Could have rabies. Bats don’t typically lay on the ground during the daytime unless they’re sick.

I’m mainly just impressed that there’s an instance called startrek.website…

Back in 1987.

Big family camping trip. Me, my parents, and sister are first to arrive.

My dad faceplants into a tree, breaking his nose and generally fucking up his face because feet.

This is maybe thirty miles from the nearest town, then another fifteen to one with an urgent care type of thing.

My dude didn’t want to go, because “not the first time I’ve been hit in the face by a tree”

He wasn’t joking.

But it sounded like “nob duh fusd tibe ibeen hib in da fabce by a twee” because homie’s grill is busted

I lightly tap the tip of his nose, and his eyes fill up with water, not because he’s crying, but because his eyes are just highly empathic I guess.

Tell him to get in the car, I’ll drive.

He laughs at my then barely 14 year old ass.

My mom ain’t driving on that god damn mountain roads.

I tell my dad for the first time ever to shut up and get in the car.

Instead of my ass being belted, he gets in the car after tossing me the keys.

Five minutes down the mountain, dude is sawing logs.

I poke him. Like, dude, wtf? I don’t know where I’m going, and you could be concussed the way your head bounced off the ground. I say that, minus the wtf part. He grunts and says “there’s only one road down, wake me when we hit pavement. You said you’d drive, now drive.”

My punk ass manhandling a Dodge cargo van down a one lane dirt road in the Appalachians, both terrified and feeling boss as fuck.

Poke him one we hit pavement. He gives directions, goes back to fucking sleep.

Snoring like a drunk chainsaw.

Get to town, poke him again. He looks around, says, “I can’t see shit, my eyes are swollen too much.” I look at him, and he looks like he said no when Mike Tyson offered to ass rape him. Face is busted.

Get directions from him again.

Off we fucking roll! He stays awake for a bit, but then just crosses his arms and leans over to snore more.

Find the fucking urgent care. Wake his ass up after parking.

Get inside, the receptionist shrieks a little, and people come running because pops looks murdered out

Questions are asked, answers given. Dude sleeps through every damn break in activities, and tried to fall asleep in the xray room.

No concussion, just a broken nose and some fractures of the face. Three stitches in his lip, five in his eyebrow.

Eventually, nose gets taped up, he’s given drugs, and we’re sent packing.

“You remember how we got here?”

Yeah, I think.

“Good, wake me up when we get to camp, and start trying to get your papaw on the CB so he doesn’t worry too much.”

My punk ass did just that.

Back up that fucking mountain, halfway in the dark as night fell by the time we were close to the dirt road.

Shitting bricks most of the way.

Dad snores through me backing up to a wide spot to let a small car go by.

Snores through the bumps and bangs of navigating that fucking road in the dark.

Get to camp. Everybody is flipping out despite CB updates. Dad finally wakes up, climbs out of the vehicle, says “when’s dinner?”, still flubbing words like a bill Cosby routine gone wrong.

Pops pops pain pills, sits by the fire and eats a fucking hamburger.

Then fucks off to his tent and snores the night away.

Years later, I ask how the fuck he slept like that. He gives me a goofy look, “I told you the army could teach you some useful skills.”

This from a guy that served on a medical base during the early seventies during vietnam conflict. Sleeping at will was the skill he valued most from that.

Me on my way to hangover town.

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