This little episode happened during a really bad time of my life. My family and friends were dying all around me, I'd already had a couple of outbreaks of the shingles, and at the time I was in a cast up to my knee with only the tips of two toes sticking out (with which I happened to be using to drive my car against the yelling and cursing advice of my doctor). Also, Jami, and the then 17 month old Zach, were still living with us off and on. Every weekend, my crutches and I were driving to Little Rock after work on Friday to take care of my mother so my sister, the nurse, could work her weekend shift at the hospital. Had I not been in such a ditzy frame of mind due to all the goings on, this little episode would probably never have occurred. But I was, and thus, it did.
Shortly after I'd gotten onto the interstate at Brinkley and just before I reached the White River bridge, I started hearing some really stange noises that seemed to be coming from beneath my car.
My first thought was that perhaps it was because of the road (you know how you hear that "tha-thunk, tha-thunk" sound as you're driving down some interstates. But the sound wasn't like that,,it was sort of like the sound of building pressure in a pressure cooker,,a hissing sort of sound,,and I couldn't figure out just where it was coming from and all of the gauges and things weren't indicating a problem with the car. So I drove on.
Just after I'd crossed the White River the hissing sound grew suddenly louder and then suddenly there was this BIGASS BOOM and I felt something hit the back of my head! I grabbed my head and my first thoughts were "OH SHIT, OHMYGOD, I've been SHOT!" I was in a really big, like almost shitting my pants BIG, panic as I tried to hold on to what I thought were my brains coming out of the back of my head as I manuvered my car to the side of the interstate.
Mind you, during these seconds in time, I felt no pain, nor did I think to actually look to see if it WAS brains and blood saturating the back of my head, I just got my ass out of traffic and pulled over.
Then the smell hit me. Knowing that if I had, in fact, shit my pants, the smell surely wouldn't be THAT smell, I looked at my hand, at the white, foamy, substance dripping from it, and then turned and looked into the back seat.
Somehow, Jami had missed retrieving one of Zach's bottles when she'd removed his car seat from my car before I'd left. There is was, fermented to bomb strength, and folks, that bottle had been there for awhile! It was decidedly past the buttermilk stage, let me tell ya. And holy shit did it smell raunchy!
I used what napkins I had in the car to wipe some of the mess from my hair and hands and then drove on, with the windows down, until I reached a place where I could better clean the back of the seat, the back floorboard, and the back seat. It took quite a while to clean the mess up when I reached my sisters and it a VERY long while before that smell finally lessened in my car.
Let this be a warning to those unwary young drivers with tots!
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