Paula Wall's Blog - Posts Tagged "travel"
Postcard from the road: Weiner Girls
“You hungry,” Sweetie asks.
I follow Sweetie’s gaze to a hot-dog truck where a bronzed girl wearing a thong bikini and a smile is beckoning. Let’s just say hot dogs are not the only thing she’s steaming up. They call them “Weiner Girls” down here in Florida and they’re the cause of at least ninety percent of the rear-end collisions in the Sunshine State.
Now, a lot of women wouldn’t like their men buying footlongs from a girl equipped with toasted buns but it's my philosophy that a guy will never fly coach as long as he has a first-class ticket.
Unfortunately, every so often, I have to take my philosophy out of my mouth and put it where I live.
“Look, don’t touch,” I say, pushing him off the hood of the car.
Sweetie and I are propped on top of a rental car, backs against the windshield, waiting for a jet to take off in the dark. When I told Sweetie I wanted this to be a night I’d never forget, this wasn’t exactly the lift off I had in mind.
In Orlando, according to Sweetie, only the bourgeois watch the million-dollar fireworks at Disney. The traveler-in-the-know is mingling with the locals at the end of the airport runway waiting for a plane to start its descent a little too early and grind them all into pâté.
I’m sure the fact that it costs a pot full of gold to get into the Magic Kingdom, while plane watching is a dollar’s worth of gas and two Puffs tissues to wipe the dust off the hood, has nothing to do with it.
Plane watching is the extreme sport for the danger-seeking lawn chair crowd. As far as the eye can see, loners straddling motorcycles and sucking on cigarettes, moms and dads feeding sandwiches to their brood out of coolers and stoners with Jimi Hindrix kissing the sky on the stereo are lined up on either side of us. Kind of like a JetBlue tailgate party.
“The key to successful plane watching is alignment,” Sweetie informs me, as he slides us into position.
“O.K. Here she comes.”
In an otherwise pitch-black sky, three lights, which might be stars if they weren’t moving, slowly come into focus. As the lights get brighter, someone turns Jimi up and the heart beats faster. Finally, this huge metal bird the size of a small town in Alabama with a little less red around the rim, is all you can see. As it thunders down the part in your hair, it sucks the breath right out of you.
While the rest of my girlfriends are being wooed with boxes of Godiva and flashing rings that come with Ray-Bans to keep from blinding you, I’m a hood ornament on a Toyota.
“Well,” Sweetie says, “what do you think?”
I think it’s a night I will never forget. When I am old, I will remember this moment and smile. Assuming the Wiener Girl hasn’t cut me down in the prime of my life with food poisoning.
Of course, I’m not about to let Sweetie know this. Without a little mystery, a girl’s just another pair of legs in control-top Spanx.
“That's it?” I say. “A hotdog and planes landing in the dark?”
Sweetie tosses me a box of Raisinettes.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I say, ripping into the cellophane with my teeth.
It seems to me a good relationship is a lot like watching planes land in the dark. You need proper alignment, a modicum of comfort, and if doesn’t suck the breath right out of you, what’s the point?
I follow Sweetie’s gaze to a hot-dog truck where a bronzed girl wearing a thong bikini and a smile is beckoning. Let’s just say hot dogs are not the only thing she’s steaming up. They call them “Weiner Girls” down here in Florida and they’re the cause of at least ninety percent of the rear-end collisions in the Sunshine State.
Now, a lot of women wouldn’t like their men buying footlongs from a girl equipped with toasted buns but it's my philosophy that a guy will never fly coach as long as he has a first-class ticket.
Unfortunately, every so often, I have to take my philosophy out of my mouth and put it where I live.
“Look, don’t touch,” I say, pushing him off the hood of the car.
Sweetie and I are propped on top of a rental car, backs against the windshield, waiting for a jet to take off in the dark. When I told Sweetie I wanted this to be a night I’d never forget, this wasn’t exactly the lift off I had in mind.
In Orlando, according to Sweetie, only the bourgeois watch the million-dollar fireworks at Disney. The traveler-in-the-know is mingling with the locals at the end of the airport runway waiting for a plane to start its descent a little too early and grind them all into pâté.
I’m sure the fact that it costs a pot full of gold to get into the Magic Kingdom, while plane watching is a dollar’s worth of gas and two Puffs tissues to wipe the dust off the hood, has nothing to do with it.
Plane watching is the extreme sport for the danger-seeking lawn chair crowd. As far as the eye can see, loners straddling motorcycles and sucking on cigarettes, moms and dads feeding sandwiches to their brood out of coolers and stoners with Jimi Hindrix kissing the sky on the stereo are lined up on either side of us. Kind of like a JetBlue tailgate party.
“The key to successful plane watching is alignment,” Sweetie informs me, as he slides us into position.
“O.K. Here she comes.”
In an otherwise pitch-black sky, three lights, which might be stars if they weren’t moving, slowly come into focus. As the lights get brighter, someone turns Jimi up and the heart beats faster. Finally, this huge metal bird the size of a small town in Alabama with a little less red around the rim, is all you can see. As it thunders down the part in your hair, it sucks the breath right out of you.
While the rest of my girlfriends are being wooed with boxes of Godiva and flashing rings that come with Ray-Bans to keep from blinding you, I’m a hood ornament on a Toyota.
“Well,” Sweetie says, “what do you think?”
I think it’s a night I will never forget. When I am old, I will remember this moment and smile. Assuming the Wiener Girl hasn’t cut me down in the prime of my life with food poisoning.
Of course, I’m not about to let Sweetie know this. Without a little mystery, a girl’s just another pair of legs in control-top Spanx.
“That's it?” I say. “A hotdog and planes landing in the dark?”
Sweetie tosses me a box of Raisinettes.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I say, ripping into the cellophane with my teeth.
It seems to me a good relationship is a lot like watching planes land in the dark. You need proper alignment, a modicum of comfort, and if doesn’t suck the breath right out of you, what’s the point?
