Because I've been a bad and neglectful blogger recently, I'm giving you a short story. This came from the prompt "Make Me Laugh," which was awesome. Have fun.
Road Trips and Tie-Dye
Georgia
was a huge fan of road trips, to an extent that almost alarmed me, but I could
take them or leave them. Unfortunately, I took them, more often than not. The
pair of us would be out at a movie, or down at the café, or I might even be off
by myself for once in a blue moon, and suddenly the topic would come up. She
lean over to me and say, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tennessee.”
Or, while we were ordering, she’d mention, “There’s this techno music festival
in Florida in three days.” Or she’d text
me, OMG WE HAVE 2 GO C THAT NEW B-WAY
SHOW. And suddenly I’d have taken three days off work, or told my
professors I had a wedding to go to, could they please give me the homework
early, and I’d turn up on her doorstep with a duffle bag in one hand and a
pumpkin latte in the other. Then we’d go off and get so thoroughly lost that we
never even got to the right state before we had to head back.
That
was more or less what had happened this time, too. I’d been minding my own business,
trying to write a paper that explained why the inventor of tie-dye was the most
influential person in my own personal history. I was regretting my choice when
my phone rang. Georgia was on the other end, saying breathlessly, “Did you know
that Burning Man is this week? There’s going to be a robotic dragon that
breathes fire!”
“I
have stuff I actually need to do,” I told her. “Professors do occasionally
assign homework, you know. And it’s only the first week of school, yet.”
“Oh,
come on,” Georgia said. I could practically hear her eyes rolling. “You don’t
have classes on Friday, right? We can just head out on Thursday and spend a
long weekend there. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
I
looked back at my paper. All I’d written so far was ‘Tie-dye is’. Maybe if I was
incinerated by the robotic dragon, then I wouldn’t have to explain how generic hippies
beat Jesus. “Fine,” I said. “Thursday afternoon? About three?”
“Perfect,”
Georgia squealed. I winced and held the phone away from my ear. “This will be
so much fun!” And then I tuned out of the rest of her gushing description of
the upcoming trip, in order to stare at the blinking cursor and wonder if
tie-dye might not be the worst bit of the sixties.
_______________________
That
Thursday, I showed up at three-ish, like I’d said, with both duffle and latte
in hand. Georgia’s place was the top floor of a little two-story house in the
middle of nowhere – or rather, the suburbs, but they were the same thing, as
far as I was concerned. Her car, a ratty little white Honda that she absolutely
adored, sat in the driveway, and she sat on its hood. “Ready?” she asked me.
“No,”
I told her, completely honestly. I had even more stuff to do now, and I
couldn’t think of my argumentative paper anymore without having ‘Octopus’s
Garden’ run through my head. “But I’m here anyway.”
“Cool,”
she told me, and we left.
_______________________
Seven
hours in, we stopped at a sketchy motel for the night – when we split the room
fee, it cost all of ten dollars each. “Should I try the hot tub?” Georgia asked
me, looking at the Jacuzzi in the corner speculatively.
“Do
you have any exotic skin diseases?” I asked, taking in the strange stains and
residue that covered it.
“No,”
she said, puzzled.
“Do
you want some?”
Georgia
blinked. “Point taken.”
_______________________
We
got to Burning Man by noon, much to my shock. Actually reaching the destination
of a road trip was a rarity. We had
gone two states out of the way, though. Georgia’s idea of a scenic route was
one that took five hours longer and looked exactly the same the entire way.
“We
have to go see the dragon,” Georgia told me, firmly, and I was dragged into the
crowd.
I’ll
admit the festival was interesting. People-watching is always fun, and I’d
never had such a… unique group to observe before. Although, I wouldn’t have
minded missing the guy who offered to show me the mysteries of the universe by
way of tantric yoga. He smelled like old cabbage and cats. Fortunately, he left
after I told him that the mysteries of the universe were readily available on
WikiLeaks and in fortune cookies. He didn’t seem very happy with me.
By
three, we’d wandered more or less the entire place, and we’d seen no dragon. “Georgia,
are you sure there’s a dragon here?” I asked her.
“Not
so much now,” she said, carelessly. “But there’s so much other stuff to see,
it’s not a huge loss, is it?”
I
thought about my pile of school work back at my dorm, while a man on stilts
strutted past us, calling out about the healing power of crystals. “It’s been an
experience, at least,” I said.
“Oh,
look!” Georgia said, pulling me over to a poster hung on a tent. “There’s a
dance party tonight, with karaoke! We’re going.”
_______________________
We went. The less said about a dance
party full of hippies, the better. At one point, a mosh pit developed. It was to a
cover of ‘Helter Skelter.’
We slept in the car, that night. It
was either that, or take up the offer of a room from the dude who’d started the
mosh pit – sixty years old, a green mohawk, and about three teeth. Even Georgia
had sensed how sketchy that was.
_______________________
We woke up and started driving about
nine the next morning, and gained consciousness an hour later when we finally
found a Starbucks. Georgia, clutching her espresso like some sort of Holy
Grail, said, “You know, maybe we should hold off on road trips for a while.”
I glanced at her beloved car, which
was newly repainted tie-dye. We hadn’t noticed before, because we hadn’t left
the car. “Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said. “Just for a bit.”
_______________________
When
I got home, I had the answer to my essay. The
inventor of tie-dye, whoever that may be, is the most influential person in my
personal history, because his brainchild saved me from my best friend.
