Looking Back and Laughing...

Think about the moments of discomfort and awkwardness we all experience in life and inevitably during the climax of these moments some wiseguy (or gal) says “Ah, someday we’ll all look back on this and laugh!”

This is a call for you to take a minute and conjure up the image of one of those moments. One of your very own personal experiences. Have you looked back on it and laughed? The other day one such occurance popped into my head and I realized that I rarely purposely go back and think about those awkward moments in which I just desperately wished it was all over.

If I sit and ponder for a second I can come up with at least two moments where that “encouraging” phrase was muttered and I shall tell you about both.

Moment One:

While I was in high school, my church youthgroup took a short roadtrip to some hot springs in Montana. Since my parents were highly involved with the church they were the chaperones for this outing (not as bad as you might think). Our church had this old, crappy van that we used for transportation and everyone was pretty surprised it even ran. It’s maroon paint was chipped and nasty, the upholstery on the seats was torn and ragged, it always sounded like it wasn’t going to start and once it got going the awful rattling made it seem like the entire thing was going to shake apart on the road. I’m surprised we even dared take it on a 4-hour each way roadtrip.

Well, we made it to the hotsprings and my mother and I decided that while everyone was embarking on some touristy thing near the hotel we would take the van and visit some caves that were about a half hour out of town. About 10 miles outside of Butte, Montana we heard a horrific BOOOOOOOM and the van suddenly started billowing out black smoke and leaving a two-foot wide trail of oil and other liquids on the freeway. My mom pulled over and I jumped out of the van and ran down the embankment. I thought that infernal machine was going to catch fire.

I yelled at my mom to get the hell out of the van and she slowly complied. We were both pretty shaken but we decided the best thing to do was start walking back to town. Nobody had mobile phones then so we didn’t really have any other option. It was about 100 degrees and very dry (it was the middle of summer) so we trudged along for a few miles in the sweltering heat. It was miserable. When we were about halfway there a guy in a landscaping truck stopped and offered us a ride to the nearest gas station.

Neither of us really wanted to get in but we did anyway because we were really suffering. It didn’t hurt that he was super hot and not wearing a shirt (welcome to Montana.. haha). Needless to say- the van was toast. We had to have someone send a new vehicle to come fetch us from our retreat.

I don’t recall whether it was me or my mother that said the words but one of us did. And thinking back on it now- it was pretty funny. We completely blew the engine right out of that crappy old van, got some quality time together chatting about whatever and ended up being rescued by quite possibly the best-looking dude in all of Butte.

Moment Two:

Last summer me and my boyfriend were camping at our favorite spot with some friends. We love this particular spot because there are giant rock formations nearby with some caves and we like climbing around on them to take in the view. One of our friends had shimmied up between these two giant boulders and ended up getting higher than we’d been before. I wasn’t going to settle for less so I shimmied up as well and ended up high atop the formation.

My boyfriend is 6′4″ and decided he didn’t want to try and squeeze himself up the same path so he waite below until I got bored and made my way back down. Shimmying down and shimmying UP are much different but I managed to get down most of the way just fine. I ended up standing on a boulder that was about 5 feet high from the earth. My sweetie said he could catch me if I wanted to jump.

I said I was going to jump but I certainly didn’t need him to catch me! He tried to insist otherwise but I was stubborn and he moved back. When I leaped down I realized the ground below had a bit of a slope and I landing right on my hands and knees in the gravel. I had a nice case of roadrash and I can still see little pieces of rocks and dirt in my knee where my skin healed over the top of it. I remember Eric’s face looking so worried when I landed on the ground but now he just teases me about not letting him catch me.

Well, can’t argue with him. He had the right idea and I stupidly didn’t comply.

Ok, so those are just two examples of silly little instances that I have looked back on with amusement.

Now it’s your turn to look back and giggle about something that happened to you!

I found a photograph from that trip. It was taken from atop the rocks as the sun sank one night. Totally worth a busted up knee. Hahaha.

Thanks for reading,

Sam