Ship Island

            If I am correct, there should be about three versions of this story floating around. Mine will be from the driver’s  perspective. I will give the version of the story from car number one, which included Claire, Lisa, Sagan, Claire’s friend from MC, Kaleb, and Jason Gault. Car number two included Mary Jane, Robert, Jessica Gibson-Adams, and her at-the-time-boyfriend, Stuart.

            The night before, Sagan stayed at my house, because we all knew she would never have gotten up on her own. I could not sleep. Sag made weird noises in her sleep, and kept claiming that there was a bug in the bed. Simply not true. Anyway, I got her up at around 4:45 a.m. because she is hard to get up. I had told Claire I’d be at her house at 5:30. After getting a call from Jason saying he ran out of gas, Sag and I went to pick him up. He’d pushed his car “over a mile” to a daycare. We left from there to get Claire. I pull up in the driveway and off we head to our third destination of the morning, and general meeting place, Lisa’s.

            All is well at Hedges’ residence, though Stuart is late. Probably looking for his insulin. We pack up and I end up driving Lisa’s mom’s car. We set Garmin to Biloxi. Everything is good. We end up having to pick up Claire’s friend in Hattiesburg.
Approximate driving distance to Hattiesburg: 1 hour
Place: McDonald’s.

Here is the conversation that ensued as we waited on Kaleb:

7:27 – Erin:  “Is he on the way?”
            Claire: “Yep. Just called.”

7:28 – MJ :(from the other car) “WHERE IS KALEB?! WE ARE GOING TO MISS THE FERRY!”
            Erin: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

7:30 – The same conversation happens
7:31 – The same conversation happens

7:35 – Erin: MARY JANE. I WILL TELL YOU INFO AS SOON AS I GET IT!!!!!!
            MJ:  Stop being a bitch Erin. [Everyone in Erin’s car nods in agreement behind my                                    back.]

7:45 – Kaleb pulls up, I scream at him to jump in the car.

7:45 - everyone  now  hates  me.

            We leave Hattiesburg and I floor it. We have a boat to catch. On we drive. Somehow, because we do not pay attention to Garmin, we end up taking a wrong turn. Earlier I had complained to Robert that he was driving too fast and that “I was not driving 100 miles an hour to keep up with his hind end.” In reality it was a little more colorful. Now it was my turn to play NASCAR. We were on some highway. Meaning not on I-49, meaning, not on the right road. I thought we were gonna die, get a ticket, or worse case scenario, miss the boat. Steam is  shooting out of my ears. Lisa is in the passenger’s seat, reduced to singing me lullabies in order to soothe me. I want to kill kittens. To save a lot of ranting, we ended up back on I-49 and our ETA according to Garmin is 9:05. More speeding. I set the cruise on 90. Civil disobedience is fun. Ask Rosa Parks. Soon we realize we are headed to the wrong end of the coast. GREAT. This, however, turns out to be a blessing in disguise. It shaves 15 minutes off our trip. We should get there in time.

     We pull up in the parking lot. I consider buying a pack of  cigarettes, but refrain. I jump out of the car, get spread eagle on the ground and kiss the land under my face. I hate driving. I am nervous.. I feel like I need to scream.  Instead, we go to the dock and get our tickets about 2 seconds before the boat whistle blows.

            An hour later the boat docked and we got off and set up camp. It was sunny. I had sand between my toes. Everything is right. Sort of. Everyone lays out a while and then we finally make our way into the water.  

            At this point in the day, everyone notices that I somehow forgot to put the cups back into my bathing suit top. Mary Jane announces this to everyone. I thank her for pointing out my nipples. To the entire island. I find it prudent here to say that no one has pointed out, until now, that I have been walking around for several hours with smut black makeup all over my face. A big thank you to my Mary-Kay consultant, for selling me non-smudging-except-at-the-beach-when-you-need-to-look-your-hottest make up. Mmmmm.  I decide to take a break from my fellow humans and do what I do best. Eat. I walked back to our little camp to find three things:

            1. Someone ate all my sandwiches.

            2. Someone drank my mt. dew

            3. Sand now covered EVERYTHING I brought with me. (I know, it’s the beach. Go figure)

At around 1:30 we head back to the boat. Once on deck we lead a rousing chorus of Santeria and then other various Beatles songs. Not many people join in. We are displeased. Back on land we say how fun it was and all that jazz. I am not looking forward to getting behind the wheel again. We get 5 minutes down the road. Jessica calls. MJ’s car won’t start. Fabulous. We turn around. I get out in a parking lot in my bathing suit to put on more clothes. Little do I realize that I am in front of a huge window. People inside think I am in underwear. Yay. We end up not turning around. We stop in Hattiesburg for ice cream and to drop Kaleb off. We park outside of a Chuck E. Cheese at the mall and act creepy. A guy at the window keeps an eye on us. We obviously look like child molesters. While Claire and Kaleb run into Forever21, we get hungry and drive through Burger king.  This hilarious event has now come to be known as the "ketchupmayopickles only" story. I won’t tell you about it all, because, lucky you, I have a video. The short version is Sagan got 11 pickles on a burger she didn’t ever order. And got charged $11.

   

            We make it back to McComb, safe. Everything has returned to a state of acceptable state of calm. Sag, Jason and I drop Claire off and head to get Jason’s car. We drop him off


About ten minutes later, we remember: He didn’t have any gas…………