A Missionary Kid's Recount of a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

     The following is a true account of a day that happened when my youngest daughter was eleven years old. She is now fifteen years old, and she wrote this piece for a school assignment that was supposed to be a narrative about her longest/worst day ever. I hope you enjoy reading her work.

The Longest Day of My Life

to be read in a cheesy fair-tale like voice

     Back a few years ago, one fateful day in Sacramento, California, I lived my longest day, and lived to tell the tale that you are about to hear. The morning dawned beautiful and full of hope, because we were going to Alaska to see my sister for she was getting married. I woke early in the morning to get ready for a long day. So I picked out an outfit that I was going to wear that day. After having my mother's phone in the bathroom, I preceded to drop my mother's phone on the tile floor and shatter the screen. I apologized profusely for what I had just done. She said that it was okay, it was an accident, that what was done was done. 
     After she went out of the bathroom and I started to get ready for a quick shower, I heard my father come into the hotel room, and ask my mother if she had seen the car that day? With a puzzled voice, she said, no, she had not. He then told her that our car had been broken into and that she needed to come down to the parking lot right away to see if anything had been stolen. In a flash, I was redressed and on my way downstairs with my mother, to see what the damage was and see if anything had been stolen. When we arrived outside, we saw the shattered window. I then looked in the car, and saw that my pink suitcase was gone (such a pity because it had all my precious books inside). After being distraught for a little while, my mother took me aside and quoted to me the following verse: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moths and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:" I was then in awe about how much the Bible can relate to your life in the moment.
     After we cleaned up the glass, we went back into the hotel, and packed up to leave. We then packed up our car, and went on our not-so-merry little way. We decided to stop and get some food before we did a few errands. I decided to get a VERY large cup of iced tea since I was very thirsty. After we got our food, my mother and I decided to stop in at a store, to see if they had any suitable boots for me. (You see, I was in great need of warm footwear, because all I had was flip-flops and sandals and those, of course, would not do because the wedding was in Alaska.) So I put my too large drink in the too small cup holder in the door, (because that was the only place I had to put it), then hopped out of the car, and slammed the door. When I slammed the door, I got a very sick feeling in my stomach, telling me my very large drink had just spilled in the car floor. I ignored it, as I ran into the store to see if they had any boots I liked; they did not.
     When I got back in the car, I saw that my feeling had been correct in that my large drink had just spilled all over the car floor (ALL 40 OUNCES!!). My oh-so-large drink was now sloshing around under my feet. Part of the problem was that, under my feet, we had weather proof mats, which were essentially these rubber-like mats with sides, kind of like a plastic tray, that wouldn't allow liquids to soak onto the floor boards. Frantically, I started slapping my poor mother on the shoulder to get her attention, and avoid alerting my father to the 40 ounces of iced tea laying in the back floor board. She finally turned around and asked what was so important that I was smacking her so hard on the shoulder. By some miracle, I was able to convey to her with frantic thrashings of my hands that I had managed to spill my drink(apparently she didn't realize that I had spilled ALL of my drink), because she handed me one measly napkin which I hurriedly threw into the "lake" of tea. And let me tell you, it made no difference in managing to mop up the tea. After I told my mother that it made no difference, she told me to just wait until we could get some paper towels when we ran into the other store, where we had put some boots on hold for me the previous day. 
     A few minutes later, she and I ran into the store to get the boots we had put on hold for me. We first headed to the desk that helped with putting things on hold and asked them about my boots. The woman at the desk went back to look for them. She came back to the desk and told us that there were no boots on hold for me. We thanked the woman anyway, and then ran to the shoe section to see if they had maybe been put back. No such luck. I then started to bawl my eyes out in the middle of the store. My mother quickly grabbed me by the arm, looked me in the face, and told me I had better cut it out before somebody thought she was kidnapping me. We ran in the bathroom and grabbed a massive wad of paper towels—my mother shoving them up her jacket and in all her pockets—to mop up the tea in the back of the car. We got back into the car, and I took the paper towels and threw them in the massive puddle of tea. It was still not enough. We then saw no way around telling my dad, and asked him for the towel that he was sitting on. We eventually made it to the airport, got on our flights, and FINALLY made it to Alaska safely.
     Morals of the story...1. Be very careful when having a phone in a room with a tile floor. 2. Never leave your suitcase in plain sight overnight at a strange hotel unless you want it to get stolen. 3. Always make sure your cup holder is big enough for your drink. 4. ALWAYS make sure you have proper footwear in Alaska, unlike me that day, who arrived in flip-flops.

By Liarra Lester
   

This story only covered part of the day and didn't even talk about, among other things, the lady who was sitting across the aisle from us on the airplane, who was quite loud and was continually trying to take Liarra's picture, and then proceeded to get herself  kicked off the plane.