As young adults, my sisters and I made some rather dangerous and stupid life choices; in fact, when we look back to today we are somewhat surprised we didn’t end up face down in a ditch somewhere. Of course, girls will be girls and will inevitably make poor choices, we are just thankful we lived to blog about them. This blog is just a short story of our older sister (we like to call her Mother Russia) that took place during a summer full of terrible decisions.
During Amanda’s senior year of high school, our dad got a promotion that relocated him to another area of the state. Fortunately for Amanda, my parents let her finish high school in our hometown. The following summer however, my parents officially moved out of the area and they were feeling so guilty about moving us away from all our friends that they rented the three of us an apartment to live our final summer in our hometown. We all had jobs at a pool on a local military base where we worked as life guards and swim instructors. Looking back, it is pretty shocking how naïve our parents must have been to let us live on our own with our 21 year old sister, Mother Russia, as our “guardian”, particularly since Amanda was only 17! That summer was a long lesson in life for all three of us, and remembering back, it is hard to believe we made it out relatively unscathed.
Towards the end of the summer we decided we should go beach camping, so we got a group of our friends together and reserved a space. We borrowed a few tents, bought some beer and junk food and were all set for the weekend. The first night at the beach, we enlisted a few boys that were lingering around to help set up our camp site and broke out the booze. It was a long night of revelry with nearby campers and plenty of boys joining the fun. It was a great kickoff to an even better weekend. In the early morning hours, we finally found ourselves slipping into our sleeping bags, some of us in the tent, others in cars, Mother Russia ended up in the bed of a friend’s truck, sleeping outdoors and open to the elements.
Everyone woke the next morning with the expected cotton mouth and headache. We climbed out of tents, cars, and trucks to make our way to the bathroom in attempts to repair the damage done the night before. Mother Russia hopped off the bed of the truck and looked significantly more damaged than the rest of us. She looked at us and cautiously asked if her eye was swollen because it felt a little funny. Everyone stared for a moment in horror as she looked back at us with a confused look on her face until one of us started laughing, at which point, we all laughed and pointed hysterically. She looked like she had gotten into a boxing match. Slightly confused, she glanced at her eye in the car mirror and turned back to us with an expression of abject horror on her face. Her eye was bloodshot; the skin around it red and swollen to at least three times its normal size. We concluded that she must have gotten bit by some giant insect while she was sleeping in the bed of the truck. We told her to put her sunglasses on and we would stop at the lifeguard tower on the way to the bathroom to see if they had any sort of antihistamine. As we were walking down the beach we started calling her “Quasimodo eye” and continued to laugh at her predicament. She was not amused by our hung over, uncaring attitude, and became increasingly annoyed. When we got to the lifeguard tower a guard was just walking out of the door so we flagged him down. Without removing her glasses, she asked the lifeguard (who couldn’t have been more than 16) if he had any Benadryl in the first aid kits as she was having an allergic reaction to an insect bite. The guard said that “no he did not have any” but wanted to see what sort of reaction she was having, maybe there was something else he could do. She took off her sunglasses and the guard’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. The rest of us girls tried to subdue our laughter but we weren’t very successful. She stared at the guard with a look of pure hatred as he got on his walkie talkie and radioed to a friend that he had to get down hear and “check out this chick’s eye”.
She quickly re-donned her sunglasses and stalked off toward the bathroom with the rest of us struggling to keep up as we were being overtaken by fits of laughter.
After our refreshing trip to the bathroom we decided that we would head to the little market near our campsite and see if they had any Benadryl there. The trip was successful so we all headed back to the campsite, acquiring more beer on our way. We returned to our spot at about 11:00 in the morning and our sister decided that it was time to start drinking and chased her Benadryl with an ice cold bud light. Unfortunately the Benadryl did no the desired effect and Mother Russia was “forced to keep her sunglasses on for the rest of the weekend, day and night, exclaiming just how bright it was with the moon out whenever someone asked why she was wearing her sunglasses at night. However, her Benadryl and beer cocktail put her in the right frame of mind to find some humor in the situation!
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