I can never stand when we come back from a holiday break, and the only thing people come back with is their lame attempt at a joke: “I need a break from my break.”
Yes, I know these jesters mean no harm with this joke; it’s just not funny or original. What could you possibly need a break from? Watching cartoon balloons fly across your screen while waiting for the oven to preheat? Despite my personal—yet correct— opinion about this cliche’, if anyone needed a break from their break, it’s me.
My holiday plans were nice in the beginning; Reconnecting with family and spending time in the tiny Hallmark town of Syracuse, N.Y. If you love towns that only consist of highways and run-down gas stations, that’s the destination for you.
The trip started off routine: My sister and I crammed in the backseat – my sister packs like a member of the Donner Party; her giant comforter and pillows take up a quarter of my space. Oh yeah, we were also accompanied by our 80-pound Pitbull who thinks he’s a lapdog.
We hid tranquilizers in his food so he would calm down. More so for our sake, so we didn’t have to hear his whining. He gets so loud, he’d break a VU meter. Luckily for him, I don’t think he remembers any part of this trip as much as we do.
After six-hours crammed into the back of my dad’s SUV with a massive dog on my lap and absolutely no leg room, we made it to our upstate destination. The moment we got there, we were smacked by the ever-accumulating inches of Syracuse snow. I think it was my favorite part of the trip overall.
Overall, the trip itself was nice. I have nothing bad to say about visiting my boisterous family—only because they will be reading this.
But, it only got worse when my sister and I tried to go to bed.
My sister is an overly-obnoxious snorer. I didn’t get any sleep at all during this trip, to the point where during the last night, I built my own mattress with coarse and scratchy couch cushions to try and get a decent night’s sleep. When my mom woke me up at the crack of dawn to get ready, I started wailing; her snoring was deafening. Now that I admit that, I simply sound pathetic.
As we made our way back, all was normal with the same feeling of suffocation. Only now we were traveling economy class due to the mounds of plunder piled in with the oversized family ‘lapdog’. Our sweet grandma gave us our Christmas presents early. Lucky me.
So far as you read this you might be thinking that this sounds like a normal family vacation. Trust me, it gets better.
Only a few hours away from Fredericksburg, the fam started to notice a suspicious scent around the car.
The closer we got, the smell got worse, and our dog was suspiciously meek and still, and I grew wary. I gently lifted the blanket, and I was hit in the face with the most putrid and foul odor; I let out a shrill as I declared to my family that my dog had discharged his bowels in the backseat. Truth be told, I may have used an all too familiar expletive to announce my findings.
My dad’s precious SUV lease was now soiled with an ungodly stench, and I had to jam nearly the entirety of my head out the window to stop my gagging. We quickly pulled over to clean out the car the best we could. I can’t really remember the exact process, but I still physically shake at the memories. It was traumatic.
I took for granted the sleepless nights due to my sisters snoring, and the inches of snow that trapped us inside.
In the future, please think before you tell someone you need a break from your break. You never know if the person you’re talking to had a dog poop everywhere in the car during their break.
