Consequences?? What are those?
Mood: hangin' in there
Music: fur elise - Beethoven
This past weekend was the annual family camping trip, or 'Cousin Camping', or if you're going to be really precise about it, the "Loafing at the Farm with a bunch of randy Germans and a trailer full of Alcohol" trip. (It was originally scheduled for The Pinery but good old uncle Kevin saw the weather forecast and sissied it up a notch.)
On Friday we went to a nearby beach which is really pretty and boasts a spectacular view of Bruce Nuclear, along with an abundance of 'Swim at Your Own Risk' signs, some with biohazard symbols on them. But the sunset was pretty and I wanted in, and so in I went! The water was surprisingly nice and I swallowed a bit of it doing handstands, which made me mildly feverish afterwards. Sweet little cousin Isaac spiritedly recollected my jovial romp in the waves last year, enthusiastically acting out the part where I ripped off my bathingsuit top and spun it around over my head screaming "WOOOOO WOOOOOOO". Hehe... (I was 'covered up', of course.) Oh, zest for life, how I miss you.
Lastnight the Sleemans and the Vexes were flowing particularity well around the campfire, as the grown-ups were reminiscing about their younger days... due to the context of most stories involving the "younger days", I find it somewhat surprising they're able to reminisce any of it at all if you know what I mean. A notable tale involving my own dear Father and Uncle David (yes, the Uncle David) came up, and oh is it a classic! So I thought I'd share it with you all...
This story takes place back in '79 when the water was clean and the sex was dirty, and our hero David Neumann was but a boy of fifteen who had followed his twenty-two year old brother Dieter to a land far, far away... called Alberta. Now, Dieter had an apartment in the city but Dave, not wanting to be a mooch, found his own job working for a farmer in a thriving rural hic community nearby. It was early May, our most favorite time of the year, and the farmer had nearly completed the guest house, but for a couple of nights Dave would have to sleep in a trailer. The famer had advised my Uncle David, then younger than I am now, to keep the stove on overnight in order to stay warm. However, on the third night the stove went out... that morning the farmer came to check in on him.
"It's awfully cold in here!" remarked the farmer, who drew a book of matches out of his pocket-
KABOOM!**
At the strike of a match, the farmer was blown to the ground twenty feet away as remnants of the trailer were now scattered across the first ten acres of the farm. The only thing left in its place was the floor of the trailer - upon which sat Dave, now hairless and severely burned to his face, still in his sleeping bag.
(**Accounts of the cause of explosion differ - the version belonging to the farmer is said to involve a teenager with an addiction to tobacco... due to loyalty reasons Dave's version of events was used in this story.)
Not long after the explosion (that was surely all over those rural Canadian airwaves) big brother Dieter came along to the hospital to check Dave out (aswell as some of those nifty painkillers he had been given ;-) ). They picked up a few beers and went for a drive through the mountains, David beyond recognition and Dieter somehow oblivious to that fact. They drove and drove and the roads got smaller and steeper and the supply of medication and other pleasurable substances was dwindling. The brothers found themselves on a crappy little sideroad on a mountain which Dieter's blue impala was struggling to ascend.
"This car really sucks!" Dieter exclaimed. "I should ditch it for the insurance money!"
Dave glanced nervously out his window at the three-hundred foot 'ditches' beside the car.
They continued their quest up the mountain to ditch the impala, David winding up in the trunk somewhere along the way as part of his brother's ingenious bid for more traction. ...Eventually Dieter reached the summit to discover an absence of Dave who had fallen out of the trunk at some point along the mountain - however by this time Dieter was much intoxicated and preoccupied with the impala dilemma to really care.
'I want to drive the car off the edge... but I don't want to die.' He was thinking to himself when his body decided it was time for him to take a nap. ...Dieter awoke a couple of hours later, slightly more sober and slightly more fond of his car, and the David situation seeming slightly more urgent. He proceeded to drive down the mountain, not long afterwards picking up his misfortunate little brother who had been wandering for the past two hours wondering what the hell was going on. They continued driving, and found themselves at the foot of Mt. Robson, contemplating what could be their next great adventure.
"It looks pretty easy from here!" They expertly determined, and then turned to consult their beer supply. Alas, they determined it was not enough to sustain them long enough to conquer Mt. Robson, so they returned to the impala and drove into town. When they passed the arena which was home to the Oilers their curiosity was peaked by a very large lineup.
"What's going on there?" Asked Dave.
"I don't know. Let's find out!" Replied Dieter.
...The next thing they knew, they were at the front of the mosh pit at a Triumph concert! The show started with a display of pyrotechnics which caused poor little traumatized Dave to nearly shit his pants! What an adventure!!
For the next few months the two brothers lived together at the apartment in Edmonton, while Dieter worked and David stayed at home hiding his grotesque mug from the cold, judging society. Dieter grew tiresome of his little brother however, and since he was oblivious to the severity of Daves appearance he came to view him as a little freeloader who was "cramping his style". David had also been drawing complaints from the landlord, who had informed Dieter that other tenants had become afraid due to the 'biohazard' sign David had hung in the window.
"I don't have any nuclear waste in here... that's just my brother."
Ahhh... brotherly love.
Anywhoo, that's it folks. Welcome to my family. After a few more beers and the singing of songs such as "Gilligan's Island" (which is perfectly acceptable in my clan - but you know you've gone too far once you start singing "Love Boat") David determined that the reason he survived the trailer accident was so that we could tour the country in leaderhosens and sing like the Von Traps (who we apparently are related to). He seemed quite enthusiastic about his leaderhosens ("The HILLS are alive with the sound of MUSIC!!!"), but it was around this time that the relatives began to retire one by one... Perhaps they had not yet had enough to drink to allow such masterful ideas to percolate. My loving father had forgotten my sleeping bag this weekend. If you had asked me earlier if I would be marching into an old, unfamiliar farmhouse by myself in the dead of night to ascend a flight of creaking stairs to sleep in a pitch black, musty-smelling bedroom which consisted of a mattress on the floor, an old rocking chair, no lights, and a dark, indistinguishable piece of furniture in the corner I would have probably have said no... But there's a first time for everything!
Ta Da!