Since I'm possibly taking part in an impromptu road trip at the end of the week, it's ridiculously hard for me to NOT reminisce on all road trips I've taken with the same group of people. Before I get into the actual story, I need to give a little background info so it's easier for you to follow along. My grandparents, Gregory Dean and Carol, or "GD" and "Kurl", aka Mammaw, aka "Mama Carol", aka "Mayor Watson" had three daughters.
Oh, you're wondering about the "mayor" in "Mayor Watson"? Yes, she's been the mayor of Victoria (my itty-bitty hometown) for 14 years. Is it an honorable or prestigious role? No. Do I tell people she's the mayor as my claim to fame? Yes. It's been a conversation starter for me for 14 years. "Oh, your Dad's the President of the United States? Well my GRANDMA is the mayor of a town! HOLLA." Does this embarrass her? Probably. Am I concerned about said embarrassment? No. Is she badass? Totally.
Moving on. Two of the daughters are twins. One of the twins is my mom. All 3 daughters had daughters first, then sons. There have been many, many, many road trips (or Griswold-type adventures) when just Kurl, her daughters, and their daughters go off somewhere together for whatever reasons. This particular road trip, and probably the most memorable, took place in 2006 (I think) and included Kurl, my mom, my aunt Lynn, Ryann (who you should know by now if you've read other posts by me--if not, she's Lynn's daughter and my first cousin/BFF) and me. We were heading to Myrtle Beach for a long weekend in November. When we road trip, it's usually me driving, with my navigator (Ryann) sittin' shotgun, yelling at me where to go, turn, stop, etc. We never go to Myrtle Beach the same way twice, so all we knew about how to get there was to make it to the "Battleship" in Wilmington. (This was pre-Garmin, by the way). **Also, I must explain that as offspring of the Watsons, it's our natural behavioral adaptation to speak as loudly as possible in a group of people. AND! for the women in particularly, we have to "out-talk" each other which may involve increasing volume and dramatics while speaking all at one time. Now imagine all of that taking place in one vehicle with 5 Watson females.**
After being on the road for a few hours, a few missed turns, and a whole lotta hollerin' later, we knew we had to be close to the Battleship. If you go to MB this way, you know what the top of the ship looks like. It has a bunch of wires and poles and crap that I have no idea what for. As we all said, "we've got to be close!" multiple times, over and over, and still no sign of the thing, Mammaw starts randomly shouting out, "THERE IT IS!" whenever she saw the top of a cell phone tower hovering above the trees. Because this resulted in repeated eruptions of laughter inside the car, we were basically done before we even saw the damn ship. (For Christmas that year, I took a picture of a random cell phone tower and had it framed and captioned "Battleship at Wilmington" for Mammaw. (She was not amused.)
Once we finally reached the beach, checked in, yada yada yada, we were all standing on our 17th floor balcony gazing down at the beach. Driving for hours in a vehicle with the 5 of us is exhausting and stressful; thus we appreciated the calmness the breeze, sunset, and waves the beach provided. The next few seconds kinda went like this...
(The five of us standing side by side at the railing on the balcony, 17 floors up, mind you)
Lynn: What is that, in the weeds, near that blue trashcan?
Me: Yeah, I see it. What the heck...?
(All 5 at the same time)
Ryann: I think it's a...
Me: OH MY GOD
Lynn: Pretty sure it's a...
Kurl: What?! What is it! I don't see anything!
Lynette: IS THAT A MAN LAYING IN THE WEEDS?!
Me: YES! Is it moving?
Lynn: I don't think it's moving!!!
Ryann: Oh he's dead!
Annnnnd imagine about 5 more minutes of that, the 5 of us squinting down at the weedy part of the sand dunes where what appears to be a man laying down, hunched up, face first, into the sand. We were all watching silently and perfectly still to see if homeboy moved or not. After realizing that we were in fact seeing what we were seeing, we starting moving about, all aflutter, talking at the same time (surprise, surprise), about what we should do. The logical thing, looking back, would have been to call down to the front desk to let them know what we were looking at. But you see, you're dealing with the 5 of us. I mentioned before that Kurl was a badass. I neglected to mention that because we are all directly (and indirectly) the fruit of her loins, we too have the 'badass' gene. Naturally, we did the only thing badasses in this mysterious situation would do. We channeled Benson & Stabler (via Law & Order, SVU) and headed down to investigate. All 5 of us. Mama, Lynn, Ryann, me, and Kurl ('Mayor Watson' if you're nasty.).
Please stay tuned for Road Trip, Episode Two coming soon.
Be First to Post Comment !
Post a Comment