i'm in hell

By Monty Phan
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 23, 1996


Arizona Daily Wildcat

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When my brother hit my car while backing up my parents' van a few weeks ago, my mom yelled at him. She immediately felt bad, however, because of his reaction.

"He said, 'Oh, great, I'm already having a bad week. Monty's going to kill me!'" my mom said. That made me feel bad, too, but not as bad as what my mom told me next.

"He's afraid you're going to put him in your column," she said to me.

So this is what it has come down to. To be mentioned in my column is to suffer "i'm in hell" damnation.

Case in point: Last weekend, I went with my family to Southern California for my cousin's wedding. As we ate breakfast Sunday morning, we recapped the hilarious hijinks involving my family over the prior few days - and, as usual, there were plenty. A good deal of them involved my mom.

"So, are you going to write your column about what happened this weekend?" my sister asked me, looking directly at my mom.

Looking directly at me, my mom said, "If I see my name or the word 'mom' in your column, you're dead meat."

That said, from now on my mother will simply be referred to as "Mrs. X." And yes, I am going to write about this weekend.

The fun began when we got off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport. Like lemmings, we mindlessly followed my all-knowing father around, looking for the rental car place. Even though I had never seen a rental car place at LAX, I followed my dad. Even though I counted about 20 buses go by, emblazoned with a rental car logo on the side and followed by the word "shuttle," I followed my dad.

This got us exactly nowhere.

For some reason, we ended up in an elevator. I think my dad may actually have been surprised to find there was no button labeled, "Automatic transport to secret underground rental car place." We rode up the elevator to the third floor € nope, no rental car places there - then to the second for good measure, and finally back down to the first.

After the quick sightseeing trip ended, some women waiting for the elevator recognized us, their powers of recall obviously a strength of theirs since we just saw them two minutes before. When they asked us what we were looking for, they missed me mouth "Kill me" to them, because they were too busy pointing us to the island outside and the huge sign which read, "RENTAL CAR SHUTTLES."

While we waited outside for the Avis shuttle, the buses for every other rental car company in a 50-mile radius passed us at least three times. Finally, our bus came into view. No sooner than the words "there it is" left my mouth than Mrs. X went running. Not five minutes earlier, she had been lugging her suitcase as if it were filled with lead; but at the sight of that bus, she was transformed into Emmitt Smith, tucking the suitcase under her arm and stiff-arming people while yelling, "Here! Here!"

The bus driver, now standing outside the bus, just stared at her. But even if he were still inside, the only way this shuttle was moving was if it levitated and zoomed off - in other words, if my life suddenly transformed into an episode of "The Jetsons."

And that was just Friday. The rest of the weekend was too painful to recount, which is too bad, because my sister really screwed up on Saturday. She'll get her turn.

Monty Phan is Editor in Chief of the Arizona Daily Wildcat. His column appears every other Friday.

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