The year was 2010. I dropped my wife, Kathryn, at Philadelphia Internation and proceeded—against my better judgement, and because I was too cheap to spring for the airfare—on a 650-mile journey with three 13-year-old boys (my son and two friends). Our destination? Myrtle Beach, where we would meet Kathryn and my in-laws at a beachfront hotel.
The banter gushing from male, pubescent, hormonal know-it-alls was what you would expect and then some; in that respect, I was trapped in the cabin of a minivan with three overachievers. Nothing smacks of overconfidence quite like males who have experienced their first kiss, learned to masturbate, and have interacted with a substance; the verbiage, as we motored through Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, was nonstop, an avalanche of sexual bloat and bullshit bordering on legendary. It’s astonishing all that can manifest in only thirteen years of living. (If this were a text, it would be an appropriate place to insert an LOL.)
And then we crossed over into North Carolina. It began to rain. The van started to chug. I became so distracted by the steady stream of teenage repartee that I lost track of the gas gauge. We were on Interstate 95, a mile from the next exit (Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.) And then it began to pour.
I am not an evil person. However, I must admit to having experienced more than a mere twinge of satisfaction watching three teenaged boys push a van through a torrential downpour, one mile to the exit and then to a gas station, while I remained high and dry. My passengers may not remember the details of Myrtle Beach and side trip to Charleston, but they will never forget pushing a clunky old van a mile-plus through a rainstorm.
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