Don’t worry, pee sappy
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
There’s no way to deactivate an imaginary booby trap or vanquish a monster made of nothing but shadows, but that doesn’t mean that Mom can let it go. “We can pack extra snacks if you’re worried,” I suggested.
“The reviewers said they kept losing the trail,” Mom told me. “We could get lost.”
“Why worry about getting lost? You get lost all the time without even trying. You’re an expert.”
“Getting lost is so stressful and tiring!” Her fingers curled tighter around the driving wheel. “Don’t you remember all the times we’ve been lost before and how awful it was?”
“Getting lost is the part you do without even noticing,” I said. “How can you be scared of something you don’t notice? It’s finding our way back that’s a pain. Let’s just avoid trying to make our adventure be a certain way and nothing can possibly go wrong.”
“Yeah, but I use my phone to find our way back to the trail whenever we get lost. If we’re out for a long time, it could run out of juice. Then we could get really lost.”
“But you keep an extra juice box for the Witch in the packpack just like you keep extra snacks for us,” I reminded her. “Here, why don’t you plug in the juice box now? That way you know it’ll be full tomorrow so you don’t have to worry.”
“But what if my phone battery gets low and I need to actually use the power pack?” Mom asked triumphantly, like it was the impossible question that would win the argument.
“Then you give her a snack. What’s so hard about that? Snacks solve most problems, you know.”
“If we use the emergency backup power, that means it’s an emergency,” she said, like she couldn’t believe she had to explain something so obvious.
“Doesn’t that just mean we’re late? I thought it was called emergency backup so it would prevent an emergency.”
“Running late is an emergency!”
It’s no use arguing with someone who prefers to rack up points rather than solve problems, so I looked out the window. The Wagon crunched the last few miles to the car kennel. “What do the signs say?” I asked, hoping the distraction would throw Mom off her worry game. “I bet they say YOU’RE IN THE WOODS NOW, SO IT’S TIME TO CHILLAX.”
The leashes in her neck strained to keep her head from blowing off as she read, “They say there’s a fee area ahead and permits are available at the ranger station. There’s no cell service out here to buy one online, and I’m not driving 15 miles back to town for a permit.”
Now why did they have to go and say a thing like that? I thought. They should know that Moms don’t carry old-fashioned money.
“The ranger station would be closed by the time we got there anyway,” Mom went on. “The reviews said that the parking lot is always full. Tomorrow’s Sunday, which means that backpackers already took all the spots on Friday and Saturday. We’ll have to park far away, which will only add to the distance.”
“The sign said all that?”
“No, but isn’t it obvious?”
Mom is a parking expert after years of practice in the City, where parking is a professional sport. She picks up on meter maid traps that lesser parkers would never notice. I looked around for a parking meter or street sweeping sign, but all I could find were trees. “Where will all the people who arrive in the morning because they didn’t sleep at the trailhead leave their cars?” I asked. “We can copy whatever they do.”
“I guess they’ll park behind a tree somewhere.” She looked confused for a second, like everything she knew about the world might be wrong. She caught herself. “But there might be rules against parking in unauthorized areas. Cars can’t break rules with impunity like we can, remember?”
“Do they have meter maids in the wilder-ness like they used to in the City?”
“There are rangers. I think they do parking enforcement.”
“Are the Rangers gonna take the Wagon to the pound if its technique is wrong?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But you forget, we might already be in distress because we got lost.” Mom looked like she was in distress already. “It would suck to be lost all day and come back to find the van is gone with my wallet, all of our water, the chargers, and the rest of our stuff inside.”
I tried to imagine it, but the situation Mom was describing sounded more like the middle of a story than the end. “Then how will we get out?” I asked.
“I guess we could ask someone for a ride.” She shuddered at the thought. “But then what? I’m already having a bad day, and you want me to ask a stranger for help?” She made her lips disappear and shook her head like someone was trying to make her swallow a pill without peanut butter. “And it wouldn’t end there. I’d have to act like I’m okay, when clearly I’m not.”
“Why would you lie about that?” I asked. “Especially to someone who’s already offering to help?”
“Because it’s rude to tell someone they can’t fix your problems when they’re just trying to help. You’ve got to act like whatever they’re doing is helpful even if it isn’t, until you feel like you’re the one doing them a favor. So obviously I’d have to escape as soon as possible by asking them to drop us off once we got back to town, even if the van is somewhere else.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad to live in the mountains. I like it here.”
“You don’t understand!” she wailed. “I’d probably have to make a bunch of phone calls to find out where the van is…”
“Not phone calls! They’re the only Witch torture you can’t withstand.”
“… And obviously I can’t ask a stranger to wait that long. They’re not a taxi service.” Another wave of hopelessness spread over Mom’s face. Her nails went back to picking at the bee sting, which seemed to soothe her. Her whole arm was bigger than its twin by now, and the hole she’d dug in the skin looked ragged and angry. “And they don’t have Uber all the way out here. So we’d be stranded again, and I’d have gone through all of that angst for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” I reminded her. “It’s much better to be stranded in a town than way out in the middle of the wilder-ness. In a town there are plenty of Friends to meet. Maybe one of them will invite us to a cookout.” Mom gave me a look and I remembered that Friends were what got us into this imaginary mess to begin with. “Never mind.”
Satisfied that the story was back under control, Mom picked up where she’d left off. “How can they take away your transportation back to safety like that? It’s unethical!”
“They did?” I looked around the Wagon, which still seemed to be in the woods with both of us inside.
“Okay. I suppose the rangers wouldn’t tow someone’s car since they’d also be the ones who had to pick them up at the trailhead if they were stranded,” she decided. A scab came off and she held up her fingernail to inspect it before wiping it off on her shorts.
My mind was tied in knots from trying to keep up with it all and I couldn’t remember what the problem was if the Wagon wasn’t kidnapped. “So how will they punish you for leaving the Wagon under the wrong tree?” I asked. “Will they have to kill us to get us out of the way before they kidnap the Wagon?”
“They’ll make me pay money,” she said, like it was a very vile thing.
“Oh no! And not having money is what got us into this fix to begin with!” I whimpered, starting to see what she was so worried about.
