Deceiving My Parents

Feel bad about lying to my parents, but only because they haven't pissed me off recently.

The day I dropped them off at the airport last week was the beginning of the Snowpocalypse, a storm that, by the way, only dumped a foot of snow instead of the 20 inches some weathermen were expecting.  But it was flurrying with the likelihood of it getting worse as the night wore on.  So my parents, acting like parents, told/ordered me to go straight home after dropping them off.

Of course I didn't.  First of all, with the impending inclement weather there was a chance their flight would be delayed.  If it got to the point where their flight was cancelled I sure as hell didn't want to go all the way down to the airport to pick them up ... especially in that weather!  Of course, the real reason I went to the Megamall instead is because I wanted to go to the Megamall.  Specifically, I wanted to see Up In The Air.  Great movie, by the way.

I kept my phone on.  The only reason they would call is if their flight's delayed, in which case I would feel justified in sticking close to the airport, and to be brutally honest about it -- "See, I knew I should've stuck around!"  But nothing happened, so I assumed they were on their way to Vegas as scheduled.  Ah, alone time.  Shopping, people-watching, Hooters and looking at titties.  And I turned my phone off.

First sign of trouble actually was the second time I went out to the skyway to the parking lot to check the weather.  The first time I looked it still seemed OK; the second time, uh, worse.  But I wanted my wings and titties, so I went to Hooters.

I use my phone nowadays to calculate the tip.  I remember once when I was the Hard Rock Cafe and I personally told the bartender who waited for me the change I wanted from my bill; with the rest she could keep as change, she went from a look of professionalism to outright disgust.  I then thought I may have computed the tip wrong, and I did.  So now I use the phone to make sure.  And when I did just before I started all-you-can-eat wings at Hooters, I discovered that I had voicemail.

And it was Grandmother.  Twice.  She told me in both messages that Father called home to ask me how I was doing.  No he fucking didn't!!!  She told him he went out.  Oh, great.

So I had to finish up my wings, look at enough titty to sate me for the night and hurry out to the car, thinking up an excuse along the way.  OK, I thought to myself, the traffic was so bad I was diverted to another mall on the other side of the city, and so I said to hell with it and wait.  I went back out when there was less traffic and got home around dinnertime.  But the weather wasn't bad, so when I forgot that I needed to buy a Christmas card for a friend, I decided to go out, and then I decided to hang with a friend.

I actually called my Parents while driving on the road, which was slicker and a lot more dangerous now that the snow was really falling.  I needed to nip this in the bud now, so I called, got my Mother on my Father's phone for some reason, and told her I was driving home.  No, Mother, the roads aren't slippery, but I'm still taking it slow, just in case.  It's not bad, honest!

I thought that would placate them, but no!  For some fucking reason, My Fucking Father told My Mother to tell me to call him back as soon as I found out what the forecast for the next few days would be.  He probably thought I was closer to him than I truly was, but I gave them that impression.  So I decided to just fucking lie to them about the forecast; a little before I got home, I told them that the weather was going to turn worse overnight.  After I was done with the call, I was very close to home.

It took me a good 10 or 15 minutes to park my car on the driveway and scrape all the snow and ice off of it.  When I finally got done and pulling it into the garage (a hard task in and of itself because the driveway started to ice over) I saw that someone left me a voicemail.  Oh shit, is it my fucking parents again?

It was my Grandmother; five minutes ago my mom called home to ask about me, again.  Didn't think they were going to do that, so I didn't have any plan to tell Grandmother, so she lied the best she could and said I still wasn't home.  I was fully expecting them to fucking blow up on me for intimating I was home when I wasn't.  Luckily, it wasn't about that.  Mother asked me for something else, I don't remember, but she didn't ask me any questions about my whereabouts beyond what I had told her.

And since getting back, they still haven't asked.  They don't know the full story about where I went and about how I basically disobeyed them.

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The weekend was very icy.  That goddamn Christmas shower we had kept the snowfall totals down, thankfully, but it created the ice that led to all that rocky shit at the bottom of the driveway starting on Saturday.  Moreover, there was a lot of ice that stuck to my parents' minivan over the weekend.

It got so bad that, apparently, one of the side doors would not fully close.  I suspected this driving it from my parents' store to home; whenever I'd make a turn the lights in the back would turn on, only to turn off once I straightened out.  It got worse when I started to drive to the airport; when I started the car the lights in the back would not turn off.  At first I thought it was just the car -- it's a beat-up work van and my parents are letting a lot of things go on it -- but tugging at the driver's side side door would turn off the "open door" light on the dashboard and the lights in the car.  Ah, so it had to be the door!  I'm driving with a door ajar!!  How fun!!!

Well, it wouldn't be, if this is not something my parents had let go and, in fact, is something that is fucked up.  While driving I started to panic about them flying in in a good mood because I gave Father some right football picks for a change, and then they'd get pissed off at me because this door light on the dash has been on the whole time -- "That's danger!  Do something!!  What's a matter with you?!?!?!"

But then I turned on the defrost at full blast.  I didn't think it'd generate enough heat to go beyond the windshield and begin to melt the ice to the side of the car, but it appears to have done that, because when I finally got to the airport I tugged at the door from the inside and heard something lurch.  And when I got out and pulled the handle, unlike previous attempts, it opened pretty much immediately.  Phew!  Now I won't have to answer questions about how I could drive the car with a door open.

And they never have to know.