365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

50. Just Say No

50. Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.

A/N: So apparently I've been kind of depressing lately with these updates, so here's something different. Hem hem, SheaBaby1.

Absolutely Not

Pensacola Beach, Florida is one of oue favorite vacation places, along with Disney World and the mountains to go skiing. It's a beautiful place: white sands and clear waters. It's the kind of place that, when you look back on, represents your childhood. Also, it was home to the Blue Angels, the most amazing flight team. My grandaddy was a pilot, and he still gets excited about planes.

Unfortunately, from where I live, Pensacola is a twelve hour journey. The condo we rent down there doesn't include anything but furniture, so all of the essentials are up to us to bring. You can't exactly bring Charmin Ultra and inner tubes on an airplane with you, so we drive to Florida.

Twelve hours. In a car. For twelve hours.

You know when you sit in one position for too long and your butt starts to get all tingly? I experienced this when I was trying to get my neice to sleep and had to stay still while I was rocking her. I called this sensation "Butt burning." On that twelve hour drive, butts were a-burning!

We had to take several cars, as it was my grandaddy, Granny, parents, brothers, brothers' families, and brothers' friends going. And our dog, Lucy.

Mom has severe car sickness, so she always had to drive. Have any of you ever rode Mission: Space at Disney World? It's a somewhat claustrophobic space training simulator. She just about died on that ride. I'm not sure if the Disney employees outside our simulator capsule could hear her pounding on the doorway and screaming, but if they could, they didn't let her out until the ride ended.

Apparently someone died on that ride once. Mom says she now knows why. But he was an old man and he went on the extreme version of the ride. She had two little children and was on the mild version. Hm.

Anyway, Mom drove and Granny sat in the passenger seat. My brother, Zachary, and his best friend, Hunter, sat in the middle seats.

Hunter is pretty much the bane of my existence. I've known him for years and we've never gotten along. It's a love-hate relationship. Actually, no, it's a hate-hate relationship. Hunter is one of those perpetually loud human beings whose sole purpose is to talk with no objective in mind.

Mom keeps saying we'll probably end up married because we hate each other so much now. That sounds like a YA novel, and I am a sucker for those things, but having experienced it firsthand, I can truthfully say that those stories are the most unrealistic stories to ever be written.

So with the car so full, where did I sit?

I sat in the back, with the dog.

I was the only one small enough to fit in the tiny excuse for a seat that was the back. Hunter was small, but he was a guest. Zachary was 6'5" and claustrophobic. Thankfully, I did sit behind Hunter's seat. Due to his size, Zachary had to scoot his chair back halfway into the person behind's him room. Even I couldn't stand that.

When you have two teenage boys who happen to fuel each other's irritating habits on a twelve hour car ride, they're going to be annoying. Especially to me.

Zachary does this wierd thing where he wants people to smell parts of his body not meant to be smelt. Like, his feet. And his armpits. And behind his ears. I'm not sure what he aims to accomplish with subjecting other people's noses to torture, other than a general inclination to be a pain in the rear end.

So I'm sitting in the back, trying to entertain myself with Hamlet, and my darling brother decides that I need to be bothered. I am far too comfortable, and so I must be disturbed.

Just as I'm getting to Ophelia's madness ("When sorrows come, they come not single spies, / But in battalions") Zachary maneuvers his foot between his and Hunter's seats and pushes my book aside. It's funny how he's only able to perform these impressive feats of gymnastic achievement when it serves his purpose.

"Smell it!" he said.

"No!" I attempt to shove his large foot away. It's size 15, and having that in your face is not a pleasant sight.

"Smell it! For real, smell it."

I start to viciously attack the foot with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Volume III, edited by David Bevington with forewords by Joseph Papp. Silently, I apologize to the brilliant playwright for what I am driven to do with the products of his genius. He surely did not forsee his plays being used by a fifteen-year-old girl (as I was at the time) to whack an abnormally large foot with a dog beside her, barking loudly at the action and another teenage boy laughing hysterically.

"What's going on back there?" Mom asked, giving us a look in the mirror that clearly said You are in front of your granny and if you show my mother-in-law that I have raised heathens you will be forced to eat the giant liverwurst sandwich when we go to eat McGuire's.

McGuire's Irish Pub was an eclectic restaurant with exorbitant prices, even bigger portions, and a moose head topped with a leprechaun hat the supposedly bestowed good luck on whoever kissed his nose. You find a lot of odd places in Florida.

"His foot--" Whack! "--is in--" Bam! "--my face!"

"Ow! Mom, she's hitting me!"

""Hannah, stop hitting your brother!" Mom said.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me. I smack the offensive foot one last time, he yelps, and I say angrily, "His foot is in my face!"

"Zachary, get your foot outside of Hannah's face," Mom said wearily.

Granny tries to look back at us with a little laugh, like she found us amusing little children. Like I was not dying from asphyxiation because I had refused to breath in the odors of his stinky foot.

It took much grunting and much laughter, but Zachary removed his foot. I glared at him, giving him what has been termed my "Evil Chinese look." It's a bit of a cross between "I want to kill you" and "I want to heap a pile of geckos upon you."

Then, because this is what I have to deal with, Zachary said, grinning, "Sorry, Hannah."

"Hannah, Zachary said sorry," Mom prompted when I continued my death glare.

"Yeah, well, he stuck his bloody foot in my personal space," I mouthed off. Then, because Shakespeare's lovely language was still in my mind, I exclaimed, "Thou art like a toad, ugly and venemous!"