This week Ricky tells us about the big Ratland Day long weekend and why it sucked so bad, courtesy of Mama Rat‘s one-sided rivalry with Aunty Maureen and Ricky’s girlfriend Baby’s mom and sister and their insistence on going into the annual Ratland Day Long Weekend Traffic Jam Extravaganza.
Podcast Script (not including ad-libs):
Hey-o! Ricky here, well, I guess y’all know that from last time and the show intro says so, too.
Hope you all had a better Ratland Day long weekend than I did, man. I mean, I should know better by now… I always think Ratland Day’s gonna be rad but then it always sucks monkey balls.
First of all, things were looking up ‘cause Big Mike was working in Chicago. And Jeff was away at a Zen retreat thingy in Colorado and neither Simpin’ Simon nor Nolan No Peen were in town neither, so things were quiet at the studio. No bookings, just a list of chores Big Mike left behind, but me and Intern Dave got that shit all done by Tuesday. So we were able to hang out and chill all week and I wasn’t gonna have to be there on the weekend. Score!
Usually Baby and her mom and sisters all go down to LA to shop on Rodeo Drive every Ratland Day to get away from the traffic jams here and whatnot, but this time Baby’s second-oldest sister Yvonne was preggo and gonna have her baby around Ratland Day so Mrs. Rattsen wanted to stay in town for that.
Baby whined about missing her shopping holiday, but I pointed out that meant we could hang out at the beach. I guess it’s been a whole three weeks since Baby last took beach selfies, so that made her happy ‘cause she could take new ones to post on Instarat for all her friends to like.
Baby’s pops was out of town for a corporate conference but then also he was tacking on a weekend golf tournament, too, so no shotgun threats if I brought Baby home later than usual. As much as Mrs. Rattsen also hates my guts, she’s squeamish about guns and she also goes to bed early and sleeps like a log so it’s kinda an honour system when she’s the only parent in the house.
It shouldn’t matter ‘cause Baby’s 19 now and me and her been an item since 8th grade algebra class, and I always take real good care of her, but… you know how it is with some folks.
Anyway, point is me and Baby had plans for the weekend.
So far, so good, right?
Well, you would think so… except… family, man. Family.
First up, Mama Rat woke me up early on Saturday morning, like 11am, to tell me I had to get up and get ready to go to the big family BBQ at my cousins’ Darren and Billy’s place. Which I forgot about.
OK, no problem, or so I thought. Baby takes forever to get ready so I figured I could get there, grab a burger and a beer and make nice with all the old folks and tiny tots, say hi to Darren and Billy, then jet and still make it to the Rattsens’ before Baby finished making up her mind what shoes to wear to the beach.
And then probably I’d still be sitting there bored for 2 hours before Baby was ready to actually hit the road.
I shoulda known better, man…
Well… first of all, Mama Rat insisted we stop at the Ratmart Supercentre because even though Darren and Billy said they were gonna have everything for the big BBQ, Mama Rat don’t get along with their mama Maureen.
I dunno why, I think it goes all the way back to junior high when Maureen supposedly kissed the captain of the football team that Mama had a crush on. Even though it’s a million years later and neither Mama nor Aunty Maureen married that dude, Mama still hates her for it and has to take every opportunity to show up Maureen and her kids and grandkids.
Papa Rat told me one time that Mama freaked out when his brother, my uncle Chad, started dating Maureen and Mama did all sorta of crazy stuff to try to break them up. Then she wore black to the wedding and Papa Rat had to clamp his hand over Mama’s mouth when the pastor asked if anyone had any reason why these two should not be wed.
It’s weird, man, but I guess Mama’s like everyone else in the Ratsdale clan: they bear grudges for a really long time. For life even.
I mean, Mama’s mama Gamma Ratsdale still bitches about a neighbour she had in second grade who borrowed her pink eraser in school and never gave it back and that musta been back in 1960… All of them Ratsdales are like that… except me and my sister Becky. I guess we take after the Rateriffs in a lot of ways, much to Mama’s annoyance.
Mama even tries to get me to not hang around with Darren and Billy ‘cause she says they’re bad influences or some such nonsense. And in turn, Darren always says Mama’s a crazy bitch, and I don’t like it when he talks that way but also he has a point.
Anyway, so Mama was all dressed up in her Tommy Ratfiger and Rat Lauren preppy clothes that she only wears when she’s gonna be seen by Aunty Maureen and her family and her overpriced Ratbago boat shoes even though the only member of our family who’s ever been to sea is Papa Rat and he works on cruise ships, not yachts. Then Mama dragged me to the Ratmart to buy our own steaks, the really expensive kind, and other shit like that fancy hot pepper jelly. Mama don’t even like hot peppers but she’ll smear it on her steaks around Aunty Maureen to act all sophisticated.
Same as she had to have me drive her over to the expensive gourmet shop so we could buy that overpriced Caciocavallo Podolico cheese from Italy and fresh figs from Greece, even though I told her I like regular cheddar and the guys have that in spades, plus some of the fancier ones like gouda and edam, but that wasn’t good enough for Mama.
Sigh… and of course we went to the liquor store and she bought amaretto and Chartreuse to drink because even craft beer ain’t fancy enough for sticking it to Aunty Maureen.
And then of course we had to go to the bakery so Mama could pick up one of them fruit flan things, even though Aunty Maureen was gonna have chocolate cupcakes for everyone and chocolate cupcakes beat fruit flans any day, man.
Then finally it was time to drive over there and of course Mama made me turn off the rock radio station a couple blocks away in favour of the boring Ratland Public Radio station and their Mozart marathon.
Sigh…
Every damn year, man… I shoulda known it would be the same this year, too.
And I long ago learned to not argue with Mama Rat over this nonsense ‘cause she’s gonna do it anyway but at least if I don’t argue she won’t be yelling at me all day.
Anyway, so we got parked in Darren’s front yard amongst the various car carcasses that he hasn’t gotten around to rebuilding yet and Mama was putting on airs as she got out and rang the front doorbell even though the proper thing to do at Darren and Billy’s is just walk around back and let yourself in the open kitchen door, which I did.
Darren was smoking a joint in the kitchen and the counters will loaded with all the grub his woman Lorelei and Aunty Maureen made for the big BBQ and Billy was setting up his stereo speakers on the back deck to blast some tunes, and Darren and Lorelei’s 4 kids were running around all sugared up and complaining ‘cause Darren said they couldn’t go swimming in the above-ground pool til an hour after they had their BBQ.
Aunty Maureen looked up from chopping veggies, put down the knife, and gave me a big hug. “Ricky! I’m so glad you could come! Where’s your sister?”
“Uh… probably still chasing Marvin around the house trying to get him to put on pants? She said she was coming, though.”
Darren asked, “Your mama doing her usual snooty gourmet bullshit?”
“Yessir. She’s on the front porch.”
“Well, Billy can go let her in when he feels like it.”
It was about then that an exhausted Becky stumbled in the back door to join us and flopped down at the kitchen table. Maureen gave her a hug too, and Becky informed us that she only got bit 7 times trying to get Marvin dressed. We looked out in the window just in time to see Marvin throwing his shorts at his sisters’ hair and climbing the ladder buck nekkid to the pool.
“Billy! Go mind the swimmers!”
Billy did what Darren told him and dutifully took up his place at the side of the pool supervising, and sure enough all the other little cousins piled in, stern warnings about waiting til after the BBQ be damned.
Becky asked me where Mama was and when I told her she gave me a dirty look and then got up and marched to the front door to let Mama and her piles of unnecessary ego groceries in. Things were civil but unpleasant between Mama and Maureen as Mama tried to sound all educated telling of what Oprat Book Club reading she’s been doing (or more realistically, what Ratipedia plot summaries of Oprat Book Club reading she’s been doing).
Aunty Maureen was, of course, used to this sorta thing by now. She tried to stick to polite small talk about the grandkids, which Mama took as an opportunity to prod Becky to talk about how Marvin’s sisters Susie and Sherry made the honor role in their junior kindergarten last year. And how Marvin had managed to go an entire three weeks without biting any of the other little rats at pre-school (funny how Mama didn’t talk about how long he’d managed to go without biting any of the staff, but then three hours isn’t quite as impressive a record.)
And of course Mama wanted to rub Maureen’s nose in the fact that Becky is an assistant meteorologist at KRAT Channel 7 News. Not that Aunty Maureen cares, and she’s happy for Becky anyway, but Mama just can’t help being nasty about the whole thing.
It’s embarrassing, but it is what it is, and it’s been what it is for longer than either me or Becky been alive, so we just kinda try to ignore it and have fun anyway.
To that end, as all our various cousins and their spawn were coming in, I did what I could to help Darren maintain order and get things ready for the grill. Darren had it down to a science with military precision for exactly what temperature each of his 4 grills needed to be at and in what order things needed to be put on them and exactly when things needed to be flipped. I just followed orders like a good steak soldier. (I stayed away from the veggie grill because I ain’t got the same knack for perfectly grilled corn on the cob that Darren has.)
I’m telling’ ya: Darren is the grill whisperer.
Not gonna lie: the expensive steaks Mama bought for me and her and Becky were pretty good, but I also saved room for one of Darren’s signature mushroom cheeseburgers, and there ain’t nothin’ in this world that’s as good as one of Darren’s burgers.
Like, seriously: I know Darren’s hot rod shop is a real success and all, but I do think he missed his true calling. He could be as famous as the guy who founded McRat Burger, man.
In any case, I had somewhere else to be, and once I had stuffed as much grub down my gullet as a rat can stuff, I asked Becky if she could drive Mama Rat home, and as much as she sighed and grumbled, she agreed, and then I slipped out for my beach date.
Kinda a bummer that I was gonna miss Darren and Billy’s annual illegal fireworks extravaganza. But… well… usually that one neighbour who always bitches about her stupid poodle getting spooked by the noise calls the cops. Then Darren picks a fist fight with her and there’s always one relative who gets the whole thing on video. And usually you can see the fireworks still going off in the background as the cops try to break it up and remind them of their mutual restraining orders, so… I mean, it’s almost like being there.
And like I said, I had a date. I was gonna be a bit late but probably nowhere near late enough to be getting there when Baby was actually ready. So I sped over to the Rattsen house as fast as I could on the backroads to avoid sitting in the annual Ratland Day Long Weekend Traffic Jam Extravaganza.
As I screeched up to the curb, Baby came running out and yanked open the passenger side door, which surprised the Hell outta me ‘cause I figured she wouldn’t be done with her make-up yet. And she wasn’t, ‘cause she only had her fake eyelashes on the one eye and no lipstick or nothin’, but before I could ask her what’s up, out came Mrs. Rattsen and a screaming, waddling Yvonne.
Wait… I ain’t even done nothin’ with Baby yet, and neither one of us been in the back seat yet today! So why the Hell was I gettin’ yelled at?
But Mrs. Rattsen didn’t wanna yell at me about that. Instead, she yanked the rear passenger door open and shoved Yvonne in and yelled at Baby to get in behind Yvonne as Mrs. Rattsen got in to ride shotgun.
“DRIVE!!!”
“Um, OK, ma’am… where?”
Baby piped up. “The hospital, Ricky!”
“Huh?”
“Ratboro Memorial! Yvonne’s water broke, go!!!!”
Well, I was confused, man, ‘cause how can water be broke when it don’t do no bankin’ or pay no bills… but anyway, Mrs. Rattsen reached over and shoved my foot onto the accelerator. And then we were off… just one problem: the closest hospital to the Rattsen house is down the highway.
Y’know, the one that’s a parking lot on Ratland Day long weekend with everyone trying get out of town to avoid the traffic, thereby making sure the traffic is way worse than if they’d just stayed home?
That one. And Ratsville City Council is kinda, well… retarded, so they didn’t make a backroads way to get to Ratboro Memorial Hospital. You have to go onto the Ratsville Parkway (emphasis on “park”) and take exit 19. It’s the only way in or out of there.
I heard tell that this was because the mayor when the hospital was built was the guy who also owned the golf course in behind and surrounding the hospital. And there was no way in Hell he was gonna let the state government build a road through his golf course to get to the hospital.
And there’s, like, a 6 foot brick wall all around the golf course so you can’t just drive over the fairways to cut through to the hospital.
Now, I ain’t gonna say when the wall was built or which of my cousins took his hot rod onto the greens before the wall was there and did donuts on the 10th hole fairway one Friday night and I certainly ain’t gonna say if maybe I was there and took a turn at it myself. Point is: you can’t just drive over the Ratsville Estates Golf Club to get to the hospital no more. You gotta backtrack 2 miles to get onto the Ratsville Parkway at exit 17 and then crawl your 4 miles to exit 19 to the hospital and that’s that.
There is another hospital, Ratsville General, outside the other side of town on the way to Mouseton, but in this kinda traffic, that one’s an hour’s drive easy, too. And Baby’s mom kept screaming at me to go to Ratboro Memorial.
On a long weekend like this, honestly, it would have been faster to stick Yvonne in Mr. Rattsen’s yardwork wheelbarrow and push her over there. But with three screaming rat women in my car, one of whom was Hellbent on grabbing the steering wheel while looking in the back to monitor Yvonne’s contractions, I ain’t had no choice but to dutifully do the stupid slow thing and turn down Cheddar Lane to merge on at Exit 17.
Even though I tried to ask Baby why we didn’t just wait and call an ambulance from home.
“There’s no time!!!”
Sigh… it’s times like this when I wonder how come their cousin Myles can’t drive them to the hospital but then I remembered Myles said something about not answering phone calls this weekend because he was back in Mouseton plowing bimbos or something.
Lucky bastard.
Actually, I think his exact words were that he was gonna be making chicks scream his name in the backseat of his Benz. Well, lemme tell ya: screaming chicks in the backseat ain’t always all it was cracked up to be… though I s’pose Myles was getting the more fun version of that than I was getting.
As my last ditch try for sanity, I tried to explain that on my way over the radio said there were 3 or 4 4- or 5- car pile-ups and we shouldn’t try to get to Ratboro Memorial, but both Baby and Mrs. Rattsen started thwacking me with their purses ‘cause they didn’t wanna hear it.
So we got to the on-ramp pretty quick and then we stopped dead pretty quick and as far as the eye could see there wasn’t a single car moving a single inch.
And Yvonne was shrieking and I told Baby she needed to call 911, but she wouldn’t listen and we were still at the top of the on-ramp not moving 10 minutes and 10 shrieks later when Yvonne yelled, “Mom! I can feel the head!”
Then I looked over my shoulder to see that any hope of pulling a U-y and getting off the on-ramp was now blocked by a line of other newly parked cars behind me.
Fuck my life… well, purse thwacking be damned, I edged the car sideways with a bunch of them little S-turn things so it was mostly off the road, or at least it was into the stupid bike lane that no one ever uses so good enough, and in the middle of three rat broads screaming obscenities at me for not driving even though I clearly couldn’t go anywhere, I dug out my phone and I called 911.
“What is your emergency?”
“I got a girl in my car gonna give birth in the backseat.”
“Is that your wife?”
“No sir, it’s my girlfriend’s sister.”
“OK, calm down…”
I put the phone on speaker, mostly so the 911 guy would be an audio witness if Mrs. Rattsen murdered me with her purse, but he started barking orders and I tried to follow as best I could. And tried to get Baby to calm down and do what the 911 guy said, and Yvonne was pushing.
The next thing I know (cause I sure wasn’t gonna be the one looking up Yvonne’s skirt to see what was goin on, that’s for sure!) then there was a little higher pitched shriek in addition to the 3 usual shrieks and Baby held up this little newborn baby rat… funny, y’know, them little brand new baby rats look just like real old rats, all wrinkly, y’know… anyway, I ain’t got no water in my car to wash the kid off with but the 911 guy said to dry the baby off anyway so I got into the trunk and I had a roll of paper towels from the studio and an old Guns N Roses t-shirt.
So Mrs. Rattsen wiped the baby down with the paper towels and Yvonne whipped her shirt off and the 911 guy asked what was going on and I told him I dunno ‘cause I was making damn sure I was looking the other way and not at Baby’s sister’s boobies. But I told him the baby was there but we were still stuck on the Exit 17 on ramp.
Well, he said the ambulance was coming but the way traffic was I figured we’d be just as well to just walk back to the Rattsen house. But of course I got a purse thwackin’ for that.
And so we were stuck there and it dawned on me that the inside of my ol’ beater was even more of a disgusting mess than usual and I should probably ask Darren how to clean that but of course my phone was still in use for the 911 call.
Because, y’know, Mrs. Rattsen needed to yell at someone over the fact that the ambulance wasn’t there yet. I think she also yelled at the 911 guy as if the traffic jam was his fault, too.
Just then we heard a helicopter, and I figured maybe it was one o’ them air ambulances, but nope. It was the traffic copter for KRAT Channel 7.
See, they were listening in on the 911 scanner and heard of the baby being born on the on-ramp and they know a good rat-man interest story when they hear of it, so we were gonna be live on TV. Plus, of course, I mentioned that their assistant meteorologist Becky Ratkowski is my sister, so… y’know how it is.
And KRAT has been pointing out for years how stupid it is that we only have the one way in and out of Ratboro Memorial because of that corrupt dumbass former mayor and his stupid golf course, so it kinda fit their agenda. Of course, Becky told me their lead anchor lady Stephanie Rath-Markham was sleeping with that mayor but ever since he ditched her for a City Hall intern half her age, she’s had an axe to grind with all the mayors and city councillors.
Either way, I think it’s high time they at least built a new overpass to the hospital and made some other road improvements, and not just for emergencies, cause there’s a sushi joint next to the hospital that my boss Big Mike is always sending me to during sessions. Even when it’s not the annual Ratland Day traffic jam, it’s a major pain in the tail getting in and out of there and my life would be so much easier if they fixed the road access.
But back to being on TV: Yvonne and the new baby didn’t mind too much, but my Baby was upset because she only had half her make-up on, so she hid the other half of her face behind my shoulder while we were being interviewed.
And Mrs. Rattsen was pissed because the last time she was on TV it was when she came in third runner-up at Miss Ratland some 30 years ago and she was mad that the TV folks weren’t gonna photoshop in a pageant crown on her head. Nor would they promise to make sure to specify that she was Miss Ratsville 1992 when they were putting her name on the screen when she was talking.
Anyway, the traffic reporter asked me all about what happened, even though there wasn’t much to say, but at least he was OK with letting me wave and say “Hi Mama! I’m on TV!”
Then Mrs. Rattsen shoved her way into the shot and introduced herself as “Karen Rattsen nee Ratkin, Miss Ratsville 1992” and started acting like she was calm and cool and collected the whole time instead of spazzing out. And like she wasn’t the reason we got stuck on the on-ramp in the first place.
But most importantly, Mrs. Rattsen had a stern warning for the other executive wives at the country club: “Meet your new future Miss Ratland! But first, Miss Ratsville, and before that Miss Teen Ratsville, and before that Little Miss Ratsville, and before that…”
Then she just kept rattling off titles which I suppose must be a whole bunch of kiddie pageants but I dunno ‘cause I kinda zone out whenever Baby and the women of her family drone on and on about beauty queen stuff. But I guess the point is the baby is a girl rat not a boy rat, ‘cause it would be weird if a dude rat became Miss Ratsville… though Lord only knows what would have happened if Mr. and Mrs. Rattsen had had sons instead of all girls.
Annoying as all that was, the KRAT team were nice enough to offer to fly Yvonne and the baby to Ratboro Memorial to be checked on by doctors. Fortunately for the KRAT team, they only had room for those two. So Mrs. Rattsen stomped off to walk home, but I was kinda stuck on the on-ramp til the traffic cleared up, and Baby didn’t wanna go home so she hopped in the passenger seat and chattered on about how her new niece was gonna win all the crowns. I did what I usually do, which is to just nod and say “uh huh” a lot.
And I guess it was another couple hours before they finally hauled the car pile-ups from the highway and the traffic began to crawl. I’d hoped we could go make out at the beach since it was getting dark, but I was ordered to turn off at exit 19 so we could visit Yvonne and the new baby. And so my Baby could take her 10,000 selfies with her sister and the new baby (and of course she hid the un-make-upped half of her face behind the new baby) before insisting I take her home.
Without stopping by the beach or any other convenient make-out spots. Ugh…
So much for my weekend plans… ‘cause Sunday Baby and her mom and other sisters of course were gonna spend all day at the hospital with Yvonne and because Mama Rat had seen me on the KRAT Channel 7 news and decided I had to go with her to church so she could brag about her son the TV hero to all her friends.
And of course to Aunty Maureen.
Sigh… some things never change.
And to make it even worse, Mama Rat spent all of Monday nagging me about chores before I had to return to work on Tuesday and get ragged on for not knowing how to play doctor properly and having fresh baby germs all over the back seat of my car.
Jeff, however, did pat me on the back and tell me, “There is much good karma from having brought a new life into this world of illusion… I guess.”
So that was that.
Links
Follow Ricky on Facebook: Ricky B. the Rock n Roll Rat Facebook page
And on Instagram: Ricky B. Rat on Instagram
And on Twitter/X: Ricky B. Rat on Twitter
But also on YouTube: Ricky B. Rat on YouTube
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