VOLUME 2 - 2007-2008
SCRAPS OF A ROAD TRIP
The way I remember it, Mom had me out of bed at 5 a.m. and Pam picked us up at 6. Pam’s six-year-old daughter, Kobi, was asleep in the backseat, so I didn’t get a chance to meet her before we were well out of Pennsylvania. Pam’s other daughter, Nicki, had already flown down to Florida with her grandparents to prepare for her ice skating competition; she and her partner had a good chance of winning the National Novice Pairs Championship. Pam, a friend of my mom’s from college, had been planning to drive herself and Kobi to Florida to save money, so she invited Mom and me to go too. Overall it seemed like a pretty good deal: We were getting a cheap trip to Florida, where we’d stay in the condo Pam’s parents had rented, and Pam got driving relief and adult company on the road. Mom and I were happy to be tagging along; we were just sorry that my dad had to stay home for work and miss all the fun.
The trip had a bonus for me: an extra week off from school in January, after everyone else was back in class after the holidays. School was OK: I got 100s on all my spelling tests, and I was proud of the A I’d gotten for my social studies report on Grover Cleveland. The problem was the other kids. Bookish, shy, and awkward, I had a few girlfriends at school, but most of the kids in my 7th grade class either ignored me or made fun of me. Middle school is hard on every kid, but it got so I even hated my name because some idiot was always warbling it across the playground in a bad imitation of Sting or telling me I didn’t have to put on the red light. The worst was when Carl, the popular eighth-grade boy I had a crush on, starting doing it too. An only child, I always got along better with Mom and Dad than with other kids; most of my friends were the children of my parents’ friends, and I only saw them a couple times a month. Getting away from school for a week was a huge, magnificent event, even if I did have to sit through a two-day car trip with a crazy six year old.
Kobi was a scrawny little thing, but as small as she was there was barely room in the backseat for me with her and all of her toys, and she was always talking or singing—or whining. To keep her busy on the drive, Pam had given her the project of making a scrapbook of the trip. Armed with green, hole-punched printer paper and a glue stick, Kobi hunted for “scraps” for her scrapbook everywhere we went. I decided I would make a scrapbook too, only instead of featuring random pictures liberally showered with glitter, mine would show the actual things we did each day.
Our first big stop on the road was South of the Border in South Carolina, a Mexican-themed rest stop on I-95. Kobi and I counted the South of the Border billboards, which we started seeing over a hundred miles before we got there. Each sign prominently displayed Pedro, the sombrero-wearing cartoon spokesman. When we finally arrived, I had to have my picture taken with at least three of the dozens of huge Pedro statues in their brightly colored sombreros. Kobi and I begged to stay at South of the Border’s hotel, but, because we’d gotten on the road so early, we still had hours of daylight left for driving, so we had to be content with lots of brochures to cut for scraps.
We stopped that night in Walterboro, South Carolina, and checked into a hotel. Kobi and I were already in our nightgowns when I found a bug between the sheets and Mom found one on the telephone. Outside our room, people on their way out of the hotel bar staggered, drunk and loud, around the parking lot, picking fights. Mom and Pam bundled us back into the car, nightgowns and all. We only had to go another ten minutes or so up the highway before we found a better hotel. The next morning we had breakfast at a Waffle House, which was exciting enough that I pasted the napkin in my scrapbook, and then got back on the road, making it to Orlando around lunchtime.
Eleven-year-old Nicki turned out to be short and slim like her little sister. Although she looked skinny, Nicki had to be athletic to succeed at figure skating, and you could tell if you looked closely that even though her legs were slender, they were strong and muscular, too. I’d never thought of figure skating as a sport, but Nicki was definitely an athlete. For years, she’d gotten up hours before dawn to get her training time in before school. She was dedicated to skating, but she was also bubbly, fun, and sweet. I liked her right away.
Nicki had been staying with Grandmom and Grandpop, Pam’s parents, who had rented a two-bedroom condo for all of us for the week. Nicki and I shared a double bed, and Pam and my mom had a single bed each. Kobi claimed the room’s walk-in closet as her own little bedroom, spreading out her sleeping bag on the floor. This proved an excellent arrangement when Kobi shut the door and played inside for hours, but was less ideal when someone needed clothes she’d hung up and Kobi insisted on hearing the right password before she’d let anyone into “her” room.
Grandpop decided he wanted to go to a theme park called Gatorland, and to convince us he hid Gatorland brochures everywhere: in the kitchen cabinets, in our luggage, between the couch cushions, in our pants pockets. Grandmom was sweet, but it was Grandpop that Mom and I got attached to over the next week. My own Poppy, my mom’s dad, had passed away the previous summer, and we both missed him. It was nice to have a grandpop around, even if he wasn’t ours to keep. Grandpop’s excitement about Gatorland caught on until we kids became his partners in crime, lobbying for a day with the amazing alligators. The moms finally relented and Gatorland was scheduled for Monday.
Grandpop made sure everyone was out of bed early, and we arrived at the park just as they opened the gates.
The entrance to Gatorland is a huge, bright blue alligator head, and you have to walk between the pointy teeth (which were taller than Kobi) to enter the mouth and the park. Alligators were everywhere inside: more than 2,000 gators lounged in the manmade lagoons or shaded themselves under trees on the banks. We got to see the largest gator they had, a 14-foot-long monster. But Gatorland didn’t just specialize in alligators—they also had crocodiles, flamingoes, monkeys, and a snake pit to boot.
Grandpop wouldn’t be satisfied until we’d done everything Gatorland had to offer, so we saw the Gator Jumparoo show (where the gators leap 15 feet into the air to take food from their trainers’ hands), rode the little train around the park, went on a swamp walk, even wandered along the alligator breeding areas (where the gators weren’t doing anything interesting that I could tell). And our day couldn’t possibly be complete without catching a Gator Wrestlin’ Show. I remember thinking the gator wrestler was pretty cute in his glasses and khakis. After the show, the gator wrestler straightened his safari hat over his sandy hair, and, even though I was nervous, I waited in line to meet him, and Mom took our picture in front of the gator wrestling pit. Then Grandpop walked us over to the smokehouse for lunch and insisted on buying gator nuggets for everyone. They tasted like chicken, but that didn’t matter to Grandpop. He got a bowl of gator chowder; he enjoyed it so much that Mom got a few cans of it too, to take home for my dad.
That night I worked on my scrapbook. Gatorland got a full page of coverage, front and back. I cut out pictures from brochures, mostly of gators but also of other animals we’d seen, and stuck them in alongside clips of the word “gator.” I glued in one impressive picture of an alligator with mouth wide open, then pasted the word “exciting” between his jaws. On the back of the page went my Gatorland park map, so I’d remember the day forever.
I sat in the bleachers with Mom and Nicki’s family to watch her skate in the championship competition the next day. She looked so small and graceful in her skating costume, and her 13-year-old partner Paul looked tall and handsome and very strong as he lifted Nicki effortlessly and tossed her in the air. They skated their program without any mistakes, executing the jumps and turns flawlessly, and we all cheered and tossed roses out onto the ice, then rushed backstage to be with Nicki when the scores were announced. We all thought Nicki and Paul had skated better than any of the other kids, and the judges agreed, awarding them first place. As Nicki and Paul celebrated with their families, I hung back, not wanting to intrude, but Nicki spotted me and gave me a big hug. Paul was making the rounds of the group as well, and when I told him congratulations he gave me a furtive hug too. A hug! From a boy! Clearly it was the best day ever.
That night we all got dressed up to go to Medieval Times, a dinner theatre with knights and jousting. Our seats were in the blue section, so we had to root for the blue knight in the tournament. This was not a problem, as the blue knight was very handsome and singled out Nicki from his entire cheering section for a kiss on the hand. Unfortunately, he died early in the battle, but we soon realized that the mysterious black knight in a thick helmet was our good blue knight in disguise! Nicki and Kobi and I all went home that night feeling like princesses.
As I pasted clippings from the Medieval Times brochure into my scrapbook that night, I thought about the trip so far. I’d never been on vacation with such a big group before. As an only child, I mostly traveled just with my parents. Even at home, I didn’t have friends among the neighborhood kids and usually spent my time playing by myself or reading a book, but, here in Florida, I felt like I had sisters and a whole extended family with me. It felt strange to realize that I’d only known Nicki’s family for less than a week, but already they all seemed to like having me around. I fell asleep hoping that we’d see each other again soon, even after the trip was over.
At Epcot Center a few days later. Pam, Nicki, Kobi, and Grandmom had gone to ride the Matterhorn, while Mom and I elected to sit with Grandpop in the biergarten in the German pavilion. Grandpop brought pretzels, beers, and a lemonade for me over to our table in the sunshine, then he lit his pipe. Puffing thoughtfully, he said to my mom, “Diane, this is the life: I’m sitting in a biergarten, eating a pretzel, having a beer, and listening to an oompah band with a beautiful woman.” My mom always described Grandpop as a charming old gentleman after that.
That night, because Nicki had competed in the novice championships, we were able to get tickets to see the adult pairs ice dance competition. Nicki was thrilled to see all her heroes out on the ice, but soon she got another surprise: Nancy Kerrigan and her mother sat down in the seats in front of us! Even though she was in the middle of eating a hot dog, Nancy managed to be gracious and gave Nicki an autograph. I didn’t ask for one because I’d never heard of her, which was pretty stupid considering she was headed for the Olympics a month later.
The next time Nicki and I got a quiet minute alone, I asked her what she thought about her partner, Paul. Figure skaters looked so romantic out on the ice, and as partners they spent a lot of time together. Nicki just laughed. “Paul? He’s a big dork. You like him way more than I do,” she said, nudging me.
I blushed. “Well… it’s not like he’s a blue knight or anything!” I replied. It was Nicki’s turn to blush.
We spent the last full day of the trip at Disney World, where Kobi was both delighted and terrified by the Haunted Mansion. Afterwards no one could convince her that she didn’t really have a ghost attached to her. Grandpop bought a Goofy hat, the kind where Goofy’s snout forms the brim of the cap and his long earflaps fall down to cover your ears. The sight of Grandpop’s dignified face and neatly trimmed beard under such a silly hat made us laugh. We had dinner in a restaurant near the Hall of Presidents, where I taught Nicki and Kobi how to dangle spoons off their noses. Nicki was so good at it we dared her to walk around the whole restaurant that way, which she did while our moms hid their faces and pretended they didn’t know us. Nicki made it almost all the way back to our table before the spoon fell off.
After a long day in the park, we decided to take the Disney World ferry, instead of the shuttle bus, from the park back to the parking lot. I was glad I’d bought a new Orlando sweatshirt, since it was chilly on the ferry at night. I stood at the railing, looking out over the misty water, and the wind blew my hair into tangles. It was the last night of our trip—we’d start the long drive back up north tomorrow morning. I thought about how much fun we’d had, how I’d made a new friend in Nicki. I had thought I’d known something about everything, but Nicki was a part of this figure skating world I knew nothing about. She was really good at skating.
What was I good at? Reading books? As I looked out over the water, I resolved that I would become an interesting person when I grew up. I would know something about everything, and I would travel all over the world. People would want to be around me, and men would think I was fascinating, and no one would sing my name at me, ever. The ferry docked, we found the car and drove back to the condo, and then the only resolution I was making was that I would never, ever, ever get another perm as long as I lived no matter what my mother said, as I tried to work my hairbrush through the mass of hopelessly windblown snarls.
