It is no secret that I was a wild and rebellious teenager, one needs to look no further than the two devil-spawn children that were born to me to know that they are 100% punishment for my ways. One particular night during my high school years there happened to be a hurricane scheduled to hit the coast of Virginia, but hurricane warnings are an every other week occurrence in Virginia, so that was NOT going to spoil my plans of drinking myself into an early grave. I managed to get my parents to agree to allow me to go to my friend Kathryn’s house, but that was it, I was to “go nowhere else in the car and be home by 11:00” because the eye of the storm was supposed to hit us at around midnight, and as you know, you are perfectly safe in hurricane conditions up until an hour before the eye hits.

I did leave my house in my cool-as-can-be cherry red Nissan Sentra and I did go straight to Kathryn’s house, where I proceeded to pick her up and head straight for the one local gas station that did not ever card anyone, so that we could load up on some Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor and Camel Light cigarettes (all the cool kids smoked and drank, and I always had to be the coolest of them all). Then we headed down to the beach (nothing beats heading right for the coast line in the middle of a hurricane), to a friend of ours house, where we proceeded to get hammered. At about 11:00pm, we decided to hit a store and get a little more beer and stop by another friend’s house real quick, which is where we hung out till about 12:30am, when we noticed the weather was getting really bad, we were really drunk, and we were out way later that we were supposed to be, which wasn’t too big a deal, since my parents go to bed at like 9:30 and I always sneak in the back door - they never know the difference.

We got up and got ready to go, and I could not find my keys anywhere (try not to focus too long on the fact that I was getting ready to drive drunk, as I was once the best drunk driver in Virginia Beach - a fact that now as a mother I am NOT proud of). Somebody in the room finally suggested that I check to see if I left them in the car, to which I replied, “Umm, I never do that, but I will check!” - Well, not only were they still in the car, but the car was still running, with the AC going and the radio blaring and of course (since we are talking about my luck here) the car was locked. This was a sticky situation, because (1) we were in the middle of the eye of a Hurricane, (2) we were really really drunk and (3) I would have to call my dad to bring me a spare key if we could not break into the car with a hangar, alerting him to the fact that I was not home at 11:00, and that I was not at Kathryn’s house - safe, dry and sober.

Well of course we could not break into the car. The winds were at a thousand miles an hour and Mickey’s was oozing from our pores, so I had to suck it up and call my dad. My dad (captain/pilot in the navy w/ like four masters degrees) told me in a nutshell that I was a complete and total idiot, that he had no clue how I was even related to him and that he most certainly WOULD NOT come out in a Hurricane to bring me a key - for me to “figure it out and he hoped I didn’t die in the process.” So I did the only thing left I could do, I got our big Samoan friend Jo-Jo to wrap his hand in a t-shirt and punch in my window. This plan worked flawlessly and we were on our way - our now cold, wet, wind-blown way. We had to drive fifteen minutes with hurricane conditions on the inside of my car, since we were now windowless. Words cannot describe the anger that steamed from my father the next morning, as he woke up and saw my car in the driveway with no window, full of glass and tree branches.  But I did what he said… I figured it out all by myself and was happily sleeping off my hangover in the comfort of my warm cozy bed.