The Griswold's Summer Vacation at the Outer Banks

One summer a few years ago, my family, along with another family, formed a car-caravan and drove from Philadelphia to North Carolina's Outer banks. It was a hot, sunny July and we were looking forward to spending a nice relaxing getaway with family and friends on the beautiful, uncrowded beach at Avon. We had made this our summer break for many years.

We spent the first few days swimming in the surf, building sand castles, swatting flies, flying kites, surf fishing, and having a grand old time. We especially enjoyed our nightly seafood feasts featuring the locally caught seafood while downing generous amounts of beer and wine. It was the size of the refrigerator, not our personal capacity that determined how much libation we consumed. The shrimp was simply fantastic and, frankly, we pigged out every single night and did our Philadelphian best to outdo the previous night's feast.

After several days of schlepping beach chairs, beach blankets, coolers, pails and shovels, kites, beach umbrellas, and radios back and forth, we found this monotonous and decided on a well needed, well deserved, vacation from all this work. We were reeking of sun-screen 24/7 and slippery as eels. A road trip was in order so we made up our minds to drive to the south end of the island and hop on the ferry to Ocracoke Island. We'd stop at the 200 foot Cape Hatteras Lighthouse along the way and take pictures.

The night before, as usual, we had shrimp, tuna, salmon, mahi-mahi, and more shrimp. Only this time we went full tilt and got six hundred clams that some of our braver, flamboyant partiers would eat raw. The event had a twofold purpose; one, the finer and more exotic delicacies of the deep could be explored, and second, those who didn't want any would be thoroughly grossed out. The evening's merriment promised to be a memorable adventure partially due to the advent of our newly developed clam-tossing thrill show. My wife and I would fling the raw clams into the air and catch them in our mouths. When things really got rolling, we would toss them across the room to each other and catch them with our noses should our aim be off.

Little did we know when we planned these festivities that fun such as this could backfire. As it turned out, "backfiring" was only half the problem. We learned, first hand, the true meaning of grossed out.

We were warned about the dangers of eating raw shellfish but we thought the likelihood of this happening to us was about the same as finding a parking space by the entrance of Trader Joe's. We laughed, we tossed, we caught the clams in our teeth and had a great time until I went out for a long one, jumped up and caught the thing in my right lung. No one knew how to perform the Heimlich maneuver but I managed to cough it up on my own. I dodged a bullet, if not the clam.

The next morning things seemed alright even though my wife was the last one out to the car which seemed a little unusual. We were caravanning again and my family was leading the parade. It was mildly annoying that my wife required a pit stop right after we hit the road (which we credited to the coffee) but the second time this happened we feared we'd miss the nine o'clock ferry to Ocracoke. My poor wife was decidedly looking green behind the gills at this point but insisted we press on. She is a brave woman.

We all knew something was up during the forty-five minute ferry ride. Everyone else was spotting dolphin, whale, shark and ship while we were trying to spot my wife who mysteriously vanished. She swims like a cinder block and just around the time I was fearing the worst, the kids noticed a line had formed at the bathroom that was called the "head". I had always thought it was called this as clever ruse to slander the captain but now I know it's because the hopper inside services either end of the anatomy as the situation demands.

The boat landed and most of the line nervously dispersed in desperate hopes of finding the next nearest facility but the few that remained were not to be reckoned with. The longer the wait, the greater the rage. Red faced and reeking of coffee, the crowd looked like the townsfolk that descended on Dr. Frankenstein's castle once they decided the monster must go. But when the door opened and my wife (who had turned spinach green) stumbled out, the unruly crowd gasped, turned tail and fled nearly knocked themselves overboard as they stumbled over each other.

We helped her into the car and I drove, white knuckled, towards the charming, quaint and historical hamlet of Ocracoke. Known for its pirate lore and swash buckling past, I'm certain we stirred Blackbeard's ghost with the drama we unleashed that day. Seemingly possessed, my wife's head spun completely around (just like in the movie) as I instinctively turned into a parking lot that contained a line of porta-potties and slammed on the brakes. I nearly knocked the potties over, via the domino effect, but the anti-locking brake system prevented this, yielding yet another fine feature of the safe Volvo.

I helped her into the fiberglass commode, as hot as an oven, received a one-word order: Imodium! and the kids and I sped away like Andy Granatelli on his first lap. I passed several more parking lots tucked neatly into the woods and made it into the town of Ocracoke-proper in ten agonizing minutes.

The general store featured such novelties as stuffed animals shaped like whales, hard candy sticks in fifteen flavors, jolly roger flags, maps of buried treasure, postcards, plastic pieces of eight, and yes! Imodium! I bought two boxes.

As I raced back to where I left my better half (who was now my "not so better" half) I soon realized all the parking lots looked the same and I hadn't bothered to take note of which lot, and worse, which porta-potty I had left her in! Panic was setting in quick as I pictured myself timidly knocking on porta-potty after porta-potty asking "Honey? Are you in there?" I imagined we'd need a helicopter to get her back to the mainland by the time I'd rescue her.

Luckily, I found her as I pulled into the second parking lot out of sheer ESP. All parents have Extra Sensory Perception but it's not often you get to use this on your spouse. She was stretched out on the grass and, although drained (and I do mean drained), she looked better. Not a lot, but a little's a lot at a time like this.

I gathered the troops and we boarded the ferry for the return trip to our vacation house in Avon. We did find a health clinic along the way and rushed right in but by then the "storm" had passed and there was little anyone could do except warn us, once again, about the horrors raw shellfish can set free. We just shook our heads and said nothing.

What began as a horror story, ended happily. Now we look back at this and laugh (well, maybe not all of us) and thank God that my wife was okay by that night. Everyone enjoyed the rest of the vacation and we explored the finer delicacies of Italian cuisine.