This story was written as a true story that actually happened to
me. The events are not likely to repeat. I overall
really like this story and think that this is my best story
ever. It's cool.
Torture is defined
as: anguish of body or mind. It’s the perfect
description of
the summer mission trip of 2003. We were going
to El Paso, Texas
to help out with a Vacation Bible School
program in a
small, local church. I’m surprised I don’t have post-
traumatic stress
disorder after the van event. I wake up at night
thinking of constant
perspiration that evolves into a sweaty
mess of pure
fear, dehydration, and comatose. There were
eight of us-two
couples, three friends, and one outcast. One of
the couples consisted
of a slightly balding, massive tower,
Pastor Ryan and
also his wife, who sounded very nasally and
tried to hide
her gray hair in a pool of blonde dye. The other
couple was the
youth director and his wife who both had brown
hair and was
married for less than a year. The outcast wasn’t
very pleasant,
simply because she had “gone out” with every
single guy at
school and was trying to come up with some
strategies for
reaping them up for collection once again. Often,
my idea was to
just buy some Midol for her because she was a
redhead and extremely
moody, which she inherited from her
mother. Her name
was Allison and her mom’s name was Dorry
Ryan. The other
three, or the now called trifecta, included a
mixed skin colored
friend named Garrick who was equally
intelligent as
he was spiteful. We were called the trifecta
because “tri”
mean three and “fecta” just sounds good. We also
needed a cool
name to call ourselves instead of saying all three
names. Most of
the time he was intelligent though, but in some
cases where people
are getting mad or moody-he would do
something miniscule
but yet large enough to have them loose
control. Andrew
was the classic cool-wanna-be with the small
cool glasses
and always wearing a baseball cap that was newly
bought. Once
you took him out of his school atmosphere he was
a pretty good
friend. The only thing that kept Andrew from
dismantling his
reputation at school was his useful attraction to
the word “gay”.
You could catch him on a bad day or when
something doesn’t
go his way and you would hear the phrase,
“that’s gay”
with an elongated “a”. I was the last personality in
the car out of
about six other’s. I had brown hair that was short
on the bottom
and longer on the top with hazel eyes that always
could find a
color to match what I was wearing. Today my eyes
brought out the
blue because it matched my red and white
sleeveless badger
football shirt with khaki shorts that gracefully
touched my knees.
The trifecta was overwhelmed to be going
somewhere and
getting to know each other better but little did
we know the dangers
to come. After a few pictures by the white,
calm massive
fifteen-passenger van we loaded up the luggage
and took off.
Not more that twenty minutes in the van did Dorry
start complaining.
“It’s too hot” she said in her helpless, nasally
voice, “Where’s
the A.C.?” Considering nobody liked the over-
pitched tone
of her voice, both the male drivers started looking
for how to turn
the air-conditioning on. It was becoming hotter in
the last three
out of four rows because of the raging rays of the
sun that wanted
to dehydrate anything in their paths. From our
undamaged high
spirits, the trifecta and outcast decided we
should just let
it go because they would probably figure out the
incompetence
problem with their lack of intelligence. Only
Garrick and I
were really thinking of the incompetence problem.
We could tell
what each other was thinking in the humoristic
sense. If we
didn’t want anyone to know the joke, we would
simply turn on
our intelligence switches and talk accumulating
big words into
long sentences that the other’s would squander
about and beg
us to be let in with the jokes. The problem was
that most of
the jokes occurred when authoritative figures did
something wrong
or missed the strong obvious things in life. An
example of this
was when Mr. Ryan, Dorry, and Jason were
crowding into
a blob of confusion around a soundboard trying to
figure out why
the sound wasn’t being produced through the
speakers through
the microphone. For about ten minutes
Garrick, Andrew,
and I watched silently after I tried to persuade
them to push
a little square button down the un-mutes the mikes.
The persuasion
lasted for about a minute because I figured they
wouldn’t listen
to me. After all I’m a teen, and nobody should
trust a teen.
They were at the point of giving up and calling a
technician to
“fix the problem” when I simply told Garrick to go to
the microphone
and say something. As I pushed the button in,
they all crowded
around me again only like little children being
easily amused
by a magic trick. “How did you do that?” asked
Mr. Ryan. I replied,
“I just pushed down on the button.” Little did
they know that
when Garrick was on the little stage-he was
reciting lyrics
to a song that had hidden meanings about
stubborn incompetence
of stupid people. When the authoritative
figures had left,
Garrick and I laughed continuously for a while,
during which
Andrew was trying to figure out the logic behind
the joke. In
actuality, there was little logic. The only logic needed
was the slight
skill of interpretation. The other thing needed was
the skill of
paying attention and multi-tasking, which his parents
can’t succeed
in. “Booya!” I said loudly. “Look who won now?
Oh wait, I forgot,
it was me!” The lower part of the trifecta
replied, “That’s
so gay.” “Stop saying gay!” Garrick said with an
annoyance. “You
really have to work on that. It’s an extremely
bad habit and
it’s not even politically correct.” We spent the rest
of the day in
the van playing a variety of tedious card games
including Egyptian
Rat, War, and Bull Spit. In addition to the
card games, we
all brought cd players, game boys, and books-
all for the long
way to Texas. That night stopping at a highway
oasis was a necessity.
Our hygiene was now secure and we
each had our
own row to sleep in. Ops, I didn’t. Oh yeah, half
way through the
night Garrick didn’t either. I ended up sprawling
myself underneath
the rows trying to find a place of comfort but
no success. I
think it felt similar to Chinese water torture. About
one second passes
before every bump on the highway, bump,
bump, bump. The
heat was also present. It was hard trying to
sleep in the
blistering heat of the van. In between bumps, I was
taking deep breaths
to try and help with sleeping and the heat.
After being bounced
like a ping-pong-ball for four hours, I
decided to ask
Andrew if I could have half of his row because
he had the end
row, which had four seats instead of three.
“Andrew…Pssst,
Andrew, can I please sleep on half of your
row?” I asked.
He just mumbled so I asked again. “Can I please
sleep on half
of your row?” Suddenly he shouted out, “Shut up,
I’m trying to
sleep!” Judging that his parents let him say “gay”
multiple times
throughout the day but won’t let him see scary
movies, I predicted
that his parents would scold me for waking
their “little
baby”, of which they have two. “Shhh!” Dorry said,
awakened from
her husband’s chest. “Let everyone sleep and
go back to bed!”
said Mr. Ryan. I was getting tired of not
sleeping so I
said back, “I can’t sleep on the floor, and your son
won’t share.
I’ll even use one seat only.” Andrew’s parents let
out disappointing
sighs and asked their son to move, but all
they got in return
was a muffled, “no”. Finally my best friend
came to the rescue.
He offered Andrew his three-seat row in
exchange of Andrew’s
four-seat row. With much effort, he
obliged and noisily,
and disappointedly plopped down on the
three-seat row.
I thanked Garrick many time over and finally got
about five hours
of sleep. The next morning everyone awoke to
hear Andrew sprucing
up the morning with an over-done
flatulent. Almost
everyone also had a hard time sleeping
because the incompetent
few actually guessed correctly in
figuring out
that the air conditioning was broken. There we were,
driving through
New Mexico in ninety-degree weather with out
air conditioning.
All throughout the day Andrew was passing
nasty, death
defying gas that suffocated us and seemed to
conquer every
inch of air in the van. Near the end of the day, I
really had to
cut one loose so I did. It was silent, and everyone in
the van thought
is was Andrew—until I started laughing. Bad
mistake Paul,
I thought. Then the truth came out, but I convinced
them that all
the other times it was Andrew. It was terrible. The
trifecta and
the outcast wanted the two couples in the front of the
van to roll down
the windows because it was a lot cooler and a
lot less smelly.
After about two minutes of fresh air, the
incompetence
escalated. They closed the windows. They said
that they were
too cold. I offered to switch places with one of
them so I could
be refreshingly chilly, and they could get hotter,
but they refused
because of their stubborn ways. To silent
myself from the
discomfort and emotional pain from stupefied
people, I slept.
Sleeping is the key to happiness. What can
happen when you’re
sleeping other than practical jokes when
you awake or
bad dreams? I definitely would rather be pumping
an infinite amount
of adrenaline into my blood than to be around
people with the
lack of common sense. I hate it when I can’t
comprehend what
stupid people are thinking, but maybe it’s a
good thing. The
next thing I could tell was that we were pulling
into a driveway
in Texas. I let out a sigh of relief because I was
tired of being
around incompetent males, females with nasally
high-pitched
voices, and Andrew who isn’t punished enough to
make a difference.
I lived through about two days and two nights
of pure hell,
luckily on the way home the van would have air
conditioning,
and less people.
