Where do you draw the line with optimism? When do you crawl onto your pessimistic throne with a half-empty glass and stew in all the bad luck and stress that seems to slowly take you over? Don’t we all deserve at least one day to throw some hate at the planet? To bypass any thoughts for those that have it much worse and to give the middle finger to the minute forces of oppression that occasionally weave their way into our lives like a house spider or a fireside mosquito? I feel like everyone should have at least one day to rage with no guilt involved and throw dirt into the atmosphere like some divine can of Aquanet. I had my day recently, and some may judge me petty, but sometimes you have to bend that fake smile and take what’s yours.
When I made the promise in Korea, I can’t say that I was truly in a sane state. It’s just something that seemed desirable at the time. Not to say that I wanted to back out of the deal, but Canada was a long way from Texas, and that was especially true when driving. What could I really do? You can’t fight love, and besides, it just seemed cool to chase a girl into Canada—or perhaps extremely desperate depending how you looked at the issue. I was determined though, and a promise was a promise anyway you looked at it. So that was the plan. Upon completion of my year teaching English in Korea, I would return home for two weeks to tie up loose ends, pack my bags, and depart the Bible Belt for better days in the Great White North.
From Arkansas all the way to Ohio, travel seemed pleasant, causing my optimism to continuously rise. No real problems, except one rude McDonald’s employee in Missouri who got pissed because I ordered a McFlurry. I had no idea they were that hard to make, but, to be fair, it’s rare to find an inner city McDonald’s employee who doesn’t cringe at the sound of a McFlurry order. So I put the dirty looks and the ideas that I had just eaten a spat-in McFlurry out of my mind and headed on. The first night I stayed at a Hampton Inn outside of Dayton due to paranoia caused from a friend of mine, who told me a story about Satan worshipers who preyed upon unsuspecting tourists unwittingly crossing over the Dayton City lines into Columbus. I can’t say that I really believed the story, and even though the friend who related the warning was prone to really stretch the truth, I decided to stop anyway. Later that night, I ate a less than stellar meal at a Texas Roadhouse cafe. While there, I drank two Long Island ice teas and met a naïve young waitress who was saving money to move to Dallas because she thought the entire city looked like the restaurant she worked in. I didn’t really have the heart to tell her that it didn’t. It’s best to let people dream their dreams; maybe she could find something in Dallas that I never could. Doubtful—but anything is possible.
With a fresh head and a large cup of coffee, I set out the next morning. In just two hours I was through Ohio and well into Pennsylvania. To say the least, the state was amazing, covered in majestic looking trees and mountainous topography. I barreled through with my radio blasting a combination of 80’s Glam and Texas Country, and I set my sights down the highway in the hopes that I would make Massachusetts by nightfall. By the time I reached Connecticut, the traffic began to build, and the rain drops began to collect on my windshield like some sort of horror movie foreshadowing. Ignoring the warnings of greater driving difficulty, I decided to push on into Massachusetts even though there was very little light left in the sky. Once outside of Vernon, Connecticut, the road signs specifying places for lodging and food began to decrease, and I realized I may be in bad shape. The sun had been down for close to an hour by the time I saw the sign advertising a Hampton Inn, and the rain had picked up so much that reading any road sign was a visual impossibility. Veering slightly to the right, I managed to make my exit and follow the road straight into the heart of Sturbridge, Massachusetts. From what I could tell through the hammering rain that had compiled on my window, Sturbridge looked like a town out of some 50’s sitcom or maybe a Stepford Wives-type modern horror film. The streets were neatly paved and all the buildings stood neatly arrayed in precise colors that looked like something out of a child’s Easter basket. I could see the Hampton Inn nowhere and had driven down the main road until the heart of the city was 2 to 3 miles behind me. Frustrated and tired, I hooked a u-turn in the middle of the street, breathed a single irritated breath, and headed back the other way. Cocking my head back and forth in half-assed attempts to look at business signs and something that might present itself as lodging, I decided to try and search my GPS. When I clicked the power button, the usual warning flashed across the screen advising me “not to attempt to enter route information while driving.” I impassively ignored this and clicked the “okay” button in order to proceed to the main menu. When I looked up, I could only see the faint flicker of a light turning red and a stopped SUV that was way too close for comfort. Slamming my breaks, I could feel the tires slide across the wet pavement without even a hint of rubber-to-pavement traction. In the following moment I could only go through the small combination of actions one can manage in a situation like this—wince, produce the single-sentenced thought of “This is going to happen,” and yell the word “fuck” at the top of my lungs. I sat for a moment and peered through the rain at the twisted metal that was, just moments ago, the hood of my car, and then following the lead of the car in front of me; I pulled off to the shoulder of the side street on my left-hand side. Shaking so badly that I almost looked like an epileptic, I managed to open my door and make my way over to the SUV in front of me. The door to the car was hanging half-way open, and I peered through the cracked opening at an older woman who was still staring straight ahead through her windshield and into the rain coming in and out of her high beams. She almost seemed catatonic, and when I asked her if “she was all right,” she only nodded slowly and said “yes” over and over. In car wreck situations, you can only hope that you don’t receive a response such as this. It only adds a layer of shit onto your already existing woes and transports your head into a realm of worry that results in incomprehensible speech and mannerisms that may suggest heavy drug use to overly suspicious cops.
When the cops finally arrived, they found me tearing my car apart in a frantic attempt to find my vehicle registration and proof of insurance. With my head overflowing with thoughts of costly court fees and intense mental anguish caused by my inattention, I handed the officer an envelope filled with unfamiliar documents I hoped like hell would result in a current insurance card or proof of vehicle ownership. As the officer returned to his car and began to sift through the mountain of paperwork I had given him, I walked back to my car and gently leaned up against it as the heavy rain began to soften. To my right, I could see the lady I had hit get into a truck driven by a man I assumed to be her husband. The man lightly closed the passenger door and then walked over and stood at my right-hand side while he waited for the officer to finish processing his paperwork. I wanted to say something to him, something with a profound impact that might ease the tension or any sort of malice he may have for me. Opening my mouth, I could only muster the words, “I’m sorry.” He slightly turned his head, sighed in frustration, and said, “It happens.” Misreading his words as a sign of a friendly nature, I began to tell him my entire story. He just sort of gave me a half-cocked expression of disbelief before he was distracted by the opening of the officer’s car door. Without even a “take it easy,” he walked over to the cop, took his paperwork, and gave me one last disgruntled look before getting into his car. After starting my car, I punched the coordinates of the Hampton Inn into my GPS. Even though my car looked like something out of a redneck’s front yard, luckily I was able to make my way down the heavily wooded back roads and safely into the hotel parking lot.
Waiting for an adjuster to return a call is like some demented episode of “The Twilight Zone”; you feel like you’re trapped in some podunk town forever. I spent three whole days in Massachusetts without so much as an update. My phone would ring every three or four hours and, like some desperate high school girl, I would jump up to answer it in bright anticipation. It was always just my girl friend or a family member checking in with me, leaving me grateful yet frustrated, and eager to return to my spot on the huge Hampton bed to eat Goldfish crackers and watch Lifetime movies. In my past I can honestly say that I have underrated the Lifetime Network, and although tailored for women, it’s easy to lose yourself in T.V. date rape movies starring Candice Cameron and reruns of “Designing Women.”
By day three my power of positive thinking was on a definite decline, and I decided to give up the wait and call my insurance company. When I asked how much longer the wait would be, the agent said, “I don’t know.” When I asked if he might have an estimate, he said, “No.” When I asked, “Please can you give me an estimate,” he still said, “No.” Left with no choice and learning that body shops in Connecticut had onsite adjusters, I contacted one and had my car towed to that location. The tow truck driver was a nice guy with no front teeth named Harl, and he didn’t hesitate to take me the long route and point out landmarks and “good goddamn eatin’ spots” on the way. Once at the body shop, I dropped my car and hitched a ride with one of the mechanics to a Howard Johnson’s. As I walked through the parking lot on the way to my room, I couldn’t help but notice the party of bikers and crack whores who had gathered in the parking lot to drink beer and rev Harley engines. My room at the Howard Johnson’s was a step down from the Hampton, and it smelled of curry and old cough drops. The wall paper was falling off the walls, the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned, and they didn’t even have the Lifetime Network. “Fuck it,” I thought as I sat my bags down. “It’s only for one night.” There is power in the phrase “fuck it.” It sort of hits your brain like some sort of perfectly tailored anti-depressant, helping relieve tension, so you can stop worrying about the truth of the matter, and move on into another one of life’s complex webs that will sooner or later call on you to use that phrase once again.
Around 5’oclock that afternoon, the shop called to say that my car was a total and that I needed to come and “clean all of my shit out of it tomorrow morning.” Hanging up the phone, I went to eat at a local diner and then retired to on-again, off-again sleep dictated by the energy of the biker/crack whore party that raged outside in the parking lot. The next morning I went for the continental breakfast so graciously provided by the Howard Johnson’s and watched as one of the party goers took the last of the cream cheese. Perturbed and tired, I poured a cup of coffee and ate a bowl of Fruit Loops with no milk, due to the hotel staff’s forgetting to stock the breakfast bar. Gathering my bags, I waited in the hotel lobby until a worker from the body shop arrived to pick me up. Once at the shop, I cleaned my deceased vehicle of its remaining possessions, reconsolidated my bags, and called a cab to take me to the Hartford airport.
In two or three trips, I managed to stack all seven of my bags at the only available spot at the ticket counter. The ticket agent working the desk had short and neatly cropped hair and was dressed like a schoolmarm from around the turn of the century. When I smiled at her, she removed her glasses and frustratingly rubbed the arch of her nose.
“How many bags are you checking?”
“Five?” I questioned.
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” I stated optimistically while she continued to scowl at me.
“Sir, you may check two, and then check one more for $125.”
“You gotta be shitting me?” I questioned.
“No sir,” she replied. “I am not…’shitting you.’” Could you please move aside, I have other customers?”
I pulled my luggage off to the side and reluctantly managed to consolidate seven bags down to two. Gearing up to re-approach the desk, I was instructed by this Nazi cat lady/ticket agent to return to the end of the line. My eyes filled with judgment and my heart full of contempt, I obliged and waited a good thirty minutes to get back up to the counter. Once through security, I headed to the closest airport bar and paid almost $30 for two beers that managed to produce the first smile I had made in two days and then headed to my gate. The flight out of Connecticut went smoothly, and I was allowed two bags of pretzels and a Sprite to tide me over until I arrived at my connection in New York.
JFK Airport in New York was nothing short of a crowded hole in the earth, and the only nice thing I can say about it was that they had a Starbuck’s that carried the non-fat cinnamon swirl coffee cake. The airport architecture was terrible; it smelled of mildew, and people littered the sitting areas to the point that it was hard to find a place even to stand. I decided drinking large quantities of beer might be my best plan of action, and I retired to the nearest airport bar to once again get raped on the cost alcohol for the next five hours.
When the gate agents finally boarded the flight, I felt a huge feeling of relief well up inside me, and I became slightly misty-eyed when the agent told me, “Have a nice flight.” Uncomfortably situated in a window seat next to an overweight lady, I stared out the window just in time to see storm clouds roll in and lightening flash across the sky. I settled back into my seat and listened to the captain’s voice boom over the speaker, announcing a flight delay due to the weather. On the tarmac a line of planes stretched almost as far as I could see, and by the second hour of the delay, the woman next to me was already sound asleep and snoring louder than an atomic bomb blast. It was not looking good, and with fifteen minutes remaining in the second hour of the delay, the captain announced that after three hours on the tarmac, airport regulations stated that we would have to return to the gate. I gazed, once again, out the window and watched lighting light up the sky, laid my head gently against the seat’s headrest, and closed my eyes.
To my dismay, before I could fall into total sleep, the plane began to slowly move forward. Were we returning to the gate? We still had fifteen minutes left before the three-hour deadline. “Nooooooo…” I thought. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t I get a break? I was on the verge of panic when a thought hit me, and it was as if the sky began to clear simultaneously with my thoughts. This was just one of those moments that made me human, a streak that all the best of us have to endure. One of those moments when you feel like all of the world’s energy is focused on tearing through you like some out-of-control force, and you can only sit back, hold your head high, and take it.
“Fuck it,” I said so loudly that the lady next to me choked on one of her massive snores, the two rows in front of me looked back, and the flight attendant came over to ask me to please refrain from using profanity.
“Sorry,” I replied as I eased back into my seat. I turned my head to look at the seat back in front of me and folded my hands neatly in my lap. It’s only one more night, big deal. Suddenly the plane began to pick up momentum and what felt like standard taxiing was beginning to slowly morph into a take-off and before I knew it, we were slowly climbing into the sky. Closing my eyes once again, I began to fall into sleep under the dimmed lights of the cabin. I was going to make Canada.
Once passing over the threshold of the Halifax Custom’s area and into the welcoming gaze of my girlfriend’s brown eyes, all that had occurred before seemed to fade slowly away and then compile itself into some overly-hyped adventure story that I could share with strangers at dinner parties and barroom outings. It is all imaginary now, something people can find themselves identifying with or scorning for its lack of true hardship. It is to me, however, a reminder that sometimes you have to hate on the world for a bit in order to find balance in your life, the good surrounding the bad, and the realization that it’s all just one great big story. Optimistic or not.
