Installment 9: Morgendorffers in the Woods
Thursday, February 8, 2006
Lawndale, MD
“Daddy, remember that tutoring you want me to take for Language Arts? It's going to be fifty dollars an hour,” Quinn Morgendorffer said.
“Fifty dollars an hour!” Her father, Jake, shouted.
Her mother, Helen, entered. “Well, I got the bad news from the peridontist, Six months, eight hundred dollars a month.”
“Eight hundred dollars a month?!”
Then Quinn's older sister, Daria, entered the kitchen. She placed the mail on the table. “Mail's here, did you know Congress still spends over two hundred and fifty billion dollars on the Miltary?”
“Two hundred and fifty billion a year?!” Jake ponded a fist on the table. “Damn it! That's it Daria! What am I made of, money?”
“Jake, were you listening? Daria said...” Helen interjected.
“Tutoring, dental work, Congress! I'm not a machine, damn it! I'm a man! For once in my stinkin' life, show me a little...” His rant stopped mid sentence as pain shot through one of his eyes. “Gah. Ah! Ah!” He held his eyes.
“Oh, Jakey, not again,” Helen said.
“It's my eye! Oh G. it's my eye!” Indeed a blood vessel had burst...
“Oh, no,” Daria said. “Get the camera,” she said to Quinn.
“You get it!” Quinn shot back.
“No camera, Daria,” Helen said. She sighed. “Remember what the doctor said the last time you burst a blood vessel?”
“Yeah, he said it would be two hundred dollars.”
Helen took Jake's hand in hers to reassure him. “Before that. He said that we need to cut down your stress and we're going camping like we used to before...” she looked and saw that her daughters were still in the room.
They both gave her a look as if saying “We're still in the room.'
“I'll take Friday off and we'll make a long weekend of it.”
“You're going to take the day off?” Daria asked.
“Daria, a healthy family comes before work, Always. Besides, I have some vacation time coming and Eric told me that if I don't use it, I loose it.” She pounded her fist on the table.
“Damn it. Those bastards aren't gonna take away my days! Come on, Jake. Let's find some painkillers.” She then lead him away.
“Don't worry about us Mom, we'll be fine home alone,” Quinn said.
“Maybe,” Daria said, wondering what Quinn was up to.
“Don't even bother, girls. You're coming with us.”
“Quinn pounded her fist on the table. “Damn it, Daria! You could have backed me up!” Then she left.
“Damn it, why would Quinn expect me to back her up?”
Later, Daria went over to her friend, Jane Lane's house. She told Jane, and Jennifer Burns about the camping trip.
“Guano see some gutsy climbing? Scaling the world's tallest pile of seagull droppings, next on Sick Sad World.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jane said. “You, Jake, Helen and the Geek Princess are going camping? As 'in the woods' camping?”
“I think that's the gist of it,” Jennifer said.
“I hope the raving envy won't effect our friendship,” Daria said.
“I do envy you,” Jane said.
“Then I'm afraid the fever has reached your brain, and you'll have to be destroyed,” Daria joked. Jennifer laughed.
Jane began to pack a suit case. “Do you know where I'll be this weekend? The Lane family reunion. Dozens of Lanes from all over the country converging in one midwestern split level to remind themselves why they scattered in the first place.
“Wow, I didn't think that your parents would be caught dead at something like that,” Daria said.
“Same here,” Jennifer said.
“They wouldn't. We're the black sheep of the family. We're only invited because hating us brings them all closer together. My parents are much too smart to fall for that trick.”
“I thought so,” Daria said.
“That's quite disfunctional,” Jennifer said with a shake of her head.
“It certainly is,” Jane said. “So they're sending me and Trent as their representatives.”
“You know, a weekend in the woods is starting to look pretty good.”
“A weekend on the world's tallest pile of seagull droppings is looking better,” Jane said.
Saturday February 10, 2006
The Morgendorffers arrived in a clearing with camping gear, having hiked to the location.
Jake was singing.
“Give my regards to Broadway.
Remember one to Harold's Square
Tell all the gang at 42 Street
That I'll soon be there...”
He then said. “Is this great or what? For the next 72 hours we're going to live off what nature sends our way.” He pointed. “See that stream? That's our drinking water! See those berries? That's our breakfast!”
“See that skeleton?” That's our future,” Daria said.
“There's no skeleton,” Quinn said.
“Made you look,” Daria said.
Quinn sighed...
–
“Total isolation,” Jake said.
“No phone, no fax, no email, no voicemail, no SMS, no way to contact the outside world! What a luxury,” Helen said.
“Tonight, we'll tell spooky stories around the campfire. Tomorrow, we'll hike till we drop!”
“Just like we used to.”
“Remember?”
“We were so relaxed in those days.”
Jake stood there reminicsing.
“Girls, doesn't all this beauty take you right out of yourselves?”
“Daria?” Helen asked.
“I'm think I'm getting a chill. If you don't mind, I'm gonna crawl back into myself for a while.”
“What about you, Quinn?”
“No phone or internet?”
No comments:
Post a Comment