Blown Away Down Under
By Carol Celeste, Orange County Branch
When the tour company asked if I’d share a room with someone who wanted to save the single supplement on a trip Down Under, I considered my tolerance level for the bad habits a roomie might exhibit. Most of our room time would be spent sleeping, I figured. In case of snoring, I had ear plugs. In case she lacked my sense of order, I could tidy up. The tour company assured me Hilda was well-traveled and unlikely to cling, so good Samaritan was I. None of my considerations came to pass, but plenty else did.
Hilda earned the nickname Hurricane Hilda. Within five minutes of luggage delivery, she redecorated every inch of every room in Early Landfill by hurling the contents of her bags into the air.
Those bags contained a hefty stash of magic powders to cure her many maladies. Added to water or juice, they turned into potions, that is, what didn’t land on whatever the packets hovered over when opened with a flourish that always spilled. One time she landscaped the phone nested in a built-in console at pillow-level between the beds with magic grit. I found the odor nauseating but a horde of red ants found the flavor delectable.
She broke more wind than a fraternity after a night of beer and bean dip. I thought I’d packed everything I could possibly need for the trip, but I overlooked a gas mask. Then there was her industrial strength nighttime menthol rub. It burned my eyes for 20 minutes after application and exfoliated my lungs while fumigating the air for hours.
When middle-of-the-night leg cramps kept her awake, she did calisthenics on the floor. Back-to-carpet, a few inches from my bed, she flapped her arms and legs making hurricane noises for twenty minutes or so.
Workout grunts weren’t her only noises. She was a surround-sound power plant, chattering unceasingly. No matter where we were – museum, sheep shearing, glowworm cavern, Aborigine performance, Great Barrier Reef – she described her life on the farm in detail, continuously and repeatedly. She wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Hurricane Hilda shunned hotel laundries. One night in anticipation of an early morning departure, I laid out the next day’s clothes on a third bed. When Hilda took off her PJs the next morning, she said, “Eeewwww, these stink,” (my only clue that she possessed a sense of smell) then tossed them on top of my clean clothes. She dressed and took the offenders into the bathroom to wash then spread the wet PJs on top of the radiator to dry. I took my bags outside to get a head start in case they ignited.
When we parted, Hurricane invited me to visit her in Kansas. For that adventure I would surely need a bulldozer to navigate the rooms in her house, ear plugs, a nose plug, a Haz Mat suit and a pair of ruby slippers to rush me home.
That’s one trip I passed – without gas.
When not recalling disastrous roommates or trying not to,
Carol Celeste guides readers to write and through that, to heal, on www.writingtoheal.com.