The Sun Also Rises

Dear America,

Greetings from Lake Sircoe, Canada.  I wish you could see this place.  I just came down from the top of a lighthouse where I watched a pink and orange sunset over the water.  A couple white gulls lazed around in the air and there was a red sailboat rocking way off in the horizon.  It was the most perfect event I’ve ever witnessed, and it was the ideal way to end the day that I’d spent at the end of a wooden dock reading Hemingway and drinking gin and sodas.  I finished half of The Sun Also Rises today, and even more of a bottle of gin.  Then I sauntered down the island and up the stairs to the lighthouse tower.  Truly stunning.

I thought about you today.  We had a great time together last month didn’t we?   I kept wishing you could be here today.  I’m probably just being nostalgic for a you that never really existed though.  You were always too busy to just sit and watch the sun set.  Does idling an entire day away listening to water lap at a dock sound good to you?  How about sluggishly thumbing through a Hemingway book called The Sun Also Rises with a sweating glass of gin and soda?  I have a feeling it all sounds too boring.  Too lackluster.

You always liked things faster paced.  If anything it always felt like I was sprinting just to keep up with your walk.  Of course we argued this issue into the ground and I’m not telling you anything you don’t know; it’s just that I had almost forgotten that about you until we spent last month together and then it hit me like a brick, oh yeah, I remember this – you are always in a hurry.

You were always on to the next thing before you finished the first.   You wrapped the next bite of spaghetti around your fork before you had even swallowed the one you were on.  You marked up tomorrow’s square in the daily planner while the sun was still up and leaving you plenty of good today to work with.   You hadn’t figured out how to use the apps on your iPhone 4 and already talked tirelessly about the iPhone 5.  You were always on to the next thing.  You were looking for the next breakthrough band, the next film, the next everything.  You were never happy with what you had.  You needed novelty and newness and next, next, next.

There I go again.  We’ve gone round and round about this and we never come to a solution.  I don’t know why I feel compelled to bring it up.  It is just that we spent 27 years together and some of your qualities rubbed off on me.  They say couples tend to start looking and acting like each other, and sure enough.  Even now I often find myself scarfing down a meal when I have plenty of time to actually sit and taste it.  I’ll find myself carrying on about the next place I’m going to visit or the next device or album I plan to purchase when really I should be thinking about where I am and what I have right now.  You rubbed off on me during those years.

I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, though.  That is just who you are.  And this is what I’ve learned about relationships: The quality you hate most about someone is usually tightly knotted to the quality you love most.  If you do away with the thing that grates on you the most, you’ll also be killing the thing you love the most.

The thing about spending a week isolated on this cottage on an island, the thing I hate most about it, is that one cannot simply get supplies when they are needed.  We took a ferry ride out to the island, and we loaded down the ferry with what we hoped would be enough supplies for the week, but it wasn’t.   Leah ran out of her cigarettes already, and she’s been pretty cranky about it.  She can’t just run to the store and get more, so we just have to deal with the irritability.

I wonder if maybe someone shouldn’t build some kind of bridge out to the island so that vacationers wouldn’t have to wait on a ferry to the mainland every time they ran out of toilet paper or needed to get ice or smokes, but if a bridge were built the quiet solitude on the island would be sacrificed.  And that’s what I love most about the island.  The worst quality about the island is webbed together with the quality I love most.  If supplies were readily available, the serenity I am experiencing would not be. That lighthouse would have been filled with tourists, and the peaceful sunset I witnessed would have been a guided tour.

And the same thing goes for you, America.  That quality that I hate most about you is inextricably linked to your best quality.  You are always in a hurry.  You are always moving on to the next big thing.  You forget to enjoy the moment.  You always think about what could be instead of what is.  And that drives me crazy.  Maybe it’s what drove me away.  But it also is what makes you great.  I’ll tell you a story.

One time I was with a friend of mine, a Jordanian, on the way to see a movie.  He asked me why you seemed so unhappy, why you can’t seem to just enjoy life.  Why, he asked, does America not relax?  Why does America not take her vacation days?  Life, said my Jordanian friend, is to be enjoyed, not to be rushed though like America does.

I almost agreed with him, but then I had a thought.  Well, I told him, look at this thing you are driving.  If it were not for America's dissatisfaction with conventional travel and her relentless work ethic, the automobile never would have been invented, the assembly lines never assembled.  Then I looked around and saw that all of my friend’s CDs in his car were from American musicians.  How about this music, I asked him, if it were not for America’s relentless pursuit of creativity, you would not have any of this.  Hell, I told him, if it weren’t for America’s work ethic and dedication to craft, the movie theater we are heading towards would have nothing to offer.  And how about that iPhone, I told him as I pointed to the one sitting in his console.  Sure, Steve Jobs and Wozniak were workaholics who never took the time to relax much, but that’s why you can check the movie times on your phone and then pull up a map telling you how to get there.  I thought I was over you, America, and then suddenly I found myself offended that anyone would criticize you.  I found myself coming to your defense.

Have you ever tried to hold a picture right up to your nose and look at it?  It gets all blurry when it is too close to your eyes.  In order to see it clearly, you have to put some distance between you and the picture.  The same is true for relationships.  Sometimes you have to put some distance between you and the other person to see them more clearly. I used to criticize you for your inability to relax.  Your insistence on the next everything made me insane.  But that was when we were too close.  Now that you and I have some distance between us, I can see that the thing I hated most – the thing that drove me away - is also the thing that I love most about you. The fact that you can't relax, can't enjoy what you have, the fact that you need the next and better thing is what makes you awful.  It's also what makes you great.

I’m not saying this because I want us to get back together.  I am not ready for that and it’s not realistic, so don't worry that I'm going to come running back. The sun set on you and me.  Our day dipped down over the horizon over a year ago, and it’s gone.  I think we’re both at peace with that, and who doesn’t feel at peace after a good sunset, especially if you can watch it from the top of an old lighthouse.  Right now I’m really enjoying living at my own pace, as I’m sure you are.  I’ll take all the slowness I can get.  But I wonder if someday, maybe way down the road, we might try to make it work again.  Hemingway may have had a point; the sun has set on us for now, but the sun also rises.

Sincerely,

Adam Showalter

The Railey

The railey, or superman as onlookers have dubbed the wakeboard trick, is a stunt that requires an unusual heap of bravery and lunacy.  The speed and airtime necessary to deliver a railey are such that a wakeboarder must hurl his body skywards at speeds of near fifty miles per hour while he flattens out over the water, all the while extending his arms and legs and holding the rope handle out in front of him.  When the trick is done well, the rider looks like Superman flying proudly through the air and looking down from his midair perch, thus the railey’s supplemental moniker.  It is one of the sport’s most exhilarating tricks to watch, and it inevitably brings those watching to the edges of their vinyl seats where they are rendered breathless for a few captivating seconds while the rider glides magically over the water, weightless and careening through the sky with his board and head on an even plain ten feet above the water.    

But the railey is not without its hazards. While this high-flying feat is without a doubt an enchanting one to watch, it is, for the rider, a trick that requires that he put himself in a most vulnerable position.  If the wakeboarder fails to get his board back under him before he makes contact with the water below, he will do a fifty-mile per hour belly flop with a board attached to his feet.  The feeling is something like being jackknifed from a high dive by a WWF wrestler.  And that is not even the worst-case scenario; if the rider gets the board only partially back under him, the lip of the board can snag on the water and hurl the rider downward in positions even more compromising than a belly flop, and at far greater speeds. 

I spent entire summers trying to learn the railey and during the process bruised my ribcage twice, turned both ankles, knocked my wind out countess times, and very probably sterilized myself.  Once, after a hopelessly botched railey, I hit the water with such tremendous force that when I reemerged to the surface my yellow “Live Strong” bracelet had inexplicably been pushed all the way up my arm between my bicep and armpit.  The bracelet was jammed so tightly up there I could not get it back down.  I wriggled in discomfort watching my arm turn blue from lack of circulation as the boat looped back to pick me up, and to this day I do not understand how it happened.  My friends had to cut the band from my arm with scissors.  Seeing it in such an impossible position was like seeing a tiny black ponytail holder around a woman’s neck and wondering how she managed to slip it over her whole head.  It seemed physically impossible, and it was testament to the reckless speed I had acquired when I struck the water.

Eventually, after a couple summers of routine near-death experiences, I landed my first railey. It was the proudest moment of my life.  The wakeboard came down between my legs and the water just before we collided and instead of being blasted into the water, which has about as much give as cement at fifty miles per hour, I found myself gliding above the water atop my board and riding comfortably out in the flats.  I had stuck the trick that seemed impossible just two short years before.  Unfortunately, one good superman did not mean I had the trick whipped and I was only able to land it on about half my attempts. 

Recently I have become a more reliable executor of the superman.  The last few times I rode my wakeboard in Abu Dhabi I landed massive raileys to enthusiastic cheers from my friends aboard the boat.  Because of the long warm season in the UAE and my ability to board year round, the trick that had eluded me for so long back in America was finally becoming routine. 

Then I came back to the States for a visit, and since my return I’ve been unable to land my superman and stranger yet, unmotivated to really sell out and try.  Maybe it is because the boat I ride behind here in the states is not putting out the same huge wake as the boat I got accustomed to back in the UAE, but I am not convinced that the boat is the culprit.  I think the main reason I have been unable to stick a railey on my liquid hometurf is because I am scared to put my body in such a vulnerable position right now.  I cannot get myself to commit to the trick.

See, a wakeboarder cannot halfass a railey; either he sells out and puts his body in harm’s way (and by doing so puts himself in a position to land the trick) or he goes in timidly and really gets hurt.  To land the trick a rider must commit to putting his body in a compromising position.  To go in hesitantly is to increase the chances of damaging your ribs or getting a yellow bracelet shackled to the summit of your arm.  You need to be moving too fast.  You need to be catapulted into the sky.  To quote a good friend whose wakeboarding motto inspired my blog’s title, You gotta want it. If you don’t want it bad enough, it’s not going to happen.   And right now with only 30 days to spend with my friends and family in America, I simply do not want it bad enough that I am willing to risk a weeklong stint in Cox Hospital.

My inability to execute a railey is not the only bizarre detail I have noticed during my holiday in America, though.  I was closing in on 30 years old when I set out for new horizons, and upon my return I found that most of my friends have slipped into legitimate adulthood during my absence.  I returned home after a year abroad, still happily single and unattached, only to find that most of my friends had become fiancés, husbands, fathers, or some combination of the three.   The same guys, who when I left were finishing their tattoo sleeves and seeing how quickly they could suck a beer out of an oil funnel, have been converted into responsible family men.  

Now it’s not just my mom and aunts who carefully spin every conversation marriage-and-childrenward.  My old friends do the same thing.  Upon my return, I found that the topics of kitchen appliances or painting-the-baby room can be treated with the same passion that used to be reserved for road trips or the hot girl that just moved in to a neighboring apartment.  A conversation that, in its initial stages, pivots around a new favorite craft beer or an up-and-coming band will quickly spiral into one about diaper prices or how the wife wants to build a bigger deck in the back yard.  Scores of my buddies have stopped using the pronoun  “I” altogether; everything is “we really want to do some traveling after graduate school is finished” or “we really wanted to buy a Big Green Egg, but the mortgage payment is so expensive we settled for a new gas grill.”

Most of my friends have slipped into marriage and fatherhood like a kitten into a sock.  They are happier and more comfortable then they could have ever imagined.  Their lives are purring along wonderfully.  I’ve watched them scoop their toddlers off the floor and zoom them above their heads.  They show me baby pictures and kiss their smiling wives on the forehead. They talk about their babies like somehow the little pips have already found cures for cancer or medaled in the Olympics.  They sell me on marriage and fatherhood so hard that I can only assume they are on commission.  Dude, it’s so great to have a life-long teammate and a little human being to love.  You just can’t understand it until you’ve done it.  So what do I have to do to get you into one of these babies today?

But sometimes in the very same breath they’ll tell me about how cumbersome marriage and parenthood can be.  They’ll heave deep sighs about the never-ending responsibilities, the financial issues, the monotony.  They lament the masculine fires that used to burn in their bellies that have been doused in baby piss and put out by daily trips to the store for more Gerber.  They bewail long weekends with her incorrigible mother. 

And then there are the risks, they tell me.  There’s always the chance you could end up hating her after a year or two.  Or she could end up hating you. She might cheat on you, stop cooking, or put on sixty pounds and refuse to change out of your extra large Pink Floyd tee.   Maybe her family will end up being a total wreck and then it will be your responsibility to comfort her through years of therapy and tears.  And that is just the spousal part of the equation. 

What if the perfect little kid you’ve envisioned comes out mentally handicapped, blind, or deformed? What if you lose your child to a car accident and suddenly the most important thing in your life is taken from you and to top it all off your wife catches a Prozac addiction to deal with the pain of losing a child?  The possibilities for tragedy and misfortune, for a family man, are endless.  And it is up to him to stick it out to the end. 

I reckon what these friends chose is essentially the life-path version of the railey.  When you get married and start a family, you put yourself in the most vulnerable position possible for a man.  You give up control of your life.  You put yourself in a compromising situation and, chances are, you are going to get hurt. 

But to achieve the most rewarding experiences in life, you have to put yourself in harm’s way.  As I’ve learned on my wakeboard, there is no way to halfass it and still get those sensations; a man has to approach his familial commitments with reckless devotion.  He has to make himself vulnerable and in doing so, open himself up to all manner of hurt and suffering – or then again he might touch down safely on the other side having felt the greatest sense of accomplishment available. There’s no chance of pulling it off without sustaining an injury or two, but if he manages to land feet-down he’s in for some exhilaration. 

The friends I left behind one year ago are now bracing themselves for both the greatest pains and the greatest rewards life has to offer.  They are vulnerable, moving way too fast, and they are nowhere near safety, but they are gripping that rope handle between their fingers and hoping they will be able to pull off one of the greatest stunts a man can try - the meaningful family life. 

I’m willing to put my body through hell in order to feel myself carve through the air above the water, arms and legs fully extended while I look down from my midair perch.   I spent entire summers dealing with debilitating injuries in order to stick the elusive railey.  I compromised my body and made myself vulnerable every time the boat pulled me out of the water. But that was just my body.

I have serious doubts that I will ever be able to put anything besides my body on the line to get that feeling.  Fearing for my own life is one thing, but taking responsibility for other lives - that is real risk.  It takes a braver man than me to pull it off.  It takes a stoic acceptance of vulnerability.  And to all my friends who have taken on the responsibility of being a husband and bringing children into this world, to all my friends who have made themselves vulnerable and opened themselves up to life’s greatest pains in order to pull off one of life’s greatest stunts - I don't know how you do it.  I think you are supermen. 

An American Slob

Four Years Ago

It was Sunday morning and my arms and legs were slumped about the sofa as I stared at the flat screen TV in my living room.  Under the belly-portion of my wifebeater tank, inches above the mesh shorts I wore to bed every night but never washed, I heard a grumbling from my belly - something about when was I going to learn to eat dinner before I went out for a Saturday night on the suds with my buddies.  It was a message from my slowly-expanding, 25 year old tummy to remind me that it (my stomach) was not solely responsible for my bellyache and that maybe, just maybe, those seven longnecks I guzzled last night on an empty stomach should share some of the responsibility for this fuzzy feeling. 

Football wouldn’t start for another hour and pizza or some fries would have been significant treatment for my particular brand of illness, but darned if I was going to de-starfish my limbs from this sofa to make or order any food myself because why should I have to do anything?! Sure I could have called delivery, but my iPhone was probably somewhere all the way over in my bedroom and it was Sunday and I felt pretty sure the Bible said something about not working today.

To distract myself from the shitstorm of misery life was heaping upon me just then, I reached for the Sunday paper and ink pen on my coffee table.  I reckoned I’d do the Sudoku and then draw a penis or two on otherwise harmless characters in the Sunday Funnies.  This would distract me, I hoped, from the mountain of hunger and discomfort I felt until the Kansas City Chiefs could take the field and divert my attention from my own suffering to theirs.  Feeling uninspired by the boxes inside boxes inside boxes, I skipped the Sudoku and decided I’d just get right down to business donning Doonesbury with a whopper when I realized that the ink pen in my hand, the only one in the house for that matter, was dry.  Oh man are you serious? This can’t be happening.  I lapped away at the ballpoint - futilely hoping that my saliva might restore the Bic back to life.  How could I have only one pen in the house and it didn’t work?    

My belly hurt, there was no football on, and I was hungry.  In spite of it being Sunday there was no sign of manna from heaven and to top it all off my pen was now rebelling.  I knew somewhere in the world someone must be having problems almost as demoralizing as mine but it was hard to imagine who.  In a last ditch effort to salvage a day that seems to be getting away from me already; I pitched the worthless pen at the wall.  Dammit! I told the wall when it rejected my offering.  How can life be so awful even on the weekends?  Somehow I managed to slump even deeper into the sofa. I’d gone through 6 of the 7 steps in the grieving process now, and it was time for step number 7. Acceptance.  I needed to accept the inevitable fact that if I were going to arouse a picture of Doonesbury or get a pizza and avoid starvation, I would have to get off my couch today.

I could have summoned my inner workingman and journeyed to my bedroom in search of clothing alternatives to my current Eminem-inspired ensemble, maybe some jeans and tennis shoes, but that was serious work and I was determined to keep this Sabbath holy, God help me. Bumbling towards my room, I agonized over the mountainous obstacles the modern man must hurdle just to survive in the 21^st century.  Cavemen didn’t have to put on jeans and a tee shirt every time they left the house.  They didn’t have to drive all the way across town every time they wanted a Papa John’s pizza. 

Then I decided Screw It.  I wasn’t going to go change clothes.  I was going-out in exactly the same clothes I had on plus flip flops. The end.  White tanktop, mesh shorts, and floppy sandals.  Why should I have to dress myself up when I was only planning on visiting Walgreens to buy a pen and then Papa Johns to snag a pizza?  It wasn’t a job interview and the only people I’d see were the worthless college dropouts manning the registers. I grabbed my keys. 

I flip-flopped and key-jingled out my front door; angry that I had to leave my house and looking remarkably like the Real Slim Shady in my white tank, musky mesh shorts, and sandals.  None of this struck me as odd at the time because who puts on real clothes just to go out to Walgreens or Papa Johns? 

Well, it turns out everyone else in the world except Americans, really.  But my younger, less traveled self didn’t know that and probably didn’t care.  What I didn’t know at the time was that Americans are the most informally dressed people in the world and that I was one of the sloppiest.  I didn’t know that on every other corner of the globe people refused to leave their homes without doing themselves up a bit first.  And back then it didn’t strike me as odd that me and my countrymates often woke up in our bedtime clothes and went out without changing.  However, that was before my mind had done a little changing of its own. 

Four Years Later

Oh, you’ll see America in a completely different light after being abroad for a year.  Things that used to seem normal will now shock you.  Get ready for Reverse Culture Shock.  Everyone and their gay cousin was going Nostradamus on me predicting how I was going to experience “Reverse Culture Shock” when I got back to America.  When I told people I was heading back stateside for a visit, they started in with their unsolicited prophecies about my trip and how weird everything would be to me. This Reverse Culture Shock concept smacked of a steaming heap of cockamamie, but just the same I told folks "thanks" for their dire warnings and assured them I’d brace myself.  Seriously, though, how much could America possibly change in one year?  Surely not much.  And could I really change so drastically in one year that my old home country would shock me?  No. Way. 

Then I touched down in Dulles airport, Washington DC after a year of traveling abroad and holy fashion-catastrophe, Batman! What had changed, apparently, was my perspective on dressing.  What a disheveled mess the American folks had turned into in my absence.  Either I was experiencing Reverse Culture Shock indeed or a nearby Goodwill store had detonated and left everyone in DC wounded with wildly tasteless and ill-fitting clothing.  I hadn’t even exchanged a fist bump with an American yet and already I felt shocked.  Were Americans always so sloppily dressed or did that all happen while I was away?

Sloppy, unkempt, and without anything even resembling a nod to fashion, grown men gallivanted up and down the airport in gaudy t-shirts that hung limply to their knees or even worse, wrinkled and oversized khakis half hidden by fat bellies that hung loosely over woven leather belts.  I looked down the long terminal and witnessed a live catwalk of anti-models: women slouched into flannel pajama pants and pink baseball caps, men who were either unaware or unashamed of their gangly beards and saggy sweats slunched on top of whatever seating they could find.  Everywhere I turned I saw people who had evidently just now rolled out of bed at, I looked at my watch, 11:00 a.m?!

Apparently nobody had bothered to change clothes during that window of time between their alarms beeping and their rides leaving for the airport.  Were my countrymen and women always so reluctant to change into something more attractive and I just didn’t notice it before, or did the clothes stay the same and my mind changed?  In every other place I’ve visited during the last year, I’ve witnessed people who have accepted the awful but inevitable truth that people will make judgments based on appearances.  United Arab Emirates, Japan, Oman, Qatar, Switzerland, and Holland – everywhere I went people were spruced up, tidy, and dressed well.  In other countries, fashion is something that people have in the same way that Americans have facebook accounts; which is to say you’d be in the minority if you didn’t.

For the rest of the world formality is the norm and for Americans it’s a chore.  Americans skip formality in much the same way that we don’t skip dessert. Foreign men wouldn’t think of leaving home without a collared shirt and if they did wear jeans or a tee out they certainly wouldn’t pair it with flip flops the way I tend to do.  What they would do is press and tailor their jeans and tee with the same precision that I do with my dress clothes and then they'd wax their hair just so, shine up some dress shoes, and stroll out in style.  No mesh shorts.  No wifebeater tanks.  Maybe people wear those things when they’re on their own couches at home, but they’d never leave the house without slicking up first. 

And the fairer sex abroad do up their looks just as vigilantly.  A Japanese, European, or Arab woman, if she were being abducted from her home in the middle of the night, would grab a change of clothes as her abductor yanked her out of her bedroom.  Even if a foreign lady is ugly, she typically gives off the impression that she's hot with her clothes and the way she carries herself.  I hadn’t seen a single pair of scrubs or PJs on a lady for over a year.  In Dulles airport, my initial step off the plane revealed at least three American women wearing pajama bottoms and pony tails tucked into ball caps.  One lady who had evidently just swallowed a Boeing 747 rumbled slowly towards a Starbucks in pink cutoff sweatpants and mustard stained shirt.  I wondered if perhaps a jumbo jet wasn’t such a bad snack when doused in French’s, and then I wondered how I hadn’t noticed this or cared about all this physical appearance business before.

What I saw in that terminal in DC shocked me.  It was the Reverse Culture Shock I’d been warned of;   my fellow Americans looked terrible.  While I hadn’t noticed the change taking place in me, apparently my standards for how-someone-should-look-like-in-public had changed.  I’d come to expect people to look fashionable and well kept, even if they were poor or ugly.  Women were meant to look snappy and beautiful; men were meant to look fashionable and respectable.  At Dulles airport in DC, people looked so ugly that I wondered if even the tide would bother to take them out.

I kept walking the direction of the baggage claim thinking about how disgusting and sloppy Americans looked while marveling at the parade of people who reinforced this observation when I stopped to order a coffee.  When the barista put the coffee on the counter I reached towards my back pocket for my wallet and was surprised to find that my pants did not have a back pocket and that my wallet was actually in my carry-on bag.  Surprisingly, I found that my pants did not have a pocket on them because they were not pants at all but instead mesh shorts, slightly dirty and grossly oversized.  Astonished and suddenly aware of my own appearance, I looked below my hairy knees and there, on American soil for the first time in over a year, were my feet – slipped comfortably into a pair of worn out flip flops. 

I snatched up my coffee and quickly slipped into the bathroom, suddenly humiliated.  Gazing at the reflection on the airport mirror, I saw a guy in dirty mesh shorts and flip flops.  A guy whose shaggy blonde hair had not been cut in three months and whose beard had not been trimmed in weeks.  A guy who looked sloppy and unfashionable.  A guy who looked pretty much the same as he did waiting on his couch for the Kansas City Chiefs game to start four years ago.  What I saw was a guy who had come to expect others to look snazzy and fashionable but who had neglected to turn those standards on himself.  A guy whose mind had changed, but whose clothes had not.  An American slob.

An American Terrorist in Dubai

Halloween 2007 – Springfield, Missouri 


…So there we stood outside the bar in ripped leather pants.  We all had our long wigs, silver chains, and black eye makeup.  I had one of my old guitars strapped around my back.  Collectively we'd spent like $400 on the costumes but it was worth it because we looked exactly like Motley Crue.  Exactly like Motley Crue. Right down to the fishnet stockings on our arms.  We were ready to make our entrance into the costume party but before we did, my buddy Kyle reached into his backpack and pulled out 4 cucumbers.  We all looked at him like, Dude I thought we were invading this club as Motley Crue not characters from The Veggie Tales, but then he stuffed one down the front of his skin-tight leather pants and we all understood…


Two Weeks before Halloween 2012 – Abu Dhabi, UAE


When I get to this part of the story my friends at the table are in stitches. We are passively glancing through our menus. I’m offering up my best Halloween costume story hoping to spark some good costume ideas.  The Devil’s Holiday is just around the corner in the UAE and we have decided that we’ll all go to Dubai for the weekend and do Barasti, Dubai’s go-to-bar for expats. We’ve heard that this multi-level beach bar in the heart of the city is an international madhouse on Halloween, so it only seems natural that we attend.  


When we sat down to eat, though, no one had come up with an idea for a costume yet.  We’d talked it over some on our way to the restaurant, popcorning a host of unispiring ideas. A zombie? Nah, too trendy.  Maybe a superhero?  Are we five?  A ghost?  What?  And waste a perfectly good sheet? 


“Okay, look,” I interrupted as we sat down at the table and took our menus from the waiter’s hands,  “What’s the best Halloween costume you’ve ever worn?  Maybe if we tell some stories that will get the creative juices flowing.”  I scanned my circle of friends waiting for an onslaught of great costume stories but they all just rubbed their chins and blinked at their menus.   


“Okay, I’ll start.”  And that’s when I unraveled my Motley-Crue-Halloween yarn.  


“…But then he stuffed one down the front of his leather pants and we all understood. One of the guys, my buddy Tim I think it was, marched right up to the DJ booth and he demanded the DJ play Girls, Girls, Girls.  The DJ took one look at us in our world-class costumes, complete with leather bound cucumbers, and he cut the music mid Brittany Spears.  Suddenly Motley Crue was pumping out of the speakers and we were thrust onto the DJ’s stage where we fake-played our guitars and lip sang to a sea of cheering Playboy bunnies and Frankensteins. Every person there was singing along and cheering for us.  It was epic.  The place went wild!  None of us paid for a drink all night, and maybe it was just the cucumbers but the way I remember it we attracted far more lady attention than any of us were used to.  At the end of the night the DJ announced that there would be a $400 prize for the best costume.  They gave us each $100, just enough to recover the shameful amount we’d spent on the costumes."


"Ha!  Nice, Adam."  


"Love it." 


"Mate, your buddy Kyle sounds bloody brilliant."  


“So did that inspire any ideas?” I ask. 


“I’ve got it!” Cries Leah as she spanks her menu against the table.  “That’s what we need to do.”


“What?  Go as Motley Crue?” I ask, skeptically. I’m not sure Motley Crue would be as well received in Dubai as it was in Middle America.  "I think we need something with more universal appeal.  Remember we’re working with an international crowd here.  You’re Canadian and I’m American so we know Motely Cure, but most of the people at Barasti in Dubai wouldn’t know Motley Crue if Nikki Sixx snorted a line of coke off their eyelid.  Plus, there are way too many of us – The Crue was only 4 people.”


“No. We need to do a group costume.”


Suddenly there is life at our table.  Yeah, a group costume!  Eyes light up and menus are snapped shut and ignored.   We all offer up a frenzy of ideas while our waiter taps his foot next to the kitchen door.  


It doesn’t take long, though, for us to realize that this isn’t going to be easy.  In a setting like North America, finding a group costume that everyone at the party recognizes is a breeze.  What person north of Mexico doesn’t know who Motley Crue is?  We all have common culture and a shared knowledge base there.  But Dubai is not North America.  And Barasti is as Dubai as it gets.  


On any given night, hundreds of countries are represented at this one place. Clubs in Dubai are like the Olympics of socializing.  On Halloween even more so.  What costume could we possibly put together that would be recognizable to a trendy young architect from Italy, a swimsuit model from Brazil, a financial planner from India, a computer programmer from Canada, a surf instructor from New Zealand, etc?


“Maybe we could do the cast of a TV show,” suggests Heather.  


“Okay, good.” I say.  “What TV show has enough international exposure that everyone on earth recognizes its characters…Baywatch?”  The girls at the table all glance down at their chests and grumble.” 


Can't blame a guy for trying.  


“Maybe we could do a sports team,” An Irish girl at the table suggests?  “What’s the most internationally recognizable sports team?”


I pipe up before I give it much thought – “Maybe we could go as the Chicago Bulls during their dynasty with Jordan and Pippin…”


She nods agreement but says she reckons she’s not really into American football and she doesn’t want to wear a helmet all night.  Irish.  It’s getting obvious by this point that finding an international common ground is going to be hard work.  Eyes drift back to menus.  Fingers stroke chins.  Appetizers are discussed.  And then, just as our waiter sees a moment of silence and his chance to sneak in and get our order, Leah strikes gold


“I know,” She boasts, sending the waiter pivoting on his heel and back to the door.  “The one thing that everyone at Barasti will know is drinks. What if we all dress as different, you know, alcoholic beverages!?”  


Drinks.  That’s it.  No matter where you come from, if you’re at a bar you know about drinks. It’s brilliant!  My head spins with possibilities.   How did I not think of it myself?  A tall furry white hat, white skirt, and white furry boots transform a girl into a White Russian.  Knock the stuffing out of a decorative pillow and glue it to your belly and, wahlah, a fuzzy naval.  The opportunities are endless.  


“Like for instance,” Leah’s head is whirling with drink puns now too, “I could maybe wear a nametag that says Hi, my name is Mary and then all I need is some Heinz ketchup dumped over my shirt and I’m a Bloody Mary.”


“This just might rival your Motley Crue costumes, mate.”  


We have a plan! What we don’t have is any-idea that while the other drink costumes will garner mass approval from the swanky Barasti crowd, my drink costume will start an international squabble.  What we don’t have is the foggiest idea that my costume will reinforce the world’s worst stereotypes about Americans and that I’ll have to rip it off in a bathroom stall just to save myself from being slobberknockered into a Bloody Adam.  


“Can I take your order?”  This from the waiter who finally sees a window of opportunity to take our orders.  


“Can we see your drink menu?”


Halloween 2012 – Club Barasti in Dubai 


When we walk into Barasti there’s a live band bopping out Marley tunes while rich young jetsetters from around the globe dance under dazzling costumes. On down the beach a DJ pumps strobe lights and trance music over a crowd of girls dressed as sexy kittens and tan guys dressed up as a P90X endorsements.  In every corner there are fellas holding drinks and exotic ladies tossing their heads back laughing.


Leah, dressed as a White Russian, tells us she’s heading to the tiki bar to get our first round of drinks and what do we want.  Heather, whose skirt is made from Corona boxes and who has a lime stuck in her straw hat, says she wants a Corona – for consistency.  Shannon, who is dressed quite seductively as a Bikini Martini orders a Sex on the Beach, I suppose for consistency as well.


“Beer for me,” I say.  “Actually, I’ll come with you.”  I’m ready to introduce Barasti to the best-dressed drink.  I swagger behind Leah into a crowd of gyrating bodies, anxious to let people see our (specifically MY) brilliant costumes.


I’d spent the weeks between our meeting at the restaurant and our date at Barasti carefully planning and executing it.  I didn’t want to be just-another-drink in the group; I wanted to be the Crème-de-le-Menthe, the guy whose drink costume snags him high fives from trendy Italian architects and playful smiles from the Brazilian swimsuit models.  I wanted to be the hottest Toddy at the party, and I had put together what I thought would be the ultimate drink costume.


The Irish Car Bomb.  


For the Irish part, I’d dried up 10 orange and green fabric markers making my white shirt to look like the Irish flag.  My Irish buddy Finn had nodded his approval at my handiwork and told me that an Irishman should also have a tattoo on his arm.  Pog Ma Hon – he’d recommended - It’s Gaelic.  I’d tattoo the words down my forearm with green magic marker alongside a shamrock. (Irish?  Check).


For the car portion of the costume, I’d purchased a package of Hot Wheels from Toys R Us and strung them up on a chord that I hung from my neck.  (Car?  Check).  


Now for Bomb.  For the dynamite cartridges I’d purchase seven rolls of paper towels and liberated the cardboard rolls from the center.  After spray painting them red and waiting for them to dry, I had a friend strap them tightly across my midsection.  For the bomb’s timer, I’d gussied up a round piece of styrofoam to look like the face of a clock and attached it to the dynamite cartridges. (Bomb? Check).


My drink costume is top shelf.  And it's go time.


“Hey.” This from a guy I don't know who has grabbed my shoulder.  He stands a good six inches taller than me and he's yelling quite loudly to be heard over the band and the trance music.  His scrubs and the stethoscope dangling between his pecs tell me he’s supposed to be a doctor, but he looks more like a body builder dressed up as a doctor.  “What’re ya s’posed to be?”  His accent sounds roughly Russian.  


Leah sees me stop to talk to him about my costume and gives me an approving nod. You’re a hit! She tips an imaginary bottle into her mouth that lets me know she’s going to go ahead and get the drinks without me.  


“I’m an Irish Car Bomb,” I yell back at him.


“Ya, man.  I can see you have the bomb.  You are the terrorist for Halloween, no?  Where you are from?” Apparently the cars around my neck and my flag shirt are being overshadowed by the bomb strapped around my midriff. 


“America,” I say back.


“Huh?”


“AMERICA!” I practically scream it trying to be heard over the loud mixture of Buffalo Soldier and trance beats that collide around us.


The band resolves the song and for just a moment there is quiet.  “American?  In united ARAB Emirates.  Muslim country.  And you dress like the terrorist?”  He scolds me.  “This is stupid!”


“No, no, no. I’m not a…” But the music starts back up and the word terrorist drowns under electronic thumps and the intro to No Woman No Cry.  Where is Leah with those drinks?  


“This American -" He yells to no one in general, "- No good! Why you dress like terrorist to the party?”  He shakes his head at me, and then steps over to a table with 3 other guys, built similarly.  I duck into the crowd hoping to avoid being beaten with surgical precision by the enraged doctor and his cronies, but out of the corner of my eye I see him pointing me out to his friends.  They all squint my direction, crack their knuckles,  and take long drinks of what looks to be tall glasses of straight vodka.  


If you’re reading this and you’re American – there are some things you should probably know about how the world views Americans.

How the World Views Americans

1. America is a nation of Islamophobes.  The rest of the world has access to the same American News sources as we watch, (Including Fox) and they don’t approve of our Muslim bashing.  I’ve had countless conversations with people from every corner of earth and they all want to know how it is that Americans can be so intolerant – yes the 9/11 thing was horrible, the argument goes, but think about Hiroshima.  That didn’t make Japan or the rest of the world anti-Christian.  
2. Americans are ignorant because they don’t travel. The fact that almost half of all Americans don’t even have a passport is insulting to the rest of the world, for whom travel is inevitable.  Foreigners sometimes say, with obvious disdain, that I’m the first American they’ve ever seen outside of America.  How can you claim to the leader of the Free World, the argument goes, when your only experience with The Rest of the World is a weekend in Cancun?  
3. America is just the nation-version of the popular-girl clique at school.  We’re the ones that sit together at lunch and never let anyone else sit with us.  We don’t even acknowledge the other kids in the cafeteria.  Look at them, the argument goes, sitting there in isolation thinking they’re so great when no one else really likes them anyways.    

I slice through the crowd, hoping to avoid a beatdown and feeling a not a little silly that I’m reinforcing the worst American stereotype. And there is Leah, standing at the bar handing over her money in exchange for bottles and glasses.  I run over a couple people trying to get away from the pissed off Russians and I hope no one can tell I’m American just by looking at me. There goes another asshole American.  Always in a hurry and too rude to say excuse me.  


“I got you a beer.”  She says.  I’m relieved to see it’s a Tiger beer from Singapore. Not an American Budweiser product.


“Great.”  I take a swig and stand on the footrest of a bar stool and scan the crowd looking for my assailants.  “Listen, I think my costume is a little misleading.”  


She starts to say something, but before she can, a couple of guys squeeze up to the bar between us.  One of them looks at me; he’s not in costume and neither is his friend. They're both well dressed and look to be about my age. 


“Hi, mate.  Is that the Irish flag you have on your shirt?”  His accent tells me he's British, and to my relief he's neither big nor angry like the last person who asked about my costume.   


“Yes, it is actually. I’m glad you get it.” I say, still inspecting the crowd and ready to make a dash for it.


“Sure, mate, you’re the bloody IRA, right?  I didn’t know Americans knew about the IRA.  Hey, Michael,” He grabs his buddy by the shirt “This American bloke is dressed up as an IRA member!” 


Michael, who has just finished placing his order at the bar, looks me up and down. "Aye, lad.” He rolls out in a guttural Irish accent. “Is it the IRA, ya are?  Yer costume ain’t the kinda thing I’d be a wearin’ ere, but it’s bloody accurate it is.”


If you’re reading this and you’re American – Here are some things you probably didn’t know about the IRA.  I sure didn’t.

The IRA

1. For centuries England has been trying to place Northern Ireland under British rule.  Both Ireland and England consider the region to be theirs.  The IRA is a group of Irish guerrilla fighters who’ve killed thousands of Brits in their attempts to permanently claim the land.  
2. Members of the IRA usually speak Gaelic, Ireland’s original tongue, because they see the English language as another overstep on the part of the Brits.  The words tattooed on my arm - Pog Ma Hon –are Gaelic for kiss me arse, which is Irish English for kiss my ass.  A battle cry, I suspect, that an IRA member would say just as he pushes the detonate button.    
3. The IRA uses bombs, specifically car bombs, to kill British occupants and British sympathizers.  Although the relationship between Northern Ireland and England is mostly civil now, guerrilla warfare still goes on occasionally, and it’s a source of never-ending tension between the Irish and English.  Sometimes an Irish guy and an English guy will be chatting over a beer only to find out that someone in the Irish guy’s family was in the IRA and killed someone in the English guy’s family 10 years ago.  

Michael, the Irish lad, and this English bloke are now staring at each other.  My costume has stirred some bad blood between the once amiable neighbors.  The bartender has placed two beers on the table for them but neither one of them reaches for their drink.  


“No, no, no.  My costume is not IRA. I’m an Irish Car Bomb!”  


“Like IRA car bomb.” Says Michael. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the English guy.  


I try my best to make an appeal.  “No, not IRA!  I’m an Irish car bomb the drink, you know with Guinness and...”


Michael interrupts and looks at me now, “Look, lad, I’ve not ‘eard uh this drink.”


“Okay, well what I’m trying to tell you is that there is a drink made from Guinness and Bailey’s Irish cream.  You’re Irish for God’s sake, man.  Surely you’ve heard of it!” 


“No, lad.  Never ‘eard of it.”


“Nah, mate.  Me neither.”


If you’re reading this and you’re American – Here are some things you probably didn’t know about Irish Car Bombs.

Irish Car Bombs

1. They're completely an American concoction.  No one else in any part of the world, even Ireland, has heard of the drink.

And that’s when I see the Russian Doctor and his posse pushing through the crowd towards the bar looking for someone, presumably me.  Michael and his English friend are still having an awkward look at each other, no doubt wondering whose family killed whose, when I take off for the bathroom. I can feel people’s eyes on me as I push through the crowd trying to get to the safety of the restroom.  I hear words being spoken in my wake.  Words like “bomb” and “terrorist” and “bloody American.”  


The bomb part of my costume is apparently all anyone sees, and word has traveled quickly.  Did you hear that there’s some American idiot dressed as a terrorist here? Here we are in the most western-friendly Muslim country in the world, and this guy can't have a little tact even on Halloween night. Young Arab men, typically the friendliest people on earth, shoot eye darts at me as I push through them in queue to the bathroom.  


Safely locked in a stall, I peel the bomb off of myself and stuff it into the trashcan.  I lean up against the wall and stare at the ceiling.  And it's here that for the first time since I left, I long for America.  America, where I won over the Halloween crowd with a long wig and a cucumber stuffed in my leather pants.   America, where no one thought the Chicago Bulls were a football team and everyone knew the song Girls, Girls, Girls.  America, where I never had to learn about disputes between Ireland and England because my country always had enough disputes of its own to keep my mind occupied. 


Now that I've got my costume off, I realize that no matter how much I try to make myself out to be a world-savvy traveler; I'll always be mostly an ignorant American.  And that whole world-savvy traveler thing, that’s just a costume. 

One Man's Trash

One Man's Trash

(A true story about death and a dollar)

This is what it’s like to wake up in a garbage bin.  It’s confusing.   The first thing you notice is that there’s a lot of beeping, so in some ways it’s like waking up in bed.  Beep.  Beep. Beep. The difference is that the beeping in a garbage bin isn’t an alarm clock; it’s the sound of a refuse truck shifting into reverse.  It’s the noise that tells you that you’re going to die soon.  When you wake up in a dumpster and you’re just seconds away from being compacted, a lot of things run through your head really quickly.  I can’t die like this.  Homeless people die like this.  Will I still get The Coveted Dollar if I’m dead?

It smells like banana peels and cans of beer that only got half finished, but you really can’t focus much on the smell because the two blue forks on the back of a huge oil-stained trash truck are getting ready to thoughtlessly dump you into a compactor on the back.  From the sounds of it - clanking metal, huge crushing wheels, whooshing hydraulics - the trash truck has just the right amount of muscle required to squash the entire contents of this garbage bin into an empty box of Honey Nut Cheerios. 

This isn’t a joke anymore. Last night when you nestled into a heap of apartment-building rubbish, and everyone was laughing and cheering you on, it was funny.  You did it because…well, because you were caught up in the moment. You knew if you took the dare and slept in a dumpster it would be the kind of legendary act you and your band mates could share a hearty laugh at over a beer 30 years down the road.  Showalter, remember that time we were on tour in Illinois and you slept in that dumpster at some apartment building for The Coveted Dollar?  Dude, that was hilarious!

Last night it was funny.  But that was before there was a giant trash truck with greasy valves and hydraulic hoses reversing its way into your makeshift bed. When that hungry truck deposits you into its posterior you’ll get methodically condensed just like the rest of the trash in it.

Now you're watching a scenario in your mind that makes you want to throw up. 

You see the look on your Mom’s face when they tell her exactly how it was that her son came to fit so nicely into an empty sleeve of Ritz crackers.  You see her knees give out under the weight of losing her son to a dual axle, rear-loading refuse truck.  You see your old man hugging her, rolling his eyes over her shoulder as if he knew you had this coming all along.  That boy has been embarrassing himself ever since he went off to college.  Now he’s gone and embarrassed the whole family…I guess we can finally cut off his stupid hair and dress him in a suit.

Just as you feel the shaking forks latch onto the bin, you hoist yourself up and reach for the lip of the dumpster.  Now that the garbage bin is lifted and tilted you can see the morning sun peeking up over the horizon.  You heave your body upwards hoping the force will be enough to spew you over the top of the dumpster before it topples over and dumps you into what-you’re-hoping-WON’T be your final resting place. And as you realize that it’s probably not going to work and you’re going to die here after all, you start to wonder. 

What the hell am I doing?  You can’t help but wonder because wondering is what people do when they’re about to die. First of all, you wonder when and how your band will find out that you’ve been mangled to death in a tragic trash bin accident.  Secondly, you wonder how they will explain it to your parents.

You see, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter – we have this thing called the Coveted Dollar and it’s…

The coveted what?

Well, it’s this dollar bill that we use to dare each other to do crazy stuff.  Instead of saying, “Hey, I dare you to eat that wet catfood, or I dare you to spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster – we say Hey, I’ll give you The Coveted Dollar to eat that wet catfood or I’ll give you The Coveted Dollar to spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster.”  It’s ingenious really, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter – because after someone takes a dare and earns The Coveted Dollar, we write their name, the date, and a brief synopsis of the dare on the actual dollar bill.  That way we can keep of a running record of all the crazy stories we have.   It's an honor when you get The Dollar.

So our son killed himself over a dollar?  One dollar?

No no, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter.  He killed himself over The Coveted Dollar. It’s more than just a dollar.  It’s...

Right right, it’s “coveted.”

Well yes, and you see Joe had The Coveted Dollar at the time because he got it for driving all the way through Iowa with a road-kill raccoon sitting in his lap.  He offered The Dollar to Adam if Adam would just spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster.  We had no idea that it was dangerous really.  How could we have known that the trash truck would come so early the next morning, or that Adam would be so sound asleep when it did.  We just thought it would be a good story…

So you’re telling us that Adam died in the name of a good story? 

Please, Mr. and Mrs. S, we know it all seems stupid to you but The Coveted Dollar was actually really important to all of us. Those stories we made together were…

When you wake up in a dumpster and realize that a menacing refuse truck is going to devour you soon, it’s amazing the things you think of.  Your sleeping quarter gets lofted up towards the rot-smelling tail end of this giant, and suddenly you’re thinking about the truck your parents gave you back when toy trucks were cool - back before trucks tried to kill you.  It was yellow.  A Tonka truck with black plastic wheels. 

You remember how excited Mom and Dad were to watch you fill the back end with gravel and sand and then roll around the yard.  They laughed at the motor noises you made with your mouth while you leaned your little body over the road you’d dug out in the alleyway behind the garage.  

They grinned at the Tonka-sized pathway you dug out from the alley to the sandbox. Even though your dad loved his grass, he loved you more.  He didn’t complain that you’d torn it up to make your Tonka-truck road. Vroooommmm, you’d say as you pushed it along your path.  Vrooommm! Your dad would say in a much deeper voice. 

You’re only about 3 seconds from a humiliating death, but that’s when it’s easiest to stretch your thoughts out in all directions, right before you die.  While you’re mentally preparing to get crushed, your thoughts elongate in every direction just like the chewing gum that’s now stuck to your arm.  You wish the gum were the grossest thing you were dealing with; currently the trash is shifting around and you’re caked in filth.  It’s one thing to die trying to make a legendary Coveted Dollar story, but there is no dignity in dying atop a bed of moldy pizza crust and crinkled toiled paper.  This is definitely not funny anymore. 

When you were a kid you used to fill the back of that Tonka truck with gravel and sticks and then haul your cargo off to the sandbox where your cats pooped.  You wrecked it into anything you could find along the way, and for each collision some of the yellow paint chipped away.  For every crash the tiny axles loosened a little more.  You would look up at your parents to check their reaction - to see if they approved of you treating your toy this way.   They would smile at you and laugh.  CRAaaashhh! They’d cheer.

Your little friend Shaun also got a Tonka that year.  He was your neighbor so you asked him to bring his truck over to play but he said it was still in the box.  Shaun said his parents told him that it would be a “collector’s item” someday. Whatever that meant.  So there it sat on his shelf, safely packaged in its yellow box with a plastic window displaying its shiny windshield and black wheels. 

Why does he have that truck if he’s not going to play with it?  You asked Mom and Dad.  

Well, Sweetie – he just wants to protect it.

Why?

Maybe Shaun gets just as much pleasure from looking at his truck in perfect condition as you get from taking yours out and rolling it all over the yard and crashing it into everything.  It’s just a different way of enjoying the same gift.  

You didn’t get it.  And it wasn’t just Shaun’s Tonka truck.  All his stuff got protected.  His UpperDeck baseball cards were packed neatly into plastic sleeves while your George Bretts and Frank Thomases were clothes-pinned to the spokes of the Huffy bicycle that you pedaled through muddy ditches. Shaun didn’t ride his bike in the mud.

You are getting ready to be pulverized by a hungry dump truck, and now you're thinking about what a wonderful gift life is.  You’ve always known it, of course, but when you’re looking at the very spot where your last breath is going to be squeezed from your lungs it hits you extra hard. 

You’re not exactly sure if Someone gave you life, or if you just fell evolutionarily bassackwards into it but suddenly you’re overwhelmed by this thought. Life. Is. A. Gift.  And here in this garbage bin that will soon empty its contents into a death hole, you think to yourself - It would have been a disservice to Whoever or whatever was responsible for this gift if I hadn't taken it out of the package and played with it, enjoyed it, even crashed it. I don't regret dying like this.

You've lost any real hope for an escape, but still it seems best to try and crawl up through a shifting waterfall of empty shampoo bottles and Glad trash bags.  It's a shame you won't survive this, you think, because it would have been one of the most epic Coveted Dollar Exchanges ever.  And suddenly your fingers find the rim of the dumpster and latch on. 

As the debris plunges downwards you somersault out of the side of the garbage bin, half triumphantly, half disgracefully, and land on your side.  The asphalt cuts deep into the skin on your elbows, and you look up just in time to see the huge-heap-of-shit-that-was-your-bed get reduced into something about the size of a toy box.  You scramble out of the way as the two huge forks on the back of the truck return the bin, now emptied, to its rightful place on the asphalt.

You look down at the arm you landed on; it’s bleeding.  For one second you wish you were more like Shaun. Why can't you be the kind of person who is careful with this whole LifeGift thing.  But you know you can't be. There would be no enjoyment in that. Life only has worth if it is taken from its package and pushed with reckless abandon down a road that YOU made, never mind the paint chipping off or the axles loosening. This Coveted Dollar business is proof that you're not one to protect the gift.

Some people sleep better when their gifts are securely hidden from the world. They look at how safely they sit up on the shelf or in that plastic sleeve and it gives them a sense of satisfaction.  But life, you think, is not a collector's item.  It can’t be enjoyed if it’s kept in a plastic sleeve. What does it say about how much you like your gift if it's still in the box on a shelf -  if it's in mint condition? 

These are the kinds of things you think when you felt sure you were going to be dead but you aren't.

You feel very much alive now as you watch the trash truck pull away still chewing its trashmeal.  You march up to the flat where the rest of your band is sleeping. The flat could belong to anyone, but you know that the band will be there. Someone offered up their living room after the show last night.  It was there that Joe decided, after a couple cases of beer disappeared, that The Coveted Dollar could be yours if you were up for sleeping in that dumpster out in the parking lot.

Wake up! You say.  You swing open the door and yell into the tiny room.  It’s done!  The Coveted Dollar is mine.  Hand it over, Joe! You throw a black sharpie at the sleeping bag with Joe in it. 

In your head The Coveted Dollar already has your name written on it right next to George Washington’s head and then the words Crashed In A Garbage Bin.

It’s early, they say, rubbing their eyes. Go back to bed…er dumpster.  And then they all laugh.  Two of them are wrapped up in sleeping bags on the floor.  The others are curled into balls on couches.  


They have no idea that you just about died trying to get The Dollar.  They don't know how special this day is now. They don't know it's a gift you just about didn't get to open - just about didn't get to take out of the box and wreck.  


Joe speaks up.  Just because you crashed in a dumpster means we have to get up with the sun?

Yes.

(The Coveted Dollar is still in rotation today.  It has been passed on to a younger generation of bands from Springfield, Missouri.  For those who prefer to take the gift of life out of the box and play with it carelessly, this bill still gets circulated.  It has convinced guys to do everything from sleeping in dumpsters to making naked snow angels to running naked through respectable parties.   For those of us who believe that life is not a collector's item its true worth cannot be calculated in dollars.)  

There ARE Such Things as Stupid Questions

(This is a true story I wrote years ago, just after I started teaching. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.  Enjoy) 

A strange looking assortment of students stared at me.  They clearly expected me to say something, but what?  I was reminded of that dream where you find yourself on stage and everyone is waiting for you to start, but why are you on a stage and what are you supposed to say?  Then suddenly you realize you don’t have pants on.  I glanced my eyes southwards and there, just below my belt, were some pants.  Okay, it’s not a dream.

To their credit these kids were spotting me the courtesy that adolescents usually only give teachers on the first day of school. The paper wads on the floor, broken ceiling fan, and unusually high percentage of facial piercings told me that this was not their typical behavior.  The problem was that I had no clue what to say, no idea what to do.  This was not their first day of school.  It was just my first day.  I didn’t have three months of summer holiday to prepare for this. The job had just been offered to me an hour before.

*****

“Good morning, Mr. Showalter,” I heard a vaguely familiar voice say when I answered my phone that morning. “This is Principal Smith from Parkview High School.”  My room was still dark.  I looked at the clock.  6:40 a.m.  Three emptied cans of Busch Beer stood on the nightstand.  I hadn’t planned on an early morning.  “Sorry for calling you so early.  You weren’t asleep were you?”

“Uhm no.” Lie. 

“Good.  Listen, I’ve got an opportunity for you.  I need a teacher to fill in for a class where the teacher has been...well, for a teacher who will be on leave for the rest of the year. Call it a permanent substitute position.  I know you’re looking for an English job, and this isn’t exactly that, but it will get your foot in the door anyway. What do you say?  Would you be…” 

I rolled out of bed, taking the covers with me, and jumped to my feet.  Finally a real job!  No more restaurant work! My bare feet danced up and down on the stained carpet of my apartment floor, and the vibrations sent the empties tumbling. 

“…willing to take the position?

I gathered myself, took a deep breath and then tried to pretend I was an adult. I spoke with what I hoped would sound like dignity.  “Yes, sir.  I’d love to take the position, sir.” Wrong.  Too many sirs – it smacked of desperation.

“Great.  The teachers here tell me you’ve done a fantastic job subbing for them in the past.  I’m glad you’re in.  Again, I’m sorry for calling you so early but it’s kind of an emergency.”

“No problem. When should I come in to get ready?” I asked, scooping up the empty cans off of my floor and opening my shades. 

“Well, here’s the thing. Your first class starts in one hour. Can you be there? It’s late notice, I know.”

I dropped the beer cans back on the floor and rushed to my closet hoping I'd pressed at least one of my three dress shirts.  I opened the closet door to find them rolled up on the ground like ancient scrolls in a cave. 

“Listen, Adam. I feel like I ought to tell you that this will be a challenging position.  Driver’s Ed tends to get last dibs on everything, and that includes students.”

Drivers Ed? Not perfect, but only for a half year until I can get an English job.

He continued, “It’s a bit of a dumping ground for students who don’t really…” and here he paused, “…belong in standard classrooms. 

I nabbed one of the shirts from the floor and unrolled it. “I’m always up for a good challenge, Mr. Smith.”  Well played, Adam.  You're on fire and it's only 6:40 am. Of course, my first good challenge was going to be unraveling some dress clothes.  “What happened to their last teacher, if you don’t mind my asking?” I said as I rifled through my hangers.

“I’ll tell you when you get here, but don’t worry about that – you’ll do great. Welcome to Parkview High School. We’ll see you in an hour okay?”

 *****

“Good Morning, guys. My name is Mr. Showalter,”  I squeezed the words up from my throat like white toothpaste out of a tube of Crest.  The single Windsor knot I’d tied in the car only minutes before felt like a noose.  “Umm…I’ll be the new Driver’s Ed teacher for the rest of the school year.” Well done, Showalter.  Way to open with a bang.  “Umm.”

My shirt looked like I’d ironed it with a cold rolling pin.  My pants didn't match my shoes.  And here I was with a newly discovered stutter.  Nice.  I dug around in the metal tray below the blackboard and found a piece of chalk that someone had colored orange on one end so that it looked like a cigarette.  Pretty clever.

M-r-S-h-o-w-a-l-t-e-r.  I wrote meticulously on the board. 

A pimply boy with an Insane Clown Posse backpack rapped his blue Bic against the table.  Other than that, silence.

The fact that the room had a chalk board instead of a marker board told me it was designed to be a classroom eons ago.  Somewhere along the way, someone decided it should be converted into a custodial closet.  Recently, it had become both.  A mop bucket and mop, a yellow WET FLOOR sign, and some paper towels were propped up in the corner.  Shelves of cleaning supplies lined the walls on one side of the room. On the opposite wall, posters displaying pictures of wrecked cars warned students that “Buzzed driving is drunk driving” and “1 in every 7 teens wreck their first car – Buckle Up.” My dream classroom.

I had no experience teaching Driver’s Ed.  There was no note telling me what the students had been learning or what they were supposed to learn.  They didn’t need any lessons on how to look scary though.  Goth kids with black eyes.  Punks. Hippies.  Thugs.  Died hair.  Marilyn Manson Shirt.  Bob Marley-smoking-a-joint shirt.  Flat brim caps with logos I didn’t recognize.  One lonely cheerleader chomped obliviously at a stick of Wrigley’s and smiled at me.  I guess if she feels safe...

They looked like the kind of crew that could whip up anarchy at the drop of a dime, so I needed to do something quick.  First impressions are everything, and if I continued bumbling around and didn’t ask them to do something constructive soon, they’d expect that to be the norm.  Think think think think…I know!

I straightened my back and smiled.  “I know you are all acquainted with each other already.  And now you know me too,” I pointed to my name on the board, “so why don’t we take our first day and make it an introduce-yourself-to-Mr.-Showalter-day.  I’m going to have each of you introduce yourself with your name, and then you can tell me your favorite musical artist.  It can be a singer, rapper, band, whatever.  That will help me remember who you are.”

Silence.  Then suddenly from a back corner of the room – the scrawny blonde girl in a Bob Marley shirt - “Are you going to throw a desk at us?”

What?  Throw a desk at you? And then I remembered.  Minutes before, the principal was rushing me down the corridor trying to get me to class before the first bell rang.  As we hustled through a maze of lockers and students, he filled me in on the last teacher’s early departure.   According to his account, the last Driver’s Ed teacher threatened to assault one of his students which, as the principal pointed out, was ironic because the desk he'd hurled at the student had already pretty much done the deed.

“Yeah, are you going to throw the desks?” This from an overweight kid with dyed black hair and two lip rings.

Chuckles all around. They were testing me – dipping their toes in the water of misbehavior. 

“I’d prefer to throw ninja stars at you,” I answered.  “but if I happen to forget my ninja stars one day, then yes – I will have to throw desks at you.” More chuckles.  Test one – passed.  Stick that one to the refrigerator door, Mom. 

Now it was the gum chomping cheerleader’s turn.  “Well, if you do throw a chair, or ninja stars, throw them at Miss Johnson. She’s got quick hands.  I bet she could catch them.”

“Miss Johnson?” I asked, and the cheerleader pointed to the back of the room.  I followed her finger with my eyes. 

Sure enough, there sat Miss Johnson. She was a small, spruce looking lady with her back to me. She was almost completely hidden behind a rolling janitor’s cart loaded down with rolls of paper towels.  She swiveled her chair around and smiled.

“Good morning, Mr. Shh…” she looked up at my name on the blackboard, “ow-alter.  “I’m the deaf interpreter.”  Then she turned away from me and towards two students, one boy and one girl, who watched as she made a brisk torrent of hand and finger movements.  Both of the deaf students had a grey plastic piece above their ears.

I have deaf students? I’ve never taught deaf students before!  How are you supposed to do that? I thought.  I waved at them stupidly.  “Well, good morning, Miss Johnson.  It’s a pleasure to meet you, and don’t worry about the ninja stars.  I only throw them at kids.”

She smiled and then turned back around to face the deaf students.  I watched carefully.  She fluttered her arms about in a series of waves, finger wags, and what looked to be hail mother Marrys.   

Then without warning she stopped her signing.  For a brief moment I couldn’t figure out why, and then I realized it was because I’d stopped talking. Miss Johnson looked over her shoulder at me and smiled pleasantly again. Her face seemed to say  It’s okay, new guy - everyone tends to watch the first time they get interpreted.

A demure little girl in the back of the room bent down to pick up a pen from the floor, and I watched her out of the corner of my eye.  While she was doubled over she stealthily dropped a piece of lined paper, folded into a perfect triangle, atop her neighbor’s desk.  Then she scooped up the pen and looked up.  She was caught. She slowly averted her eyes away from her glaring new teacher, letting her dark hair fall into her face, and then sat back down. 

Ah, perfect target. The gazelle with an injury – shyness.  I’ll start with her.  “Young lady who thinks her new teacher won’t notice a bit of note passing, let’s start with you.  What is your name and what is your favorite musical artist? It can be a singer, a rapper, a band, whatever.”

She thought for a moment, then without looking back at me, “Hi, uhm…my name is Bracie and I guess I kinda like all music.”

I waited. 

“Uhm…but I guess maybe my favorite would be like, I don’t know, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, maybe.”

“Very good, Bracie. I also like the Chilli Peppers.” 

No way, you know the Chili Peppers? I imagined all of the students must have been thinking.  That’s awesome.  You probably play guitar and stuff too huh?  You’re so cool, not like our old stupid teachers.  I waited for one of them to speak up about how hip I was. 

Silence.

“And you, sir.  Sitting next to Bracie who likes the Chilli Peppers. What is your name and who is your favorite musical artist? 

“James. And fricken’ Metallica, dude.”

“Thank you, James. And good call on Metallica.  However, I prefer to be called Mr. Showalter over dude.”  Lie. 

I carried on this way, snaking up and down the rows asking each student his or her name and favorite musical artist trying to ascertain something about who they were based on what they listened to.  I reckon it was more like making snap judgments. 

“Nick – Insane Clown Posse.”  Juvenile hall, much?

“Carrie – Brittanie Spears.”  Tighten up that curfew, mom.

“Karlee – Bob Marley.”  Pot Head.

Darren – Tupac – I glanced over at Miss Johnson to see if she’d throw up the west side W with her fingers. No luck

This little game continued nicely as I repeated the students' names and the music they wanted associated with them.  It was actually helping me remember.  There were 30 students in the room, and already I’d memorized 28 names and an artist or band I could associate with each one.

At last I came to the boy and girl who sat in the corner of the room under the cleaning-supply shelves.  Sitting before them was Miss Johnson, who had been translating my wildly successful student-teacher introductions. 

I suddenly recalled hearing somewhere that deaf people actually prefer that you look at them when you speak to them, regardless of whether or not they are watching an interpreter.  Maybe they won't look at you all the time, but when they do, they should catch you looking at them and not the interpreter.  So I spoke slowly and deliberately, facing my two deaf students. 

“What. Is. Your. Name?  And. Who. Is. Your. Favorite. Musical. Artist?”

How it had not occurred to me that a deaf student would most certainly not have a favorite musical artist I cannot begin to say.  I would like to chalk it up to the fact that I hadn’t been properly trained or prepared for this situation, but how much training does it take to know that it’s not okay to ask deaf people about their particular tastes in audible sounds? 

What I can say for sure is that if you are reading this, and you are a deaf interpreter – don’t do what Miss Johnson did.  Please.  What did Miss Johnson do?  She listened to my question, and then without missing a beat, wiggled her fingers around in circles, interpreting every stupid, dumb, insensitive, ludicrous word in my question. 

I wish I could describe the face that the young deaf boy made at me, but I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to forget it.  Imagine the way a jury looks at a man on trial who admits, without guilt, that he killed his wife and daughter with a knife.  If you can imagine that, you’re getting close. Without unlocking his hateful eye contact with me, Brian commenced a series of angry looking hand motions, something akin to typing on a keyboard that is trying to get away from you.

Miss Johnson, turned around and looked at me with a disapproving face. It was at this point that I realized my mistake - just before she said it.  I wanted badly to suck my words back into my mouth.  I ached for a time machine, a rewind button.

“He says ‘my name is Brian and I don’t hear music because I’m deaf.'”

Silence in the room.  Two seconds of awkward, dare I say deafening, silence.  The students all leaned forward in their desks and waited. Then Brian made one more aggressive movement with his hands – a firm fist and then a circle.  Miss Johnson shook her head no at him.  He repeated his sign again, with even more aggression. He shot glances back and forth between Miss Johnson and I.

Reluctantly, she swiveled around in her chair and faced me. The look of disapproval on her face was now replaced with confusion.  Later that day she told me that she probably shouldn’t have said it, but as an interpreter for the deaf it’s not her duty to censor conversations but simply to interpret them.  It’s part of the moral code of conduct that they are hammered with during their education.

Brian continued to shoot icy stares between Miss Johnson and I, waiting for her to do what her code of conduct required of her.  And then she did. She said what Brian had signed.

“You are really stupid.” The words trickled shakily out of her mouth, but they landed like a grenade.  Suddenly the room roared with laughter.  You are really stupid.  Boisterous, belly laughing.  It bounced off of the cement walls and into my ears.  It was the kind of laughter that haunts middle school nerds in their dreams.  It was the kind of laughter that punches you in the gut.  Loud.  Pointed.  Abandoned.  Brian crossed his arms, leaned back in his desk, and admired his handy work.  Miss Johnson covered her face with her hand and doubled over into her own lap. She wouldn't look up.

And me?  I stood there, dumbstruck and watched.  What else could I do?  The laughter was too loud for me to say anything and be heard.  It was ear-splitting.  Even the two deaf students must have felt the vibrations from the roar.   I wanted to run out the door and never come back.  I wanted to crawl over to the cleaning-supply shelf and chug a bottle of Clorox.  Anything to get me out.  But I didn’t.  I just stood and stared as my students lost themselves in the hilarity of my mistake. 

All about the room, genre-transcending moments were taking place.  I watched  James-the-Metallica fan stand up and high five Darren-the-Tupac guy.  Brittany-Spears-fan-Carrie and Karlee-in-the-Marley-tee actually stood up and hugged.  They clung tight to each other, using the other for support as their uproarious laughter weakened their knees.  All of this at my expense. 

You are stupid, Adam.    


I scanned the room, panning my downcast eyes across the strange looking students who had found their new target.  The cheerleader was actually pointing her finger at me and laughing the way Nelson does on The Simpsons.  I was reminded of that dream where you find yourself on stage and everyone is waiting for you to start and suddenly you realize you don’t have pants on. I guess there are worse things than being pantless though, because I would have gladly traded my pants in for a chance to go back and un-ask that stupid, dumb, insensitive, ludicrous question.