Thursday, November 09, 2006

After the Wedding, Before the Honeymoon. (Series Part VII)

To read the rest of the series, find the "Love Series" links on the sidebar.

So, after we left the house where the wedding was, Armondo and I split up into different cars. Armondo went in his father's car to his father's hotel room to gather his stuff, while I took my mother and grandmother straight back to my place. My mother asked several times to go with my FIL, but Armondo and I were NOT going to let our two disfunctional parents be alone together in a hotel room! So, right after our wedding, Armondo and I were already split up!

We live really close to the ferry, so my ma and grandma were just coming over for a little while before they caught the ferry, and on the way home, my mother fell asleep in the car. (This is, of course, after she had already fallen asleep at my WEDDING!)

When we got to the house, my grandmother and I announced loudly that we were there, and both forcefully slammed our car doors to try to get my mother to wake up. She didn't. So for the next little while, my grandmother and I relaxed and chatted a bit while we waited for the time for the ferry to arrive. When it was time to drive them to the ferry, Armondo and his dad were just arriving. My mother woke up as we got into the car, and was upset that we hadn't woken her up, 'cause she wanted to check out my house and wanted to visit with everyone (ie, Armondo's father). Then, apparently, she didn't have money to pay for the ferry, and my grandmother paid, and then she cried on the way home 'cause we didn't wake her up!

After most people had filed out of Armondo's aunt's house after the wedding, I changed into some comfy sweats for the up coming plane ride. I was still wearing them when Armondo and his father decided that we should go out for dinner. They opted for a very casual family restaurant, so I wasn't overly embarrassed, or worried about looking like a slob for dinner.

That is, until Armondo's father told our server that we had just gotten married, and the whole wait staff came out and announced it and yelled and hollered and put ANTLERS on both of our heads and took a Polaroid of the occasion. It was at that point that I felt like a total loser. Not because of the antlers on my head, but because I was wearing SWEATS on my WEDDING DAY! (you know, I might have even been wearing PJ bottoms, and not actually sweats too. How's THAT for class?)

After dinner, we were in a rush to catch the ferry, so Armondo's dad started racing down the freeway in his old BMW at speeds that were all too unnecessary, and all too scary for me. I was, at this point, more scared of the drive to the ferry, then to the airport than the actual PLANE ride. We were half way to the ferry, when we noticed a car make this massive swerve in front of us at the same point as another car was pulled over. My FIL didn't react as quickly as the car in front of us and ran over the thing the other car was trying to avoid. It was half a dead deer carcass. A very LARGE deer carcass. And he ran right over it. And started to freak out.

The car that was pulled over was obviously the car that had hit and killed it, and we were the third or fourth car to come afterwards. As my FIL is freaking out (but not pulling over), I'm trying to assure him that it was, indeed, just a deer, and not a MAN as he seemed so insistent on trying to convince us it was.

"But, did you see that thing?!?"

"Yes, it was the back end of a deer! The front end was on the side of the road."

"That wasn't a deer! That was a MAN. I just ran over a MAN."

"No, no you didn't. It was a deer. I promise you it was a deer!"

"But, it was all bloody and the skin was all ripped off!"

"Yes, because it had been RUN OVER!"

"I think we just hit a MAN!"

Me, getting out my cell phone: "I'm going to call for help, maybe the people pulled over need help, and no one has called yet."

"OH NO YOU'RE NOT! " He shouted! "If I just ran over a man, you're not calling the cops on us! We're going to get arrested! PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY!"

Realizing that I was probably in more danger than the people on the side of the road, I decided to listen to my new, beloved FIL, and I put the phone away. I then got to listen to him repeat over and over again how he ran over a man and how his car must be ruined underneath, and sat seething in the back seat.

Then we arrived at the ferry. Turns out we were in the line up right behind the guy who was ahead of us and who had actually swerved and MISSED the deer carcass, and it started the whole Man/Deer argument up again. Embarrassingly, it was someone I knew from high school (Steve Iyer, for those of you who care) but luckily, this third opinion was able to convince my FIL that the blood and guts on the bottom of his broken spoiler thing were that of an animal, and not of a man. It was at this point, standing in the dark, in the cold, staring at deer guts that I was glad for the first time that I was in SWEATS and not in something nicer.


The ferry ride itself was uneventful, as Armondo and I went up to the passenger decks while FIL stayed in the car. It was up on the decks that Armondo took a couple of minutes to lecture me on how I should have just "let (it) go" and let my FIL think he ran over a man instead of arguing with him, but then also admitted that he was sure that his father was drunk (this was the first time I had met him, so I had nothing to compare his behaviour to) and had figured that his dad had been normal all day because he had been sipping vodka in his coffee cup, but now that he had gone a couple of hours without his maintenance drinking, that he had gone loopy. We decided then that we would tempt fate and accept the ride to the airport still, but that we would skip out on the late night visit that we had planned with his dad to kill time before our flight arrived.

Next installment: The Honeymoon.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm SO glad you're still alive. Ya know, I think you had every right to feel more danger about the car ride than the plane ride, even if your FIL wasn't drunk and delusional. More people die from car accidents than plane crashes.

What an eventful day.

Anonymous said...

Make that "hallucinating" rather than "delusional."

CeCe said...

Sarah~Well, I think more people die in car accidents than plane crashes because more people drive than fly!

Pink~Hopefully yours won't be so eventful!

CeCe said...

Debambam~Any day