Ain’t no party like a Vol-ass-whuppin’ party, amirite? Good
Lord, even I didn’t fully anticipate the keg-sized can of whup-ass (pronounced
“hoop-ice” ‘round these here parts) that the boys in crimson were going to open
up on that radioactive-pumpkin-orange horde from north of Fort Payne. I mean, I
don’t remember seeing a more brutal and thorough destruction of Alabama’s most
hated rival, as there just wasn’t anything good those heathens could muster
against the fully-armed and operation power of Alabama’s Death Star.
No, much to the delight of we the Alabama faithful, our
beloved Crimson Tide was relentless, explosive, driven, powerful…all qualities
one looks for in an eventual championship team. Sure, there were some things
the Tide could have done better, but overall, there couldn’t have been a more
satisfying outcome.
This week, the Tide steps right back into the fire against
yet another ranked SEC foe in Texas A&M. There are plenty of reasons to
harbor some concern, though none of them are particularly compelling to your
humble narrator. Yes, Texas A&M beat Alabama at Bryant Denny in Johnny
Football’s coming out party. History is history. Sure, the Aggies are ranked 6th
nationally coming into the game. I know, I can read the rankings. Yes, they
appear to have developed two facets of the game that doomed them in the past,
namely a defense and a running game. Of course, I know who Trevor Knight is and
what he did against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl several years ago. Old news.
Maybe the Aggies are the team that will give Alabama fits
this year, so to that end, we must take up the ritual baton of Hoodoos past and
lay some meaningful sacrifice at the foot of Football Loki’s crimson throne.
For we do nothing without the favor of our pigskin patron, and granted the fact
that the only way the Aggies will defeat Alabama is by some conjunction of
voodoo black magic and divine intervention, I say it’s best we stack our Hoodoo
deck with Loki’s blessing.
So as we’ve done for so many eons before, bring your
shameful, your embarrassing, your horrifying, your tales of woe and guilt, and
place them before the Saint of Football Chaos. For it is his favor we covet,
and it is with his favor that our beloved Crimson Tide will once again ride to
victory.
But enough prelude, for I have come here to drink hand-hewn
bourbons and spin Hoodoo. And I am all out of bourbon (not really, I have a
shit-ton of bourbon, y’all).
Let us journey back once again to the days of your
narrator’s youth, a more convivial era when voodoo economics reigned, when music
was heavily peppered with synth-driven electronica, and our beloved Crimson
Tide was in the ditch in regard to the football program. Though we had not yet
reached the dubious “Mikes” era of Alabama football, we were floating in the
latter stages of the Perkins years while heading squarely into that dark epoch
known as the Curry tenure. (Now I’ll say, Bill didn’t do a terrible job
overall. But he couldn’t beat Auburn, which led me to believe that he was some
long-placed sleeper agent of the latent Alabama-Georgia Tech rivaliry of the
Bryant era. Those bastards had certainly sent him in as a mole to destroy the
Tide form the inside out, and I’ll be damned if they weren’t half successful.)
But their spy-versus-spy activity ultimately brought about
the reign of SEC terror known as the Gene Stallings years, as after tolerating
an outsider in Curry (and a Bobby Dodd-coached Tech dandy, at that), Alabama
looked within towards Stallings for his ties to the program as a trusted
assistant and advisor to Coach Bryant himself.
But alas, these are merely historical footnotes of the
Alabama program with which we are all familiar.
On to our tale…
I was a young feller growing up in Mobile, AL during the
80’s, the son of a negligent father and a hard-working single mother who did
her best for her boys, at least as well as she knew how. Momz did a pretty
great job of being both mom and dad to us, as she’d carry us to ball practice,
pitch at us in the backyard when we needed her to, and participate in our
youthful adventures (even if doing so meant turning a blind eye to some mischievousness
or other).
But let’s face it: as much as she tries, a mother can only
go so far down the fatherhood path before she reaches the end of the road. Boys
need a father, or in the absence of such, a father figure. Fortunately for me
and B-Rad, we had father figures galore, uncles, parental friends, and extended
family who would take us in and do man-type stuff with us so that we didn’t
grow up as nancies who didn’t know how to spin a football, cast a lure, pump a
shotgun or turn a lug-nut.
One such figure was an old Army colonel who spent most of
his adult life living next to my grandmother, a man by the name of Fox. Mr.
Fox, as we called him, was a Southern-styled Dean Martin with a Bing Crosby
baritone and a military flair. He wasn’t about the bullshit, unless of course,
it was the particular kind of bullshit he enjoyed peddling. Whenever I’d be
working in my grandma-ma’s yard, he’d drift out, shirtless of course (it was,
after all, Mobile), with a bourbon neat on-the-rocks in a crystal hi-ball
glass, swaddled in a cocktail napkin. He was a quiet man, but like most
gentlemen of military bearing, he knew when and how to make himself heard.
On this day, I had been mowing my grandma-ma’s big back yard
in Jackson Heights. Fox sauntered out, glass in hand, leaning on the gate of
the chain-link fence.
“Hey son, turn that thing off a moment.” I complied. “I need
somebody to come over here and cut my front yard…you need the work?” he said, a
grin parting his lips.
“Yes’sir, Mr. Fox, if mama will let me.”
“Oh, she’ll let you. Just come knock on the slidin’ glass
door when you’re ready and you can use my high-wheeled self-propelled. That
there is the Cadillac of push-mowers.”
He slinked on over to my grandma-ma’s house, where I’m sure
he told her about the deal he’d brokered with me. When I was done with the
yard, I went on in, and grandma-ma told me what to do.
“He said you can use his mower, but you better be careful
with it. I’m going to come watch you to make sure it’s done correctly.”
Done correctly? What? Did Grandma-ma take me for a fool? I
knew how to cut grass. She didn’t relent, however, and followed me to Mr. Fox’s
yard.
I did as I was told, met his exacting specs on how to cut
the glass, which way he wanted the clippings to go, and the way he wanted me to
rake over it when I was done. It was no picnic, I tell you what. And to do the
whole job beneath the eye of my exacting grandma-ma made the task that much the
tougher.
“Your rows aren’t even, you want your rows to be even, mow
in a straight line,” she’d order me, like a landscape drill instructor. “You
cut that corner too tight and missed a few blades, go back over it.”
Grandma-ma has always been one for details, and though her
tactics seemed harsh and tiresome at the time, I realize now that she was
teaching me something I’d need throughout my life. The lesson is two-fold: if
it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and that one should strive for
perfection knowing full well that such is impossible, thus settling for
excellence. God bless my grandma-ma, who is still teaching me lessons at the
age of 95. I love that woman more than anyone but my mama and my kids.
When I was done, Mr. Fox sankowed out, fresh ice cubes
soaking in a newly-filled glass of brown liquor. Still shirtless, of course.
“Well now, you done? What a fine job you did, really nice
work, son. I’m proud of you.”
I beamed. It wasn’t every day I had a full-bird colonel
telling me he was proud of me.
He then extended to me a wad of green bills. I rolled them
out immediately and counted them…one…two…three. Three dollars? Really? I had
thought I’d at least get five, and in fact, I had been planning my expenditures
the whole time I had been cutting. I figured with that much money, I could get
a GI Joe figure, a couple Faygos and enough penny-candy to induce a mild case
of the dia-beetuss.
“Um, Mr. Fox, is this all?”
He laughed. Which, when dealing with situations involving
one’s payment for work already completed, is never a good thing.
“Well, you didn’t tell me how much you wanted for doing the
work, so I figured you’d just take whatever I gave you. You need to always
negotiate your pay before you start work. If you’d have said you wanted five
dollars, I’d have paid you five dollars. But you didn’t…so I gave you three.”
Well, that was a hell of a lesson to learn, and a hell of a
way to learn it. I got taken by someone older and wiser…but that lesson itself
ain’t my Hoodoo on this here day. It’s one that has stuck with me forever,
though, so I assume of ole Fox knew what he was doing. No, given the gravity of
this game we play this weekend against the ever-pesky Aggies, I have an
addendum to lay on this introductory yarn that is of far more embarrassing
pedigree.
Now before you think Mr. Fox a lout for short-changing a
poor young soul down on his luck, I have to tell you, the following week he
called my mother and asked if it would be alright for him to take me and B-Rad
on a trip to Disney World. You see, his daughter had married grandma-ma’s son
Rushell, my mom’s brother, and together they had a son, B-Ri. B-Ri was Mr.
Fox’s only grandchild, and he figured it’d be more fun if B-Ri had a couple’a
cousins along on the trip as playmates. At least, that was the official story.
In reality, I think that he really wanted to do something wonderful for us, and
knew on my mother’s single income, we’d never make it to the Magic Kingdom
otherwise. He truly did us a solid that I will never forget. Great guy, great
man.
The day arrived that we were supposed to leave for Orlando.
I was a little nervous, having never ventured far from beneath my mother’s
apron strings. I had surely never taken a trip across state lines without a
parent, and it was not without some bit of trepidation that I agreed to
undertake this childhood journey into the heart of cultural Americana darkness.
The Ezekiel’s wheel for this particular trip was Fox’s recently-acquired
merlot-colored Camaro, fresh off the lot. It was a beautiful, if not
particularly roomy, automobile with tan leather interior and t-tops that made
it look even sportier than it was. Always a fan of the Camaro, to my childhood
eyes it may as well have been a Mazerati, and I was tickled to death that I’d
get to ride all the way to Disneyworld in the front seat (since I was the
tallest and needed the most leg room, of course).
That is, until this particular American muscle car was
neutered by the over-information provided by the well-meaning associate at Bay
Chevrolet, from whence Fox had purchased this fine, gas-guzzlin’ mo-sheen.
Always a stickler for the rules, Fox had been told by the saleman at the
dealership that for best results, he should keep her under 50 miles per hour
for the first 1000 miles (who in the hell buys a brand new Camaro, and keeps it
under 50 miles per hour? Surely, this was said in some twisted gest?) And ole
Fox, he wasn’t about to violate the rules of the road for the sake of
expediency…no sir’ee. The Man said keep it under 50, so he was damn sure gonna
keep it under 50. Now bear in mind, the trip from Mobile to Orlando on the
Interstate system takes approximately eight hours, give or take an hour
depending on traffic. That is travelling the speed limit, or course.
But at a median speed of 48 miles an hour, that trip grows
substantially longer. Unbearably so, in fact. There are only so many Stuckey’s
signs and hot springs one can pass by on the journey to the Florida interior
without being lulled into a semi-conscious state, unable to sleep fully because
of the excitement of the pending arrival at DISNEYWORLD YAY!, but too tired to
hold one’s lead-weighted head upright atop an undersized neck.
It was an exhausting exercise, made more exhausting by the
gigglin’ foolishness psillin’ out of B-Rad and B-Ri from the back seat. Those
boys were live wires to begin with, but stuff them in a car and ply them with
snacks and caffeine-laden soft drinks, and the outcome is less than favorable. Spending
hours in an enclosed space with an unmedicated B-Rad will test one’s will to
live, as I felt like I had run the Iron Man Triathalon of foolishness.
B-Rad, a childhood diabetic, was on a very strict
nutritionist-mandated diet as a youngster, which meant he had to consume a great
deal of raw vegetables and fruit. Sounds healthy enough, right? It was healthy
for him, but not for those who would in subsequent hours have their relative
atmospheres tainted by the rancid percolations of his tailpipe. He’s always
been a farter…to this day, he is prone to rack one off in mixed company and
chuckle like an 11-year-old. This car trip, this grueling, 12-hour car trip,
was a nightmare in regard to gaseousness. Had the designer of this treasured
Camaro known of B-Rad’s effluvial talents, certainly he or she would have
equipped this sporty vehicle with drop-down oxygen masks not unlike those found
on your typical 747. It would have been an appreciated essential option on this
make, as being enclosed in a confined space with B-Rad and his B-hole for long
periods of time is the gassy equivalent of water-boarding.
At one point just past DeFuniak Springs, Fox asked us if we
were hungry. Which, of course, must have just been a courtesy of sorts, or a
mere indirect announcement of intentions, as he knew that three growing boys
were pretty damn well always hungry. He identified a Burger King at the next
exit, and dipped us off the road to get a bite. Because of the newness of the
car, and the light color of its interior, we took our meal indoors.
B-Rad and I were well accustomed to the Burger King menu, as
there was one within walking distance of our home, and we frequently rode our
bikes up there for a Whopper and shake (in those days, a kid could still ride
hither and yon without fear of being dragged into a white cargo van or gunned
down in some crossfire or another.) As we were accustomed to the menu, I was also
accustomed to which dietary restrictions B-Rad had to abide by, being my
brother’s keeper and such. As a frequenter of the Burger King, I also knew good
and damn well which of those particular offerings would render the most noxious
fumes in B-Rad’s gullet.
However, I couldn’t dissuade him from one of the primary
defenders, specifically the Italian chicken sandwich. I don’t know what type of
sulphurous preservation agents or methane-based anti-foaming additives could
have rendered the dioxin-laced paper mill scent that would waft from my
brother’s posterior upon eating said sandwich, but suffice it to say, his
consumption of that particular offering should have been banned by the Geneva
Convention.
Time came to order.
“I’ll have one’a ya Eye-talian chicken sammitches and an
order of fries please,” B-Rad piped up.
“Ummm, do you really think that’s a good idea? I mean….”
B-Rad looked at me and nodded, as if he knew what I was
getting at and was fully onboard.
“You’re right, I didn’t think about that. I’ll have two’a ya
Eye-talian chicken sammitches…”
This was going to be a disaster. Two of those sammitches
would supply him with a week’s worth of butt-fumes, to be sure. But Fox, always
open to enjoyment of the finer things in life, was undaunted.
“Ah, we’re on vacation, the boy can have anything he wants,”
said Bob Fox. I had no choice but to relent, even though I knew this loosening
of B-Rad’s reins would surely lead to a WMD-level stinkfest for at least the
remainder of the ride to the Happiest Place on Earth.
As predicted, B-Rad’s gut bubbled and perc’d the whole way,
requiring multiple stops at questionable public bathrooms littered along our
route. When the gasses within him topped off, he’d let them sizzle out like the
guttural hissing of a stank-ass pressure cooker. I must have spent nine of the
12 hours of the trip with the window rolled down slightly, just to vent that
stank off that small cab and out into the already-stink-corrupted Florida
atmosphere.
Finally, through all of the toil and trouble of B-Rad’s
belly bubble, we saw a faint glow in the distance, a neon beacon ever so softly
illuminating the sky just over the horizon.
“That’s it…that’s Disneyworld, right over there,” said Fox,
pointing to the greenish-gold illumination on the edge of the sky. I was
ecstatic. I never thought I’d get a chance to visit Disneyworld, and now,
thanks to Mr. Fox, that out-of-reach dream was about to become a reality.
Given our late-evening arrival, Fox elected to get another
bite and head straight into the hotel where we could rest up for the next three
big days. I walked around wide-eyed, as if I was setting foot on another planet
for the first time. In a way, I was, as what I saw was far from the confines of
my neighborhood and the sleepy town that was Mobile, AL in the years of my
childhood. There were lights everywhere, people smiling, the Monorail…it was a
lot for a young’un to take in, but I was loving it.
I could hardly sleep that night. I was excited for the
coming day, even though I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I would soon find
out.
You see, I have a confession to make before you, my faithful
readers. At the risk of being mocked, I must admit that your narrator has a
phobia of sorts, one that has circumscribed my actions lo these many years,
prevented me from attempting things I may have enjoyed, limited me to pursuits
of a terrestrial nature. You see…I…am terrified of heights.
Now before you judge me, understand, I am as fearless an
individual as you will find. A product of a rough childhood carved from among a
rough assemblage of characters, very little actually scares me. I’ve been in
street fights against behemoths in which the odds were not in my favor. I’ve
been in shootouts in which nothing protected me from searing bullets but the
thin stamped sheet metal of a car door. I once stared down a whole passel of
drunken hooligans single-handedly at a Mardi Gras parade (Hoodoo for another
time).
In a word, I fear no man or beast. But put more than a few
feet of empty space between me and ole terra firma, and I panic. I get the cold
sweats. I go to shakin’ like an epileptic Quaker. I can’t, nay, won’t, board
that cotdanged winged death trap known as an airliner, not after my run-in with
Delta a few years back in which the landing gear failed to deploy after 30
minutes of circling Mobile. I hate open grate walkways at stadiums. The Dolly
Parton Bridge on I-10 over the Mobile Delta gives me cold sweats. Once at lowly
Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, I was forced to sit on the terminal end of one
of the rows, nothing between me and the asphalt 60 feet below but chain-link
fence, and I nearly puked my guts out and got vertigo.
Because of this irrational fear of heights I harbor, there
is a litany of activities that I’ve marked off my list for this lifetime.
Visiting the top of Stone Mountain via cable car? No thank you. Walking the
rope bridge at Rock City? Nuh-uh. Crossing the Mississippi on the Huey Long
Bridge in New Orleans? Nope. Taking in the Mobile Delta from the 30th
floor of the RSA Tower? Hell nah, can’t get near the window. Ferris Wheel at
the Greater Gulf State Fair, even? Negatory.
Which brings me to the current situation…I hate amusement
park rides, specifically because most of them rely on heights and speed to
terrify occupants. I’m okay with the speed, but the heights? Ix-nay on the
eights-hay.
So in light of this, I’m not sure exactly what I thought I
was going to do at Disneyworld? Spend three days on the Dizzy Teacups, maybe?
Do an awful lot of research in the Hall of Presidents? Not the makings of a
memorable vacation by any stretch.
So we set out for our first day at Disney, and what is the
first damn thing my daredevil cousin B-Ri wants to do? You guessed it: Space
Mountain. Now not only does Space Mountain involve speed and heights, but a
goodly bit of darkness as well, completing the terror trifecta. We got in line,
and already, I was trying to think my way out of getting on that god-awful ride
without looking like a total chicken-shit.
“Um, Mr. Fox, I think I have a stomach ache, can I go to the
bathroom?”
“Well, son, I wish you would have gone before we got in
line. But when you gotta go, you gotta go, we’ll get out of line and go with
you, then come back to the line.”
“Dangit,” I thought. That’s not what I was hoping for at
all. I guess I thought maybe he’d just let me go while they were riding Space
Mountain. But no dice. I had to feign a poopster to give myself the maximum
amount of time to come up with another ruse to get me out of getting on that
Ride of Death.
I finally responded to the third summons from Fox to “come
on,” and we got back in line. My brain was racing, I had to think of something.
“Uh, Mr. Fox, I feel dizzy, feel like I’m gonna throw up. I
don’t think I can go on this ride.”
He looked at me for a minute, his buzzed-bald head cocked
sideways, taking in my cues like a dog does to glean every bit of additional info
he could in order to make some sense of my actions.
“Don’t feel good? Well, I’d hate it if you puked on everybody
on the ride, reckon you can just stand here while we go? B-Ri really wants to
ride Space Mountain…”
“Of course, you all go ahead, I’ll wait right here by the
attendant.” I breathed a sigh of relief as they shuffled forward toward the
front of the line. This was the best case scenario. The ruse had worked so
well, I figured I’d be able to fall back on it anytime the other wanted to get
on a ride that terrified me. I was all set.
So when the rest of my party sankowed up to the now-defunct
swings ride, I was all like, “Still feelin’ nauseous, probably ought to sit
this one out.” Someone suggested Splash Mountain? “Nah, y’all go ahead, I’m
feeling dizzy, y’all have fun.”
It worked perfectly, though I knew my constant feigned
discombobulation would at some point result in suspicion amongst members of my
party, particularly the old Army colonel who had graciously let us tag along.
He was all about us kids having “fun,” but I think he was beginning to fear
that this phantom illness of mine was preventing the pursuit of the
aforementioned.
Now, I had plenty of fun…eating snowcones, cotton candy,
shopping for Disney paraphernalia, etc. The Haunted House was great, and
Pirates of the Caribbean was a blast. I even enjoyed the It’s a Small World
ride, particularly since it hemmed close to the ground and traveled at a modest
speed in doing so.
On our third and final day, I was pretty proud of the fact
that I had gratefully negotiated the minefield of heights that Disney World
offered, and had not even had to open myself to the ridicule of my counterparts
by admitting my phobia to anyone. Surely, that would be an unsavory prospect
because, as the eldest of my cousins, I was a role model of masculinity to my
cousins and brother. If the fates were on my side, I’d be able to negotiate
this final day, get a good night’s sleep, and begin the trip back to Mobile the
following morning, my reputation intact.
We rode the monorail into the Magic Kingdom, and though
there were spots in which the monorail bordered on being too high for my
liking, I shrugged it off and tried to enjoy the modest view. After all, one doesn’t
get to Disney every day…had to soak in the sights. We spent the day working our
way across the park, re-riding our favorite rides (my dizziness still in play
when necessary) and revisiting our favorite attractions one last time. As the
day wore to a close, we stopped for a bite to eat, and B-Rad ate a salad and a
bacon cheeseburger, which I knew would be a winning (or rather, losing)
combination in his perpetual game of gut-roulette, and we could only hope that
his gassiness held off until we were safely back in the confines of the hotel
room where we could cloister him in the bathroom for the duration of his
bio-chemical attack on humanity.
I, for my part, had a big ole grilled chicken sammitch and
drank what must have been the better part of a gallon of fresh-squeezed
lemonade. Lemonade is one of those drinks that one never really “buys,” but
rather just rents for a short time. Before we left the restaurant, I availed
myself of the facilities and made water, but as I learned with col’beer in a
later epoch, once that seal is broken the water is going to flow often.
We wandered without aim, letting our eyes be our navigators
with no plan or design to our meandering. Or at least I thought. We found
ourselves in an area of the park known as Fantasyland, which sounded innocuous
enough, to be sure. But as we approached a structure that looked charmingly
like a Swiss chalet, a feeling of foreboding began to rise within me, a
disturbance in the Force, if you will. Something wasn’t right here, and Fox’s
cadence of speech and tone reflected a subtle change.
“I got something over here I want to see…” said Fox. “I’ll
be right back.” Fox disappeared into the chalet for a moment.
Hmmm…I was puzzled. I thought we’d pretty much seen
everything. Something wasn’t right here.
As I waited outside for Fox to return, I became aware of a
rickety, clickety, clanking-creaking sound that sounded as though it was coming
from overhead. I looked up, and to my shock and horror, I saw what appeared to
be a dangling metal box of death, suspended precariously from a spaghetti thin
cable.
It all made sense now. I felt panic rising in me like the
mercury in a candy thermometer dunked in molten chocolate. Fox emerged from the
Alpine-styled building, a few snips of paper tucked within his folded hand.
This was not good. This was beyond not good, this was some fkd up repugnant
shit right here.
“Hey boys, I got us some Skyway tickets,” he said with a
grin. “We’re going to ride one of these Skyway cars back over to Tomorrowland
to get us back closer to the hotel."
There was nothing about the word “Skyway” that sounded fun
or even doable. More like “Deathway.” Had he heard that flimsy galloping
toaster-box of death bumpledy-bumpin’ down that ridiculously thin cable? Holy
shit, I couldn’t believe this was happening. He had already purchased four
tickets. I immediately fell back on my built-in, pre-existing excuse.
“Um, I don’t know if I can or not, I’m dizzy,” I offered.
“Well, dizzy or not, you’re gonna have to ride, OWB. It’s a
one-way trip so you can’t just sit it out.”
“But, I’m…dizzy?”
The power of my previous excuse had wavered. It wasn’t
taking. The magic words were no longer magic. I had to think quickly.
“I may puke, pretty sure I’ll puke.”
“I reckon we’ll have to take that chance.” Fox, being the
military man of brass that he was, wasn’t budging from the plan.
“I…I can…I can just walk back I guess, meet y’all over
there.” I was grasping at straws.
“Oh no you can’t, son. I’ll not face your mama and explain
to her how I let you walk all by yourself all the way over to Tomorrowland. Not
gonna work. You’re just gonna have to man up and ride this cable car. It’s
really short, doesn’t last long at all. Only about five minutes.”
Five minutes? FIVE MINUTES? Clearly, he didn’t grasp the
full extent of my “dizziness,” i.e. height-driven terror! Five minutes dangling
in the thin air by a literal thread was akin to a lifetime. Five minutes was
exactly four minutes and fifty-nine seconds longer than I’d want to be in said
position under even the most dire of circumstances. I’d much rather have taken
my chances explaining the situation to mom, which says something about my fear
of what I was about to have to do.
But Fox wasn’t budging. In his mind, it was a done deal.
“Com’on, now, I already got a ticket. You may get up there
and realize you like it. You can see everything from up there.”
Might like it? Was he kidding me? Yeah, I might like getting
my leg torn off and eaten tare-tare by a great white, but I ain’t tryin’ it to
find out. And the fact that I would be able to “see everything from up there”
was not a very good selling point…in fact, that was the very thing I feared the
most, seeing everything…including the ground, all the space between me and the
ground, the splintery-stabby tops of trees underneath me, the hard ass concrete
that would certainly turn me into a pancake if I fell onto it from 100 feet in
the air. This was most assuredly not a promising development.
“But…but…I gotta pee.” I was really reaching.
“Well, there’s no bathroom right here, you’re just gonna
have to wait until we get off the cars on the other side.” Dammit, foiled again.
I wasn’t lying, I really did need to shake the dew off me lily. That lemonade
was sittin’ heavy on my bladder button, and after walking damn near all over
the park, holding it was creeping up on downright painful. I had been
performing he “invisible dick-pinch” (fellas know what I’m talkin’ about) tactic
that allowed me to hold my water under dire circumstances until I could find a
WC.
I had to literally be dragged into that house of horrors
known as the Swiss Chalet from which this cable car to hell embarked. I was
absolutely terrified. I would have preferred that Sweet Death has swept me up
in its soothing embrace prior to stepping into that swinging gondola of pain,
so that way, I’d never have to try to unsee that which was about to forever
stain my eye-parts.
The goofy, grinning attendant opened the door to a black car
(appropriate, since black is the COLOR OF DEATH) and accepted our tickets. For
those of you who harbor irrational fears, you know the routine. When you suffer
from acrophobia, you become super-sensitive, super-observant when in a
situation involving heights. Time slows down, you see every detail, hear every
sound, searching for the tiniest hazard that could spell certain death.
As I attempted to step into the car, I saw a small gap
between the car and the loading platform. The car was bobbing slightly. I
froze. I couldn’t will myself further. I was mortified.
I felt a nudge from behind as Fox pushed me towards the car
a little. “Com’on boy, gotta get in, we’re holdin’ up the show.”
I closed my eyes and stepped in. The car swung under my
weight. This was not good. I kept reassuring myself, trying to convince myself
at this point it was okay to open my eyes as I sat on the little bench seat.
But I couldn’t. I tucked my chin to my chest and kept my peppers pressed
closed.
The car lurched and I heard a humming sound that vibrated through the
steel cable, telegraphing itself into the steel enclosure of the cable car. The
car lurched forward under some phantom power.
“I don’t feel so good.” I knew that if I opened my eyes,
nothing good would come of it.
“It’s alright, you’ll be okay,” said Fox.
The car was moving, and I could tell from the lightening
shade (despite my closed eyes) that we were out of the chalet loading area and
out in the open air, bobbing like a balloon in the breeze. My brother and
cousin chirped like a couple of budgies.
“OOOO look, the Grand Prix Racetrack looks like a bunch of
Hot Wheels from up here…”
“Yeah, the people look like ants!...”
I could have done with a lot less description, honestly. The
car trolleyed along, every so often sending a shock of pure fear through me
when the pulley wheel holding the car to the wire bounded over one of the cable
connection points. It was seriously the worst thing ever. Ever.
After a moment, Fox spoke up again.
“Open your eyes and take a look around, there’s a really
great view. I think you’ll like it.”
Was he crazy? Of course I wouldn’t like it. Then again, I
was also afraid that everyone would deem me chicken, since it was obvious by
this point that I wasn’t overly tickled with the whole situation. Maybe he was
right, maybe I would like it. I mean, he had never steered me astray before, I
trusted ole Fox like a grandfather.
I don’t know what came over me exactly, but for a brief
moment, I concurred. I decided to take his advice. I opened my eyes, and as
soon as they adjusted to the light, I was confronted with a visual holocaust of
terrifying images. The heights, THE HEIGHTS! Why did they have to be so high?
The people DID look like ants! We may as well have been a mile up in the air. I
immediately thought of the poorly built car, the floss-thin cable, how long we
would fall if the car plummeted, the bumping and swaying of the
under-engineered pseudo-vehicle as it made its way along.
Confronted with this overwhelming tidal wave of sensory
overload, I had no choice but to collapse onto the floor of the car, assuming
the fetal position with tears welling in my eyes. It was awful, everyone in the
car just looked at me, not knowing what action to take, as if I was a freshly
run-over dog writhing on the roadside.
To make matters worse, I could feel the warm groinal embrace
of a urine stream creeping through my underbritches. Remember that burning desire to cut loose
with the Yellow River I mentioned earlier? Well, the pressure had grown so
great that it would have been intolerable had I not been distracted by the fear
of imminent death posed by the Skyway ride. When I opened my eyes, freaked, and
went to the floor, I momentarily lost control of my faculties, and without
constant concentration, that bladder button I had been suppressing for so long
popped open like a shaken Co’cola.
So I was a wet, cowering mess, sprawled out on the floor of
a Disney cable car in a puddle of my own whiz. What’s worse, I was going to
have to walk from Tomorrowland back to the monorail station in said wet
britches, stinkin’ of fresh piss like a cage-kept baby squirrel.
My counterparts just looked down upon me (figuratively and
literally) from their benches above in amazement. There was utter silence save
for the droning hum of the car finishing its course, rumbling over the steel
cable to its destination.
My brother, never much for the whole silence thing, cut one.
A wet, methane-tinged one that quickly filled the semi-sealed cab of the cable
car with a stench so wretched that I found it very difficult to suppress the
urge to vomit. If this particular gaseous emission had been of a color, that
color would have most undoubtedly been olive-drab green.
Now your narrator is no chemist by any means, but based on
the observations of that day, I can only conclude that butt-gas is heavier than
air, as I could almost see that stank descend upon me from my vantage point on
the floor like a putrid curtain of brimstone. And there was no, I mean no,
ventilation in that damn cable care, save for the few gaps through which I
could see daylight around the joints in the floor. That cab was not made to
accommodate pooters the likes of my brother B-Rad, as his hindparts could
legally be registered as weapons of mass destruction by the UN. His bee-hind
was guilty of war crimes, the current instance being but one of them. Had
Saddam Hussein harnessed his flatulent stylings, then certainly the course of
history would have been changed for the worse. The cab festered with that awful
smell. I think I puked but caught it in my mouth and swallowed it for fear of
making an even bigger mess on the floor of Walt Disney’s masochistic airborne
torture chamber. The smells were wretched: the cab was the very definition of a
literal hot box. The situation couldn’t have possibly been worse.
“Com’on boy, get up off the floor, you’re makin’ a mess of
yourself,” admonished Bob Fox. “It’s unbecoming.”
At that point, I didn’t care about becoming. I just wanted to
become myself out of that death trap and back on solid ground, piss-pants or
not. I wanted some clean clothes. And I wanted to go home. As it’s been said, the
journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…in this case, a single,
piss-soaked step.
I had to undertake a walk of shame to take cross the
remaining territory between the Tomorrowland debarkation point of the Skyway
and the monorail, followed by a soggy pee-stank ride on the train back to the
hotel. It was miserable. My related peers dared not laugh or poke fun at the
time, as surely they would have incurred the wrath of the generally just Fox.
But once away from parental earshot, I was sure I’d face a firing squad of jabs
and jokes. Yay.
That was my sole experience with Disney World. As a parent,
I am ashamed that I have not introduced my kids to it, but as you can
understand, my lone previous experience has been a source of trauma for some
time. Thank the Good Lord they did away with those damn Skyway cars, so I now
feel able to return and enjoy what the park has to offer.
But if my first foray was a guide, then to Hell with it.
Magic Kingdom my ass. More like Kingdom of Death and Urine.
There you go, Loki. Have fun with this one, I saved it for
the Aggi because I fear that they will be a tough out. Please, slake your
thirst for embarrassment on my humble offering, and lend us your favor as we
meet these heathens from yon westerly climes.
Roll Tide.