After countless hours of driving, Allen and his sister Cheryn realized that the trip to Memphis, Tennessee would be a long one. After all, they lived in Oregon. Allen was only 32 years old, and he knew that a cross-country drive was a bad idea. Especially at 1 in the morning. But they had nothing else to do. There were no board games in the glove compartment.
"I can't believe you told your friends about us," Cheryn said sternly. "I'm still disgusted by that." Cheryn couldn't forget the concept, but she had a right to be upset. Not only was she Allen's sister, but she was also his wife.
Allen turned up the volume on the car radio so it was higher than Cheryn's voice. He retrieved his "Everybody's Greatest Hits" cassette tape from the glove compartment and popped it into the tape player. This was Allen's favorite driving music. He listened to this tape during every cross-country drive he's ever taken (since he bought the tape). But the headlights didn't work as Allen drove down the dark, deserted highway. He had to be careful so as not to hit any road signs.
Cheryn asked, "How can you listen to this garbage?"
This kind of criticism was unacceptable. Allen wanted to strangle her, but he withheld his anger and just ignored the comment like a good brother/husband would. As a matter of fact, the last time he strangled her was three months ago in the toothpick aisle of a convenience store.
All of a sudden, the car hit a bump in the road! The vehicle shook wildly, jerked left and right, and one of the front tires popped! Allen stopped the car and got out. At this instant, Cheryn ejected the tape from the tape player, cracked open the passenger door, and tossed the tape out. Allen was checking behind the car to see what he had hit.
"Oh! There's a fork in the road," he said. He held up a plastic dinner fork. He threw the fork off to the side, and got back into the car. The car began to move again. "What were you saying, Cheryn?"
Cheryn smiled, trying not to laugh. "You should really keep your eyes on the road." In the distance, a few dogs barked. Allen tried to honk his horn, but that didn't help the situation.
Allen noticed a deafening silence in the car. "Did you turn the volume down?" he asked. Cheryn didn't say a word. She wasn't going to tell Allen that she threw his favorite tape out of the car. Instead, she revealed several clues as to what she did as she took another sip of her diet cola.
She said, "Well, you had it before you drove over that fork."
Allen thought effortlessly for a few seconds. "Yeah, I did. Hmm." Allen looked at his watch. It was about 1:34 in the morning. He continued vigorously turning the volume knob on his tape player up and down, but there was still no sound. This was a very complicated situation. Allen pushed the play button on the tape player, but to no help.
"Alright, c'mon, Cheryn! The tape couldn't have just jumped out by itself. Where is my tape?" There was a pause. Allen scratched his head to try to wake up his brain, but as usual, it didn't work. Cheryn didn't say a word. Allen said, "Okay, give me another clue."
"Well, the tape is not in the car," she said.
Allen began to reassess the situation. Clue #1: They had the tape when he drove over the dinner fork. Clue #2: The tape is now missing.
"Wing wang wong!"
Allen considered asking for another clue about the missing "Greatest Hits" tape, but he didn't want to sound stupid. Allen turned left at the next corner. Then he drove straight again, because that's the way the road went. The burned down hotel was to the right. It was a very popular hotel, but many customers were not pleased with the food there. It was a grease fire in the kitchen that caused the hotel to burn, baby, burn.
Cheryn became aware of how disturbed Allen was. He hasn't forgotten that $50 bet he lost against his best friend. But at the end, it was all resolved, because his best friend had a change of heart and told Allen that he didn't owe him a dime. He was just fooling around. I mean, what's up with that? I wouldn't have even bothered.
"My cousin Sheasie lives somewhere over here, I think," Cheryn said.
Allen replied, "No, she doesn't. Sheasie lives in Memphis. That's why we're going there. Besides, although I'm married to you, you're still my sister. So that makes her not your cousin, but our cousin." Then Allen turned to you and remarked, "Can you believe it? She has a cousin named Sheasie. How do you pronounce that?"
This is when Allen remembered that the headlights in his car didn't work. That didn't help him much at 1:40 in the morning when it was completely dark outside. Cheryn took another noisy sip of her diet cola. But that's when she noticed the can was empty. She took a bigger sip, hoping to get the very last drop, but it wouldn't come out.
Just then, a car had passed them up. The bumper sticker covering the rear license plate of the car read, "If I passed you, then you're going the wrong way." Allen couldn't see any logic in that statement, but he didn't know what logic was in the first place. Besides, it's too bad the Allen couldn't read that bumper sticker, considering he was driving in the dark with no headlights. What a total idiot.
Cheryn reminded Allen, "You should really get the headlights fixed."
Allen quipped, "Yeah, I was going to fix them right now, but not while I'm driving."
"No big deal, it can wait," Cheryn added. She wasn't the idiot that Allen thought she was.
"Whoever's reading this story is totally sucked in!" Allen smirked. "I feel sorry for them. I can't believe they're still reading this garbage!"
Cheryn chuckled a bit. "Yeah! Garbage, just like your tape."
Allen nodded in agreement. But Allen had a very interesting idea. A brilliant idea. He decided that, from now on, his name would be George.
"I wonder what the weather's supposed to be like today," Cheryn wondered.
"You mean today as in Tuesday? It is after midnight," George said.
Cheryn responded, "Yeah, today. Wasn't it supposed to be 74 degrees?"
"Well, it won't be that nice once we get to Tennessee!" George commented. With that, George and Cheryn laughed at the joke like a couple of morons.
Cheryn said, "You know what I heard? We're not supposed to have any weather Friday. No weather at all. People are going to wake up in the morning, go outside with a blank look on their face and say, 'Huh'? We're all gonna die!"
"Really?" George couldn't believe it! "We better hurry up and get to Tennessee." George mashed on the gas pedal, bringing the car up to 83 miles per hour. The car began to move faster. "At this rate, we'll get there sooner!"
After Cheryn opened up a fourth can of cola, a light bulb appeared over George's head.
"I just remembered something," he said.
"What?"
"I have to be at work in 7 hours."
George and Cheryn had driven 15 hours away from home, and George just remembered that he had to be at work today. What a dork!
Cheryn began to panic. "You mean, you forgot to call in for vacation time this week? Didn't you remember we were going to Tennessee today?"
George was totally embarrassed! "Oh, man, I'm...I'm afraid not. Should we turn around and go back home? I mean, we won't get back until about 4 p.m., but that's okay! I can tell my boss that I wasn't at work this morning."
Cheryn shrieked, "No, I want to see our cousin!"
George suggested, "Well, should I give my boss a call?"
"Now? It's almost 2:00 in the morning!" Cheryn said.
George reached his arm around to the back seat. "It's okay! Hey, where's my cell phone?"
"You don't own one."
"Oh, darn," George said. "He's going to fire me."
Cheryn quipped, "Well, one thing's for sure. It doesn't matter whether the shower curtain hangs on the inside or outside of the bathtub, as long as the water's warm!"
"And there aren't that many people in the world, really," George added.
Then the two morons contemplated how their statement made no sense whatsoever. There was a pause. George asked Cheryn, "Do you think they're still reading this story?"
"Probably," Cheryn said.
Suddenly, their friend Daric - who was sitting in the back seat of the car all along - woke up from his nap. His hair was a mess and he was drooling.
George waved to Daric. "Hey, buddy! How was your nap?"
"It was good! Not long enough," Daric answered.
"Not long enough? You slept for 15 hours!" Cheryn said. "C'mon, rise and shine!"
Daric peered out the back window at the road disappearing quickly into the darkness. The tail lights were working, by the way, so he could see that the car was indeed moving.
"Hey, Allen, why are you speeding?" Daric asked.
George said, "Oh, I'm George now. And I'm speeding because I'm anxious to get to Tennessee!"
Daric came to his senses. "Tennessee? I thought you said we were going to Kansas City."
"Hmm..." George mumbled.
As Cheryn finished her seventh can of diet cola, George pulled out a road map to find out exactly where he went wrong. He studied it carefully as it covered his entire view of the road.
As he was reading the map, he explained, "Well, it says here that we -"
Cheryn interrupted, "George, watch out!"
Just then, as George pulled the road map down from view, he lost control of his 90-mile per hour trash bucket and it veered uncontrollably off the side of the road! The car sped through the barricade, tumbling down the wall of the seemingly bottomless cliff, into the darkness.
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08-17-2003, 01:55 AM
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