Baltimore to Pensacola
Friday, October 26, 2007 at 07:07AM Google travel time: 16 hrs 14 minutes
Our time: 41 hours
I was so tired Wednesday morning I nearly lost it. Actually, I may have, but I guess it depends if “losing it” can be defined by a man crying to Lionel Ritchie in the produce section of a Giant grocery store in Fairfax, Virginia.
I also called the store’s assistant manager a “cockwad”.
The morning started later than I’d hoped, but much too soon for the good of my mental wellbeing.
Five years into our marriage Sarah is very comfortable mocking my man plans. They would not be so mockable if I had a track record of following through with them. When I announced we’d be leaving her parents at 6a.m., she could not contain herself.
By 2a.m., after two hours of bouncing Quin to sleep on the new pilates ball (we’d popped her mom’s other one), I too was doubting if we could get off to an early start. Sarah had sneaked away to get some sleep. She needed it. She’s always been good about getting her sleep when she can, but now she’s a nap ninja who sneaks away like a dying animal to get some shuteye.
Google says Baltimore is one hour and six minutes from Washington DC. I think Google should have a button that says “calculate with traffic on the second-most congested stretch of highway in the nation.” Because if you get on the 695 beltway at 7a.m, you’ll end up very vulnerable and sad.
It was raining. I knew I should have given up and gone back to bed when in the dark of the Baltimore streets I slipped and fell into some wet dog food I’d spilled out of the trunk the night before. Paco was more than happy to greet me when I came inside. My wife reminded me that even through the pittering of rain and the closed front door they could hear me swearing.
I’m sure her mom and dad could hear me from the Beltway, too.
It took us three hours to get to DC. I was hungry and tired. My eyes looked like bloody stools. There is no video of that stretch of the journey. Those would be my Nixon tapes, filled with epithets and inflammatory language. In that time I screamed and shouted vulgarities. I took the name of the Lord in vain. I became an agitator, a spiteful tent revivalist of sorts. I was overwhelmed by an intense irrational hate for one specific Saab.
I think I acquired restless leg syndrome.
I yelled at other commuters to take stock in their lives and understand that no matter what they did they could never be truly successful if they did this to themselves everyday.
I’m already to phase two of fatherhood. Step 1: Fertilize egg. Step 2: Become asshole in car.
I'm working my way to Step 3, heart and prostate issues.
I wanted to grab something to take to my Uncle Bruce’s place. Near his neighborhood we found the Giant. I stood in the bakery for longer than necessary. I wanted everything I saw and felt almost something like lust for a pan of cinnamon rolls. I went with some kind of cheese-filled pecan Danish. It looked like a sweet pizza. To accompany that I figured we needed to give some fruit a chance. I grabbed a cantaloupe and a honeydew. Then I went to the self-checkout. I shouldn’t have. My weak mental state was no match for the automated machine. It was like that powerful chess computer versus Woody from Cheers. A comic friend of mine says she hates those do-it-yourself cashiers because if she wanted the shitty job she would have applied for it herself. They usually require more assistance than a full-service checkout.
I put the honeydew on the scanner and it told me to wait. And then it told me to find the picture of the proper produce. Already I was stressed. I did manage to find a picture that said “melons”. Nothing specific, not any certain melon, but just “melons.” I pressed it and a soothing female said “Cantaloupe.” So I put the cantaloupe on the scanner and pressed “melons”. She asked me to wait for assistance. A little guy dressed way too nice for a grocery store came to my rescue. His nametag said his name was Drake and he looked like he was playing dress-up with his father’s suit and tie. He was too important to say anything to me. He simply moved the melons, pushed some buttons and then…pushed some of more buttons…mine. I swear I’m normally stronger than what I’ll represent here, but this little management mite was not worth the fortitude. He grabbed the pale green fruit and held it up and announced, “This is a honeydew,” and then he pointed at the rough skin of the other melon and dropped his voice to make his point. “That is a cantaloupe.”
He turned a walked away. My resolve was too weak to let him go. I raised my voice a bit and told him I knew what a cantaloupe was. And that little bastard walked back to me and grabbed the honeydew and repeated each melon’s proper nomenclature.
I heard a popping sound and things got fuzzy. I think I sprained my patience. Suddenly this glorified janitor was the evil Saab, he sounded like Quin’s screaming and smelled of Paco’s farts. He was the slow traffic and the truck that almost hit us in Indiana. He was everything bad all in one convenient location. I shouted, “I know what a honeydew is, cockwad!”
Everybody in the vicinity turned to look at the crazy man. The assistant manager backed away and cheerfully reminded me that he was just trying to help. Yes, help himself to a dish full of Napoleonic complex.
I mumbled something angry and managed to check myself out. And then I saw some beef jerky and I suddenly wanted it so badly that I wanted to get some and go back through the line. And then I thought I’d better get something healthier than the salty roadkill of a Slim Jim.
It was a few minutes later, hungry and feeling a little crazy, that I found myself misting up to “Say you, Say me.” I don’t know what it was or why I was bawling but Lionel just got the best of me.
I left without incident. But with the pastry and the fruit. One a cantaloupe and the other a honeydew. cockwad.
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