, and so I could laugh at Elliot about it later.

I handed my card to Jess, as did the other ladies and then we all dispersed, waiting as Jess went over the answers and marked each card. Harley and I went inside to have a taste of the savoury snacks, and might I just say that I could not stop eating the samoosas. But then when I spotted the sushi table—yes, there was a whole table designated to seafood—in the corner, I could not get enough of the prawns.

Finally, Jess called us back to announce the results.

"Drumroll please," Jess said and we all started hitting our thighs. "The lady with the most correct guesses is Zara!"

I had not been expecting that. I mean, most of these ladies probably grew up with Jess and yet I had gotten the most guesses?

"I didn't know what to get as a first prize since some ladies like different things so I just settled on gifting a $200 check, so you can spend it on whatever you want," Jess told me nonchalantly before handing me a literal $200 check.

I genuinely didn't know what to say. How were you supposed to thank someone for giving you that much money? A simple "thank you" could not possibly suffice.