The Backroads: Fearless and a little insane
By Sean Hart
Sunday, May 10, 2009 1:23 AM PDT
Fearless — bordering insanity. That’s my mother, at least at times.
I remember an instance, on a family trip to the coast years ago, when she swam out into a rip current in the ocean to rescue some poor kid who was being swept out to sea.
Of course, she was a lifeguard for years, so maybe that’s not insane. Still, as a pretty good swimmer who spent years at the pool as a child, I think I’d just stay ashore and yell at the idiot to swim diagonally back to land.
But I guess that’s why I’m not fearless. Nor a lifeguard ... nor a mother.
In her latest crazy escapade, my mother stared the dirty swine flu in the face and, apparently, escaped unscathed.
She had flown to Arizona to retrieve my grandmother’s car — a newer soft-top Mustang — after her winter excursion. I know, a tough job, huh?
While there, though, my mom decided to do what airlines and most sane people have, or at least had, stopped doing: She took a trip across the border into our southern-neighboring country.
Why anyone in their right mind would travel to the source of a deadly pandemic virus, I don’t know. But I didn’t say she was in her right mind. I said she was insane, at least borderline.
What she was doing there, I don’t know either. Taking food to impoverished children of flu victims? Single-handedly fighting the drug cartels? Smuggling me back some Cuban cigars?
Well, I didn’t get any cigars, but, otherwise, I guess we’ll never know what she was doing. She made it back, though.
Of course, she brought with her something that made her sick — food poisoning, she called it.
I called it, “Well, don’t think you’re going to come stay at my house, even though I’m renting it from you. I have a quarantine to maintain.”
Well ... she did anyway.
And I’m still alive. And she went back to work in Eugene quickly after her night’s stay in Vale and said she never had the swine flu. And I lost a $10 bet to my roommate that she did.
But I guess the moral of the story is: If you’re ever caught in a rip tide, swim diagonally to shore.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Sean Hart is the lifestyle editor for the Argus Observer. He can be contacted at SeanH@argusobserver.com.
To all you downers wrote on May 24, 2009 7:29 PM: