The Mother Road

by Meghan Quinn

Let me paint you a picture. It’s that time of the month; its shark week, as some may say. The civil war is being reenacted by your ovaries and death is scatted over your fallopian tubes. You’re crippled over in pain on your couch, half a Snickers bar hanging out of your mouth, a heating pad pressed against your innards, and a blanket wrapped around you as if you’re a cocktail wiener in a Pillsbury croissant. The Hallmark Channel is airing that Mario Lopez movie you’ve been dying to see and not because the plot looks good, but because you want to reminisce on your Saved by the Bell days. Mario is the only thing getting you through this time of need, that and the chocolate drool slowly dripping into the back of your throat. You’re content, minus the battlefield in your uterus, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the mister in your life flops on the couch, causing a ripple within your cocoon. Your heating pad shifts and your Snickers bar falls to the ground, a travesty in itself. The swoon-worthy shot of Mario with his shirt off gets rudely switched to some stupid sporting game just as the mister lifts his ass in your direction and blasts two large farts. Can you feel the monster start to awaken? You try to remain calm; you tell yourself it’s going to be all right, your life isn’t spiraling out of control into the depths of hell…until one simple crack of his knuckles rings through the room. One single pop. You lose it. Your eyelids flip inside out, fire shoots out of your v...