Story time. Today I drove my mom to a dr’s apt in Tupelo. We were headed home and she noticed there was some wind noise around my sunroof. Rule number one in my car is do not mess with the sunroof because it has a tendency to get stuck in the open position. I accidentally hit the tilt button the other day and it opened a tiny bit and I couldn’t get it to close all the way, so I told my mom that was the reason for the wind noise. She said “Oh, I can fix that!” I was like “please no” but that girl don’t listen. So she started pushing buttons and the next thing I know the sunroof is open all the way. She said “Whoops, didn’t mean to do that” and I was like “WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!? But I didn’t even get that out of my mouth before something long and black fell through the sunroof directly onto my head and slithered down my arm. Now one thing about my mama—there’s nothing that scares her worse than snakes. I’ve worked very hard as an adult to overcome this fear but let me tell you I was not ready to deal with one suddenly landing on my head. To be fair, I love puppies and kitties but if one of those fell from the sky directly on top of me while I’m barreling down the highway that too would be cause for alarm. I’ve heard of people having racing thoughts before but I swear so many thoughts have never paraded through my brain all at the same time. I realized I need to keep control of the car, get the snake OUT of my car, and keep my mama IN the car because we just left the back dr but if sister gets her feet under her she’s bailing out of this car and headed off into the woods and we will never find her. It’s maybe been two seconds since the snake fell in the sunroof and as I’m reaching for mama to try to physically hold her in the car I notice she’s not even moving. She’s frozen stiff as a board and her eyes aren’t even open. It’s too much. She has been faced with a crisis of epic proportions and she’s just playing dead in the passenger seat. So I’m like wait a minute, YOU’RE MY MAMA wake up and save me!!!! It was also at this moment I realized someone was screaming loudly and that someone was me. You’ve heard the expression “screamed loud enough to wake the dead?” That’s exactly what I did because Mom reanimated and promptly joined me in screaming and flailing around. Also I’m swerving all over the place but thankfully no one was around us. In all this excitement the snake had not moved since it fell from above. We both took a good look at it where it had fallen across both our laps and we realized……it was a big piece of black rubber from the side of my sunroof. I have never been so relieved or laughed so hard. Here is the “snake” that nearly took out me and my mama:
