After I got off work last night, Cousin Cate picked me up and we headed to our local drive-in food joint, The Shake Shack.  While it doesn’t exactly have what I would describe as delicious food, I have to give it credit for living up to its name: it does, indeed, sell shakes out of a shack.  It’s one of our favorite places to go; Cousin Cate likes their broccoli-and-cheese-nuggets and I just like to say “The Shake Shack” as many time as possible.

After having our nutritious delicious dinner in the front seats of her car, we decided to drive up to the river and go for a walk.  Cousin Cate and I both have A Ridiculously Strange Situation going on in both of our lives that is eerily similar to the other one’s Ridiculously Strange Situation and, really, when you’re dealing with Ridiculously Strange Situations, you pretty much have to talk to someone in the same situation for them to really “get” what you’re saying.  And, frankly, if we’re going to be talking about Ridiculously Strange Situations, we might as well be doing it whilst walking beside a lovely river.

When we got to the river area, we decided to go to a lesser populated area where a creek runs into the river; there’s a waterfall there that we like to sit by sometimes.  We noticed that there were four people already down by the creek when we arrived, but didn’t pay them much attention as we began climbing down the rock-filled embankment.  As soon as we reached the creek, we were suddenly hit by an overwhelming smell.  I turned to Cousin Cate and said “WHAT is that SMELL?”

Without even hesitating, she looked me dead in the eyes and said “We gotsta get outta here!” except maybe it was a bit more colorfully worded.  You don’t mess around when Cousin Cate tells you to do something, so you better believe my ba-donk-a-donk started up that embankment.  About halfway up, Cousin Cate leaned in and whispered that the people at the river were doing meth, a very powerful drug that is commonly abused in our region. I naturally turned around for a second glance only to find that?  The people down at the river?

Well, they too were making their way up the embankment, right behind us.

Now, I may not be the smartest girl on the block, but I can size up a dangerous situation when I see it and I SAW IT COMING UP THE EMBANKMENT BEHIND US.  I decided to employ some colorful language of my own to emphasize to Cousin Cate how quickly we needed to get to the car, namely suggesting that we begin running like Satan’s hometown.

We jumped into her car, locked the doors and got out of there like we were driving towards the last two available males on our planet (for the record, we didn’t call the police simply because the people took off in the opposite direction and neither of us had cell coverage for a 15 mile radius).  About 30 seconds into our getaway, I told Cousin Cate  that I wasn’t feeling too great.  At first I thought it might have just been my nerves, but as we continued up the road, it quickly became apparent that the smell of the drugs (which they had likely been “cooking” beside the river thus making it more intense than just smoking it) was still on our clothes and making me ill.  Within about three minutes I had to ask her to pull over because I knew I was going to be sick and there just weren’t enough empty Shake Shack bags in the car.

As I got out of the car, I began apologizing ahead of time and begging her not to watch for her own sake.  I made it to a wooden railing and seriously began debating removing various articles of clothing just to get away from the smell.  Lest you think I’m being overly dramatic (and I can’t imagine anyone ever coming to that conclusion), I’ve most commonly heard the smell of meth described as “plastic shower curtains burning while covered in rotton eggs.”  I’m not one to typically condone the removal of clothing on the side of public roads, but when you’re dealing with melting plasting shower curtains and rotton eggs, well, all bets are off.

Luckily for those drivers passing by, I elected to remain fully clothed.  I do, however, feel the need to inform you that this decision was based more on the fact that I was in full dry heaval mode by this point than due to any concern for my modesty.  Cousin Cate, bless her darling heart, didn’t know what to do from her spot in the driver’s seat.  But then, in a rush of what I like to think of as true inspiration, our girl plugged in her iPod, rolled down the car windows and turned my favorite Beyoncé song up as loud as possible.

If you’re gonna be dry heaving on the side of the road because you smell like an illegal drug, you might as well have a good soundtrack for the experience, I guess.