To be fair, it was just the sauces. Lots and lots of sauces!
Okay, so my parents went to college together and were members of their school's science fiction and fantasy society. This group got together frequently during college and played games - tabletops and RPGs (role-playing games, for the non-nerds among you). One RPG emerged as dominant when graduation approached - a campaign run by a guy named Dale.
Dale's game had about 15-20 players (my parents among them), and continued after graduation in a semi-annual pattern. As the players dispersed and found fairly permanent places to work/live/have families, the players with bigger residences stepped up to host the game. This tradition continues now, even some thirty-odd years later.
The winter game is hosted on the east coast, and the summer game happens on the west coast (sometimes in the midwest). This is an effort to vaguely equalize travel headaches/expenses across all players. Oftentimes players' significant others and/or kids come as well. Attendance is obviously not mandatory. The game proper is played for 2-3 days, and we fill the rest of the time with tabletop games, random outings, and socializing with one another.
I grew up with this awesomeness. As in, it was not unusual to have a large group of adults descend on the house, sleep four to a room (including in closets), cook gallons of hot sauce from scratch (yes), and spend 10-12 hours a day in the basement poring over a vinyl map with tiny figurines on it.
So! Fast forward to me in college (or possibly early vet school, I'm not sure) and home for winter break. My parents are hosting the game, and we'd ordered Chinese food for dinner. Alas, the Chinese restaurant did not deliver. I volunteered to go pick up the food, and this tall, bear-like guy named Brian came with me. Brian is pretty fantastic. He told me hilarious stories as we drove across town.
When we got to the restaurant, it was readily apparent that the huge volume of food we had ordered was not adequately packaged for transport. I think we had maxed out the restaurant's size limits on to-go containers. The waiter handed us roughly a zillion boxes of rice and packets of fortune cookies in some plastic grocery bags, which presented no problems. The hot, saucy food was another matter. I regarded the eight large, flimsy boats with some trepidation. The boats were that same bendy foil that they use to make disposable loaf pans, and the lids were...vaguely secured to the tops. Each boat was about the size of a smallish sheet cake.
Brian's eyes got big and he shook his head. He helped me carry the food to the car, where we tried to find the best arrangement for minimizing jostling. You guys, I drove home so carefully. Each turn, brake, and acceleration was gentle and smooth. When we reached my house, I saw that the sauces from the boats had carefully, gently and smoothly fountained all over the backseat, other stuff in the car, and into the rivulets that hold the front seats.
Let me tell you, that was a fantastically awesome next hour or so. The floor mats in the backseat still have some ambiguous brown stains.
2. A gallon jug of Dawn dish soap.
We've discussed this. In short, I purchased said jug of Dawn and left it in my car for several months. It opened and all the Dawn leaked into/across my backseat. One corner of the seat is still sticky and blue-green.
3. A large, full sharps container.
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| thanks, smartpractice.com |
So, I used to work for a large mostly equine, mostly sports medicine practice before I went to vet school. They did some lameness work for the Narnia farm, which is how I got the opportunity to work there. It was fantastic! I loved it. Full marks.
One ambulatory vet at that practice had the habit of breaking open the plastic top of the sharps container in her truck so she could dump it at the clinic and avoid getting a new sharps container. This is obvs NOT what you are supposed to do with your sharps container. Anyway! One day, this vet and I were at the Narnia farm, examining some horses until late. I was living at the clinic at the time, and she asked me to empty her full sharps container when I got back so she could go straight home.
I settled the several gallon, stuffed-to-the-gills sharps container in my backseat, and on the way to the clinic (you saw this coming) it tipped over. The broken plastic top fell off, and scads of needles, catheter stylets, spinal needles, and glass syringes (joint injections, friends) trickled into the nether regions of my backseat.
I retrieved...most of them when I got to the clinic. I found a glass syringe under the driver's seat many months after that job ended.