My father is into REAL experiences. He thinks being on a plane that lands without any problems is boring, but a landing where the pilot tells people to “brace themselves” is a real experience.
Somehow he was unable to convince his sons to love real experiences, as our primary goal in life was to watch TV and ruin our father’s real experiences. An example of this is the time we went on a walk through the woods after a summer rain and my father kept remarking on the peace and tranquility of the woods while my brother and I continued to recite lines from the Simpson’s episode we’d just watched. This resuscitation of lines somehow turned into roll playing and my brother and I started to shove wet rocks down the back of my father’s pants.
My father thought our childish behavior would shrivel under his serenity, but forty minutes later the only thing that had changed was the size of our rocks.
Later that year, my father decided it would be best for the family if we picked up and moved across the country to California, a place where people embraced real experiences more-so than the staunchy east coasters we’d always known.
To save money, we decided to cross the country via car and take the most direct route, which, unfortunately, took us through the most helaciously boring parts of the country. On the second day of our trip my father started talking about the Great Salt Lake in Utah. By the fourth day, his tales actually became exciting to us as we had grown tired of flat, corn filled landscapes that required nothing more than an occasional glance every three hours.
I knew my brother and I were excited when we started talking about it without my father talking about the lake’s cool, rejuvenating qualities.
As soon as we saw signs for Utah we were already in our bathing suits and applying sun tan lotion. My brother and I spent the last ten miles of the trip to the lake jockeying for position to be the first one out of the car. As soon as the lake came into site we started banging on the windows begging our dad to drive faster.
What we also saw, however, were camels. A camel in Utah standing by a giant lake is an unexpected site, but it wasn’t what we saw that became the problem. Immediately, a foul odor began to seep into the car. My father rolled up his window saying “uggh…smells like a sulfur mill”.
Even after the window was closed the smell got stronger as we got closer to the camel and the lake. Soon we were breathing with our shirts covering our mouths.
“It smells like someone died,” said my brother in between holding his breath.
My eyes started to water as our car pulled up to the visitor’s parking lot. I refused to get out of the car in fear of the smells that weren’t able to penetrate the car’s steel frame.
“Oh my god!” said my mother, “who knew camels smelled like this?”
“Once we get passed the camels, we’ll be fine,” my father said as he took a deep breath and opened the driver’s side door. As we scurried past the camel, the smell didn’t relinquish, it gained in strength. Exponentially. When we finally got to the lake we noticed hundreds of dead fish lining the shore. None of us had dared to remove our shirts from our mouths but my father refused to be and insisted one of us go in.
My brother and I refused, but for some reason my father didn’t take my refusal seriously and decided to throw me in. He picked my up by my mid-section and with one motion threw me into the stinky abyss. I immediately buoyed to the top, not because of the high salt concentration, but because of the horrid amount of dead fish I fell into waiting to be washed on shore.
I crawled to the edge hoping that at some point I would loose consciousness. As I was digging my fingers into the shores of the Great Lake I could hear my father trying to convince my brother to go in. Fortunately, my brother knew of an outlet and claimed that he would tell the entire Mormon community that my father had molested him if he tried to throw him in the lake. With this comment, my father hung his head in defeat. I wish I had thought of that.
We walked away from the lake with our shirts still over our mouths, a wet son with “beat up dad” on his list of things to do and an entire family hoping to never talk about Utah again. My father insisted that it was our attitude and not the area’s smell that needed to be adjusted. My brother reminded him that no one would accuse him of needing an attitude adjustment if he were to be angry after falling into a big pile of shit.
We didn’t talk to each other the remainer of the trip and insisted on driving straight through, no matter how long it tool. When we drove across the California border we were stopped to see if we had any produce or Mexicans on us. Before the officer could finish his sentence about the importance of keeping foreign fruits out of the state, he stuck his head into the car and said, “Eeewww? What is that smell?” My parents didn’t know what to say so I lifted my head up from the Game Boy I was playing and yelled, “Sir, that’s Utah!”.
