That Was Special

I have said before that when I travel my goal is to have as bad a time as possible, shy of being maimed, killed, or raped (especially raped...). In a way, I got this from my father, the Green Beret and Ranger, who certainly taught me to seek out and thrive in misery, which we have done on countless occasions. In fact, he came to call his intentional infliction of dire circumstances, usually involving weekend hikes through the likes of the aptly named Hellhole Swamp, as "Planned Misery." The difference in our perspectives is that while he sees a weekend or two a year as a way to more perfectly appreciate the other 360+ days, I view a horrific time as no less than the essence of life itself.

Shy of this transitory, ever-fleeting present, our lives are truly our memories. Of those, I submit, the far greater part are not our joys, but our misfortunes. Perhaps the people who argue this point are sincere but my own experience and my observation of others holds it as true.

As a child I went to Disney World, what many consider the acme of childhood delights, nearly a dozen times. Of all those times being there I can hardly recall a specific episode, save, of course, for the time that it was cold and rainy. No, I can´t recall that sort of thing, but I remember quite distinctly and vividly the night on our first swamp trip when an unexpected cold front came in. We´d all packed for seventy degrees and it dropped into the low forties/ high thirties, and that was after a day of wading neck-deep in the swamp. I stayed up all night tending the fire as Pop and the cadets were curled up around me, constantly rotating as if on a spit, so as to stave off that piercing cold. In the morning, Pop discovered his plastic raincoat had melted from his trying to get so close to the fire.

It was a truly miserable night. And I love it. I know I love it now, in retrospect, but even when I´m in the moment of a truly bad time, I find I love it. Certainly not from any warped masochism, but simply for the fact that I´ll remember it; I´ll have survived it; I´ll have conquered it in a way. So most people want vague recollections of general serenity...I´ll take the ingrained knowledge of contending, of running the gauntlet and making it out the other side.

I´m sure I´m right about this, and, besides, who wants to hear about someone else´s good time? Nobody. Okay...maybe your parents, but that´s it. Good times aren´t interesting. Struggle, conflict, these are the bases of story-telling. If people want to hear about good times, why is the word commiserate?

So without further ado...

Homeland Security Agent Knuckles was refreshingly tender, yet thorough, and I was through the gate and into the pond-jumper in no time. Having to stand hunched over as the plane was apparently designed for Lilliputians was a novel experience, but after take-off, when I attempted to use the facilities and found wedging my frame into that cabinet nigh on impossible, I considered that it was perhaps I who was Brobdingnagian.

Curled in a ball, I read contentedly until we made our descent and I looked out over miles and miles of perfectly rowed and surveyed suburbs. Allow me to correct myself: exciting misery is my goal. The hellish life of the wage slave living in one of those boxes outside Detroit would never hold appeal for me, which is most of the reason why I´m not sure I´ll ever be a lawyer. Life should be living, not trying to make partner.

Bleary-eyed, the Detroit airport seemed a nice enough place. In between terminals was a long walkway tunnel. I suppose the idea was to have rapidly changing colored lights run the length of the cylinder to go along with soothing sounds and thus help travelers shed stress and think positively, but the whole thing came off like another trip down the birth canal. Born again in Detroit! Oh joy...

Despite my greatest efforts, I did suffer a most gruesome violation (of my finances, mind you) by way of a honey-tongued waitress at an airport cafe where I ate lunch. The beer she brought me could have financed a new front on the Global War on Terror. Her kind words to me couldn´t hide the fact that she´d gotten what she wanted and so I had to go. Completely disheveled, I awkwardly bid her adieu and stumbled out, feeling confused and ashamed at what had just been done to me.

As for my fun nine hours crossing the planet, I was a proper fit for my seat, though of course there were screaming babies all around, the stewardess spilled water in my lap, and I was plagued by those two bane ulences of the locked- in traveler: turb and flat. Someone also evidently thought as that it was minus- seventy outside the plane, that it should be positive- one hundred ten inside. I peeled out of my layers and cursed the heat. I´ve been in 130 degrees and I think I broke my sweat glands on the river last summer. Part of the allure of going on this trip was to finally freeze my tuckus off. I swear I might move up to Maine.

I was pleased upon landing to get the horrible recollection of being deaf, mute, and illiterate. My ability to say only "I don´t speak German; do you speak English?"; "Please"; "Thank you"; and "Yes, Mr. Bartender, I would absolutely, positively adore yet another satisfying, delicious, glorious beer" will have to do. I pulled some play money out of the ATM, stumbled on to the train to Berlin, and collapsed in a heap.

P.S. Reading law books for a semester is like weight-lifting. I thought that perhaps I brought too many books with me, but I polished off Charles Frazier´s (Cold Mountain) new book, 13 Moons, by the time I landed here.