After my graduation and commissioning ceremony had finished at Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning, Georgia, in April 1983, I said my final goodbyes to some of my friends that I doubted that I would see for a long time, if ever. Then, I excused myself and slipped into the gymnasium to change out of my dress green uniform into something more comfortable like jeans and a T-shirt. When I was ready, my family and I loaded our belongings into my red Chevy van and we headed out of Fort Benning, hopefully for good this time. Of course, when I left to go to Korea back in 1978, I thought I had left Fort Benning for good that time too. But in the back of my mind, I knew that I would be back. I knew that I was destined to be a student at Benning’s school for boys (a.k.a. OCS). I had always wanted to be a military officer. I just didn’t want to do the West Point thing. Yeah. The Air Force offered me their Academy thing. But they also said I couldn’t fly jets. Well, if you can’t fly jets, there is no point to joining the Air Force because that’s what they do. They fly jets in the Air Force. Zoom! Zoom! Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah. My family and I had just climbed into our red Chevy van and we had driven away from Fort Benning, Georgia. We were headed to Orlando, Florida to visit Walt Disney World. We had previously gone to Disneyland in California. But now that they had opened the Epcot Center in Orlando, we thought we would treat our daughter to a visit to Disney World. Word to the wise, the humidity in Florida starts to get really, really bad in late April and early May. Notice that I said it starts to get really, really bad. But it’s not already there. That is a huge distinction. By late May, the humidity is totally miserable and unbearable. When you couple that with extremely high temperatures. The weather is not very human friendly. That is unless you are inside air-conditioned premises at all times. When you’re visiting amusement parks, unfortunately, you are not inside air-conditioned premises at all times. Word to the wise. The absolute worst time you could visit is in the middle of the summer. Cuz Disney World is not a huge swimming pool. About the only way you can be comfortable in Florida in the middle of the summer outside is if you are in a swimming pool. Notice I didn’t say the ocean. There is a reason I didn’t say the ocean. There are sharks in the ocean. Sharks like to bite people. When sharks bite people, they usually take huge chunks out of people. Ouch! The last time I checked, when sharks bite people, that shit hurts. It hurts a whole lot. Not only that. It bleeds a whole lot. If you don’t get helped double damn quick, you could be in a world of hurt. Swimming in the ocean, not good. Swimming in a swimming pool, good. Get it. Got it. Good. Now, the best time to go to Disney World would be in the winter time. However, I had to go when my schedule presented an opportunity to go. In the middle of April, after graduation from OCS was the best I could work out. Now there is another reason why that time of the year is right on the cusp of being a bad time of the year. That reason is called skeeters. You may know skeeters better as mosquitoes. However, I affectionately like to call mosquitoes, skeeters. Why? Just for shits and grins. No other reason. Now, the further south you drive in Georgia and the later in the day you drive the more concentrated those damn skeeters get. How do I know this? It’s quite simple. Or, as Sherlock Holmes used to say, “Watson, my dear, it’s elementary.” You have to stop about every half hour or so to clean the damn bugs off your windshield because you can’t see through it anymore. The skeeters are that thick on your damn windshield. You scrape the excess shit off with an ice scraper. Then, use windshield washer fluid and a sponge and squeegee to clean the rest off. That whole process takes a wee bit of time to complete. The closer I got to Orlando, the thicker the damn skeeters got. I had this little trick that I learned to keep skeeters from biting me. I put a vitamin B complex stress tab in my shirt pocket and let the sweat from my body dissolve that vitamin. It seems that skeeters hate the smell of the B complex vitamins. There is one B vitamin in particular that they do not like. I learned that little trick from the book Vitamin Bible written by Earl Mindell. But some people have sweet smelling blood that skeeters just love to drink. My wife and daughter are two of those people. They had to shower in bug spray just to keep the bug bites to a minimum. Yes. The minute they walked outside; the kamikaze skeeters started to divebomb them. When you add the misery and discomfort associated with heat and humidity to the itching and pain of Skeeter bites, a trip to an amusement park in Florida in late spring, early summer, or summer can be downright unbearable. Anyway, when we got to Orlando, I pulled onto a frontage road and started down a long line of parking spots. I was looking for a place to park. I was driving rather slowly, about 10 miles an hour. I was just about to pass a little yellow compact car when it started to back out. I don’t think the driver of the little yellow car ever looked back because he crunched his car into the bumper of my van. He caused rather extensive damage to his little yellow car. I got out and looked at my van and there was some yellow paint on the bumper that I would have to rub off with some polishing compound. But other than that, I didn’t have any damage. The idiot that caused the damn accident suffered all the damage. I walked up to him and asked, “What would you like to do about this accident?” The guy looked at me and asked, “Is your car damaged?” “No. It looks like your car suffered all the damage.” “Okay. Well. I think the accident was my fault. So, we’re good. No need to involve the police.” “All right then. I’ll see you later.” I got in my van and drove on. I seriously doubted that I would see him later. I also suspected that the driver of the yellow car might have been high on drugs. Of course, I would never be able to prove that. Finally, I found a parking space. Then, we got in line to enter Epcot Center. We soon forgot about the heat, humidity, and skeeters that had been constantly dogging us while we were en route to Disney World. When we finally entered the world of Mickey and his gang at Epcot Center at Disney World, we forgot all of our troubles and escaped into a world of fun and adventure free from any exercise of futility.
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