War in Switzerland

Charles sat with his widowed mother in her small home in Lincolnshire, England. It was almost Christmas and the two of them sat alone warming next to the fireplace, Charles on the floor and his mother under a blanket in her recliner. She was 93 years old and her face was wrinkled and thinning.

“Mother,” Charles asked, “What was the happiest time in your life?” He knew this would be the last time he’d see his mother alive. Her health was worsening, and there was a great distance between their homes now. He was certain that the next time he saw her would be at her funeral, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t misuse this visit by talking about trivial things.

His mother had never struck him as a particularly happy person, and he wondered why she hadn’t been happier. It wasn’t that she seemed depressed or unreasonably angry ever; it was just that she never seemed to have much joy in her life. Whatever motherly warmth Charles and his brother got from her seemed to come more from a sense of motherly duty than from a sense of joy or happiness. He looked out the window at the gray afternoon sky and waited for his mother’s response.

She rocked back in her chair and watched the fire. Charles wondered if she’d heard his question. “Mother, what was the…”

“I heard you, Charles.” She interrupted. “I just don’t know if you will understand my answer.”

Charles looked up at her again. Her eyes were closed now and he saw the creases that extended outward from the corners. Not surprisingly they looked just like the ones on his own aging face.  She took in a deep breath and then spoke. “The happiest time in my life was during The War. That was the happiest I ever felt.”

It wasn’t what he expected her to say, and certainly it was not what he wanted to hear either. Surely her happiest time was when he and his brother were innocent little boys who wrestled about on the ground and begged their mum to come join them. If not then, maybe her honeymoon with his father. Charles poked a stick into the fire and stiffened his back. How could the happiest time in her life be during World War II? 

“The war, mother? The happiest time in your life was during World War II? When the world was consumed by death and violence?”

“I was 20 years old when the war started.  In all of my life since then, I’ve never felt so intensely alive,” She said. Charles focused on keeping the fire alive rather than looking at his mother.  “I felt so…I don’t know - there was such a sense of unity. We all knew what we had to do. We didn’t have to question our purpose. We knew. Every day, when we woke up, we knew what our purpose was. To fight Germany. To beat the Germans. We had a clearly defined enemy.”

“Wartime, mother?  That’s the happiest you ever felt?”

“You’ve not had a war of your own, so I don’t expect you to understand, Charles.”

*****

“And I reckon I won’t ever completely understand it,” He tells me.

Charles is one of the most fascinating people I’ve met in the UAE, and he’s one of my best friends, despite the fact that he’s much older than I am. Almost 30 years older in fact. He is another English teacher at the school where I work.

We’re sitting alone in his classroom when he tells me about his visit home and the conversation he had with his mother. He is still wrestling with it - trying to make sense of it.  The white hairs on his short beard hug thoughtful lines that cut deeply across his face and out from his eyes.  Sunlight streams in through the open door to his classroom, and it lights up the student papers that are taped up haphazardly on his wall. We are worlds away from Lincolnshire, England but his mind is still there.

A thoughtful speaker with a sturdy British accent, Charles doesn’t tell stories, he paints pictures with words. And that is probably why I tend to gravitate to him when I don’t have a class. I often find myself sitting in his room wishing I were one of his students. A Cambridge graduate who has worked and traveled about the world, he’s intensely knowledgeable and wonderfully thoughtful - a brilliant speaker, and an equally talented listener.

“It’s a bit jolting to hear your mum admit that she felt the happiest amidst the longest and most violent war the world has ever seen.” He says.

“I can see how that would throw you for a loop,” I tell him.  “It seems kinda morbid.”

“I suppose it makes sense though,” He says. “Most of us go though life wondering what it is we’re meant to do here. But when England was at war, mum didn’t have to wonder.  She had a clearly defined purpose and a clearly defined enemy.” He leans back in his chair and clasps his hands together behind his head. We both sit and silently for a moment and think.

A couple of boys laugh as they walk past the door to Charles’s classroom. One of them punches the other in the arm, and a playful wrestling match ensues in the sunlit corridor outside.

Charles and I spectate as the two playfully fight each other.

“There are a couple of young men who know how vital a war is to their happiness.” I say lightly, hoping to clear the air of lingering sadness Charles’s story left. “Look how happy they are when they fight each other.”

“I apologize. That was a bit dreary wasn’t it?  Not, perhaps, my most uplifting of tales. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. Shall we talk about something a shade less depressing? Have you decided what you’ll do with your summer holiday? I reckon you’ll do something more pleasant than visiting your dying mother on a gray day in England.”

I turn away from the playful scuffle in the hallway and look back at Charles. He’s smiling now and leaning back in his chair, the solemn look on his face replaced by a sideways grin.

“I’m going to fly to Switzerland for a week, and then I’m heading back to the States,” I tell him.

“Oh, wonderful. I love Switzerland!" Charles has been just about everywhere and done just about everything, so that he's been to Switzerland surprises me none at all. "What will you do there?” He asks.

“I’m going to run a half marathon in the Alps,” I spill, unable to hide my enthusiasm. I’ve never been to Europe and I’ve never run a half marathon either, so I'm really looking forward to my summer holiday.  “I’ve been training for the race for a month, but just last night that I booked my flight to Zurich.”

“My goodness. You do realize that a marathon is twenty-two kilometers, yes?”

“Ya, but it’s only thirteen miles.”

The lines around his beard creep upwards into a big smile. “A very American way to look at it, indeed. And you’ve already registered for the race?”

“I’ve registered for the race, booked the flight, and started the training. I’ve been running well over 50 kilometers every week for the last month,” I tell him.

“That sounds awful, but good for you. That’s splendid. Well, no actually I think you’re quite mad. I admire your gumption, but I think you’re mad. Why are you doing it?”

“What do you mean, why?” I ask.

“I mean why do you want to run 22 kilometers,” He pauses and grins, “Or 13 miles?  It’s not something most people would do voluntarily.”

Strangely enough - I never though about it and suddenly I see what he means. What struck me as a perfectly reasonable fitness goal now strikes me as odd too. What sick personality trait do I possess that makes me want to wreck my body for 3 months in preparation for a race that will take less than 2 hours? Why do I feel satisfaction when I see my laundry basket full of sweat-drenched headbands and t-shirts?  Why do my sore knees feel like badges? Why does this training make me happy?

“I’m not exactly sure,” I admit to Charles. “If I’m honest, the training is physically exhausting.  Last night I waited until 8:00 p.m and when I went outside to run my 11 kilometers for the day, it was still over ninety degrees.  My throat was so dry when I finished that I could barely swallow any water. My heart rate was so jacked up last night that I rolled around in bed unable to relax or fall asleep. My knees feel like they have cement in them.  So I guess I don’t really know why I’m doing it…except that I love it.  It makes me happy.”

Charles unfolds his hands from behind his head and leans in towards me; a mischievous smile dashes across his eyes, but it disappears as quickly as it appeared. I wonder what’s on his mind. He doesn’t talk though; he simply waits for me to carry on.

“It sounds miserable, I know. And it is. But somehow it also feels really good.  When I run it’s like there’s this voice in my head that says you can’t do it, and it’s really fun to try and defeat it. I feel like I’m just rambling. What were you smiling about a second ago?”

“Tell me more about the voice, then I’ll tell you why I was smiling.”

“You know the voice. It’s the thing that tells you that you can’t do something. Honestly, Charles, that voice is probably the reason I’m here right now. It’s always been in my head telling me I can’t do things.”

"Really? How is responsible for you being here?"

“It told me I was too small-town and too scared to ever go live in another part of the world. It told me I was stuck in Missouri, and I might as well accept it. I hate that part of myself - that voice.  I’ve always felt compelled to fight it.  That’s why I started looking for ways to get out of America and experience the world. I wanted to broaden my perspective yes, but I also wanted to squelch that stupid voice. A lot of what I do in my life is about killing that voice. Seriously, what were you smiling about?”

“I'll tell you after you finish telling me about this voice.”

“Well, I always try to prove it wrong, but it never really goes away. It's my biggest enemy. It tells me I’m a lousy teacher. It tells me I’ll never be a good musician. It tells me I’ll never be able to do certain tricks on a wakeboard. It tells me I can’t write well. I'm always trying to prove it wrong, and nothing feels better than when I do prove it wrong. That’s probably the main reason why I’m running this race. I want to prove it wrong."

Charles smiles and loosens up his necktie. “It sounds like you have a clearly defined enemy. Just like Mother did during the war.  And it seems to make you very happy to fight that enemy.” He pauses for a second to let me think about it.  “Do you see why I’m smiling now?”

And I do see. My war with the voice is just like his mother’s war with Germany. That voice in my head is what the German’s were for his mother. It is my clearly-defined enemy. It gives me purpose. I don’t have to wonder what I’m meant to do with my life right now. When I finish with work I glance at my training program, write the day’s regimen on my hand with a blue pen, lace up my Nikes, and then go running.

It gives me a purpose, just like the war gave Charles’s mother a purpose. It gives me a clearly defined enemy. I’m not just swinging blindly at an enemy that I can’t see; I know what I’m fighting just like she knew what she was fighting. I’ve waged a war on the part of myself that I hate - that voice. And the war with that stupid voice is making me feel happy.

Most people couldn’t understand why Charles’s mom would identify wartime as the happiest stretch of her life. Most wouldn’t understand why I want to run a half marathon in the oxygen-starved altitudes of the Swiss Alps. But I see a connection.

Charles shuffles some papers around on his desk and then looks up at me, still smiling.

It’s funny though,” He says, “You’re going to Switzerland to fight the war with your voice. Switzerland is the one place that managed to stay neutral during my mother’s war.”

*****

My conversation with Charles has me thinking about the wars I’ve fought, and how often my happiness is hanging on the coattails of “war.”

When I was in my early 20’s I started a band with my brother and my three best friends. Against everyone’s advice, we set out to “make it” in the most unforgiving industry that exists, and we started at the rock bottom.  We were only average musicians then, we knew nobody in the music industry, and we were all small-town Missouri boys. But we wanted rock and roll success, so we waged war on the people who said it was impossible.

Every month, we loaded our red and white tour van down with banged up amplifiers and guitars.  I remember setting off for tours with as little as a single twenty dollar bill to last the week.  My face burned with embarrassment when I had to ask gas station cashiers for free cups of hot water so I could dump a package of Raman noodles in and quiet my hunger.

Sometimes we had to borrow money to pay the $50 monthly rent we owed for our practice space – an old storage locker in an unheated concrete building.   We practiced every night in that horrible room.  During the winter it got so cold that I played guitar with numb fingers.  I could see our singer’s breath come out of his mouth like smoke over the microphone.

But it was our war, and as uncomfortable as it was it gave us purpose.  We had a clearly defined enemy.  Our enemy was that mass of people who told us we couldn’t make it - the people who thought we were stupid for trying.   We were happy because we had a common goal and when we suffered we did it together.  When we slept on strangers’ cold floors without blankets in cities thousands of miles from home, we were not doing it alone.  We were, like Charles’s mom and the rest of England during WWII, unified.

And once we started experiencing success, we knew we were defeating the enemy.  When we found our own sound and started gelling together on stage we sold thousands of CDs.  We made fans all over the country.  We recorded songs with award-winning producers and played to packed crowds who knew every word.   We would go to malls in other states and see total strangers wearing our Tshirts.  Before it was all said and done we were playing shows in front of massive crowds in huge venues and even putting money in our own pockets after big shows.  Every person who listened to us was a strike against our common enemy.  Each success we had was a loss for the people we’d gone to war with - the naysayers.

Although we had some amazing successes, we never “made it,” at least not in the MTV sense of the word.  What we got from the band though, is the most important thing.  It gave us purpose, and to quote Charles’s mother, “…There was such a sense of unity.  We all knew what we had to do.  We didn’t have to question our purpose.  We knew.  Every day, when we woke up, we knew what our purpose was.  We had a clearly defined enemy.”

And I think that maybe we all tend to miss the point when we search for happiness.  We tend to think that happiness will come when we no longer have any struggles - when we don’t have to wake up every day and battle. When my life is easy, we tell ourselves, then I’ll be happy.

But I think that’s the wrong way to look for purpose or happiness.  What we should be doing is searching for new struggles, new battles, and new wars.  Our wars give us purpose.  And if we can’t find an external enemy to go to war with, it’s time to look inside and find the parts of ourselves that we don’t like and go to war with them.  Maybe the problem is that too many of us are trying to find happiness by avoiding conflict when what we should be doing is looking for our next war.

Maybe there’s a reason Charles’s mother never seemed particularly happy after the war.  Maybe she never felt so intensely alive again because she needed a war to give her life purpose, and after The War was over she couldn’t find a foe. The world no longer provided an enemy, so she didn't know what to do. Perhaps she never thought to look inward  and she failed to realize that we all have a perfectly good enemy to fight inside of us.

I’m fighting my internal enemy - that voice - by training for a half marathon that goes straight up a mountain.  I fight him every time I sit down to write.  I battle him every time I practice my instrument.  And even though I may never beat that voice in my head completely, I will continue to battle it every day of my life.  And that battle gives me great joy.

This blog entry is dedicated to my old bandmates who fought alongside me (great friends from my old life) and to Charles (a great friend in my new life).  Andy, Jacob, Jake, Derek, Joe Willy, and Charles - this one's for you.

I'm Sorry, Ms. Jackson and I'm Sorry, Weather God

I Am Fo' Reeiyall

I’m not sure who said it first, but I know Outkast said it catchiest. Andre 3000 rapped it in their song, Ms. Jackson back in 2001.  I know what you’re thinking – hang on, Andre and his boys in Outkast spit a whole inventory of catchy material back in 2001 so what, specifically, are you talking about?  Allow me to clarificate.

The song was full of lines that snagged in your head like a fishing line in a thicket of cottonwoods.  For instance, everyone remembers, “I’m sorry Ms. Jackson, Ohh - I am for reeiyall,” and, “Forever.  Forever ever?  Forever ever ever?”

But the part of the song I dug hard on was the picnic/weather line; remember it?  “You can plan a pretty picnic but you cain’t predict the weather.” 

I know it’s supposed to be a fancy metaphor about things unforeseeable.  Blah blah blah - that’s not why I like it.  I like it in its literal sense.  I like it because that little weather proverb rings true right down in the cob of my little corn-fed heart.  That old weather adage was probably written about Missouri.  The weather in the show-me state is stable in the same way that the beaches there are beautiful, which is to say not at all. 

We Missourians have our own weather proverb.  It goes, “If you don’t like the weather in Missouri, wait a couple minutes.”  Now that’s a weather proverb.  Score update for clever weather proverbs: Outkast: 1.  Missouri: 1.  The ball’s in your court, Andre 3000. 

I spent my whole life, or rather 28/29ths of it, in Missouri, so I subscribed to that sensible nugget of weather wisdom wholeheartedly.  It makes sense there. It does not make sense here.  


When I moved to the UAE,where the yearly weather is predictable  - or rather 364/365ths of it - I got cocky about how well I could predict the weather.  I’d say things like, “Oh weird, another hot, sunny day – never could have predicted that!” And my comment would be so wet with sarcasm that it could hydrate an adult camel for two years.  

“You know,” I’d offer up, pointing my fingers to my temples and squinting my eyes, “my fortune telling skills tell me that tomorrow is going to be sunny and hot.”  And sure enough...

Here in my new desert home, the weather didn't change by the minute like it did in my home state.  In the UAE I could predict the weather (or so I thought).  So against my better judgment I questioned Oukast’s lyrics.  Psshhh – what do you know, Outkast?  You obviously never lived in the desert.  You-can-plan-a-pretty-picnic-but-you-cain’t-predict-the-weather my ass.

Bad idea.  Never again will I question the wisdom of Andre 3000's rap lyrics.  I paid dearly for my insubordination.  The Weather God is apparently an Outkast fan too, because He struck vengence on me for my skepticism.

Last weekend, unpredictable weather pummeled me and 14 of my friends.  It catastrophicated our camping trip so badly that I’m currently questioning whether or not I’ll ever be able to snap another tent pole together in my life.  We spent a night getting battered by weather elements that had no business being out in the desert.  And don’t tell my fellow campers this, but I think our suffering was because of me, because I offended the weather God’s taste in early 2000’s rap by questioning a sacred verse from the book of Andre 3000.

In Missouri, the weather is not only erratic season-to-season; it changes by the hour.  You have a better chance at predicting the winning number in a game of Besty Bingo in 100 acres of green pasture than to predict tomorrow’s weather.  (If you don’t know what Betsy Bingo is, get a clue.  In Missouri, we cultivated the most sophisticated gambling game in the world where high-rollers place money on precisely which square foot of land they think a cow will shit on).  

It sounds like hyperbole, I know, but I swear on a winning cow-patty it’s true. You honestly cannot predict the weather there at all.  Back in Missouri, I often wore a heavy pea coat, mittens, and a beanie to work in the mornings and then blasted the air conditioner on my way home in the afternoon.  Missouri meteorologists are just palm readers with TV shows.  I remember going to bed with my little red swimming trunks on after watching our local weatherman Mike Bracciano’s glimmering forecast only to find myself, the very next day, standing in knee-deep snow with my moonboots on; I think my first cussword was “Damn” followed by, “you, Mike Bracciano.”

Event planning is tricky in Missouri because the weather is a total crapshoot, the likes of which even Betsy the cow’s backside couldn’t compete with after a bushel of corn laced with laxatives.  Most events are planned with a tentative backup date.  Well-planned events are planned with a backup date for the backup date. The words Event Postponed Due To Weather are quoted as frequently as scripture in the show-me-state.  The poor folks there can plan a pretty picnic, but they’ve got to plan it three times before the weather cooperates. 

But it’s not like that here in the desert.  I was chatting up a fellow expat Missourian, and the topic turned to UAE weather.  I suggested that the plan-a-pretty-picnic proverb simply doesn’t hold water on the Arabian Peninsula.  Come to think of it, the statement doesn’t hold water isn’t exactly the kind of idiom that has much meaning in the desert either.  Or at least you wouldn’t think so…but that’s because YOU think there's no water in the desert because YOU have never been humiliated by a desert rainstorm.  I have.

“In the UAE,” I gushed confidently, “You can plan a pretty picnic AND predict the weather.  Where you at on that one, Outkast?”  And if memory serves me correctly - which it does – my fellow ex-Missourian greeted my revelation with a nod of understanding and affirmation.  

“Ha.  Outkast,” he said.  We Missourians are sensible folk who do things like nod affirmatively and bet on pooping cows, but we’re also well versed in the lyrical content of 2001 grammy-winning rap albums. 

Now, I have no degree in meteorology; I don’t even know what a barometer does, and I’m no Nostradamus either.  But before the desert rainstorm debacle last weekend ruined my sense of confidence, I felt like I was, so I forecasted the weather in the UAE for one year.  

January through April – Clear skies and hot.  0% chance of precipitation.

May through June – Clear skies and pack-extra-underwear Hot. 0% chance of precipitation.

August – “You know, Hell looks like a nice place for a vacation.”  0% chance of precipitation.

September through December – Clear skies and well, anything is better than August? 0% chance of precipitation.

And there you have it.  In the desert, as far as I was concerned, Andre 3000’s quote didn’t hold any water make any sense.  But I was wrong, and Outkast’s lyrics were right.  I admit it.  Unfortunately, I only admit it now because that stream of knowledge along with 12 kilos of sand got shot into my head by the most unlikely weather I’ve ever not laid eyes on because my eyes were too full of sand.

I would like to cordially invite you, said the invitation I got from my friend Lauren, To the event of the century, aka my 30^th birthday.  Desert camping and BBQ.  Guitars, drums, nudity, and pets welcomed.  Mark off Friday, April the 13^th in your calendars.  Things to get started around dusk.  Map, directions, and BBQ details to follow…

Anything up there catch your eye?  Besides nudity. Anything that foretells of misfortune and bad omens?   Maybe a specific date that we associate with terror and rotten luck?  Perhaps a number we consider unlucky preceded by the word Friday?  Guess who didn’t notice. 

Side note: If you’re trying to tell me something important, don’t put it in the sentence after a sentence containing the words “guitar” and “nudity.” I reckon I’d probably overlook just about anything so long as it falls directly after such a focus-deflecting sentence.  Guitars, drums, nudity, and pets welcomed.  Also, if you come someone there will gut you with a dull sword.  Wowzers, Guitars and nudity?!  I’ll be there!

I marked the date on my calendar, scrubbed out my cooler, worked up a set list of campfire songs, and got good and exciterated about a great night of desert camping.  The last desert camping trip I took was one of the finest nights of my life.  Fresh air.  Warm sand.  Cool breeze.  Big sky.  Great food.   I had similar expectations for this one.  And in a place where the weather is actually predictable, what could possibly go wrong?

When Lauren’s birthday celebration/camping trip began, it had all the makings of another legendary night, and I guess it was a legendary night.  After all, technically you could call Sadaam Hussein legendary. The happy campers all showed up on time with their coolers, tent bags, and smiles.  I was the only one who showed up naked; other than that everything started out perfectfully.  Well, almost perfectfully.

I was also the only camper who showed up in an SUV.  For you dirt huggers out there who are unfamiliar with desert terrain please note that driving in the deep sand without big tires and four-wheel drives falls somewhere between inadvisable and impossible.  In light of this fact, all the partygoers parked their cars on the road, and I caravanned us in multiple trips out to the dunes. I loaded and unloaded four shipments of people and gear via SUV.  All in all – about 15 people were on hand as we started the fire, fired up the grill, and grilled up the meat.  That makes 14 witnesses who will confirm that this freefall, from enjoyfullness to demoralizification, actually happened. 

I don’t have a particularly impressive history of training when it comes to driving on sand dunes.  My experience driving into sand is entirely limited to the handful of times I’ve been golfing and teed off straight into the bunker.  As for conducting vehicles on dunes, this was my first time, and it’s not as easy as it sounds. There is a great deal of skill involved.  Even the best “Dune Bashers” get stuck when they drive their 4X4s through the desert, and they’ve been driving in it since they were knee high to a camel puppy.  But guess which newbie dune basher you’re reading right now didn’t get stuck?  The Toyota and I cut through that sand like we’d been doing it together our whole lives. Party on!

The fire crackled, the skewers sizzled, the laughter bounced around, and before long the suds started flowing.  Happily hidden between rolling dunes, we made merry like only Bedouin wannabes can.  The party was turning out to be, as it was billed, the event of the century. But the Outkast-loving weather God had not forgotten my transgression, and the fun was only short-terming.

After dinner and sunset, I broke out the guitar and we all sang happy birthday and every other sing-along tune in my repertoire.  It’d be just spiffing if I could tell you, for the sake of synchronicity, that one of the songs on my list was Outkast’s Ms. Jackson, and that together we songfilled the entire desert with the line, “You can plan a pretty picnic but you cain’t predict the weather.”  I don’t know how to play that song though, because even though it's so good that even the Weather God loves it, the only lines anyone would remember well enough to sing along with are the 3 I’ve mentioned. That disqualifies a song, regardless of Who loves it, as a sing-along.  So that didn’t happen.

What did happen was that one of the happy campers, we’ll call him Andre 3000 because I want to protect his identity and I’m desperate for some synchronicity here, got a bit upside down on the beer.  And Andre 3000 doesn’t drink much, which almost excuses the mistake he made; only the mistake he made left this otherwise songfull group of partiers lying in broken tents with soggy sand-soaked bodies wishing they were dead.  His mistake, innocent as it was, left us helpless while the angry weather gods hurricaned through the desert and clobbered us with their arsenals, destroying what could have been perfectification.

Andre 3000 is usually a moderate drinker – a sip here or there just to prove he’s not stuck up - again I’m looking for a way to excuse his mistake.  One of the symptoms of only infrequently inebriating yourself - and thus not having a catalog of experiences to tell you otherwise - is that when you do get sloshed you think you can do things you can’t; things like drive my white Toyota SUV back to your car to get something in the middle of the night when you’re not an experienced desert driver and now it’s dark and you’re drunk. 

Those of us who have plenty of experiences dealing with our less-than-sober selves know our libation-induced limits.   I’m frigging awesome at double backflips off the diving board when I’m sober and man I feel like trying a triple, but maybe I should stick to cannonballs considering I just shotgunned my 5th can of suds out of a swimming noodle.

People who are infrequent drinkers tend to make big mistakes when they do get sauced because they’re not well acquainted with the drunken versions of themselves. They make mistakes like going ahead and trying the triple back flip and painting the surface of the pool red.  Or sometimes they make mistakes like driving way too slowly on the sand thus causing the tires to sink and then refusing to listen when I suggest we leave well enough alone and deal with the problem in the morning. They make mistakes like saying no we can get out of this and then flooring the gas and peeling out until the entire undercarriage of my SUV is sitting on the sand. 

But mistakes are forgivable at times like these.  It’s a party after all. So Andre 3000 made a classic party foul - getting a 4X4 stuck in the sand.  Who hasn’t gotten soggy at a college frat party and done that?  I decided not to let one minor setback set me back, even minorly, and it was decided unanimously by me that we’d call someone to come pull us out in the morning when there wasn’t so much good food to eat and good songs to sing and great times to be experienced.  And back we went to merrymaking and enjoyifying on a perfect night out under the stars.

But then something happened, and when I say something I mean everything that could possibly go wrong.  The wind started to howl over the dunes and our tents all began to lean slightly away from us like a sand dune was sucking them in.  We all exchanged a few worried glances.  We’re still desert rookies, but we’ve been here long enough to know that desert windstorms can get violent quicker than a pit bull when you flick his balls. 

Wind is never a good thing unless you’re flying a kite, and if you think flying a kite is fun you probably wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up and bit you in the jugular.  Wind is an especially not-good thing in the desert.  (Interesting fact #1:  Did you know that those cloth thingies Arabs swirl atop their heads are not just for decoration?  You’ve never seen an Arab wearing one swirled atop his nugget when it’s windy because when the wind comes, they wrap them across their faces to protect their eyes, nose, and mouth from sand.)  (Interesting fact #2: None of us so-call Bedouin wannabes had one of those cloth things packed.)

Grey clouds closed up the view of the stars like a curtain after a Broadway show, and then suddenly a ferocious gust of wind picked up speed and, along with it, picked up loose sand and our tents.  We were blinded by high-velocity sand grains just in time to not see our tents get picked up like kites and thrown out across the blackened sand. 

Without those cloth thingies to aid our vision, we began blindly running about, picking up anything that might blow away.  And that included just about everything.  The wind was such that the list of things that couldn’t blow away was very short:  


List of things heavy enough to not blow away in desert windstorm:
1.  The sunken SUV.


Then during a short break in the wind, all of us bolted to our tents to try and reassemble them and weigh them down with whatever we could find.  The only thing I could think of to weigh down my tent was my own body.  I plopped down cross-legged on my sleeping bag just in time for the tent to collapse on top of me.  I watched as the thin plastic cover, meant to keep rain out of a tent, lifted off and kited itself, stringlessly, out into the desert sky. 

Before long, sand began piling up around me in little miniature dunes.  Or at least I think it did.  I couldn’t see anything because miniature sand dunes were forming on my irises.  And in my armpits.  And in my shorts.  And in both my ears.  Relentless waves of sand rushed into my tent, one after another, until even my mouth was brimming with it.  And I would have gladly abandoned all of my belongings and drove us all out of there except for the fact that the truck was as mobile as the phone on my grandpa’s desk, which is to say not at all. 

Well why didn’t you at least go get in the truck, turn on the air con, and wait it out there, you ask?  Oh, did I not mention that I forgot to fill up with gas on my way out to camp, and that in our futile attempts to unstick the truck we ran her dry?  Did I also not mention that the temperature inside a dead, unventilated vehicle in the desert is well over 100 degrees F even during a windstorm?  

For hours I skulked in my tent getting bludgeoned by sand and thinking things couldn’t get any worse.  And then they got worse. 

I’m not exactly sure what the statistical likelihood is for rain in the desert, but my guess is that you could put ol’ Betsy on a pair of rollerskates in a Wal-Mart parking lot, give her a shove, and still have a better chance at guessing which space she’d drop her dook in.

At first, I refused to believe it.  Was Andre 3000 right?  (The rapper, not the drunken 4X4 sumberger who I pennamed Andre 3000 for the sake of synchronicity).  Is it impossible to predict the weather on the day of your pretty picnic even when you’re in the desert?  This is the question I sat and pondered as my lifeless tent clung to my body like a wet blanket, and rain and sand coagulated high in the black sky and pelleted me with what can only be describe as sandhail – marble sized capsules of wet sand that hardened like cement as they careened from the sky.

For a full 3 hours it rained.  The wind raged and carried away our bags.  Sand piles covered our belongings.  Our grills toppled over.  The sand dunes shifted.  The fire got snuffed.  And there I sat, exposed and humiliatinized by the angry, Outkast-Fan, Weather God.

If you’ve ever exfoliated your face with that gritty soap stuff and you scrubbed it into your pores trying to get all that dirt out - you know what my whole body felt like.  Only it was worse.  The wet sand didn’t exfoliate my pores, it clogged them, along with every other orifice on my body.  And there was nowhere to go and nothing to do except sit cross-legged in a dilapidated tent and accept the fundamental Buddhist concept that Life Is Suffering. 

Well played, Weather God.  Well played.

When the sun finally peeked up over the sand dunes and the rain and the wind stopped,  I walked around our campsite listening to my fellow campers ask things like, “Has anyone seen my iPod,” and “Where is Heather’s tent?  Wait...where is HEATHER?”  I dug my box of wet wipes out and used the entire box just getting the sand off of my fingers so that I could use my fingernails to excavate the sand from my ears. 

And then I did what all of us do when we’ve been in the wrong. I apologized. Sorry, I said silently, to the entire kast of Outkast (especially Andre 3000).  I was wrong, I admit it.  You can plan a pretty picnic but you cain't predict the weather.  Then I apologized to the weather God, the one who’d gone Poseidon on my Odysseusness, and punished me for my insubordination.  Sorry, I whispered.  I didn’t know You loved Outkast so much. I will never question Andre 3000 again.

And it was an honest promise.  You can plan a pretty picnic but you CAIN’T predict the weather.  And this time, I’ll buy that Forever.  Forever ever?  Forever ever ever.