Meet the Parents: Misery

It all started December 23, 2005 while I was on Christmas break at home in a peaceful Indianapolis winter. One day, I receive an instant message from a visitor to my website, a girl named Rachel from Missouri, commenting on its content, to which I ask a couple questions on her thoughts about my mainly political and theological articles. This practice is nothing out of the ordinary as I receive several such responses a year and even have met some of my closest friends through this sort of communication, and in one case I’ve almost become family with one girl in Chicago, visiting several times a year. After talking to Rachel for a couple months both online and offline, she told me that her dad wants to fly me from Indianapolis to Kansas City to see her for a weekend, and never having a bad experience with this sort of thing, I thankfully accepted. This action created an urban legend that will last for the rest of my life.

Friday afternoon at 4:45 p.m., I’m flying out and land at Midway in Chicago, taking my connecting flight to Kansas City, MO that lands around 6 p.m. As I’m getting off the plane and not noticing anyone out in the lobby, I turn to see who called my name. As I look over and see her parents, seeming clones of Michael Moore, and then herself, looking absolutely nothing like the pictures that I had seen, I want to turn around and jump back on the plane. Forcing myself to be polite and deal with it, we all pile into the car and begin the four hour drive to Springfield, Missouri, a total surprise to me since I thought I was staying at her house the whole weekend. The trip results in about 20 minutes of continuous conversation during the ride there as I ask God, “Why me?” Once arriving at the hotel, we enter the two rooms: a suite with a queen and the other with two double beds. Her dad warns me that he snores, so he offered to sleep on the couch in the extra room off of the room with the queen sized bed, but I figure if I can sleep through a jet engine on the way here, it can’t be that bad. We agree on the sleeping arrangements: I sleep in one of the doubles while he sleeps in the other and Rachel and her mom sleep in the queen next door. Before going to bed at midnight, Rachel and I watch a little TV and her dad is already asleep roaring away like a freight train. The whole night I’m trying to muffle the noise with one pillow, two pillows, then three, then finally I get my iPod so I can get thirty to forty-five minutes “sleep” as I feel like I’m sleeping next to a diesel engine. This whole process had been going on for roughly five hours before I resulted to the iPod. The first day is coming to a close and the weekend hasn’t even truly begun.

Rachel’s dad wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready, which wakes me up, not being a hard thing to do. He informs me at 5:00 a.m. to wake up and get ready to leave, which at this point I’m contemplating stealing the car and driving back to the airport and catching the first flight to Chicago. After a short continental breakfast, we leave at about 6:30 to go get her brother, who's with the rest of the youth group at another hotel in town and who looks like a 45-year-old stalker. After an uncomfortable meeting with one of Rachel’s ex-boyfriends, the youth group along with Rachel and I get on the bus to leave to the college campus for the Assembly of God’s fine arts competition. Once the bus gets to Central Bible College in Springfield, we spend all day walking around campus watching all the people in her youth group perform, mostly standing, since the music hall is packed. We finally leave at 5 p.m. to make the four hour drive back with a grand fifteen minutes of conversation this time. After the trip, we go and eat with her parent's good friends and Rachel says three words the whole meal to the waitress, as she tries to explain that she can’t order for herself, so her dad orders for her. After getting back to her house, Rachel and I watch Spiderman 2 on their big screen, but then her parents come down to pull me away to work on their computer that was busted due to insane amounts of viruses on the computer. Once I finally give up on the computer at about 12:30 a.m., Rachel asks me to wait while she goes upstairs to get something for me. I look in disbelief as she returns in a few minutes with a “bracelet” that consists of two plastic bands, one purple and one black, that when she forcibly puts this bracelet on my wrist it is cutting off my circulation making my hand turn purple in a matter of seconds. After being polite in accepting this horrible gift, I lock the guest bedroom door and remove it as soon as possible. Then I go to sleep on this bed that was as hard as pavement, but I’m so tired I just died on the bed. The sheer exhaustion of the day finally ends and I find myself on the Sabbath, but there is no rest to be found.

I’m then woken up at 8 a.m. to get ready for church, so we go to Sunday school, which was decent. In church, we sing for 20 minutes and then we have to “sneak”, although there was nothing stealth about it, out the back from the fifth row of the church during the offering to catch our flight, as I’m feeling like I’m dodging the offering plate. We don’t even hear the sermon, making it totally pointless. Once arriving at the airport, we eat at a Mexican restaurant, which is probably not a good for the poor guy that had to sit next to her dad on his flight to California. We all sit in near silence in the lobby till my plane gets there. Once it arrives, Rachel gives me an awkward hug and I mutter "See ya later" and go through security while they stand behind the glass wall, waving at me every couple minutes while I'm standing in line praying to God for “liberty or death”. Even after all this, her parents have her call me while I'm standing in line as I can look over and see her behind the glass. This creates another five minutes of awkwardness as I try to get her to say something besides one word responses. Once they start boarding, I quickly end the conversation and get on the plane as quick as I can; waving one last time as I thank God I’m out of Missouri.
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Even though Mrs. Jones the Feminazi gave me a C- on this, I still think it's probably the best story I've ever heard of that actually took place. And yes...it all happened, if I'm lying I'm dying...Enjoy and put all inqueries (What the *** were you thinking!?, etc.) in the comments. And remember that your day isn't as bad as this...