I had sworn to my knuckle-headed, twelve- year- old cousin, Giles Frederick Porcher Tompkins (otherwise known as Shay), earlier in the summer that I was going to kidnap him for a few weeks to drill some sense into his head. At the time, the hopeless momma's boy had looked to his mother, cousin Elizabeth, for protection and quickly saw that she was more than ready for him to go off on an adventure (not that I claim that she thought that I had any sense of my own). The boy thought he had gotten off the hook, what with me going off to Peru and him going to Hertford, NC.
After returning from Peru I have been on a rather leisurely schedule of driving and drinking, by which I mean that, being homeless, I travel to a relative's house, stay a few days and wear out my welcome, and then move on to the next poor cousin (or brother). Nonetheless, I felt it was high time that I got on another trek so I worked out with Elizabeth to kidnap Shay. It took a bit of finagling, but we got it worked out.
Fortunately, the kid is nothing if not gullible, so he completely fell for it when I showed up in NC to pick him up instead of his mother, whom I told him was too sick to make the five-hour drive. Once I'd filled up the car with gas and we'd gotten on I95 North, I asked him if he wanted the good news or the bad news. I told him, "The good news is that the cooler (I brought one to lessen expenses) is full. The bad news is that I'm a man of my word. (He looked at me strangely.) I'm kidnapping you. We're going to Canada."
Suffice it to say that the boy wasn't pleased. Visions of me marching him through the Canadian wilderness apparently didn't appeal to him. He perked up a bit when I told him that our first stop would be to King's Dominion, the Paramount Theme Park.
I couldn't have asked for a better first experience for this little week-long trip. We got to King's Dominion just ahead of a storm. Though they have a no-refund or rain make-up policy, we were gambling that either the storm would miss us or that it would pass through. The roller-coasters (he's never been on one before! What the hell is wrong with Elizabeth?) were shut down due to lightning so we did the bumper cars and wandered the park while waiting for the storm to pass. It didn't.
Ah yes. That will be a memory for the boy, to be that close to his first roller-coaster ride and not be able to get on. Hahahahaha!!!!! He'll remember that, I promise. At least, he'll remember that moreso than if he'd just gotten to ride the nine roller-coasters. Yes, as many of you well know, I'm a firm believer that one should strive to have a bad time, to be miserable, because those are the memories that truly last, and, since life is but a series of fleeting memories, you should try to ensure that the ones you make stick. I can't wait for a gut-wrenching divorce or two!
After that first failed experience we drove on towards DC. I stopped in Manassas and called my various friends who live in the DC area but the only one who answered his cell was in California. No worries, though; I brought a tent anyway.
We went to eat at a restaurant and while we waited on a table to open I figured I'd see just how much work I'd need to do with the boy. First I asked him what the capital of Virginia was and he didn't know. When he was iffy on Columbia being the capital of SC and flat-out didn't know the capital of NC, where he'd lived for three years, I started grilling him. I was shocked to discover that he didn't know the states. His various claims were that Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Canada, and Mexico were states. When I tried to guide him through it and asked him what states were on the west coast, he told me that there were 20 states on the Pacific and that Nebraska was one of them. When he didn't know where California was, I asked him, straight-up, if he was $@#!ing with me. He wasn't, so I made him get the atlas out of the car.
He was saved from my impromptu geography and US history lesson (I discovered from him that Samuel Adams and Andrew Jefferson were presidents) by our meal. I, as is my habit from the Army, inhaled my food. He took an hour to eat two-thirds of his plate. When I told him to speed it up, he casually told me, "I like to enjoy my meal," and then proceeded to chew his bite another two hundred times.
We finally made it to a campground in Maryland and I was punished for all the odoriferous torment I'd bestowed on others during my smelly-foot life. I'd already made him put his socks outside of the car when we'd changed in the parking lot of King's Dominion (thankfully, as we were running back to the car through the rain, we forgot and left those in the parking lot), but when he took his shoes off for the night, I nearly wretched. I've decided to put him on an intensive sock-changing, sole scouring, foot powdering regimen. I will not be subjected to that again.
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