The Trip Home

As I look at other blogs, I have noticed that some have special days of the week for special posts. So I'm going to start Story Saturdays. I love to tell stories. I have lots of stories, it seems. I've been kindly accused by a co-worker that whenever someone tells a story, I top it with a better story. I've tried to catch myself when I notice myself doing that, but it's hard. Everything I hear reminds me of something I've done, or had done to me, or heard about..... And I just want to tell the story. I even find it hard to comment on people's blogs without telling a whole story that I was reminded of when I read that particular post. Pathetic, I know. I've often had people tell me, "You should write a book." So here's the first story in my book:

THE TRIP HOME

Many years ago, when the Witmer household consisted of the parents and the five youngest daughters, of which I was oldest, (the oldest of the youngest five, that is), we went on a Christmas vacation trip in the Ford station wagon to Mobile, Alabama, where older sister Mary Ellen lived. The entire trip and visit had been a great pleasure, and all that remained of it was the trip home. At some point we girls decided that sitting on seats was entirely too confining, so the back two seats were laid down, and we had a big area to lounge around in.

One of the greatest travel pleasures for us was a set of tall, color-coded Tupperware cups with lids. We had cleverly frozen water in them overnight, so all day long we sipped on the good, cold melting ice in our respective cups. We slept, read, wrote, sang, aggravated each other, laughed, played the alphabet game, anything to pass the time as we drove up the long, boring Interstate 95 toward PA.

Things were going along fine until Dad made a slight error and found himself driving IN the city of Baltimore instead of AROUND it, as planned. Things became tense. Mom got out the map as we found ourselves in rush hour traffic on streets we had never heard of before. Things became very tense, and we girls knew we had better calm down and behave. And then the unthinkable happened. Dad had to slam on the brakes just as one of the girls, who was leaning against the back of his seat, opened the lid of her Tupperware cup. The COLD melted ice went right down Dad’s back. In a VERY loud voice he said, “WHAT was that?” as he continued to navigate the car on the crowded, unfamiliar streets. My sister explained and apologized profusely, Mom tried to dry his back, and the rest of us hid our faces in our pillows as we tried not to SCREAM laughing. All the way through Baltimore our minds would replay that moment, we would look at each other, and the giggles would just try to explode out of our bodies, but we knew that Dad had not found it one bit amusing and he needed to be able to concentrate.

But now these many years later, he laughs along with us whenever we recall that moment. And to this day, the memory of it never fails to elicit all the giggles we kept inside that day!