Sunday, August 14, 2005

Oklahoma, Revisited.

I just got back from Oklahoma, again. Last week, I spent three days traveling around the state with my sister exploring, eating at run down diners, and braking for obscure historical markers. When we finally got back to Texas I swore that would be my last trip into the social backwoods of Oklahoma for a long time to come.

Having made said resolution, I found myself just a week later, crammed in the backseat of my mom's Honda, headed for where else, but Oklahoma. The car ride was an adventure in itself. When we were heading out, it seemed good and economic for all of us to ride together. My sister had brought along her boyfriend, so in all that was five adults, or more accurately, two couples and myself.

So here I am, the fifth wheel on a weekend long trip, literally crammed into the corner of the backseat, in a car filled with the stench of young love. Let me fast forward. Two and a half hours later, I'm sitting as far on the edge of my seat as possible, head in my hands and eyes closed, trying to drown out the cooing and cuddling of my sister's relational bliss. About an hour into the trip, I had pinpointed the sound of the boyfriend's fingers brushing her sleeve, and it had acted for the last hour and a half as a sort of slow torture of the ear, getting louder and more maddening with every minute.

Combine this scenario with closterphobia and motion sickness, and you might begin to understand the vomit-inducing agony of this car ride. When we finally stopped in Wilberton, Oklahoma, I'm not sure the car had even stopped before I was falling out of the door. After an hour or so of freedom, we decided to drive to a different park, which I thought was relatively close, but ended up being another two hours away.

It was during the second two hours, that I quietly developed several new theories on dating and relationships, which I've started to write about already, and one day hope to publish under the title "A Dismal Look at Love".

Once that was over, the trip made a turn for awesome. We spent the next day and a half floating down rivers, hiking up mountains, and slamming on the brakes for deer families. I'm always amazed at how beautiful Oklahoma can be. Or rather, I'm amazed that it can be so iconic, and yet continually produce people so backwards and grizzly.

Overall, the last half of the trip was excellent. It was nice to get in some good time with the family before the big move. I love laughing with my parents. I never laugh this much away from home. I think people outside the family, find my humor reproachful. But here, a joke gets going and we just keep pushing the envelope until we're laughing too hard to talk through our tears.

This weekend, I was teasing my dad about something, we got going, and the conversation ended in him singing "Amy has an evil heart, nanner nanner nanner", which I feel like should wound me on some deeper level of my child psyche, but everytime I think of it, I laugh myself to tears.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, Amy that's funny. Doesn't your sister read this? My favorite part is the nana na na nana.

Anonymous said...

Hey Lou! Yeah, my whole family reads this now. Lara knows how I feel about looove. She didn't take offense. =) How's life?

Anonymous said...

It's alright. I got pulled over last night for "not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign" Is it possible to not stop completely, if you are stopped, than that means you've stopped. Otherwise, I would have run the stop sign, yes?