One year for my dance team, we had two giant props for our small groups. They consisted of a giant bird's nest and a dining room table. Don’t ask why, it's a dance thing. Somehow though, my mom was left in charge of the props since she had the ultra-super mom minivan with the seats that stowed all the way down. This was not a problem for all of the local regionals in New England since we usually didn’t have to go far and parking was cheap, but nationals were in New York City. Parking in New York City is so ridiculously expensive so my mom thought it was a genius idea to rent a UHaul to bring them down. When she brought up the idea with the studio owner, she thought it was great. She even told us that we didn’t have to bring them back and we could just take the bus home. After that, it was settled. I was going to become a big city trucker.

I was very excited to drive in the UHaul. It was going to be my first time driving in a truck and I still had this childlike wonder about it. So much so that I really wanted to immerse myself in the role by buying a trucker hat. Thankfully, my mom shot down this idea.

Once we picked up the van and started driving it, it was a completely different story. The first thing that I noticed about the van was that it had a tendency to bounce up and down every time we would even graze a crack on the road. Even though the bouncing of the van irritated my mom, it reminded me of my favorite roller coaster at Funtown in Maine. The creaking sound when it made turns, the click-clack of the gears while going up a hill. Of course, I did not know much about cars and the fact that they are not supposed to do that. If I was in a car that did that now, I would freak out.

Now my mom uses the Waze app for directions, you know that app that every middle-aged mom uses to avoid traffic but sends all the middle age moms that same way so you're still stuck in traffic. In pre-Waze days, we would use the George Washington Bridge to cross over. But due to my mom's relentless persistence and unearned faith in Waze, she refused to cross the bridge when we got to it. Instead, she followed the directions to some obscure bridge that I cannot even remember the name of. The one thing I can remember about the bridge was that it had a really low clearance level. But the big problem was that my mom did not know the clearance of the truck, which might have been important information to know going into this. Naturally. My mom started to freak out, trying to find a way to diverge from the bridge and onto a different path. But the Waze was persistent and insisted that we could only go under this one very specific bridge.

Somehow, after about 45 minutes of trying to dodge the bridge, we ended up in Harlem. I could definitely tell that my mom was very frazzled. So much so that when she was grasping on the wheel and nervously hyperventilating, she didn’t even notice the biker crossing the street. I steamed and my mom hit her foot on the breaks. I am not kidding you when I said she was literally 10 feet away from slamming the truck into a biker.

After a very stressful ride, we finally made our way to the hotel. Let's just say that it was not quite what we expected. Well, the outside was what we expected. A giant skyscraper with a 2 story lobby that was about the size of my entire house. But my mom and I got to see something no one else got to see. The loading dock. It was probably the grossest thing that I have ever seen in my life. Not to mention that it smelled like every dumpster in the world threw up in this one small spot. Not to mention that there was no one there to help us move the stuff. We were just in this nasty loading dock all alone, so my mom called for some mom pal back up.

First and foremost, I am not a fan of Dance Moms and I think it is very inaccurate to the actual competitive dance experience. But the mom my mom called is literally a brown-haired Jill and that is not just because I have seen her wear cowboy boots before. 

She obviously left after she realized that she actually would have to do work and offered to bring our bags up to our non-existent room considering that we haven’t checked in yet. We obviously did not give her the bags but I have always wondered what she would have done with our luggage. She probably would have just put it in her room and given it to us later but it is fun to imagine her throwing our luggage into the Hudson so her daughter could have a solo in the modern group.

We were left alone again, and we had no idea how to operate the freight elevator since it looked like it used a key to activate. I was literally sitting in the back of the UHaul, rightfully sobbing because I was surrounded by trash near a sketchy alley in New York City. Finally though, a worker came by and confusedly unlocked the freight elevator for us. I don’t blame him for his weird stares. Hey, It’s not every day that you see a human-sized bird nest coming out of a UHaul.

We finally met up with Paula and her daughter Allie, we could tell that they were ready to work. Instead of wearing their regular high heels, they were wearing high-heeled sneakers, which are the optimal heavy lifting shoe. Now when we first asked them about the UHaul, Paula said we could just ditch the props in the city without any repercussions. It seemed weird but we just kinda went with it. But when we were about to turn in the UHaul, Paula looked confused and said, “Return it? But we have to bring it back.” And my mom was irate. Let's just say that we did not return the props. And by that I mean we just ditched them in the hotel ballroom at the end of the weekend and booked it the heck out of there before anyone could stop us.

My mom learned her lesson in one way as she never volunteered to bring the props again. But after almost 5 years, she still uses Waze. I guess the one thing I learned looking back on this experience is that you can never curb that middle-aged mom's obsession with Waze.