Wheee !!!

Wheeee !!!
Think about it. When was the last time you used that exclamation? Bet you said that word when you were on some sort of carnival ride like a roller coaster, or on a fast horse with the wind whipping your hair against your face. Perhaps you were acting the daredevil and were riding down a big hill on your bicycle without holding on to the handlebars, or when on a joyride in your mama's car, laughing and traveling way too fast with a bunch of kids along for the ride. Maybe bouncing over a snowy crest on your sled as you zipped down the hill turned out to be a "Wheee !!!" moment. The word is so descriptive because it defines the moment of utter abandonment to that instance of excitement. So you use "Wheeee !!!" when you're thrilled by something. It's not so much an adult word, but one that a youngster would shout out gleefully. It's accompanied by a grin as wide as the edges of your mouth will stretch.

It's a word that my cousin Nancy and I had the occasion to use on a trip down one particular mountain of the Smokies in Cherokee, North Carolina when we were with our relatives: our grandmother, nicknamed Dammie, and our Great Aunt Bonnie, and Nancy's mother, Bunny. We had spent the summer day at the Cherokee Indian Reservation and were driving back to Bonnie's home in Maryville, Tennessee in Dammie's great big land yacht of an automobile - some sort of a Dodge. I'd guess the year was 1955 when I was nine.

The three women were sitting in the front seat chattering away. Nancy and I had the back seat all to ourselves. We were busily content, playing with our Ginny dolls and their new wardrobes which Bonnie and our grandmother had sewn from scraps of dress and curtain material, leftover lace and snippets of braid. Riding in hot weather on mountainous winding roads usually caused me to have motion sickness, but if my mind was on something besides gazing out the open window, the swerving movement of the car did not bother me...I was all right. Dressing my Ginny doll with her new outfits kept me distracted enough to prevent any car sickness.

The car had just come out of a sharp curve, and as it descended this steep grade, it picked up speed. Suddenly, the conversation ceased in the front seat. Our grandmother began to pump the brakes, but that did not slow the car down at all. Nancy and I looked up from our play and could see the trees and clouds and tops of the hazy blue Smokies flying by much faster than normal. The adults started screaming, so cousin Nancy and I did, too. Except their screams evolved out of pure-tee, white-knuckled fright, while she and I were saying "Wheee !!!" out of excitement because we thought Dammie was trying to give us the ride of our lives down that mountain! Nancy and I were laughing out loud over our grandmother's trick of almost putting us in orbit. Bunny was screeching at her mother to press harder on the brakes; Bonnie started crying; our grandmother was pleading with Jesus to stop the car! He obviously heard her and answered the distress call because after about a mile of whizzing, screaming, crying, praying, and wheeeing down the mountain, a slight incline appeared to our right, the type of graveled incline that runaway vehicles take in an emergency. She wheeled the runaway Dodge into that emergency ramp and slowly came to a stop, bogging down amidst the deep sand and gravel. Cries of "Thank You, Lord Jesus!" filled the car, then all was eerily quiet. Until, with animated voices, we two little girl cousins in the back seat said, "Wheee, do it again, Dammie!"

Story ID:	1768
Written by:	Susan Hammett Poole (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Story
Location:	Cherokee NC USA
Year:	1955
Person:	myself