June 6, 2006
The Gas Station
I'm going to tell another set of stories on my poor bug-phobic sister and then I'll leave her alone for a while. But I should probably also say that she's not nearly this much of a wuss anymore.
Picture it, Texas, during the energy crisis (no, not this one) ... two youngsters on their way to the promised land: DisneyWorld. What? Oh ... I've been watching old episodes of Golden Girls in the afternoons while I vegetate after getting home. Apparently Sophia is contagious. At any rate, we were preparing to head across the country from Texas to Florida so we could go to Disney World. My sister was all of 3 and a half and I was just 7 and a half. I was beside myself despite knowing that it would be a two day trip in a very packed Delta 88.
Grandpa drove and we reached New Orleans and drove through the French Quarter briefly on our way. My sister and I fought over who was sitting next to grandma in the backseat ... this was a complicated debate because it meant having to sit in the middle of the long bench seat and be squashed by a sibling on one side and grandma on the other side.
And, of course, these were the days before iPods or Walkmen, before GameBoy ... Advance, DS or plain-ole plain-ole. We had a set of car bingo "cards," one of those magnetic face dudes (that I eventually tore apart to see just how soft those magnetic filings really were ... cuz they looked soft), and some books.
Somewhere between Disney World and home, we made a pit stop at a gas station. It had a nice restroom, white tile - pretty palatial for the time. Naturally, as the kids, my sister and I made a beeline for the stalls. Just as I'm ahhhh, relieving the pent up tension of the trip, my sister begins screaming.
Three year old. Room covered in ceramic tile. Great set of lungs. Ummm, OW. Mom and Grandma finally get out of her what's wrong: spider.
Now, in the stall next to my sister, I am trying to finish up frantically before this huge nest of tarantulas comes and eats me alive. Because that MUST be what's happening to my sister given the amount of terror in her voice.
I am hurriedly trying to escape my stall before these hideous creatures come over to my side and I'm also positive at this point that my poor little sister is obviously dying given the horrendous screams coming out of that gas station, reverberating restroom. However, in my panic, I'm twisting the little knob to get out of the stall too far. This particular design let you turn the knob half way to open the door. I am frantically turning it all the way one way ... can't get out ... and all the way the other direction ... can't get out. Finally, I keep pressure on the door as I turn the knob and it pops open. I flee to the safety of my grandmother's arms. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty ....
"Go crawl under the stall door and let your sister out of there," my mother tells me.
WHAT?
Sure the kid is still screaming and therefore still alive, but come on ... it's been like eleventy minutes of solid screams in there ... surely she has been bitten so many times that she's going to die. And now Mom wants ME to go in there?
At this point I turn into a babbling fool.
My sister has barely stopped screaming to breathe. I am now under the impression that she can scream while drawing breath in as well as while exhaling. I'm also certain that is only a matter of minutes before she inhales spiders and stops making that infernal racket.
Mind you, I'm sad that my sister is obviously dying of spider bites ... but not so much so that I want to risk joining her in death by crawling into that spider's nest of a stall where she's been mutilated by foot long spiders.
Mom insists that I crawl under the door and rescue my sister because I'm smaller and I'll fit. I'm terrified. Petrified. This is when Grandma begins telling Mom that she should let my poor little sister out. Mom insists that she won't fit under the stall ... baloney, she's at least as scared as I am at that point. Plus, it's kinda undignified.
During the argument between Mom and Grandma, I discover the groove in the lock to the stall. I calmly insert my fingernail, frantically look at the floor for the swarm of angry spiders ... and begin slowly twisting the lock open. Finally I have it.
My sister has absolutely no mark on her. She's still screaming.
There is no swarm of tarantulas. There are no tarantualas. In fact, I don't even see the spider at first.
I go in, lead her out by the hand.
The first moment I can remember of older sibling disgust.
Daddy longlegs.
There is a single daddy longlegs in the corner of the stall.
Poor thing was probably terrified by all the commotion.
As we finally finish our tasks, wash up and leave the restroom, there's practically a crowd of people carefully not-looking at us as we exit. My sister is still kind of hitching and snuffling, but I'm rolling my eyes and completely unconcerned anymore. My mother, on the other hand, is utterly mortified. The Public Service Announcement commercials advertising the Child Abuse Hotline have just recently been introduced around the country and my mother is certain that everyone at the gas station has lined up at the pay phones to call the cops on her for so obviously beating her child half to death and back.
I didn't know it then, but that was my introduction to my sister's bug phobia and a good preview of what we'd be dealing with at Disney World in the days ahead. (Apparently the Mad Tea Cup ride was the perfect ride and even the It's a Small World "roller coaster" was too much for her. Well, she was just three.)
A daddy longlegs ... sheesh.
Posted by Red Monkey at June 6, 2006 4:44 AM |
Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping.
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Stories like this make me wish I were a therapist.
*vision of near-endless flow of greenbacks*
Sorry. To help, of course. With the, you know. Trauma. And stuff.
Beth said:
You do realize that the "grand-daddy long legs" as we call it, is the most poisonious to humans-however their mouths are too small to bite us? I watch way too much Discovery Channel.
June 7, 2006 7:31 PM
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