(Dearest paternal units, please forgive me in advance for the story I am about to share!)

Once upon a time when we lived in our little roach-infested one-bedroom castle in southern Georgia, my family came for a weekend visit, bringing an air mattress along with them. That evening we made a bed on the couch for my sister and began manually inflating the balloon-bed on which Mom and Dad insisted they would sleep. And when I say “manually” I mean “orally”. Yep. No self-inflating mattress here.  No simple vacuum attachment. Not even a measly little foot pump. We huffed. We puffed. We huffed some more. We puffed some more. And we blew that giant overpriced pool float right up. . . over the course of, say, two or three hours.

Eventually we were all peacefully sleeping in our respective beds when the apartment complex came under attack. We were awakened by an explosion akin to a sonic boom or an anti-aircraft missle, and being near a huge military base, we took these things seriously.

BOOM!!!!

It hit us so hard we literally screamed ourselves awake. “WHAT WAS THAT?! ARE YOU OKAY? ARE WE UNDER ATTACK? IS EVERYBODY ALIVE?” I hurdled over the end of my bed (I could still hurdle in those days), out to the main room to witness the Ground Zero mayhem:

The air mattress had exploded. Amidst the rubble, Dad was lying FLAT on the living room floor, pillows and blankets thrown clear of the wreckage. The bubble of air (and saliva) remaining in the mattress was mushrooming out past their toes. And Mom…well, Mom was awkwardly draped over Dad like the winning wreath on American Pharoah.

Recalling this event still makes me laugh out loud.

I’d give anything to have an actual photograph of the aftermath. Then again, the mental picture in my head is so worth these thousand words.