centre of the universe - the dreaming: Fat Chick and the Snaggletoothed Geek

03/05/2003: "Fat Chick and the Snaggletoothed Geek" I think I'll just write short message this morning, until later. I'm not quite bright enough at the moment to be witty or otherwise.

LATER
but not much.
I spent a good chunk of the evening last night chatting with my friend Thomas. We went to University together...ah...among other things. Long story, short moral. Anyway, I had kind of lost contact with Thomas over the past *few* years, and got the Alumni Association to look him up. I figured out of all of my friends, he was the most likely to have provided the University with updated information as to his whereabouts. It worked, and now we're in contact on a fairly regular basis. Like most of my exes (Thomas is not one), he lives in Calgary. Although rumour has it some of them have started coming back.

That's rather strange, when you think about it. I have dated a few people in my day, and several of them moved away to Calgary. Hmmm. Mental note: Calgary Unsafe. Visit Edmonton.

Today is another blustery, bloody cold day. The people on the radio were saying that after one factors in the wind chill (a particularly Canadian phenomenon, which I'll talk about later), it's closer to 50 below zero again today. Yes, yes, I know. I said I love the cold. I do. But the Captain isn't able to play outside for very long (maybe five minutes, tops), and there's nothing worse than being cooped up indoors all winter. Especially without a fireplace.

Here's the deal. In Canada, you have cold, and then you have cold and windy. When it's cold and windy, the cold air hits you faster, so it's actually *colder* than the cold, because the cold is moving about. That's the 'wind chill factor'. Doesn't make sense? Think of it this way: on a really hot day, if there's a breeze, it usually doesn't feel as hot as it really is. Why? There's air movement. So if there's air movement, there's this weird nebulous number like "3600" that gets factored in to the actual *mercury reading* (do they still use mercury for temperature readings?) to give the 'feels like' temperature. Okay, it's not specific to Canada; I figure some sailors probably came up with it, but it applies just as well on the Prairies.

When we were kids, we used to listen to the radio in the morning, and they'd say things like: "Temperature today is minus 30, with a wind chill factor of 3800." Roughly translated, that means exposed flesh will freeze in under two minutes. I'm not making this up. Recently, they've done away with that 'wind chill factor' and have just done the math for us so that we don't have to bugger around with our wind chill slide rules to determine that if it's 30 below and the wind is 28 km/hour, it's actually about 50 below out there.

Which reminds me of the time we had the Griswald Family Christmas Vacation. We left from Climax (the town, near the US border) on Christmas morning. I was 17. It was probably closer to 55 below, although just to make sure I'm erring on the side of hyperbole, let's just round that out to 60. It was freaking cold. Ice crystals hung suspended in the air...the sun wasn't up yet because we left at FIVE IN THE MORNING (my father likes to get an early start, and my mother insisted on going down south) to catch our plane in Saskatoon at noon. Climax is roughly a six hour drive from Saskatoon in good weather. This was not good weather.

The roads weren't icy, but cars don't like to move at those low temperatures. In between Climax and Shaunavon, my mother hollers something to my father, I wake up, dad swears and jumps on the brakes. I hear a thump. A conspicuous thump.
"What the hell was that?" I ask.
"Hit a deer," my father grunts. He sighs, opens the door, and gets out to see what kind of damage we've done to his mother's new Oldsmobile. Oh. I didn't mention that. We were driving my grandmother's new Oldsmobile. I don't remember why...something about nobody wanting to trust mum's VW Rabbit to Christmas trips, nobody wanting to smoosh together in my father's tiny 1/4 ton, and my grandmother insisting. Anyway, we hit a deer with her new car.

I get out of the car, ignoring my mother screaming at me to stay in. The deer is on the side of the road. A nice buck. Big antlers. Yes, it had antlers; it was winter. Its back legs were both broken, shooting out at crazy angles from its hindquarters. The poor thing was freaking out, trying to stand up, trying to get its legs under it, and not understanding why it wouldn't work.

"Get back in the car," my dad says, opening the trunk. I ignore him.
He's looking for something to kill the deer with. He has a ball-pin hammer in there. And a tiny collapsible shovel. There *must* have been a tire iron somewhere, but I didn't see it. I did, however, see my father beating the deer to death with a ball pin hammer. I don't know whom I felt sorrier for; the deer or my father, together on the side of the road, each trying to put the other out of its misery.

I finally thought 'now would be a good time to get back in the car' - I wasn't dealing well with the sight of the animal trying to stand up and run away from this crazy man with a hammer.

Eventually the deer was dead...or at least unconscious...it occurs to me we probably could have accomplished more if we'd have fed the thing the liquor my mother had in her purse, but I didn't think of it at the time. We got back on the road, my grandmother's new car smashed up and covered in deer shit and blood. Just about the time we got to Shaunavon, I start getting this funny feeling. You know that feeling...kind of a burpley fluttery feeling in your stomach. I begin chanting to myself: "I'm not gonna throw up, i'm not gonna throw up, i'm not gonna throw up".

I open the door, lean out, and barf. In -60, that stuff freezes like a sonofabitch to the side of your grandmother's new Oldsmobile. My dad jumps on the brakes, whips his head around and hollers, "What the HELL are you doing?"
"Barfing. What the hell do you think I'm doing?"
"I thought you were trying to jump out of the car." He says to me. He says he thought I was trying to jump out of the car. That's what he says.
"..."
My mother chimes in, "I think she's drunk."
"WHAT!?" My father and I cry at the same time.
"Are you drunk?" he asks me. I glare at him. "Well, have you been drinking?"
"There's only one person in this car who's been drinking for three days straight, and I'm willing to bet there's still booze in her purse. Three guesses as to who that person is. I'll give you a hint. It isn't me, and it isn't you. No, I haven't been drinking."

Every half hour after that, as calmly and surreptitiously as possible, I open the door and barf. My grandmother now has racing stripes along the rear passenger side of her car. And some weird art-noveau design on the grille and windscreen. We eventually make it to Outlook, where my grandmother lives. Mum races inside to go to the loo, I stagger inside to have a lie down, and Dad sighs, pulls himself together, and drives off to wash the car.

Meanwhile, I'm downstairs, talking on the phone, lying on the couch, trying to convince myself that I'm not going to be sick anymore. Then I throw the phone into the cradle, sprint to the bathroom, and hurl. We now have two hours to get to the airport in Saskatoon, check our luggage, and board our flight for Sunny Orlando. Outlook is about an hour and a half from Saskatoon.

My father drives. My father drives the old Oldsmobile. I'm in the backseat with my grandmother. Like clockwork, my father pulls over every half hour so I can barf. My grandmother is Rife with Worry. She keeps asking me, "was it something you ate, dear?" to which my mother always replies, "it was something she DRANK", prompting my father to turn around and ask "have you been drinking?" prompting me to thump my head against the window. The window was cool, and the thumping noise drowned out all those voices.

It gets worse, trust me. But I'm going to leave it at at that instalment right now. If you want to hear the rest of the story, post a comment. I could tell you all about the plane ride, the hotel stay (a miniseries in and of itself), Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and the bullet holes at Denny's, the fat Italian man in a g-string. Even trying to get back into the country. Or being offered all kinds of things on New Year's Eve... yes, these things did happen. But nobody believes me.

"The Winter's Turning" "GAK"

3 Comments

Ooblik , on Wednesday, 5th March:

What a horrible story. Poor deer.

cenobyte , on Wednesday, 12th March:

So, does the negative Karma vote mean that the story indicates bad Karma (killing a deer) or that you just didn't like the story, Terry?

Terry , on Thursday, 13th March:

Testing, m'dear!

Surely you can't expect to add a new feature to a webpage and not expect me to play with it! :) Oh, I might get to using it in the manner in which it was intended, but first I want to see what this thing can do... *insert mad scientist laugh here*

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