Parental Discretion

The craziest stories I have heard have come from my parents. Not all of them have been true. And many were missing important details. Which was probably why they sounded crazy. They're not very good at story telling. Or checking in. They'd been out of the country for a month and didn't call until tonight, when they arrived in Chicago (to be fair, my dad did email- once).

That was when I heard this story.

Father: ... there was an incident toward the end of the trip. We got stomach flu and couldn't go on the exploration.

Moi: Explore what?

Father: The Shanghai explore. The biggest thing in-

Moi: The Expo?

Father: Yes. Ex-po. We got sick. It was probably from this Tibetan tea that cost 100,000 RMB.

Moi: How were you drinking such expensive tea? (~$15K USD)?

Father: It wasn't really 100,000 RMB. Well, The bag of tea was, but we only had a little. We toured this tea place and the owner gave us each two pieces [of this caterpillar fungus tea]. The roots were 50 RMB apiece ($7.30). It's not like we could say no. So we had some. No, wait, it was 360,000 RMB. That's $53,000 USD.

Moi: And that made you sick?

Father: It's a little complicated. I'll tell you more when I get home.

Based on the hesitation in his voice, I'm guessing some 'shrooms were involved, too.