So I took my wife and kid to San Diego to vacation for a few days last week. Of course, by saying "vacation" I mean "chasing around a toddler all week long, doing everything he wants to do, dealing with him crying about wanting to be somewhere else and listening to him whine all the way home about going back to the same places he bawled his eyes out at." Oh, I'm sure the family vacations get easier over time, right?
In all reality, it was the Grizwold-esque car ride down that would not only set the tone for a difficult vacation, but usurp any drama my demon seed laid upon me. To start things off, we decided to set a goal of hitting the road for our seven hour car ride by 7 am. That was my idea, forgetting that I had a fantasy football draft the night before. I don't care who you are, four hours of sleep and a belly full of heroic amounts of various beers, Rockstars, and spicy pulled pork sandwiches is not the best way to start a long car ride with the youngin'. I knew my stomach was a ticking time bomb that unfortunately wasn't ready to blow before we left the house.
Before this story gets much, much worse, let me give you a travel tip if you ever plan to take a three year old on a vacation. Don't. Just don't. I'm not saying don't take them to zoos or amusement parks or anything like that. I'm just saying the things that make those places special are lost on them at that age. The San Diego Zoo is freaking awesome, but it's too much zoo to drag a little kid around that only wants to pet diseased goats and watch elephants ****. I could've took them to the Oakland Zoo for that. For all the money we spent getting into Legoland, all they wanted to do play in the water park. I can go a water park at home. I could've gone all out around my area with the kid for four days and saved two thousand dollars, two hellacious car rides, and you people from reading this sad saga.
Anyway, knowing that the only facilities I will be able to use on I-5 are gas station fly farms and rest stops, I can only hope that my innards can hold on for dear life until I get to the hotel and blow a hole in the bottom of the toilet. The first few hours end up alright, that is, after we got the kid a DVD that won't skip. I swear, with his black hair, brown eyes and a fifty\fifty chance to inherit my fat a$$, my baby son has future field worker written on his all the way. However, after realizing how much he is into Go Diego Go, I started to wonder if I could ever trust him again on a vacation this close to the border.
We even hit one rest stop with no incident... well, not exactly. I noticed this one guy just staring out into the road with a stoic look on his face. I did think it was odd that this guy was in standing there in his sweatpants, digging into his a$$ crack with the same vigor that one looking to pay rent with loose change in their couch would. He just stood there, damn near fisting himself for the entire time. As we were leaving, Mrs. Totem said he may have been one of those male prostitutes that hang out in truck stops or rest areas, like the ones she saw on Dateline or Montel or whatever the frick she watches. She said that he was walking towards a group of trucks that just pulled up as we were driving off. Relaying that tidbit sure did remind me of the tightrope walk the contents of my stomach were doing as a little bile came up at the thought of coming face to face with someone who put down "waiting at rest stops in 100 degree heat for truckers to drive up and bang me in the ***" under occupation on his taxes. Reminded me of Bhodi.
By the time we stop for lunch I am white knuckling it. We hit another rest area to eat the packaged lunch my wife made while I was getting drunk and calling everyone around me a ****** for taking my sleepers a round before me the night before. Despite my fragile condition, I still tried to eat the turkey sandwich on chibatta bread that would please anyone that said "now make me a muthafukin' sammich, beeotch". Once that first bite hit my palet, it was on. That turtle was pokin' his head out and he was hell bent on winning that race.
So I run into the rest stop bathroom. Please feel free to come up with your own description of the unique foul musk that seems to only come from rest stop bathrooms. I'm going with an unwashed hippie date raping a week old placenta while lighting his ****** dreadlocks on fire, after squeezing a cat's **** glands over his chest too. How's that?
This particular pit had three stalls. The first one... umm, no. We will leave it at that. The second one was swarming with flies, and for good reason. We are all adults here, but how the **** does a grown man blow a$$ everywhere in a stall and miss only the toilet? Pardon the pun, but I **** you not. The entire stall was covered in brown and the bowl look as white as the day it arrived from the factory. It looked like abstract artistic painting of a Nobby gangbang.
The last stall was the handicapped one. If it wasn't for the rattlesnake warnings I observed outside, digging a hole in the ground was a better option. In keeping with my outdoor survival theme, I had no intention of my a$$ hitting that putrid seat, so I squatted/hovered like a woman before I let it rip. Now I don't want to talk in biblical terms, but I liken what happened to Noah once the ark was built. I annihilated that flippin' toilet. In my haste I didn't lift up the seat and I left a healthy bit of the night-before as a souvenir. I didn't worry too much, since most self respecting handicapped folks would rather sit in their stool than use a rest stop stall.
Of course, like Smsharoo when someone offers to buy him coffee, heeeeeeeeeeere come the flies. I try to pull double duty and shoo off as many as possible while I am trying to wipe still halfway in the squated/hovered position. Before I was done I saw particularly ambitious fly work his way underneath, almost giving me a hundred eye wink as he went for the motherload. Picture that.
You know that feeling when a fly lands on you. It may be a minor inconvenience but it can be a little bit of a creepy feeling. What's the worst? When they land on the top of your leg hairs? Does that send a slight tingle up your spine? Maybe around your nose? So how about a fly landing directly on your exposed chocolate starfish? How does that feel? Let me tell you...
Pretty much whatever was left in my system that was not turned into poo decided to show itself to the front door. I'm guessing getting molested by a fly causes you to vomit your spleen. I hurl forward, bathing my shorts and flip flops in cheap beer and pork resin. I turn around looking for the toilet to finish my extraction in, only to realize at the last minute that I was about to absorb a backsplash of barf, flies, old rest stop toilet water and my own ****, so I pull away from the bowl and continue to spew all over the ground, neglecting to notice that my feet are on a grade towards the drain.
You know that point when you are finished vomiting and that sense of relief comes over you, signaling that the end of your porcelain journey? Yeah, well that doesn't happen when you are swarmed by fifty flies at a rest stop and they don't think you've have finished wiping your a$$. I think I frightened a drifter or someone that tried to enter my private hell because I heard my wife call out and ask if I was OK. All I could say was "New outfit. Toothbrush. No questions". She obliged and I told her to get the kid in the car and get ready to go ASAP. I did the best I could to clean up while dealing with the fear of stripping down in a rest stop bathroom. I got my face and hands somewhat clean but I had to deal with the puke that was caked to my feet and calves at this point. I go out and wash my feet and legs at a faucet outside the restroom, leaving my old clothes in a puddle of puke and **** in the crippled gimp stall on I-5. As I get close enough to being finished, I see my wife pull the car up for me to get in. I use the last bit of strength to do this defeated man-jog barefoot through the patch of grass, not realizing that is was freshly drenched and mostly mud.
Completely unaware of the trauma I just went through, my wife takes one look at me, mud on my bare feet, dejected, humiliated, and violated by a horny homosexual fly, my face looking like it aged ten years in ten minutes and said...
..."It could be worse. At least you're not shadowrelm."
Totem