Besides have clothing issues I took care of myself pretty well in my younger days. My family back then consisted of my dad, mom, sister, and myself. This was before my brother was born and before our house started having a weird smell. (I’m positive the two events are somehow related). I have always been pretty lucky when it comes to my family. I’m thankful that I wasn’t born to a family of crack heads, or one of twenty children living in a trailer park in West Virginia. Though I love my family there have been certain events that have made me question just how much they love me. An example would be one day, when I was a wee toddler. I waddled over to my loving father in the kitchen. He decided to tell me that the brown stuff on the cooking tray was chocolate when it turned out it was not chocolate but very old barbecue sauce from the night before mixed with dirt from the counter; delicious.

Back in those days my family enjoyed taking outings. We would all go out to a store together or maybe share a meal at a restaurant. Even a trip to the gas station might turn into an outing. It is within this particular outing where one might find humor in my misery.

This trip was to the wonderful superstore known as Target. I have always wondered to myself if enemy terrorists were flying over the country from very high up in the sky wouldn’t Target stores be the easiest to bomb? I mean with the sign and everything it seems like they are just asking for it. Maybe they should have just picked a better name.

The day was beautiful and the sun was shining. My father had decided that we needed to spend some cash on some new plates and utensils and such. We all piled into the car, a trifling, dark green Ford Focus (The car was so ugly that I remember looking it up on the internet and discovering that on a list of the Top Ten Cars that are least likely to be stolen it was number one) and we were now embarking on another wonderful family adventure.

Most of what happened that afternoon is pretty hard to remember because it was quite a while ago but my sister has filled me in on most of the details. Apparently we arrived at the store and all went our separate ways. My parents stormed off to go get the items that we were actually there for, meanwhile I waddled over to where my domain was: the video game aisles(I did a lot of waddling in those days). I have loved video games for basically all of my life. I am not, however, one of those poor fools who sit and play those virtual games for hours and hours until they drop dead. I’m more of a casual gamer (wow, that actually still sounds kind of pathetic).

It’s amazing how real looking video games are becoming. Sooner or later they will be so real that I can even see them coming out with a skateboarding game advertising “the most realistic game play ever”. The funny thing is, you will buy the game and all they give you is a skateboard. Is that real or what?

So, back to the story. As I gazed at heaven, which was the game aisle, my parents found their purchase, rounded up my sister, and went to checkout. They had plenty of opportunity to say: “Caroline go get your brother and tell him that we are about to leave”, and my sister would come and scoop me up and we would leave and it would be just another family outing. Ha, that would have been fantastic. Instead, they bought the items, went to the car, and rolled out without a care in the world.

As my sister tells it, they got all the way back home before one of my loving parents said, “Where’s the fat one?” Ok, they didn’t actually say that but for the purpose of the story and to make you feel more sorry for me let’s just say they did. So they hurried back into the crap-mobile and found me laying down reading one of the game magazines just happy as can be. I’m sure they all had a laugh about it later when they got home and the story would be told later at family gatherings and whenever I had friends over. But I still don’t find it very funny and it could have easily ended badly with some psycho kidnapping me and taking me halfway across the globe and putting me into child labor camps in which I would eventually die from withdrawal from my Chips Ahoy and Reeces Peanut Butter Cup diet. And one night when the family would sit around the dinner table for a nice meal of Chicken and Mashed Potatoes and assorted vegetables one of my parents would look at the other and then at my sister and say, “Hey, where’s that other kid?”