Here is safe; there looks better

"Here is safe; there looks better"

I was a proficient apprentice with a roll of packing tape at ten; by the time I was thirteen, I was a master craftsman. I was born instinctively knowing that packing books spine down is not the way to go--it's a waste of box space and makes for a heavy load. Pack books flat and layer them only half way up the box, then load light, non-breakables on top of the books. Newspaper is as good as bubble wrap, but not nearly as much fun.

When I was being reared, we moved around a whole lot. That was the nature of my father's fluid careers. Sometimes he had some sort of regional sales guy job, submitting bids for oil and gas construction contracts. Other times he supervised warehouses on oil and gas construction sites. Both tracks required a new set of marching orders almost annually.

Moving has always been exciting for me in the same way really scary turbulence is exciting on long haul flights--each takes me away from the monotony of tedium, the tedium of boredom and the boredom of routine.

Changing schools was both a pain-in-the-ass and a gas, gas gas.

Changing schools contributed enormously to my lifelong norepinephrine jones.

You see, more often than not, I seemed to luck out and enter every new school in the middle of some lesson that I'd already had (in fact, when we settled in Louisiana, everything I needed to know in order to graduate from a Louisiana high school, I'd learned in grades 1 -6 in the Midwest).

I was this annoying new guy who never learned it was safer (i.e. adrenaline inhibiting) to not raise your hand with answers that had been fed to me by previous schools. As a result, with every new school there was, without exception, a day that would come like clockwork when I'd have to meet somebody after school, behind the gym. I was obviously begging for these opportunities.

The wins were harder on me than the losses for reasons I've never been able to figure out, but this phenomenon probably indicated early on that I'd grow up and vote Democrat.

I got older (maturing didn't go hand-in-hand with this process) I went to college.

The month after I got my BA, I left town. . .after town. . .after town. . . .in eight years, I'd had more zip cdes than I'd had birthdays. I'd skipped out on so many upper-triple-digit phone bills that I am convinced that in some small way I had something to do with the break up of A.T. and T.

Eventually I settled in long enough to earn an MA.

After earning the MA, I had two choices: A. I could dig in, get married and breed or B. I could cut and run and spend the next 12 years filling out dozens of DS 4085 applications for additional passport pages.

I'm settled now. Rapidly approaching old age and impending death has had that effect on me. I've been married to the D'Rose now for 3.22 years--that's 39 months or 1,694,383 minutes--anyway you cut it, it is a personal best (in this century).

I have had the same telephone country code for the past 2.28 years. Also a personal best in this century.

These days, I still visit travel agencies frequently but the difference between before and after is that I now book round trip flights.

So, while "here" looks and feels pretty good, I gotta tell you that "there" still looks better. Yet, these days I have this faint idea that "there" will still be there when the time comes for me to go there. Imagine that.

Here are the bloggers I'm hectoring:

Gringo Vasco

Sandy the TEFL ex-Blogger

Ms. Liz in HK

Lisa in New Orleans

English Teacher X