Image by Fonzie's cousin via FlickrAre you one of those people who think that it's Superman's cape that allows him to fly? I tend to differ from the norm since I think it's the fancy pantyhose (tights). After all, Batman has a cape but he can't fly. I think it's special pantyhose that all the superheroes get from a special superhero store. The color of which determines which superpowers you get. My reason, all the superheroes always wear fancy pantyhose but not all of them wear capes. It is thoughts like this that have caused me grief on more than one occasion, for example.
When I was about five years old, I was out in the backyard playing with my friends. We were playing with a kids archery set. The kind with a little bow and arrows that have little rubber suction cups on the end. As children are prone to do, we got bored and started shooting the arrows straight up into the air. This led to several arrows landing on the roof of our house. It just happened that someone had left a ladder leaning against the house and I headed for the roof to retrieve the lost arrows. Once I had retrieved the arrows I found myself unable to get down from the roof. It could have been that someone knocked down the ladder or most likely it was my lifelong problem of getting back off the roof and down the ladder.
So I am standing on the roof enjoying the view and trying to figure out how to get down when my "friends" go and tell my mother that I am on the roof. My mom comes out to see what the problem is and just happened to be holding a flyswatter at the time. Not a good sign to a five-year-old. She proceeded to use my full name while ordering me down from the roof. When your mom yells something along the lines of "your full name here" get your butt down from there right now! You have no choice but to comply. Having watched a few too many episodes of Superman and having no prior knowledge that this was a bad idea, I said OK and jumped off the roof. You can imagine my surprise when instead of floating down to the ground in slow motion like they do on TV, I landed with a thud on the concrete patio breaking my leg in the process. Confused and in a considerable amount of pain, I could not understand what had happened. All my TV heroes jumped off stuff all the time and they never got hurt. Since I knew that my TV wouldn't lie to me the only explanation was that maybe I wasn't a superhero after all. Well, I had plenty of time to think this through while laying around with my leg in a cast. I was pretty sure that I was still a superhero, I just hadn't been given my superhero outfit yet. Once I got some of those fancy pantyhose this would never happen again.
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While driving around during our visit to Florida, I was looking out the window taking in the scenery. Which for me meant picking out the restaurants I wanted to visit. I was carefully adding to this mental list when I saw it. The second funniest thing I saw while visiting Florida. A "Rent To Own Tire And Wheel" store. I had never seen a rent to own tire and wheel store before and the only thing I could think was, who would rent automobile tires?
I could understand the need to rent a car, a boat, golf clubs or any number of items you might need to use on a less than permanent basis. I have had reason to rent cars, surfboards, and even a washing machine at some time or another myself. However, I can not picture the circumstances that would cause me to consider renting tires. How would that even work? When you decide you don't need the tires anymore and return them, how do you get your car home? The whole idea was hard to comprehend.
After struggling for days to understand I think I finally figured it out. Now keep in mind this is only a theory and has not yet been proven. I think that this business is a secret government operation to draw out, identify and tag stupid people. You know, kind of like animal researchers do with wildlife. They catch them, tag them for identification and then monitor their movements. Same thing here except instead of wildlife, it's stupid people. What a great plan and it even pays for itself from the tire rentals. It's so simple, just open one these stores and wait for the stupid people to wander in. Rent them some tires and now you have their name and address, and even know what they look like. You might even get a picture. Catalog all this information and then distribute to all the smart people so we know who to avoid. They could even give them all the same brand of a tire so that the rest of us might more easily identify them while driving. At least that is what I hope is going on, otherwise, somebody is wasting a perfectly good opportunity to monitor stupid people in their natural environment.
So, what was the number one funniest thing I saw during my visit to Florida? That would have to be Christmas Eve when my sister Suzanne and her entire family show up wearing matching black pants, red shirts, and Santa Claus hats. It was something right out of one of those sappy Christmas specials on TV. Without a doubt, the funniest thing I saw during the whole trip.
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The drive from Nebraska to Florida actually quite nice, but since I tend to ramble on lets jump to the end.
About the time we were coming to the Florida state line, my Dad called to ask where we were. It turned out that my sister Leigh Ann and her son were only a few miles ahead of us and Dad thought I should call them and get them to stop long enough for us to catch them. He suggested that they could follow me the rest of the way. Fine with me, since I had good reason to take the lead, which I will get to in a moment.
A few cell phone calls and a stop at the wrong location later, we managed to meet up and continue our journey with me leading the way. We still had about 250 miles to go and I was well past ready to be there already, so non-stop was my plan and I was sticking to it. With less than 15 miles to go my wife informed me that she had needed to use a rest room for some time and was I going to stop soon or not! I was so close to our destination that no, I had not planned to stop. As I tried to make my case the cell phone rang. It was my sister wanting to know if we were going to stop soon, she wanted to stop for a bathroom break. I was outnumbered and overruled so asking why nobody said anything sooner was not going help, but I did it anyway. Potty break for everybody!
OK, now as to why I wanted to be in the lead car heading to the folks house. My mom had told us that sleeping quarters were first to come first serve. The unlucky contestant in this game of Home for the Holiday's would be sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the den. Having only a vague description of this "inflatable mattress", I pictured spending several days of trying to sleep on something that might also serve as a swimming pool floatation device. I wanted a real bed and was determined to arrive first. As it turned out, the "inflatable mattress" was much nicer than expected. Even if it may or may not have been purchased from a television infomercial. The big surprise came when my generously accommodating parents offered to give up their room and sleep in the den on the air mattress. Darn, I was so looking forward to making fun of the loser in this race and my folks go and do something nice.
Image by calebism via FlickrI am not a big fan of airlines, with their lack of set prices, bad food, and the need to take me sometimes several places I don't want to go before delivering me to my destination. So whenever possible I travel by car. If time permits and it has been long enough between trips to forget the details of the last mind-numbing day long drive to visit family or friends. Once I start driving, I rarely stop until I reach my destination. For my Christmas trip to Florida, time was available and I planned on staying for more than a couple of days, so driving seemed the way to go. The fact that a round trip drive to Florida was nearly 3500 miles was somehow blocked from my thought process.
When you travel by airplane, you pack carefully and efficiently. Everything you might need will have to be carried in one or two bags. When you travel by car, especially one with a good size trunk, it seems that all reason regarding packing goes out the window. This became very clear as both my wife and I wandered from room to room in our house gathering as many of our household possessions as we could stuff into the car. Anyone who might have been watching our countless trips from house to car with armloads of bags, boxes and assorted shiny objects may have guessed that we were moving, not just loading the car for a vacation. It was my desire to be able to actually see out of the rear window of the car that prevented us from loading any more. After all, it is better to be prepared than find yourself miles from home without that pair of socks I haven't worn in four years or enough dog food to feed Ted the Wonder Fuzzball for three months.
With the car loaded, and after Ted has found the best place to stand for his viewing pleasure. Let the vacation begin, we have a long way to go, miles to drive and we ain't stopping except for food, fuel, and letting Ted add to his list of places where he watered the bushes.
