Let me start out by saying that my most memorable vacation ever was not my best vacation ever.
When our kids were still living at home, we loved to visit America’s national parks as a family and we all have wonderful memories from those trips. But we had one trip that was kind of a comedy of errors…at least for me.
We drove to South Dakota from Chicago to visit The Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore National Monument, and Wind Cave National Park. The sites we visited and the sights we saw were spectacular.
Badlands National Park
That said, it was a camping trip and we stayed at various campgrounds and a number of things happened during that vacation that I wished never happened.
I backed our car into a tree
I drove for about 100 miles with the emergency brake on
I almost set our campsite on fire when I was frying a some trout we caught that day over a campfire
I tore my Achilles’ tendon playing basketball at a KOA campground one day and the next day I went horseback riding and almost fell off my horse at full gallop because I couldn’t use my right ankle in the stirrup
I had to go to the ER in Rapid City (and when I finally got back to Chicago, had to have surgery to repair my torn Achilles’ tendon)
On the drive back home, my wife had to drive because I was sick as a dog and was throwing up most of the trip
And yes, I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it was pretty horrible for me. Honesty, it was like a National Lampoon’s Vacation movie and I was Chevy Chase.
For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has given us the word “acronym” and asked us to choose an acronym and use it any way we’d like. Of course, an acronym is an abbreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation itself forms a pronounceable word.
The military is well known for using acronyms and I’m going to focus on two military acronyms that have become part of our everyday lexicon. They are SNAFU and FUBAR. Both of these acronyms have transcended their origins that lie in the unpredictable world of warfare and each word, “snafu” and “fubar,” serves as a commonly used expression for chaos, mishaps, and unfortunate events.
SNAFU is an acronym for “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.” With its World War II origins, SNAFU referred to a state of affairs that was chaotic, disorganized, or full of errors but was seen as a typical or expected occurrence. It captured the frustrations and challenges faced by soldiers in everyday situations.
FUBAR is an acronym for “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.” Like SNAFU, its origins trace back to World War II, and FUBAR referred to situations where things could deteriorate rapidly and dramatically, describing a scenario that had gone disastrously wrong, rendering it essentially useless or unrepairable.
Over the years, these two acronyms have seeped into popular culture, finding their way into movies, books, and everyday conversation. Their unique combination of brevity and expressiveness has made them memorable and easily adaptable to a variety of situations. They represent a shared understanding of life’s chaotic moments, whether on the battlefield or in everyday life. They offer a means to acknowledge and commiserate when things don’t go as planned, providing a touch of humor in the face of adversity.
Below are two examples of how these military acronyms have been folded into our common lexicon.
They had expected the software upgrade to be released this quarter, but due to a technical snafu, it won’t be available until the Fall.
Americans are hoping that the U.S. presidential election and its aftermath in 2024 won’t be as fubar as it was in 2020.
And let me finally add that, while I intended this post to be a stream of consciousness response to Linda’s prompt, I ran into a snafu while researching the origins of these two military acronyms, resulting in more of a lecture than a piece of spontaneous writing, rendering this, as a stream of consciousness post, to be totally fubar. Sorry, Linda.
Marla, from Marla’s World, has created a writing challenge. The challenge is for multiple authors to write a single story. She will choose a story that she has written, or that another author has submitted for this challenge, and she will nominate the next person to continue writing it. Once that person has added their section, they will nominate the next author. It will continue like this until the story is complete.
“Drive! Get the hell out of here,” he thought as he sped down her dense tree-lined driveway. “Thank you,” he said to his car, the first time he felt truly happy his old car died. This one just needed a fob in his pocket to unlock the doors and start the car.
Since they matched on the app, their conversations had been so interesting and wide-ranging. Their first date went well too; she was even more beautiful than her pictures had shown. The conversation continued to flow smoothly, and the kiss at the end of the night removed any doubt from his mind that he truly liked her.
He broke convention asking her out again for the next week as soon as he had gotten home, and she agreed. They continued to talk every day, and he was getting more and more excited about tonight’s date as the week went on.
This time, she picked a restaurant an hour away, but close to her house, and he happily agreed. Once again, the date had gone really well and she invited him back to her house to watch the Netflix special they had discussed, and he followed her to her house.
He followed her down her long, dark driveway that wove through a dense forest, becoming increasingly anxious, but unable to pinpoint why. Finally, they got to the house and he was ready to jump out of his skin, but he decided to follow her inside anyway. That’s when he noticed…
…that it was awfully quiet. No insects or birds chirping, no sound of any kind was heard. It was quiet as a graveyard. It felt like he was in another dimension altogether with the sound on mute.
He could see Rebecca beckoning him from her front door, her lips were moving but he couldn’t hear her words. His unease and jitteriness increased. She was saying something but…
“What?” he shouted.
There was no reply. He saw that she had disappeared into the house. The light coming out of the open doorway changed hue and was now purplish blue.
He slammed on the brakes. He held his breath, expecting impact, he couldn’t drive as he was almost blinded by the flash. But there was no impact and everything was instantly quiet again. He tried to get his breathing back under control, hands gripping the steering wheel with force, and opened his eyes.
He jumped into his car and reversed out of the driveway. The blue light was following his car.
Suddenly there was a very bright flash and he couldn’t see anything…
What the hell is going on? he thought. Looking straight ahead he could see Rebecca’s house out the front of the windshield but there were no lights and Rebecca was nowhere to be seen. Hadn’t he just followed her here? What was going on?
He didn’t know if he should park the car and get out, going to the front door or if he should just put the car in reverse again and get the hell out of there. They had had a great dinner, he liked her and she seemed to like him, but this was all so confusing. He felt like he was dreaming. Was he in some sort of Twilight Zone?
With his breathing back to normal and the fear of what had just happened slowly starting to diminish, he had to chuckle to himself. It had to be that he had drunk too much. That was it. He was “seeing” things because he was drunk. They had shared the bottle of Prosecco before dinner had even started. Grabbing the driver’s side door handle, he pulled up to open his door to get out, but…
…the door was locked. He ferreted around for the fob, cursing the car, modern electronics, and technology. Where was it? He’d managed to get away so it had to be inside somewhere. The interior lights started to blink on and off, and of its own accord, the car started to move. The blue light was back, pulling him like a magnet towards Rebecca’s house.
There was still no sign of life there, but the door was wide open now. He decided he wasn’t drunk. He would never have gotten behind the wheel if he thought he’d had too much, so something else was playing with his mind, and he didn’t like it. No Sir. He didn’t like it one bit.
His fingers closed around the fob which had fallen into the passenger footwell. At his touch, the engine started and smoke came from the rear tires as he slammed it into reverse to get away. The force was strong, but the car responded brilliantly, eventually breaking the hold and the light went out. He spun the car on a dime and hightailed it down the wooded drive towards safety.
Suddenly, a shape materialised in front of him, her clothes in tatters, and her eyes wide with terror. It was not Rebecca.
Jason slammed on his brakes and the car came to a stop maybe five feet in front of the terrified girl. Jason’s hands on the wheel were shaking and he was breathing rapidly as he and the girl were staring at each other. Finally Jason had calmed down enough to open the car door, step out, and walk around to the girl he’d come close to running over. “Are you all right?” he asked her. “Who are you and what are you doing out here in the middle of the road?”
She didn’t say anything but started pointing back in the direction of Rebecca’s house. Jason turned to look behind him and he could see the blue light slowly moving in their direction. “Shit! Quick, get in the car,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her to the passenger side of the car. She resisted, but she was small and he managed to open the car’s passenger door, and literally throw her inside. He then ran around to the driver’s side, but she had engaged the automatic door locks, and with the fob still inside the car, he wasn’t able to get into it.
“Unlock the goddam door!” he yelled. “I’m trying to get us both to safety, don’t you understand?” He started to look for a rock to break the car door’s window, but it was too late. The strange blue light had engulfed Jason and the car with the girl inside of it.
For last month’s Pass the Baton, I tagged on the Sicilian Storyteller (aka Nancy), and she did such a good job that I’m going to tag her again.
Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).
Today’s word is “steam.”
Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.
Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.
And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.
This, That, and the Other 