Whose home are they talking about? Satan's?

Tonight I took my mom to the Taste of Home Cooking School as her birthday present. It's a huge event that comes to NWA every year or two, but neither of us had never been. Mom is an awesome cook, and I like food, so we figured much fun would be had by all.

Well.

We were wrong.

The doors opened at 5 for the vendor booths, so we got there at 5 til. There were already easily a thousand people there. We went into a small ballroom that was lined with tables filled with vendors giving out various food samples. Each table was mobbed. We went to the table with the shortest line and hopped in. As we got near the table, I saw two women out of the corner of my eye. They were in their 70s and using walkers. They were about 30 feet away, and I watched them scoot directly over to our line. The first lady pushed her front walker legs right in front of my mom's show and shimmied herself up to the table. Mom and I just stood there with our mouths hanging open, but they couldn't have cared less. All that so they could get at the cherry tomatoes pronto.

The rest of the booths were more of the same. Women with too much jewelry who clearly don't get a night out very often fighting their way into lines to get free guacamole. We had our personal space invaded more times than I care to recall. We finally decided that we'd just go hungry. By then it was 5:20. We swam through the ocean of obnoxiousness to get to the doors to the actual event, the cooking show. There were already hundreds of people waiting to get in--the doors opened at 6 and the actual show didn't start until 7. We slouched into line behind a contingency of women wearing denim skirts and fringed vests. After about 2 minutes, our eyes met and I said, "or we could ditch and go out to dinner." Faster than you could say "cattle call" we were at the front doors. As we walked out, we passed a girl standing in the vestibule. My mom randomly asked her if she wanted our tickets, and what do you know? She did! So we even got our money back. That's what I call serendipitous. And then we went shopping and ate dinner at Bonefish--all in the time we would have been waiting for the show to start had we stayed. THAT is what I call smart. And the Taste of Home Cooking School? We won't discuss what I call that.