Traumatized by Bass Pro Shops

I had forgotten a couple of things in my enthusiasm to go see the Bass Pro Shops on Lakeridge, a redneck Disney Land of sorts. I am creeped out by animals that were once live and now stuffed, and big, grey fish with mouths that can swallow your fist.

Background: My maternal grandparents had nine children and no jobs. They lived off what they grew and butchered themselves. Then they converted their house into a hunting lodge and my grandfather let men pay to shoot on his property. And sleep in his house, which must have gone over great with his six daughters. There was a twin bed or a cot in every space of every room of that house except the kitchen.

And there was no privacy. The house had no hallways. Each room opened up into the next one in a square, with the closets and storage rooms filling the center of the house. Part of the kitchen was converted into two adjoining bathrooms with curtainless shower stalls. (A luxury since before that there was an outhouse.) But they didn't have a proper door with a doorknob. They had three-quarter swinging doors with hook latches. By the time I was four, my grandparents had died (both at age 56) and the hunting parties ceased.

My youngest aunt kept the house just as it was, with all the beds and the creepy, curtained walk-in closets. If you wanted to change your clothes in private, you had to go into one of them, and every one had a mounted deer head on the wall (with eyes that saw me). This spooked the heck out of me, and I didn't like sleeping outside that room either, knowing that head was in there and could float out at any time and get me. I had to spend two weeks of every summer in that house until my aunt had the good sense to burn it down for the insurance.

Back to the Present Day: Bass Pro Shops has a lot of stuffed, mounted deer heads. On stuffed mounted deer bodies. All over the place. Everywhere! As well as turkeys, and birds and other stuffed stuff. I got to the point where I just kept my head down, but not before I saw the stuffed baby bear. Not a stuffed teddy bear. A stuffed baby real bear. Ahhhhh, that was too much. My husband tried to claim it was fake. "They wouldn't stuff a faun." Because, ohmygosh, there's even a stuffed Bambi's mother and a stuffed teenager Bambi. Thanks for pointing that one out, honey. Now I need therapy.

Look at all these guns. This is freaking me out. And whereas I usually like to look at brightly colored tropical fish, a tank full of evil gray fish with whiskers and big gaping mouths...well, I am going to see that in my dreams. Sheeeesh.

The place was packed. My husband doesn't eat fish, so we weren't planning to wait the hour to 90 minutes for the restaurant part, and there were a boatload of kids in there anyway, even sitting at the bar in front of the giant aquarium with friendlier looking fish. Right after stuffed deer and big fish, I don't like restaurants full of kids. Santa was there, too. (Not in the restaurant. In the boat section.)

The Nascar driving simulation looked very fun, though, and was only $5, but my husband didn't want to try it. We watched one car repeatedly slam into the virtual wall and spin around in the grass before crossing the road again, only to slam back into the wall. When it was over, two preteen boys got out of that car. How many years before I'm sharing I-95 with that driver? Two?

The one thing I thought about buying, a tin frog on a stick (don't need it, but it was a good price, $4.95), I didn't because most of them were already broken by obliging kids who had pulled the bobbing frog tongues out. And I almost bought a bag of marshmellows labeled "Snowman Poop," but then I couldn't think of anyone who would appreciate such a gift. It sort of puts you off marshmellows.

So that was my holiday outing this year, although there's a possibility I might get a free Tacky Light tour next week. I assume there will be no stuffed deer along the way.