Left Coast Cousins

We used to play this game when I was a kid called telephone.

Now for any of you that have never played this game, the idea was to sit in a large circle and have someone whisper a story to the person sitting next to them.

He or she in turn would whisper the story to his closest neighbor and so on and so forth.

The fun of the game was to see when the story had completed its circle, how far off or different the story was from the original version.

For all of us grown-ups this prepared us for the real world of working with other human beings.

I mean you knew that story about your co-worker running away with Conan O'Brien was a lie. She didn't even like redheads!

Well this happened to me the other day when my lunatic cousin, who is a vicious tornado windmill jockey in Oklahoma ,sent me a story recalling his trip to San Diego when I was a mere lass.

He journeyed to my homeland one summer from the plains of the Oklahoma badlands to enjoy our glorious Summer weather.

The following is his account of the events that took place.

As I am extremely polite, I will let him go first.
Bear in mind that this was a bajillion years ago.
Like in the 60's.

There I was minding my own business when a revolutionary thought shot through my gray matter like a prune through a goose!

I should go to the Left Coast and visit my unusual and sometimes bizarre cousins. Usually these unique pulses of wisdom hit me at night but this one was at high noon while sitting on the porcelain receiver! Did I mention this was about 50+ years ago, but I still recall every terrifying moment! This brood of cousins lived in Southern California just about a tacos throw from Mexico. My mom’s wonderful sister lived there and her offspring are unusual to say the least. I heard a story about the last one. It seems the doctors were asked “can you put it back?”

I resided in the plain states of the West and we were known as “Okies”. Aside from an occasional Indian attack things were pretty easy going.
I will say we were ahead of Arkansas because we had more than one type of DNA.

My dad worked for an airline and we were eligible for free passes to fly. In the early 60’s most of the airliners were prop jobs which just lumber along slowly but steady.

Made it to San Diego and circled the airport and being the aviation guru that I was I noticed there was only one runway! Where are the rest of them? Even in Oklahoma we have at least three but not here, just one big one. I figure they thought it was big enough to handle all the wreckage. But then I wasn’t ready for the fact we flew between buildings downtown on approach to the ONE runway!

Made it to my Aunt & Uncle’s house where I was surrounded with hugs, kisses, food, and cousins. We ate till I felt like a dog tick and laughed a lot.

There was a ravine behind the house and my cousins informed me it was full of rattlesnakes! “If you see one just ignore it and it will probably just go away.”
Little did they know we ate them for breakfast back in OK so I felt right at home.

My two youngest cousins, one you know quite well, planned a trip to the beach. I was so excited because at that time I don’t think I had seen the ocean in person. We adorned our latest and most fashionable swim suits and other related ocean stuff. I marveled at the flowers and palm trees and perfect weather. Don’t think they would have made it on a wagon train if this was the norm.

We made it to the beach and I was fascinated. That had to be the largest pond I had ever seen!

We played in the sand and I wowed the girls with my 2 pack which sadly has evolved to a one pack these days. There were these things called jetties which were piles of rock extending into the water for some important reason I assumed. We observed clinging to these rocks were star fish just below the water line. First ones I had ever seen and I just had to have one. The girls said, “no problem! "Just reach down and pull one off!”, so I did. Of course they failed to tell me to watch for waves and sure enough I got slammed like a June bug on the windshield of a rocket train.

After they stopped laughing, I grabbed that little sucker and a couple more just like him. We put the little rascals on the back deck of the car so they could get plenty of sun. They were crawling around like a monkey that just had a jalapeño enema!

Got them home, so what now? Called the aquarium people and they said to boil them and lay them out to dry. One pan full of boiling water, three starfish, what a way to go. You could hear their little screams for blocks!

Little suckers turned orange so we put them on the back step to dry for a few days. After a few days of craziness it was time to go home. The little rascals seemed hard and ready for transportation so we wrapped them in plastic wrap, stuffed them into the suitcase and headed for Oklahoma.

At that time luggage was not opened, which later I found out it must have spared several airline employees a most horrid death. It seems the aquarium people forgot to tell us to gut the little suckers, so after a day inside my hot luggage those puppies were so ripe they exploded like a dead possum on a 300 degree highway at high noon in the middle of August!

Got home and my poor unsuspecting mom opened my case and this wall of the most unearthly, fowl, repugnant, nauseating green vapor hit her. On her way to the bathroom she was saying “shut that thing”.

Needless to say we had to burn the suitcase and its contents from hell!

Have often thought this might be a formula we could use on the enemy and stock in our arsenal! It would probably be outlawed as “inhumane”.

One of many bizarre things I seem to get involved in with my Left Coast cousins!

So there you have it.

His delusional recollection.

I have no words.

At least for now.

And since you probably need some time to digest this starfish story, I will just have to let it "simmer".

Plus the truth deserves its own blog entry.

So until next time.

......I'm just sayin'