Part 2 The TRAGIC TALE: The Epic Saga continues

PART 2. "BORN TO BE WILD"

This story involves dirt and bodies - too many bodies to count and an ice cold Popsicle (in particular, a red Popsicle).

It includes a hi-speed Highway Patrol chase and an old couple in a Ford truck (who might have been angels or maybe aliens).

(Part 3 will be titled: "The Fast and The Furious")

It includes a nickel...and the worst kind of tragedy a kid of, say, 9 or 10 could face at my impressionable age.  It involves a bunch of wild brothers and sisters and several passengers illegally riding in a trailer. The story includes a cover up, a reporter, the owner of a small diner, a cheese burger, a dented Dodge station wagon, the first day of fifth grade and Marilyn.

Before we go back to where we left off last time...  it's important to remember that this painful story has to be told as a flashback that was set in motion on the very first day of Fifth Grade.

When the normal kids were raising their hands as instructed by Sister Godzilla, to share whatever-it-is normal kids do over summer vacation, I slid down in my seat and tried the bestest I could (bestest is a 5th grader's word) to remain as anonymous as possible.  I sat like one of those possums pretending to be dead.

Think about this with me for a minute. What were my options? Was I supposed to wave my hand frantically, half-shouting, in excitement like the other obnoxious normal 10-year-olds. 
                     "Sister...
                           Sister...
                                Sister...
                                       Sister...
                                           Sister...
                                                 Sister...oh..oh..oh...oh...pick me! Pick me!"
There was nothing I could have said that either, wouldn't have gotten me into a heap of trouble, or stirred up this experience from a couple weeks ago that I was hiding from the world, that was bound to embarrass me... or to stir up feelings I was working hard to bury deep inside.

What was I supposed to say?  "What I did over summer vacation by markie d. Me, my little sister and our our two neighbors were electrocuted in our swimming pool by my ingenious older brothers. Oh yeah, that experiment went so well that they also managed to shocked the purgatory out of Sister Lucilla. By the way, did you know that nuns have hair under those habit-thingies they wear on their heads." Hahahehe
Ah, NO!

I didn't think that would go over so well.(See Blog post April/26/2013 "Electrocuting a NUN")

Should I have talked about the bamboo bow and arrows my brothers made that had sewing needles taped to the tips... and how, when they ganged up on me, I looked like a porcupine with quills standing up on end. NO! I needed to protect these innocent regular kids from that - it would be like bringing in the movie PSYCHO for a "show and tell" presentation.

...and, I certainly wasn't about to tell them about... SALTON SEA! NO "Keep your mouth shut markie d" ...and I did!

I didn't wiggle, I didn't squirm... I kept my pulse down so low, a mortician would have thought I was dead.

Shame is the great motivator to keep one's mouth shout. I didn't want a single person in the world to know what happened two weeks ago on our family vacation. I hoped to keep this whole nightmare a secret... a secret between me and, like, the17 people who were crammed into our station wagon and also those passengers who were illegally riding in the trailer on our little excursion from "H E double toothpicks."

I did it! I survived, the horrible "first-day-of-school-ritual." I made it out alive... yeah me! UNTIL...

Until Marilyn caught me in the hallway on the way to lunch. She cornered me (well, maybe she didn't really corner me, but it felt that way because she was like 4 feet taller than I was. Me, Ghering the Great and Ronnie Hart were the three shortest kids in our class). I was small and she was tall and there I was eyeball to belly button... metaphorically speaking, and Marilyn said, "I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU this summer..." Gulp! My stomached churned. She said, "When we were sitting down for dinner and my father read all about what happened to you at Salton Sea in the newspaper."
                                                                         
At that very second, several things crossed my mind:
                  1)  In the newspaper.. My story? Yikes! Is that who that guy was in the diner?
                                   2) Do normal families sit down and eat meals together?
                                                3) And... Do regular people have conversations at the dinner table?

Marilyn brought up the tragic tale of woe, so now I am obliged to jump back a few weeks and tell you the whole "hot mess."

I left off last time with us spilling on to the hot, rough, pulverized volcanic-pumice (which was now nothing more that abrasive grit - that those imaginative developers claimed to be sand).

Though scientist had become proficient at developing Nuclear Bombs by this time in history they had only managed to come up with three ways of protecting ones skin from the harmful radiation of the sun's rays.
                        1) Stay indoors.
                        2) Coppertone - (nothing that had numbers like we have today. There was no such thing as number 8 or number 15, or 30, or 50 Those new-fangled options of  pampering ourselves just didn't exist back then).

 

or 3) Zinc Oxide

1) I'm not sure if the Lennons were ever allowed to go out into the sun. I had never really seen them outside playing. Maybe that's why their skin was so perfect...and to testify to that the Lennon Sisters are still performing to this day in Branson (because they weren't allowed outside and still look so good).

2) Coppertone cost money (who knows, maybe a buck-a-tube back then. We weren't going to spend that kind of money - No way. But our next door neighbor, the Blasers (who were part of the Lennon clan), actually went on regular vacations like normal people do and to tap it off, they ACTUALLY bought sunscreen.

3) As for the third option, we wouldn't be caught dead with that goofy Zinc Oxide! Instead, we shook our fist at the sun and grew up looking like a tribe of blonde haired-leathery beef jerky.  

We just weren't going to do it...besides IT WAS my mom who invented 50 sunscreen. Yep! When we rolled out of that old Dodge wagon and came wobbling out of that trailer with sea legs - the second we hit that stinky, sulfer,dead-fish smelling shoreline, momma had us dip in that salty water and roll in the dirt.

We looked like a homeless tribe of Australian blonde-haired Aborigines. When the intensity of that desert sun hit us, we looked like corn dogs that had been dropped in a gutter and forgotten about for a long time. 

While we were baking  like stir fry in our three inches of batter, I pictured the Blasers lounging along the shore of the crystal clear Kings River in front of The Kings River Resort Hotel coated in Coppertone and noses carefully painted with Zinc Oxide...

I pictured them having to rough it with room-service and air-conditioning if things got too unbearably hot.


On these long hot days we had to figure out what to do next. Would we hunt each other like we do at home or band together and capture some rattlesnakes that we could terrorized out neighborhood with. Fishing was always an option. We could walk out to the end of a small rock jetty and throw in our lines or just scoop up the dead fish off the shore line (I had to keep my vomit superpowers in check).




It was going to be a long hot (did I say hot)... a long hot weekend.  But I was covered in my stir fry batter of volcanic mud and I was happy. I couldn't wait to see how this latest adventure would unfold and I was a little sad, really - for the Blasers who would have to miss out on all the fun we were going to have.



Some dude, like 3000 years ago wrote in an ancient manuscript that "we are fearfully and wonderfully made" I like to call it - "crazy amazing." It's pretty crazy, how we're wired as emotional beings with intellect and creativity with all our chemistry, hormones and physiology wrapped up together in a bundle package.  And all of that - all of who we are...responds to life in so many different ways.  Life (or family vacations) don't always go the way we plan. Things just seemed to have a way of getting messed up, but we don't have to roll around in it like volcanic paste we smear all over our bodies. We have some degree of choice in our responses... "If life give us lemons, we can choose to make lemonade or choose to let it get under our skin and make us bitter."

Until next time... make lemonade! Don't sulk in self-pity. Think of things that you can be thankful for right now! Wherever you are, while reading this (whether at Starbucks or at home), just mention three things and share a smile with the next person you come in contact with. Besides lifting someone else's day- odds are it just may lift your day as well.