Truck Driving Adventure….

One Saturday, I was sitting at the Moose Club with my two cousins enjoying the afternoon. In walked two giant guys, at least to me. I am not really a short person, but while I am sitting in a chair, they looked extra large to me, one was 6’3 and the other 6’7. The one nearest to me, the shorter of the two, was talking with my cousins. I could not see the tallest one as he was behind me and there was no way I was going to make any sudden moves. The one I could see had shoulder length or longer hair, some sort of leather cap on that looked like an Elmer Fudd hat (I guess that is some sort of a motorcycle cap), his goggles were off of his eyes and propped on the cap, he had on a leather fringe jacket, leather chaps and boots. What a site he was and I don’t mean this complimentary. I was very uncomfortable with their size and could not wait for them to leave. When they did leave, my cousins say to me that he is the guy they are wanting to set me up with. I was shocked! I asked them if they hated me or something or if I had done something to make them mad!!! They went on and on about how nice he was. Yuck! I wanted no part of any of this. Thanks, but no thanks! They were truck drivers and Harley riders, not my type at all, haha! (As if I actually had a type, I really do not know if I do or not.)

The following Saturday night my mother, sister and her spouse and I went to the Moose to have a steak dinner with my cousins and their families. We are enjoying our meal and in walks the guy and this time the only leather he is wearing is his coat, no hat, goggles or chaps. I can’t even believe he comes and funny the only available chair for him is across from me. Grrrr! (My cousins later tell me that he asked of me and they told him I was coming this night. They seemed to be quite proud of this and had on these really smug, proud grins. My sister, always the friendly, fun, kind person, chats away with him and keeps trying to include me in the conversation. He tried to buy my meal which I would not allow! I was not going to be indebted to this guy for anything. After the meal, the band began playing and this guy wanted to dance with me. My sister and everyone kept “pressuring me to dance”. I love to dance, but really did not want this guy to even begin to think that I liked him, but I did dance with him a couple of times so that I could dance at other times as well. I would feel terrible telling him I did not want to dance and then dance with others. To my dismay when the dance was over my sister invited him to her house for steak and eggs with the rest of us.The guy was being funny and fit right in and the entire family loved him. My mother was absolutely nuts about him!

One day he showed up to where I was working with my cousin and brought us a soda. This guy! Seems that my cousins kept filling him in on my whereabouts. He showed up one morning at the restaurant we were eating breakfast at before work and even treated us to breakfast. You cannot say this guy does not try and is not nice. He had to go on a run to Texas and when he got back in town he drove out in his semi and brought me a very expensive, nice, gold necklace. I tried to not accept it, but he would not take it back. He then started telephoning me and not really being a mean person, I would talk to him. He did make me laugh although he was somewhat annoying at times. He had these two little sons, such cuties, who were here for his visitation period over the summer. He wanted me to go see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with them at the theater. Ummmm, NO! Give it up buddy. I was not really interested in going to that sort of movie anyway. Why would someone without children go see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, (Heroes in a half shell, turtle power. Funny, I do know the show obviously.)

During our talks I had mentioned that I had never been in a semi and thought it would be fun to ride in one. Boy he wasted no time jumping on that! He asked me to go on a trip to Florida with him. I guess that could be tolerable and maybe entertaining. I asked my cousin’s husbands if I would be safe traveling with him and if he would not hurt me. They assured me he was nice and I would be okay and that he had better not ever hurt me. (I am not sure they could have taken this huge guy, but I accepted their reasoning and felt comforted.) Well, I have now known this guy, that I do not like, for two weeks and was on my way to Florida with him. He was friendly and fun to talk with so, what the heck, it beats setting at home. Florida was everything bad that you could imagine. There were ugly lizard things walking up the windows right outside the table we were eating at. What an appetizing site (sarcasm) and a rather ugly thing to eat with. You could see those ugly little suction cups that they were stuck to the window with and everything.

We were in Wildwood, Florida, and we pulled in to a truck stop for me to go to the bathroom, inside I found a small bird on his back struggling to turn over right beside the stool. I ran out and got my friend and said I could not go in there with that bird! He came in there and checked and told me it was a bug! OMG!!! A bug as big as a small bird!!! He said it was a Palmetto bug. I have no idea what it was called and do not really care. All I cared about was that it was on it’s back and I was not going to sit on a toilet and have him right himself and fly around while I had my pants down! I am positive that I do not care for Florida and I want to go home! Needless to say, the guy did not get rid of the bug and we drove elsewhere to use the bathroom. There was one fun thing, though, I got to sit at the tables where the truckers do and use those phones that were at their tables! I got to call my mom and my sister and chat with them while at a restaurant. I called my niece, anyone I could think of because this was so neat! How cool and I felt so important calling from a dinner table! This thrill is gone and a thing of the past now that there are cell phones. There were even little individual jukeboxes at the table and we could play our own music.

Going home is not going to happen! The truck broke down next. All I can remember is that we were in some parking lot for hours. It was too hot to sit in the truck so we had to sit on the dolly. A dolly is the part where the fifth wheel is that you hook the trailer to. This spot is only available for sitting when there is no trailer on. It was not comfortable at all and it was oily and dirty and it was very hot out. It was finally repaired and we were on our way. This was to be a short trip, we were only going to be gone one night and back home the next day. His boys were up from Florida visiting Illinois, remember? He was just taking short trips so he could be with his sons. Well, by the time we got the truck running, it was time to head back to Illinois. Sadly, the boys were on their way to Indiana to fly out to Florida. So we high tailed it to Indiana instead so that he could see his boys off. Keep in mind that I am a bit uncomfortable as the boys nor their grandparents (this guy’s parents) know that I am with him. We meet them in a truck stop to have lunch. When we are about to get out of the truck, he says they are going to have a fit when they see you crawl out of this truck. Great! Now I feel wonderful. I will never forget the look on his parent’s faces when I stepped out of that truck and it only gets worse. The flight was not until the next day so they were spending the night in Indiana. The parents were beside themselves with what to do. There was, of course, nothing I could say or do. They are not my parents or my children and I was not even suppose to be around. We went to eat and afterwards the boys got to swim in the hotel pool. They were such a joy! I got some pennies out and had them dive for them. We had such a great time. They were showing me all of the tricks they could do. I immediately fell in love with those little boys. We talked, laughed and played. I could see the parents discussing the situation with my friend and I could tell they were not happy. I could catch some of the looks on their faces. They decided they would get adjoining rooms and they and the guy were in one room while I was in a room with the boys. This was a hard decision for them. They did not want the guy and me in a room together. They did not know me and thought it would be uncomfortable with me in their room, for all of us! I only know the guy, so this was very uncomfortable for me sleeping with a group of people I do not know at all. I assume it would have been inappropriate for me to go back in that sleeper on that truck with the boys there, but I am sure that I would have liked that better. Why should things improve at this point, we find that the air conditioner in our rooms does not work. The boys were complaining of being hot and it was miserable. I wanted to complain! There is nothing worse than being hot. There seemed to be no air movement at all. (Here I am thinking of that sleeper on the truck again, the air conditioning works good in it.) I kept telling them to just lay still and it would get better, although I knew it would not. I kept trying to comfort them and then we would talk and talking turned in to giggling. Then Grandma starts telling us to be quiet. I am an adult and am being told to be quiet at bedtime, being chastised by someone I just met and yet being treated like her child. I don’t know if that should make me feel better or not. Anyway, all of this made us giggle more and more. I advised the boys to hide their giggles in the pillows and tried everything to get them to sleep. It was fun laughing and trying to hide it and it reminded me of being a child and yet was so uncomfortable at the same time. That was a great time with the boys and a good memory, but I just needed to get home.

I have failed to mention one thing here. After everything that could go wrong on this supposed fun, first time trip in a semi went wrong, somehow I ended up falling in love with this guy. We had discussed this in Wildwood, Florida, before we left there. I was so upset about falling in love with him that I cried. Can you believe that? He also cried because he was so happy about it. Well, that did not take long did it? From dislike to love in two weeks?! Sounds like a Harlequin romance book or a Hallmark movie. I was crying and told him there was no way I could love him already. He said being in a truck and having everything that went wrong go wrong, was like being married for ten years. He said it was not like we were dating and seeing each other in good situations, we had been stuck together every minute with nothing going right and we still enjoyed being together.

So, my point here is that I think I am in love with a guy that I am sure his parents do not think well of. They think I am some sort of questionable lady, riding around in a truck with a guy I hardly know. He has two little boys who know nothing about me either. What a way to meet his family! I tried to be as friendly as I could to the parents but it was just too awkward. I did become “besties” with the boys. That was easy since the guy and his parents spent the time discussing what to do about me and I had nothing else to do but play with the boys. They were fun and very sweet, though. It was time for them to board their plane finally and we could get me back home. When we got to my home my mom and sister and family were in the yard excited to see how the trip went since they all love this guy so. I got out of the truck and the first words out of my mother’s mouth were that I had no make up on and looked beautiful. She cracks me up! My sister’s first words were that it was “because she is in love.” I quickly stated that I was not. Although I had admitted it to him, I somehow still wanted to deny this fact, especially after the night I had. I really did not want this to happen for some reason, probably because he is not what I considered to be my type, I did not get off to a good start with his parents and he had these children.

However, not to be discouraged, this guy calls me the next day and says he has a run to California. I guess I must have mentioned that I had never been to California and I always wanted to and he felt like he needed to take me there. He insisted I go because he only picked up this run for me. Oh boy! I am getting in deeper and deeper here and this is not something I want at all! Well, here we go….. wait until you hear how much goes wrong on this trip to California and what all happens! See you here on Sunday!