The first official day of summer vacation would be spent rearranging boxes at my mom’s job, where I occasionally help out. As we entered the oddly orange colored doors of the small retail shop, her phone rang. Of course, she answered it.

“Do you want to go to Florida, like, today?” My mom enthusiastically asked after she had hung up the phone with her best friend, Kara.

“Are you serious?” I questioned. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to Florida, but it was completely thought up out of the blue. Plus, a large portion of my shorts were dirty and there was no way I was going to wear dreadfully thick blue jeans that I’d roast in to Florida.

“Yes, I’m serious. One of the women who gets her hair cut by Kara is letting her stay in her vacation home in Florida for a week and she invited us to go."

"Really!?" I was still stunned at the fact that we were getting an opportunity to load up and go to Florida. Just earlier that morning, hopes of a vacation out of state was looking bleak.

She nodded her head to confirm once again that we were going to Florida as she started dialing her boss’s number. She asked if a vacation would be okay and thankfully it was. The only catch would be that she had to stay at the store until her boss could arrive to take over.

For me, I wouldn’t have to suffer through another hour of moving boxes from shelf to shelf. Kara would act as the equivalent of a fairy godmother to save me from what seemed to be unbearable in order to get a head start on packing.

Once at home, I began to stuff everything that would be appropriate for the Florida heat and hurriedly stuffed it into a bag. It wasn’t long until my mom was home and began to do the same thing. It was like our house was hit by a tornado. Clothes scattered the floor along with boots and other shoes. We snatched up blankets and pillows off of our beds, in order to make the drive more comfortable if one of us had an urge to take a nap.

I may or may not have used Kara’s son Landon and his friend Hector to my advantage when it came to putting my bags into the trunk of the car. Some people would look at this as enforcing some form of child labor, but I see it as Landon paying me back for all the times I went downstairs to get him a pop and he was just too lazy to put down his playstation controller to get it himself.

Two hours and a packed car later, we began the lengthy eighteen hour trip to Bonita Springs, Florida with three girls, two boys, and a beaten down Cadillac. However, little did we know what we would be getting ourselves into.

When you are traveling with ten and eleven year old boys you never know what you’re going to hear from their backseat conversations, especially when they have been exposed to Vine.

“First, let me hop off the mower in the lawn. I don’t want to cut the grass no’ more.” Hector and Landon sang together in unision.

I glanced over at them with an odd questioning expression on my face, “What are you singing?” I asked as I was generally curious.

“It’s from Vine,” Landon retorted as if I had no earthly clue to what Vine is.

It wasn’t long until their conversations returned to discussing who truly is the best NFL team,  admiring Stephen Curry’s most recent off-the-chain slam dunk, or the latest inappropriate joke that was the center of a

Filling up the car with gas turned into more of a feat than what it should have been. For disclosure, my mom and I knew that Kara’s car had a few problems, but we didn’t know the extent of them. Each time the car was filled up with gas, it would have to also be filled with oil.

The piece attached to the hood of car that held it up was broken off. However, Kara had driven her car long enough to know how to improvise. Under her seat, she kept a shovel handle that would be used to prop the hood up. She also had a few quarts oil and a funnel. After putting in gas, the car acted like it didn’t want to start.

Kara chuckled and said, “You just have to punch it. She doesn’t start unless you give her a little gas.”

I couldn’t but to think that we boarded a ride to Florida in the most ghetto car to ever be manufactured.

To only make matter worse with the car, Kara wasn’t the best driver either. It always seemed like she was swerving off the road or she was busy trying to multitask by putting on her makeup. To demonstrate how bad of a driver Kara is, neither my mom or myself would fall asleep while it was Kara’s turn to drive. Thankfully, it wasn’t long until it was my mom’s turn to drive and a wave of relief washed over me. Until we heard a horrid sound coming from the car.

I was sitting in the front passenger seat while my mom drove. The car begin to make a sound as if the bottom of it bottom of it was dragging the ground and I knew something bad was going to happen at any moment.

“Was that the car?!” I frantically asked. All we needed was another problem concerning this car. Although we weren’t too far from our destination, the rate we were going at, the chances of getting to Florida in one piece seemed slimmed.

“Yes, I just hope there’s nothing wrong with the transmission.” She responded. I knew the same worries were running through her head as we continued our journey.

What seemed like days later, we finally passed a sign that said; Naples 20 miles, Bonita Springs 15. Bonita Springs was so close, yet so far away. As we passed the sign, a huge storm began to roll in. It began to rain so hard that you couldn’t see the road in front of us, the wind was blowing, and Landon didn’t want to listen and sit still as we tried to navigate through the storm. It wasn’t even hurricane season, but in my mind that’s what our journey had came to.

Fortunately, the storm subsided about ten minutes later and allowed us to arrive in Bonita Springs roughly thirty minutes later. Kara directed us towards the house we would be staying in. It happened to be a coincidence that it was on Kentucky Lane in a small neighborhood that was home to many vacation houses.

We pulled into the driveway and began to get our bags out of the car. As we entered the small house, we stunned with tacky shades of yellows and pink accompanied by seashell decor that seemed to be everywhere. It was tacky and gaudy, but it worked. When it comes to decorating in Florida, no color combinations are off limit.

Among checking out the house, Landon found a dead lizard in one of the nightstand drawers. Since he is a ten year old boy, I decided to lock myself in the bathroom so he wouldn’t proceed to chase me with it.

“Let me throw this away in there!” He said as I went into the bathroom.

“No! Landon, I’m in here!” I screamed in reply. Thankfully, Kara redirected him to the trashcan in the kitchen and made him dispose of it in there.

After the lizard fiasco, we all decided that going out to eat was a good idea. We left our bags unpacked and scattered all over the floor, but they would be there all week to become organized.

We went to a restaurant called Perkins, it was a nicer version of Waffle House or iHop. The waiter asked us what we wanted to drink and when he got to Hector, we broke out into a fit of laughter.

“Do you have Ale-8?” He innocently asked and the waiter had a frazzled look on his face.
“Honey, we only have that at home.” Kara laughed, explaining to Hector that Ale-8 was only a indigenous to our area at home.

That’s when I realized that an eighteen hour trip to Florida with three girls, two boys, and a beaten down Cadillac had been the best trip in my life.