Two pounds of grapes, and a 4-hour ride to Hershey Park.
I know I promised this story a while ago but this is a delicate subject that required a lot of thought, to word correctly. Actually, I didn’t have anything else to write about today. I have been in a really crappy mood lately. Besides hating my job, it has been raining for a month, and I can’t take it anymore. But I know you don’t want to hear my problems, besides if you sitting there reading this you have problems of your own to contend with.
ON WITH THE SHOW…
Everyone has this uncle. Not the creepy one that only comes up out of the basement on Easter, the one that is the troublemaker/whiner. He is generally the youngest sibling of your parents, and he reminds them constantly that he was the neglected one, the baby who never got anything. Well finally this uncle got something no one else in the family got, a trip to Hershey Park with an 8-year-old and a 7-year-old who ate two pounds of grapes the night before the big day.
My Uncle *Joe decided that he was going to do something nice for his seven-year-old daughter and his Goddaughter (me off course, I get the broke godfather). He had it all planed, he and his daughter were coming to our summer home in Maryland to spend the night and in the bright early summer morning we were going to Hershey Park. Wahooo!!
It was a good plan, and it sounded like a lot of fun, little did he know while he was outside yucking it up with my parents and the neighbors, my cousin and I were systematically cramming grape after sweet juicy grape in our mouths while watching Charlie’s Angels. It was amazing, in the one-hour episode of action-packed Angel’s action two pounds of grapes had disappeared quicker than Farrah’s sanity. My cousin and I panicked when we saw the empty bowl, so we did what any kid would do, we hid the bowl in my baby sisters’ room (she was only two, she could take the rap and come out unscathed) and went to bed.
When we woke bright and early on trip day no one said a word about the missing grapes. My cousin and I nodded across the table at each other (to show the mutual respect that children have for each other when the prefect crime has been committed). And it’s at this point over the bowls of Cheerios that it all went bad. To this day, I still think if we hadn’t eaten the Cheerios that we would have made it.
We boarded my uncle’s brand-new canary yellow van with canary yellow extra thick shag carpeting, and we were on our way. We had made it to the Maryland/Delaware border when my cousin had her first stabbing belly pains. I was in the back, and I remember her saying “daddy, my belly hurts” and all I could think was, “Damn her she is going to ruin this trip, stupid baby”.
Just as I was finishing this thought she started leaking eeks and eeks of uncontrolled gasses. One after the other until we needed to open the windows. It was a good thing too, because the next eek was followed by an eruption of explosive diarrhea. Without the open windows, I think we would have had a whole van full of puke to boot.
It all sounds comical, but let me tell you, it’s not really as funny as you think it would be.
You don’t really know fear until you’re stuck in the back of a van, curled up like a scared little animal, watching a puddle of warm grape flavored diarrhea creep across the seat toward you. And you can’t move because your dumb seat belts got you trapped like it’s part of the punishment.
We never told anyone about the grapes, and to this day, when I’m at the store, I roll by the grapes nice and quick. Don’t even like to look at ’em.
Next week: the exciting conclusion: How to Get Dookie Out of Yellow Shag Carpet (Or Why My Uncle Still Hates Road Trips).
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