Small Town Saturday Night

So, you read about the girls' trip. You know that the three of us had a great time hanging out and catching up. You know that the weather was perfect for a winter getaway. Now, here's the down and dirty on our Saturday night festivities...the story behind the story, if you will.

Thayne, as a town of just over 300 people nestled in snowy Wyoming, unfortunately has a high rate of domestic violence. Apparently, there isn't much else to do during the winter than drink a bunch of alcohol and beat your pregnant wife. Kelly is pregnant, so we toyed with the idea of drinking a bunch and then helping her have an "accidental fall down the stairs." Sort of a "when in Rome..." That idea quickly lapsed...not that Micki and I couldn't muster the stamina to drink that much; we just weren't too keen on beating up our best friend. Go figure.

In the end, we opted for a pizza dinner. On the way to Tootsie's Pizza in downtown Thayne to order our pizza, I was riding in the backseat with Kaycee when all of the sudden, Micki screams "Oh no!" and Kelly yells back "Just hit it!" I have no idea what's happening...I look up...the car swerves...we're back in our snowy lane...we're all safe. That is, all of us except the skunk we hit with the car. Yes, we were SKUNKED! The term "skunked" can mean a lot of things...this time, however, it meant that the small animal's odiferous "perfume" permeated the inside of the car so badly that we were quite concerned that the skunk was actually stuck up under the wheel well. We turned off the heat. The smell was TERRIBLE when we got out of the car. We tried to visit the car wash, but it was closed for the winter because it was snowed in. None of us were the least bit interested in getting under the car to see if the skunk was stuck there.

So, since we had 20 minutes to kill before our pizza was ready, we decided to return to the scene of the crime to see if the skunk was in the road or stuck under the car. There was great anxiety in the car as we approached the spot. No one spoke. We all leaned a little closer to the windshield. Micki turned on the bright lights and shown them on the road. Much to our great relief, the skunk was indeed intact and in the road...and not lodged up under the wheel well. That did not, however, help with the smell. Despite our attempts to drive on the snowy shoulder to cut the smell, a piece of that skunk (or, more correctly, the skunk's smell) survived the entire ride back to Salt Lake City.

May the skunk rest in peace...and may Micki's new car once again have that "new car" smell...