Blogging About Burls

            This weekend, I partook in the popular American past time of road-tripping. Lizzy Burl, the prodigy child of equally intelligent parents with juxtaposing accents of English and French, and I packed up the Burl family Odyssey and travelled down to Columbus. In Columbus, our plans were to visit her brother, David, at OSU, then travel to Hilliard-Bradley High School to watch our gymnastics teammate in the state tournament. As our journey began, so did the heavy droplets of water falling from the sky, haphazardly striking the windshield with an insurmountable force. Lizzy pointed out how mesmerizing these droplets were, as they defied gravity to sweep up the windshield, creating droplets that fussed around like constellations in the night time sky. This mesmerizing display enraptured us for the majority of the ride until we arrived at Goasis, or in Lizzy’s terms “A super gas station…with fudge.” After the luxurious pit stop, Lizzy broke out the biscotti, the Burl’s choice of car ride snack. After consuming the tantalizingly tasty biscotti, we arrived at OSU, where Lizzy and I played the roles of art critics as we wondered the student union. To get to the point, let’s just say that art isn’t the same as I thought it was.

 Next it was lunch time. After the whole gang was seated and picked out their various entrees, the waiter came to take our orders. Mrs. Burl, who ordered first, fell into a trap that many food connoisseurs fall into: memory loss. In her attempt to order a garden salad, she inadvertently ordered a Caesar salad…with Italian dressing on the side. The patient waiter paused for a moment, possibly attempting to rephrase the incorrect sounding words in his brain, and then cautiously questioned, “So you want a Caeser salad…do you want Caeser on the side?” To which Mrs. Burl responded, “No, I want a Caeser salad with Italian on the side.” She eventually got her desired salad and dressing, and for desert ordered a “banana slit.” The tolerant waiter inquired, “You mean a banana split.” Mrs. Burl flushed with embarrassment and concluded that, yes, it was the banana split that she in fact wanted.

 Now, our goal was to arrive at the gymnastics meet at 1:30, so as not to miss our teammate compete. However, in a typical late lunch haze, Mrs. Burl forgot where she and her husband had parked the car in the car garage. This resulted in a scavenger hunt for the minivan, which involved a frantic Lizzy thundering around from floor to floor in a desperate search. After fifteen minutes of intense searching, we identified the car and sped off with the hope of still making the meet on time. After communicating our teammates estimated time of vault, the GPS calculated an estimated time of arrival. The same time. Mrs. Burl anxiously hurried through the streets of a rural Columbus town while Lizzy and I hyperventilated in the backseat. When we arrived at the school, Lizzy and I sprinted faster than imaginable into the school, making complete fools of ourselves, and squealing to a halt at the front table to buy our tickets. In the process of obtaining tickets, our teammate’s boyfriend along with a group of his friends walked by and sincerely remarked, “You guys just missed her!” With a simultaneous jaw dropping mixed with disappointment, Lizzy and I turned back towards the door, only to hear, “Just kidding!” In the end, Lizzy and I had to wait another hour and a half to see our teammate compete, and it was definitely worth it. So is road tripping with the Burls.