Um, dudes?  You people be nasty.  I knew I liked you.

Jill and I asked for gross car stories last week.  I expected rotten milk stories.  I expected spilled drink stories.  I figured someone somewhere would find a way to drag some poop into the whole thing.  What I got is not AT ALL what I expected.  What I got was 60 people who made me feel way better about myself.

The whole point of this blog is to make YOU feel better about YOURSELF as a parent, a spouse, a human.  Call us even, I guess.

There are so many really, truly horrifying entries to this thing that I have no idea where to start.  Every one of you needs not only a lifetime supply of Febreze but a maid service, one of those people that come to your house and organize it for you and a therapist.  Again, my kinda people.

Alas, there can only be one winner, because we only have one prize to give away, but before we get to that, let’s cover the runners-up.

Our very scientific, educated judging system came down to how vividly we could still picture what you told us a week later.  Basically, the better nightmares we had, the better your chances were.

Anne’s story of stalagtites in her car maybe didn’t stink, but it’s totally something I would do, and it cracked me the hell up.  Honorable mention, yo.

When I was a kid, we moved to the upper midwest. The first winter we were there, my mom left a six pack of Diet Coke in the passenger’s side seat of our car.

Not only did the fierce cold cause all six sodas to explode? But stalactites. Massive, frozen, hanging, cave-like cones of of diet cokecicles from the ceiling of the car. Like seriously scary six inch ones. We didn’t even know how to clean it up – the car was already in the garage.

Oh dear god in heaven, oh sweet little pink baby Jesus, Sara made me want to D.I.E.  Also honorable mention.

I found my cat in the car once. With his four-inch tapeworm buddy hanging out of his mouth.

See, my cat had been diagnosed with tapeworms, and we were treating him with tapeworm tabs. We’d been keeping him inside (even though he’s normally an outdoor cat) because the tabs can cause the cat to vomit up the tapeworm sometimes (if the tapeworm has migrated to the cat’s stomach, which hah! who lets their cat be wormy that long? NOT US, NO WAY), instead of passing it the other way, and we didn’t want him to choke without us around to help. Also, keeping him in just seemed like The Thing To Do. He didn’t like it, and one day he managed to get outside (after several days of frantic meowing, bolting whenever the door was opened, and clawing madly at the walls and carpet).

When we couldn’t find him in a couple of hours, we just figured he’d taken off to sulk in a tree for a while. Apparently, though, he’d jumped in our open car window and curled up for a “ha ha, I’m outside, bitches” nap. Aaaand… the tapeworm chose then to dislodge from my cat’s stomach. Not his intestines, where he would be all dead-ified and disollved, oh no. His stomach. Where the tapeworm was, um, not dead, and not dissolved. And then? My cat took a nap with the tapeworm mostly out but apparently, er, still attached, and the tapeworm died.

What did I find in mycar? I found a sleeping cat and a pile of cat vomit with a shriveling tapeworm on top. All great Neptune’s ocean will not wash those stains clean from my hands.

Ah, the poop stories.  MommyCosm‘s husband thought it would be heee-larious to throw a diaper in the back of a buddy’s car.  I’d have KILLED him.   Jim left a whole potty chair, a FULL potty chair, in his car.  That’s hot.  Simply Anonymom left a poopy pull-up in her car.  For a week.  Heather B’s nephew left her a little brown present under her couch.  That’s mah boy; HIDE THE EVIDENCE.  Zak tried really hard to recycle his cloth diapers and be a good dad, except that he left that $18 diaper in the back of his car for god knows how long.  That’ll teach him.  Elizabeth had cat pee, which may actually be worse, I dunno, but I’m lumping her in here anyways.  And then I’m showing you a picture of us, all sloshed drunk.

That’s just how I roll.

I don’t give a rats ass if he is my brother, I’m giving Gnilleps 3rd place for his dead cat in the car story.  Not because the rats that got chopped up in Sandy Shoe’s car’s fan or Liz’s dead bullfrog or Redneck Mommy’s baked snake or the mice who died in Juice‘s and Melanie Dawson‘s heaters and just rotted there all summer weren’t more gross, but the detail, lordy the details.

Well, it’s not food, in this country anyway. So I worked for the cable company and used my own van. (Read : Blue Bunny, really, kids always asking if I was selling ice cream) and one day I notice a cat jumped in my van and pee’d. Yeah, that sucked, middle of the summer it was terrible. One might believe this to be the end of the story, but oh no, it’s not.

So I get back in the van on Monday and goto work. I smelled Chinese food all the way to work, but thought nothing of it. (Hit Panda Express that day, cause something drove me to it) Then the next day, it smelled like bad Chinese food… man it smelled, but I am a guy and am impervious to rotting food I leave in the car for weeks on end, so I push on. By the end of the week I am DYING, even I can not take it.

So I start cleaning out the van to locate the smell… can’t find it. WTH?!?! So I go into the back and start looking and then I take the Gorilla Racks out cause I HAVE to fix this and there, trapped in between two of the legs is the cat… That’s all I got.

You had me at Panda Express, brother.

There are so many milk and chicken and pork and cheese and pasta stories, I’m A) going vegan now, thankyouverymuch and B) not even going to try to link to all of them.  But even though you all are forgetful as all get out, none of you accidentally made your child consume your rotten food.  Well, none of you except Ali.  Really, dude?  If I ever come over, I’ll have water, thanks.

PS: FlickrLovr?  I JUST started liking salsa, like, this year.  And you RUINED IT for me.  Fuck you.

Adriane takes second place (and sister, you totally would have had 1st had you included one tiny little element to your story, which we’ll get to in a minute.)  I loved this not just because it’s totally horror-show disgusting, but because she had so much stuff piled in her car for so long that it masked what I can only imagine was the smell of pure death.  Kudos.  You can ride in my car ANYTIME.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to unhook the baby’s seat so I could get at the real mess, the floorboard at the foot of her seat. (my theory is that since no one’s legs hang down there- there is more room for junk to accumulate). I sat down and started taking things out. Mismatched shoes, board books, happy meal toys; The deeper I dug, the worse it smelled. Moldy smell. Gagging moldy smell.

At the bottom of the pile was my old black hoodie that I keep in my car for chilly emergencies. Just looking at it, I knew what was inside. I flashed to a field trip I had chaperoned for my son’s class to the U-pick pumpkin farm in October. He was cold after the hayride. I went to the car to get my hoodie. He wore it for a little while.

Then he zipped up his small-ish (re: 3 lb or so) pumpkin in the hoodie to “make it easier” to carry. He put it in the back seat, zipped it up, tied the arms together and promptly forgot about it. So did I. Bad Mom. I know.

Now it is February. 5 months of putrefying pumpkin wrapped in what I am assuming to be an amazingly cryogenic scent sealing hoodie. I unzipped. I was attacked by a smack of mold funk smell, and the pumpkin IMPLODED. It literally went from a orb shape to a caved in gelatinous goo puddle.

What would have pushed you over the edge, the Pièce de résistance?  MAGGOTS.  You say maggots, I die a little inside.  Lattemommy has the best maggot story ever told in the history of maggot-story telling, but I’ll leave that up to her.  Maybe someday, if we get her drunk enough.  StPaulSlim, however, DID share her maggot story.  The best part of the story, shockingly enough, isn’t the maggot infested cheeseburger, it’s what they did about it.

We found it several 100 degree days later, promptly lysol-ed the hell out of the van and drove it straight to the dealer for a trade in. When the used car manager inquired about the smell, I told him than the girls’ grandfather had died in the car and we needed to trade it in because the trauma made it impossible for the kids to ever ride in it again. He took pity on me and gave me $500 over book for the trade.

You’re going to HELL, dude, and I want to have the locker Right. Next. To. You.

But nothing, nothing, could touch the 1st place winner in this little contest.  Dear god, I think you have actually traumatized me, Kris B.  I know we asked for details, but YIKES, yo.  I am scarred for life.

Umm… stray dog vomit. Piles of it. In the loopy carpet found on the back of my folded down car back seat. After said stray dog has apparently eaten a Jed Clampett sized bowl of cheap cat food and . . . are those Ramen noodles? Oh shit. Unless Dr. Frankenstein has used his talents to animate pasta, those are. . . TAPEWORMS!!! OMFG, the mass of orange, slime covered goo was positively seething with live, and dead, intestinal parasites. Ever smelled partially digested, warm, cat food turned to dog puke full of worms on a hot day? No? Well, if you own a cat (and you feed that cat an unnamed brand of cheap dry cat food) soak about 4 cups of that food in just enough water to make it look like ploppy cow poo. Then dump the mess back into the bag, close the bag securely and let it ferment for a few hours.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Take your fermented cat food, in it’s closed bag, and microwave it on high for a minute or so. Got it? Okay, now, open the bag just enough to toss in some old cooked ramen noodles and some of that slimey, gooey, jelly looking stuff you get when you refrigerate chicken that’s been cooked a certain way. Give the bag a little shake to distribute the contents. Now, stick your nose in the bag. Smell that? The actual pile in the back of my car smelled worse than that. Let’s move on. Go toss your bag full of foulness onto a piece of loopy carpet (the kind you have at the office should do nicely). Make sure to spread it around. Now here’s a pair of old underwear (don’t ask) and McDonald’s napkins to clean it all up. Oh and make sure you don’t touch any of it because the feel is even worse than the look and smell. Trust me on this one.

But our little experiment isn’t over yet! Now, to truly understand the horror, miss a pile between the car seats. Find it only after it’s been percolating in a closed car that’s spent 2 days parked in the Oklahoma summer sun and high humidity. The good news is the worms were at least dead by then.

Um, hold me?

Thanks to everyone who bared their souls and stepped into our little confessional. My ego really needed this boost. *wink*