Louise and I had decided to drive to England for a vacation.
We were driving a car and only needed to cross over the border into England. When we reached the border, I wondered when I would need to start driving on the left side of the road rather than the right. I had never driven on the left and was a little apprehensive about doing so.
We reached the customs office. Louise was sitting on the passenger side of the front seat and I was driving. She rolled down her window and gave the man there $20 for the customs fee. He gave her back some money. I wanted to know how much it cost to get in and when I asked the man, he gave Louise back some more money. It was as if he had been trying to keep some of the money until asked the exact price.
I looked at the money he had given her; a bunch of change consisting of both British and American coins was mixed in. Noticing an American silver quarter, I pointed out to Louise that it was a worn, Washington, silver quarter. I also began looking at some buffalo nickels. I counted four, some in almost perfect condition. One had the date 1940 stamped on it and a D on the back.
I almost asked the customs man to give us another dollar's worth of change, but I didn't. I asked him how much it cost to enter.
He began to explain that he had also given us some money for insurance. He explained that when they had checked the car, they had shaken up a cassette player in the car and thought they might have damaged it. So he had paid us 75 cents for damage to the cassette player. He was unsure if the cassette player had actually been damaged and said it still played well.
We drove on in. After driving the car to an airport and parking, we decided to fly to Mexico. I decided we would stay in Mexico for about six days. I thought it would be a nice vacation for Louise and thought it would please her.
We walked into the airport and bought the tickets. I gave the tickets to Louise and told her to go on to the plane, because I had a pop bottle which I needed to return first.
In the meantime she had become angry with me about something. She went on to the plane and I took the pop bottle over to a machine to try to get my deposit money back for it, but I was unable to get the money back there. I needed to take the bottle somewhere else, but time was running out. The plane was supposed to leave at 1 o'clock and it was already a couple minutes before one.
When I walked up to a counter to return the bottle, I saw I had unscrewed the top of the pop bottle from the bottom of the pop bottle. It took several minutes to put it back together. I finally got my money back: 8 cents.
The clock said 1:05; I was afraid I had missed my plane. I began running toward the boarding dock and began thinking how stupid I had been worrying about getting my money back for the pop bottle. I should have just left it there without worrying about it.
I came to a gate which I couldn't pass. Someone motioned me toward a hole in the gate and I ran through it. I ran toward the plane, which was still there. Other people were still boarding. I hoped Louise was already on the plane waiting for me and that she had saved me a seat. I also hoped she wouldn't be angry during the entire trip. Perhaps if I gave her some spending money it would appease her and she wouldn't be angry all the time.
Copyright 2003 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
