Paper Bag Prison

Telling on myself... :-) Admitting our weaknesses is healthy.

 

Paper Bag Prison

 

I’ll admit it...  I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the brown paper bag prison.  It’s not a big diversion from where I live in the Southwest desert off of the ever famous-Route 66-in Albucrazy-(Albuquerque), New Mexico.  It’s brown.   Very brown.  After awhile, you get use to it.  Doing time in the paper bag prison is and has been quite a conventional experience for me.  It’s every day life-MY life!

 

I can’t even begin to wager a guess on the innumerable times I have said, “I couldn’t find my way out of a brown paper bag!”  Telling on yourself is tough for some people.  Me?  It’s not that big of a deal.  After all, I do have strong points.  Who doesn’t?  We can’t all be good at the same things…  It’d make for a very humdrum world, wouldn’t it?   

 

My multifarious prison life was a more obvious issue before the days of Map Quest, and for some of the luckier drivers, the GPS Navigator. MapQuest has proved to be quite lucrative for me these days.  But, I am not talking about now.  I want to reminisce a bit.  The days BMQ or BGPS… 

 

I remember taking my three children on a field trip.  We were meeting our Home school group on the other side of the city out in the boon docks, at a place called Shady Lakes.  They were going to try their hand at fishing. Being the daughter of an accomplished fisherman, trained up at a very early age, I had gotten the whole thing down to a science, even taking the slimy little suckers off of the hook with a stick.  I had the rare opportunity of witnessing my mother's prize-winning casting manuever when she'd cast out into the deep blue and snagged my dad’s right ear with a deadly hook, lure and all.  Being a licensed cosmetologist, I couldn’t have pierced his ear with greater precision.  Mom nailed him nicely. Her face turned three shades of ghostly white, her eyes practically popped out of her head, and her hand went over her mouth as she was ready to faint from the sight of the bright red droplets of blood covering my dad’s light blue shirt. That furry little yellow lure with dangling red beads and a dazzling shiny silver accruement filled up with blood in a flash.  It was a sight to behold.  Being an army Corpsman in his younger years, blood was nothing to my dad, but since it went all the way through, we had to get our butts in gear. After cutting the string with his fishing knife, we quickly pulled up the anchor, fired up the engine, and headed for the shore to take a quick trip to the emergency room. Neither my mom, nor I had strong stomaches.  There wasn't going to be an emergency surgery with wire cutters on the boat.

 

My teen years wrought me a slight deviation from fishing to sunbathing on the boat.  You see, I needed a tan. It was a prerequisite for a young, teenaged girl wanting to impress the guys. You don’t wear a bikini on a boat without that exact intention.  Being a multi-tasker, I had previously sized up my options and decided I could easily handle both simultaneously, my priority being the most important of the two: Sunbathing! I’d don the sun tan lotion, prop the pole near by and wait for the BIG ONE. Closing your eyes and soaking up sun rays, doesn’t equate to good fishing. The BIG ONE came and went, and so did my fishing pole.  I was quickly jostled out of my afternoon siesta as my pole was pulled over the edge of the boat with a brisk, ker-plop!   As I sat up, I saw the black handle of my red pole rapidly sinking out of sight, not to mention my reach!   My dad said a few choice words while chewing my butt, as we both looked over the side of the boat contemplating the ten pound Walleye we had obviously just missed. I took my verbal beating like a young woman should, sighed, and immediately returned to my sun bathing, while steam was coming out dad’s ears like a steam engine on the railroad tracks.  I could have cared less. He’d break down and buy me another one anyway.  That’s just something an avid fisherman does.  Everybody in the family had to be well supplied with all the gear.  It was life.  Sustenance!

 

My kids were excited about the fishing adventure we were about to embark upon, and so was I.  I wasn’t about to miss this field trip. Not after all of my painstaking on-the-job-training with witnessing an ear piercing, sun bathing, and the Big One stealing my bait and landing my fishing pole on the bottom of the lake. The truth be known, I probably wanted to go more than the kids. 

 

Like I said, this was literal light years away from Map Quest so this excursion was like a blind person trying to find their way in the dark.  After driving and driving and driving some more, the red flag went up.  Something definitely wasn’t right.  My gas tank was rapidly moving toward empty and it was time to stop for directions.  Unlike my male counterparts, I am not opposed to asking for directions.  A wise navy wife, Janie Brannon, once told me, “If you get lost, just stop and ask for partial directions. This way you never have to remember much.  And ask for landmarks, lots of landmarks. Don’t stop until you reach your destination.  You see Carole, it’s really no big deal.  What do they know?  They don’t know how many places you have stopped along the way to ask how to get where you are going.”  Janie was speaking from years of experience.  She was very familiar with our handicap and had been around this same mountain umpteen times.  She was also privy to the fact that I had a serious issue in this area that called for serious intervention. I needed all the help I could get and she knew it.   

 

Either this nice gentleman at the Circle-K didn’t know his right hand from his left hand, or I didn’t follow him, but I never found the lake on his set of directions. I ended up a hundred miles outside of Albuquerque, before I realized that this dude didn’t have a clue, or I was just enjoying a little time in the very brown state penitentiary.  I was right smack dab in the middle of that brown paper bag prison AGAIN!  Well, we did make it, eventually.  The kids still got to fish.  My frustration subsided, and I seemed to forget the scenic detour fairly quickly.  And, the kids?  They couldn’t have cared less.

 

Did you know five-year-olds are not necessarily directionally impaired, and can help you find your way out of the paper bag if a situation warrants it?  I had gone to the base to get gas.  In those days, it was considerably cheaper, and worth the drive. It was one of the many perks of having a husband in the U.S. Navy.  I drove onto the base and suddenly realized this particular base was a whole lot larger than I had anticipated.  The very few times I had been there, I wasn’t driving.  Every one knows that some people are notorious for not paying attention, if they are not in the driver’s seat.  I was no exception to the rule. I didn’t know which end was up and where on God’s green earth I was?  After mumbling out loud to my son, Shawn, and my 2 ½ year-old daughter, Michaeli, “Mommy can’t find the gas station,” Shawn matter-of-factly said, “Mommy, go down this road until you see the flag on the corner and turn left.”  By god, the kid was right.  A lesson in humility?  A-yeah!  Twenty-six-year-olds need lessons in humility, too.

 

Then there was the time in San Diego when I took my mother to the airport and ended up in the country along a hot air balloon landing.  I didn’t know at that time that San Diego had country.  But, I had seen hot air balloons on several different occasions and I had wondered where the balloon landing was?  Handicaps can be blessings in disguise, you know. More than likely, I could never get back to that landing I happened upon that day, but that’s beside the point!

 

I’ve learned to never, and I mean never, drive any where with another woman that likes to talk and has the same identical handicap.  Two wrongs darned sure don’t make a right.   And the paper bag excursion makes for a few more detours and a whole lot more frustration.  They don’t call me the “Turn Around Queen” for nothing!  I have visited darned near every driveway in Albuquerque. Awe well. 

 

Map Quest has kind of taken the adventure out of my life.  And after listening to the monotonous and redundant voice of the GPS’S Vannah White on two recent vacations saying “Recalculating Route” after missing turns anyway, I say-trash that blasted contraption!  My brown paper bag prison isn’t so bad after all!

 

 

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This was a fun trip. And I love to fish. Had that happened to my dad, the hook going all the way through, he would have clipped off the barb, pulled it out, washed off the blood and went back to fishing. My brother-in law got hooked through the lip in the same fashion and we fixed him up that way too. I sliced my foot open on a broken piece of glass, poured some whiskey in the wound (and a little in me) and went back to fishing. We Franklins take our fishing very seriously! And why waste all that money on a trip to the emergency room that could be spent on bait? lol This was a wonderful read and just beautifully written. Now, I've got to oil up my reels...I've got the fever! lol Oh, the day I sliced my foot, I caught a six pound largemouth bass. I have a picture of me holding it up with a big grin on my face, a bloody strip of t-shirt tied around my foot. It really should have been sewn up, left a nasty scar, but hey, I got my fish!

[Jayne Ann Saporito]

What an engaging and fun story! It takes the memory back down that lane! Thanks for sending the request as I thoroughly enjoyed it as my afternoon reading!

[Phill Oz O'fee]

It wasn't just a drive .. it was an adventure! A bit like this glorious piece of reminiscence. A great story, full of offshoots, antidotes and humour.

Thanks for sending a read request, as it was thoroughly enjoyable!

God's Blessing
Phillozofee

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

I loved this read! I remember the first fish i ever caught.. have said so many times the same of the brown paper bag ,, as for sunbathing , i am allergic to the sun so never could stay out too long .. tried the fake ran and turned orange !
Carole, a very well written story of life..

Chloe
xoxo

[Gary H]

Very well written and entertaining. I like the moral point at the end about the GPS system. All the adventure you mention would certainly be lost or will be lost when they take over every vehicle. The humour in this really makes the story move along and keeps the reader interested.

Like the fishing tale. Although sounding very painful the ear piercing is also very funny.

[Blake Q Hatfield]

Interesting perspective on getting lost. Sometimes with the assistance of modern technology, we forget the joys that can come from the "senic" routes. Good write!

[Brenda Sue]

Oh such a cute write. I enjoyed it very much. Wonderfully penned. Great job.

[youngwriter222]

This sounds like such a fun trip, I bet you love it!
Getting the hook caught all the way in would disgust me, my brother did that once and he wanted me to hold the fish so he could get it out, it was so gross. But this is a great adventurous write and how you brought back times from your teenage years.
You are really funny in this and it is such a great write. You brought back so many memories.

Sarah

[Valentine]

This is so funny and brought to mind the ways all of the men in my family thought about my sisters and myself..We get lost a fgew streets from where we liove..We also use to get lost driving to grand-pas farm when we went there dozens of times a year,,Here in ar. my sister came fro a visit and we went through the little town..We thought gee what a friendly place..everyone coming at us was waving friendly like..later I saw we had went down each one way street in town the wrong way..brownbags or street signs..both get me confused in a hilly town like this one..Good laugh..God bless//Valentine

[Winter McPherson]

This is really cute! People don't usually like to admit this type of "handicap". And here you've written an entire story around it. My favorite part was when you were a teen-ager. Loved it. Brought back memories of my own bikini, sun-tanning days - and such a nice picture of the family together. Well-written.