My darling Otter got me to thinking about roadtrips and why I am most un-American (c'mon and get me Georgie boy and I will bury your smirk so deep in the dirt you'll be picking grit out of your cochlea) and do not ever willingly embark on protracted incarceration in my automobile.

Perhaps I should skip right over the fatal car accidents I witnessed as a child and as a teenager. A family of four where the mother and daughter died right in front of us while my dad tried to keep them warm with his parka and the blanket that was in the trunk. But there was just too much blood and it was everywhere. I was too little to send for help so my big brother who was seven ran up the hill to try and find a house for someone to call the police (oh yes, the days before cell phones) and I had to sit in our car by myself while the other daughter outside kept screaming like I have never heard and I never want to hear again. The guy that hit them was on the wrong side of the road and drunk out of his mind and if that car had not been in front of us, he would have hit us.

And then there was the time I was in the passenger seat when the car I was in crashed into a telephone pole cause a van in front of us dropped a bucket out the back and we swerved to miss hitting the bucket. Let me just say, having your face come within 4 inches of a telephone pole at 45 miles an hour can really spook ya'.

You know, I'm not gonna keep going with the accidents-- this is getting gruesome. Roadtrips. Right. Roadtrips.

So, seeing as I went to college about 950 miles from where my parents lived, I did a fair number of travelling by car escapades with my East Coast compadres. However, the first trip that pops into my head when I think of wretched-will-I-die-tonight roadtrips was not a 3-day jaunt. Au contraire-- it, much like the ill-fated S.S. Minnow, was a simple three hour trip to Chicago's O'Hare airport.

What went wrong? Hmmm, my illustrious drivers were Scott and Gavin (names have not been changed to protect the innocent because I dare them to find me and challenge my version with theirs because I know I will win because they were too STONED OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS to remember). It was Scott's car-- a green station wagon that could have rivalled Carol Brady for suburban glamour if not for the wainscoting of rust that edged up to the doorhandles.

Much like the endless love triangles so expertly explored in Jules et Jim, Gone with the Wind, Chasing Amy, etc--- Scott was in love with me, I was in love with Gavin, and Gavin was in love with himself. So.

We set off around 4 in the afternoon as I recall. My flight was at 7 something the next morning, but Scott had gallantly offered to drive me to the bus (as this was the only bus I could catch to get to Chicago and I just planned on hanging out at the airport) and Gavin came along cause he figured on the way back from the bus station Scott would probably stop for food and then Gavin could get a free meal. Of course, this is in the great wisdom of my later perspective--- at the time, being an idiot freshman with a crush on a charismatic pothead I was thrilled to think Gavin wanted to see me off. *swell Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing here*

On the way to the bus station, Gavin teased that Scott should drive me to the airport. Scott, ever on the defensive and wary of not being cool enough (and no, Scott, you weren't-- you were sweet and kind and loyal and wonderful-- but somehow it's always the cool that matters, what can I say? life's a bitch and then you die) picks up the challenge and says-- great-- we'll stop at my brother's place on the way.

Me? I'm thinking-- I could save $11 dollars and not buy a bus ticket. Sweet.

So down we go. Me in the back seat (I have this thing about not wanting to sit up front, dontcha know), Gavin is in the passenger and Scott is at the wheel. Gavin amuses us all by flipping his beer caps back at me. Wheee-good times.

We do stop at his brother's where a keg party is in full tilt and we engage in partying with total strangers until well after midnight. I start to get a little bit anxious, even though I'm now only 45 minutes or so from O'Hare. Scott is dead drunk-- swaying on his feet calling me 'little missy'. Oddly enough, I'm able to get Gavin to understand that I HAVE TO MAKE THIS FLIGHT (that's a whole nother story for another post) and he gets Scott to get back into the car and down we go.

To Chicago. You know, That little one-horse town. Not the kind of place you could get LOST in. Especially if you didn't have a MAP in the car. Oh wait, there was a map of KENTUCKY. So, maybe we were driving funny as we tried to figure out where to go but we attracted a certain State Police car's attention and he pulled us over.

Hmmm, was I thinking I wanted to go and spend the night in jail? Why no, I was thinking, this policeman could HELP us. He could give us directions. Heck, maybe if I smile just right HE will offer to drive me to the airport. I kid you not. I was a font of happy possibility as a child.

So there's Scott with eyelids rubbing on his lower lip. Smart-ass Gavin with his "authority issues" (his dad was with the CIA, whatever) and me, with my square tan suitcase and my plane ticket. The cop flashes his light around the dash and on the floor and lo and behold-- the beer caps that Gavin had been flicking-- all over the back seat! Now we have to get out of the car. On this strange road with big honking 18-wheelers screaming by and I have no idea what time it is but I keep looking for airplanes cause if I saw one I'm thinking I could follow it to the airport. God, to have that kind of mental acuity today-- youth is wasted on the youth.

But, Scott came through-- talked our way out of it-- and things were different back then, drunk drivers were issued a warning and sent on their merry way (like that guy I told you about who killed the mother and the daughter?-- he never even went to jail-- my mother read it in the paper).

So I think now we have directions. And we head to the airport. Yay. Except we are in some part of town that is creepy. And getting creepier. But it's okay cause we're gonna get to the airport and our doors are locked and, oh shit-- what was that? Scott pulls over. He gets out. Fuck. The tire is flat.

And. There. We. Are. Worst Nightmare, USA.

We decide to go into this bar that's on the corner so Scott can call his brother. We don't know where we are-- but Scott tries to tell him something of where we are though Lewis and Clark even with the amazing Sacagawea by their side couldn't have found us. Scott hangs up. The bartender kicks us out cause they are closing it is going on 4 am.

Now we are on the corner. I sit on my suitcase (and of course I am wearing a tank top and a cotton skirt cause it's June but it was freaking cold). This cab goes by and I hail it down. The woman says it'll be 40 bucks to take me to the airport. I've got like 20. She's about to pull away and I say, "here, I'll give you this ring" and I show her a ring on my finger that belonged to my grandmother which is worth a whole lot more than 40 bucks. She says okay I'll come back-- I have to go off duty and then I'll come back.

Now I'm trying to remember why I was sitting on my suitcase and what happened to the car-- it was in a junkyard with a dog. Hmmm, maybe I was partying a bit that night, too. Maybe the car got towed? Was that part of the neverending story? I think it was, but you'll have to ask Scott and Gavin about that part--it's kind of foggy for me.

So scary cab woman who looks like the female counterpart to the guys in Deliverance drives off promising to come back and take me to the airport in her own car. Gavin and Scott have to stay by the bar in the hopes that his brother's rescue mission finds them one day before they have to graduate from college. But they are not liking this plan of action. They are not liking the idea of me driving away with creepy woman and we are getting into quite a emotional discourse about it because, frankly, it had been quite a long night and I think we all might have been a bit tired and feeling some strain. Feh.

When *trumpets blare here* could it be? Headlights coming at us. It's not scary woman who wants to keep me in a box under her bed, it's SCOTT'S BROTHER SAM who I have never hugged more tightly than anyone in my life, ever. He was a big guy, but I may have bruised his ribs. And I think I promised him my first born child--

And then we got into a WARM car! With wheels! And a driver who was a genius and could find us in the cold, dark endless alleys of north Chicago! And within 10 minutes I was standing on the sidewalk at the O'Hare airport with my square, tan suitcase. And I hugged the brothers. And I hugged Gavin. And I went into the most beautiful airport in the whole world, birds chirping while bunnies and squirrels skittered playfully at my feet. I washed my hair and dried it in the bathroom and changed my clothes and stepped aboard that 747 like I was Cleopatra herself.

And then, I passed out.

The End.

P.S. Remind me to tell you the one where my parents went to Rio for 2 weeks and left my older brother in charge and me and my girlfriends talked him into driving us to the Jersey Shore "so we could dip our toes in the water" and how we burned out the engine on my parent's car by not putting oil into it and getting stranded in the middle of the night hours from home, and oh, did I mention me and my friends were 14-- oh yeah, what a hoot.

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