In the dark of the night… Just kidding. It was morning. My three young children and I were driving home from my mothers house who lives in Utah and we lived in California at the time. I was overwhelmed with the drive and the bickering of my daughters. Did I have snacks just in case they get hungry? Yes. Did I have our favorite music CD’s? Yes. Did I provide them all with a full reusable water bottle? Yes. All the same questions I asked myself before we started the long trek back home.
We had been traveling all day, but as we got past Las Vegas and the temperatures heated up fast and my full size van started shutting down on me. We could drive about an hour, then we would have to stop and let the engine cool down. This made the trip twice as long, super hot with temperatures in Baker that had reached 117° that day. I’m so glad we had portable fans to help keep us cool, but it was still so very miserable. Anyone that has traveled through Baker, CA in July can totally understand what I'm talking about.
The day was almost over and I was ready to be home and sleep for a week. However, there was still a few hours left of driving left and my butt muscles were killing me. I was flexing my muscles hoping to make sure my butt didn’t fall asleep and wishing my daughter's music CD would break because we’ve been listening to it over and over and over. We were on the road now for hours and hours and I was anxious to get the kids home and to bed, so I shower and sleep.
We were only a few blocks away, I started to see the end of this long arduous trip then suddenly I felt the van jolt, and heard the pop. Sounded like gun fire. My tire flattened. Great another thing to stress me out. My children were all asleep and I didn’t want to wake them, so I pulled out my Fix-A-Flat and sprayed it in. That only worked for about a block, my van is so big and heavy that it went flat again pretty fast. I didn’t care anymore, we had been on the road for a day and ½ and when I glanced at my travel watch, it was 11:55 pm. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so drove slowly home, hoping that driving on the rim wouldn't cause too much damage and since we were only a block away I decided to take the chance.
When we arrived I jumped out and took a look. The tire was shredded, it looked like a wild animal tore it to pieces. Suddenly I had a funny thought and decided to play a practical joke on my daughters. However, they were all asleep, so I decided to do it in the morning.
The next morning I asked the kids if they remembered what happened last night. They looked at me confused and asked what.
“We were attacked by a werewolf last night”, I exclaimed, “You didn’t hear the growling?”.
Their little eyes bugged out and fear swept across their faces. They all started asking questions about what happened.
With a lot of vigor, throwing my hands up into the air, I excitedly expressed, “The werewolf chased us down the road, he grabbed our back tire and ripped it up, but I was able to speed up and we were able to escape, but we almost died!”
Then I ran them out front, frantic to show them the tire. They were shocked to see that it was shredded just like I said and they looked at me with total belief in their eyes, that werewolves really exist.
Then suddenly I jumped and screamed, acted as if the werewolf had returned and they all started screaming as well. In a panic we instinctively ran back into the house giggling and screaming as we went. We laughed for hours afterwards and I was the mom hero of the day. Of course, now that we are all adults, they find it funny and plan a similar joke on their own kids.
