The last 3 hours of my birthday this weekend were some of the worst hours of any birthday.
Let’s rewind 24 hours, though. That’s way too negative of a statement for me to make. Every moment of my birthday up to that point was fantastic. I had the best 26th birthday I could have asked for.
The day started at midnight (obviously), inside a really unique bar in downtown Chicago. I was surrounded by friends, one (Megan) I’d known for 12 years, and two (my brother and Chris) all my life.
After some sleep, we were on the Megabus to Milwaukee by lunchtime, where we met up Chris’s family. It was great to see them, great to see his brother Alex’s new house, and good to be back in Wisconsin – even if I was only there 7 hours. We went up to see a Brewers game, and it was a fun game that ended in a Brewers victory. It was so nice to have the Stelsel and Vant Hoff brothers together and we shared many laughs, mostly at the stark differences between the people Chris and I have become. We still remain best friends though.
By 9:00 p.m., Chris, David and I were back on the Megabus, headed back to Chicago. That’s when it started. It was a double decker bus, and we headed to the back. Little did we know, it was the perfect storm at the back of what became my jail cell on wheels for the next three hours.
The trip started off fine, with me dozing off. But when I woke up, to the sound of a screaming child, I never made it back to dream land. Two seats back, two very young parents had a child who was absolutely screaming at the top of her lungs, on and off, for the entire trip. They did nothing to stop it, other than yelling at her to shut up a few times. They used awful language, said naïve things, and spoke like they were the only ones around.
I could not believe nobody said anything to them, until people on all sides of me started to join in on the idiot party. To my left, a girl got on her cell phone and let loose like she was in private, and behind me a woman got on her phone and started using motherf*#@er approximately every 10 words, like it was the only qualifier she knew. At one point, she said “if that B*#$ch doesn’t show up, I’m going to punch her in her motherf*#@ing throat.” IN THE THROAT?!?! That’s pretty violent.
By the time we got off the bus from our trip down the River Styx, I had 10 minutes left of my birthday. I lamented for 5 of those, and took the last 5 to soak in the beauty of the Chicago skyline on our walk back to Chris’s apartment.
You know what, though? On second thought, I bet my actual birth day was way worse than those three hours. I was removed from my home for the past 8 1/2 months, slapped on the butt, cut away from my food source, and exposed to lights for the first time ever. That had to be pretty rough!
