we went on this insane little trip when i was like 13 years old. and by little i mean of course 3000+ miles in a van from the west coast to the east. my parents hate to fly. they live in mortal fear. still to this day. but they love to travel. so summer vacations found us packed like sardines in a motorhome or station wagon on a roadtrip from hell. we blazed a mighty path across the nation leaving a trail of license plate games and petty arguments in our wake.

so this trip when i was 13. we were going home from seattle to south carolina to visit extended family. and this old van we were driving was towing a travel trailer. it was some kind of fun. we were in sturgis, south dakota when this indian, or native american or whatever floats your gravy boat came at me. i realize that sounds like a hunter s. thompson novel: we were somewhere around barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

but that’s not how it was. this was years before i discovered drugs.

my parents decided to stock up on groceries at the safeway in sturgis and this was during sturgis. sturgis the event. you know, where all the motorcycle guys come out riding their cute little bicycles? and they were everywhere. mom and dad parked way out in the outer limits of the parking lot because this 300 ft van and 1200 ft travel trailer took up too much room for a compact parking space. but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

so, my brother and i are waiting outside in the van because, you know, that’s safe during a huge motorcycle rally. i don’t know. maybe we got into an argument or something. maybe i just wanted to stretch my legs. maybe i was a troublemaker even then and was just asking for it. but for whatever reason i got out of the van to walk around. and here comes this guy. the tallest indian i’ve ever seen. he’d been laying in the grass near the parking lot. i thought he was dead before. which didn’t alarm me. not until he got up and started walking. toward me. and i watched with my mouth open like the stupid little girl i was. am. whatever. he’s stumbling around, can’t walk straight. then i woke up. i realized too late he was coming right at me and by then it’s too late to turn and get back in the van. if i try to open the door he’ll grab me. so i run around it. and he chases me. we just go around. and around. and my brother? he climbs out of the sunroof and starts jumping up and down on the roof. “run, kimberley! run!” that’s extremely helpful. i must say. but does he open the door so i can jump inside on my next go around? no. do i have the common sense god gave a doorknob to stop running around the retarded van to run toward the store? no. i just go on running around in circles, feeling him ambling along behind me; reaching out occasionally, trying to find purchase on my shirt or hair. he’s muttering something. telling me to stop. i’m screaming at my brother to open the door.

then i see my mom. she’s coming our way with a bag of groceries in her arms. she sees what’s happening and drops the bag. runs. sprints across the parking lot. she’s short, my mom. in comparison to this man. she runs right up to him and with both hands pushes him backwards. he falls against the side of the van in his presumably drunken and/or high state and says, “i know her!” which, you know, made perfect sense to us all. my mom is freaked. she’s screaming at this guy to just get away and he’s muttering with slurred speech, “i just want to borrow her for awhile.” my mom is now on terror code alert orange. she’s shrieking like a freaking banshee and i’m hiding behind her shirt watching her push this guy around. “uh mom, you shouldn’t push him.”

and he finally walks away. he just gives up and goes. back to the grass to lay down. he was exhausted, i guess. mom races back to get the groceries and literally forces us back in the van. she swears us to secrecy and sits there waiting for dad to finish paying.

we didn’t start laughing until we were about 20 miles outside of sturgis. we made it that long. then the three of us nearly peed our pants in hysterical laughter. my dad was pissed. he was so angry that we didn’t tell him he wouldn’t speak to us for another hundred miles or so. but we knew. he would have killed the guy. we would have been writing “how i spent my summer vacation bailing my father out of a south dakota jail” in the fall. it was handled. there was no point in telling him. besides the dents in the roof, no one would ever have known it had even happened.

dude. safeway is a crazy mad grocery store.