• Nostalgia

    The monkey cup

    A long time ago, in a place far, far away…

    I was a small child growing up in our first house. I knew what I liked and I knew where to find it. A kitchen chair was all I needed to make it to the next step: the kitchen counter. From there I could stand up and reach the top cabinets. That’s where the Pepto-Bismol was hiding.

    With my favorite cup in hand, I poured myself a generous serving of the only one that coats.

    Oh that was good.

    Then one of my parents found my favorite cup, my activities betrayed by…

    … the only one that coats.

    Unbeknownst to me, a phone call to poison control was taking place while one of my parents tended to me and my favorite cup. Soon after I learned more than I wanted to know about induced vomiting.

    The episode cemented the monkey cup in the Legend of John.

    Caveat: John may have mixed his meds this morning.

    My father had surgery yesterday. It was nothing serious: hernia surgery. However, even though my father was ambulatory* after the surgery, my mother can’t be left alone and my father was still not one hundred percent. So I came over to stay the night. It’s not like it’s out of the way, or a tremendous burden. The second house I did my growing up in is just a mile or two up the street.

    One of my endearing qualities is I always go rooting around the house looking for memories when I come over. That’s how I came across the long lost monkey cup, hiding in the bottom of the china cabinet.

    Now you can know and love the monkey cup as much as I do.

    *The word my sister the nurse used – I’m clearly not that smart

  • In between

    Most trips my wife and I took since our wedding were merely travel – complete with a detailed itinerary. They involved as many relatives as possible. It was misguided, but it was how we measured a trip’s success.

    You probably know at least a few people like this – folks who don’t think a trip has worth unless they need a vacation afterwards.

    Do you know what I like best about a vacation? I like not thinking about what I want or need to do next. This doesn’t always happen when we travel – thus the distinction between travel and vacation. Vacation may be a subset of travel, but it doesn’t take business to take the vacation out of a trip. Last week I had a vacation.

    We went to Ocean City, New Jersey. Why New Jersey, you might ask? It’s where my brother-in-law’s parents met. Long story not so long, they went every year for nostalgia’s sake (and because they had fun), my sister went after she met Mike, and she talked us into joining them, renting a second floor condo looking out over the five mile boardwalk, the imposing dunes, and the Atlantic Ocean. In short, she made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. I don’t need to tell you this was a vacation, not if you’ve read my earlier posts.

    While I’m glad we went, today was time to go back to work. Yesterday was supposed to be the day but I had a doctor’s appointment – and, well – I felt a little unwell. Is it possible I just had a case of post-vacation blues? That’s something only me and my thermometer know, and neither one of us talks much.

    Why is it so hard to go back to work after vacation? Unless we hate our jobs and the people who share space with them, returning shouldn’t be all that bad. We’re returning to life. Real life. We’re returning to people we generally like, to jobs we find at least bearable – if not rewarding. I’d imagine a few people feel more at home at work, those lucky enough to have a job that’s more than a career – a calling.

    Tonight I’m just not buying. You see, for me a vacation is a glimpse at perfection. It’s like drinking water all your life then tasting a sip of fine wine, but only just that sip. Water doesn’t taste quite the same after that sip, but why should that be? If we generally enjoy life (when not suffering from depression), why loathe it’s return? (In my case it may have something to do with that depression.)

    In my mind I keep going back to a conversation while we were in NJ. It was one of the more serious conversations… most of them were rather light. A topic and a few tangents were discussed, but my cynic’s lightbulb went off and I quieted the group with a single line. “I think the problem is too many people in this world are too stupid to understand or accept that the world we live in is gray.”

    I warned you it was going to be cynical. And yes, I know it loses something without the context, but sums up why I can’t come to grips with the return to work. In my mind’s eye, vacation proves the purest white exists, and I lose a bit of my grasp on reality. That, and I’m just as stupid as a lot of folks out there. Life is rarely that perfect. We should recognize, savor, and celebrate it when it comes along, but realize it’s not forever. It’s not sustainable. Life is messy. Life can be a struggle – to each in his or her own way. The trick is to balance the light and the dark, to live in the gray, sustained by the moments of light – at times making our own.

    I think about the peddlers of “success” manuals, the “you can be happy all the time” crowd, and religious zealots (talking about these mysterious plans, or giving away free toasters with each first time prayer). I probably think about them too much. I think they are a lot like a vacation (from reality). I think they pose a real danger.

    It’s when we think everything can always be perfect that we’re ripe for disappointment.

    We can strive for it. We can look forward to those moments when we achieve it. But I don’t think we should always expect it. Not from ourselves, or our lives.

  • Taking flight

    It’s the last day of our vacation, if you can call it that. It’s travel day. It’s my birthday. It kind of sucks. I’ve mentioned before it’s been a while since I’ve traveled, but I sure don’t remember the seats on an airplane being this tight.

    Impossibly tight.

    Some seats recline, some don’t. It’s a matter of luck of the draw. It’s a matter of matter. Does the person behind you have short legs or long? If they’re long, that seat isn’t going anywhere, unless someone’s femur develops a joint.

    My neck really enjoys the seat-backs. They were designed for someone about six inches shorter and with much better posture, forming the business end of a right triangle. It has a nifty headrest that bends at the edges, keeping your head immobilized as you sleep. Too bad for me the head rest pushes ever so gently on my back at about T-7, causing my head to lean forward when the seat is in it’s full, upright position. Fortunately, no one is sitting behind me – so my seat reclines. I don’t have to hold my head up for two hours like a swimmer lifting his head out of water for air.

    Woo-hoo!

    However, I think my knees will have pressure marks for a week from the magazine pocket. Did I mention the seats were a tight fit?

    What airline delivers this kind of comfort at bargain prices? Spirit Airlines.

    You get what you pay for.

    On a lighter note, the last full day on the shore (yesterday) was everything I could have asked for. There was lots of time to relax. There was lots of time to read. There were lots of opportunities to go snap-snap with my camera. I sat quietly most of the day by the balcony overlooking the shore. Cheryl, bless her heart, took the kids out to spend their last bits of energy before flying home.

    It didn’t rain and it wasn’t cloudy, but the surf was up a bit from the hurricanes out in the Atlantic. There were alerts all over the news to refrain from swimming in the Atlantic. However, my brother-in-law and his family couldn’t resist the call of the surf – they went boogie boarding. This was a natural camera moment, watching my 6’1” brother-in-law challenge waves beginning their break a foot or two above his head. They had a great time taking a beating from the sea, and I had a great time taking their pictures.

    Twenty minutes later… back on the plane.

    Dick-head was just moved by a representative of the airline. Someone complained about Dick-head’s seat-back pressing into his bad knee, and Dick-head’s refusal to sit up. So what does Dick-head do? He moves into the seat in front of the tallest person in our section: me.

    Dick-head could have moved into the center seat a row up. There’s no one sitting behind that seat.

    But noooo. That’s not how Dick-head rolls.

    Meanwhile I have a certain obligation to stay with my family. I could move to a seat a row back, but it involves a trade-off. Another tall person is behind this seat, meaning I couldn’t try to put my seat back, in good conscience.

    This is my choice – John’s choice. Sit in a pitched forward position or live with pain in my knees (which I’ll get to in a moment). My neck is already a mess, so I’m sacrificing my knees.

    I’m having an outstanding time playing a passive aggressive game of tug of war over seat position. Dick-head tilts his seat back. It moves about an eighth of an inch – approximately the amount of compression possible between seat, skin, fat and bone on a knee attached to one of my legs. Throughout the flight he keeps trying to press back further, looking back at his impediment – my lower half – looking up at me as if I’m the bad guy. Believe me, I’d be shorter right now if it was up to me, Dick-head. I keep shifting my hips, alternating pushing a hip into crook in my seat-back and the crushing pressure on a knee. This serves two purposes. It temporarily relieves some of the pain in one knee, and it concentrates the surface area poking into the back of his seat. Plus, as a bonus it jostles him around a bit when I switch back and forth.

    Fuck. This is going to be a long hour and a half. I’m already losing sensation in my toes.

    Do you think I’d be looking at criminal charges if swatted the back of his head a few times? Open fisted, of course, I’m a nice guy. That’s the way I roll.