It's a game in which you try to make your partner say a certain word without saying a provided list of associated words. For example, if the word were "Darth Vader," you might not be able to use the following words in your description: Luke Skywalker, Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Anakin. Playing this game with three different generations can be problematic, but perhaps in some way it's better than playing with the same-brained.
Me: He's a character in a series of movies directed by George Lucas... The films take place in outer space... He's evil, and he breathes really heavy... He wears a mask and wears all black...
My grandmother: Johnny Cash...?
The man at the counter said there was no way I was getting on that plane, but then he changed his mind and said, "Merry Christmas" (like it was an excuse) and handed my checked luggage to another man who was to personally deliver it to the plane. It was 7:05 and my plane was due to leave at 7:30. I'd been stressed in the taxi—it was rush hour and the day before Christmas Eve, and the BQE was full of cars with red-glowing tails and I was terribly late—but I was tired enough and feeling sick enough that I fell asleep in the taxi three times anyway.
I had accepted my fate, even before the man at the counter told me I wasn't getting on that plane, and I was okay with it. I'd nodded and already started to wheel my ugly green luggage to the back of the line before he called me back to tell me I could get on the plane. The plane ended up being delayed over an hour anyway, although neither of us knew it yet.
So why, when I was offered an impossibly amazing deal from the airline to give up my seat, did I not take it? One: because I was tired and sick and rather delirious, the kind of delirious that comes with having taken serious sedatives (I hadn't), or like when the hairdresser is combing your hair and you want to fall asleep and don't really care what she does with the scissors. Two: because I foolishly half-thought that people in NC would be upset with me for not arriving as planned. (It turns out they would've totally understood.) Three: because no one else was taking the offer, which made me subconsciously discredit it. Four: because taking the offer meant I would have to stand up and recover my bag from the plane's belly (I was already sitting on the plane) and walk through the cold and figure out where the hotel was and how the hell I was going to get there. Five: because the alternate flight to Raleigh would've been two legs, instead of one. Six: because I am a big idiot.
The deal, had I given up my flight? All of the following: two round-trip tickets to anywhere in the U.S./Canada, good for one year. Two free upgrades to first class. $400 toward a plane ticket anywhere in the world, good for one year. Free accommodations at a nice hotel that night, and a nice dinner at that hotel. A first-class ticket to Raleigh first thing the next morning.
Exactly one minute after the offer expired, I began banging my sick aching head on the plastic oval window to my left. I didn't sleep at all during the flight, like I'd planned. Instead, I used that time to consider all of the places I could've gone for free but chose not to. I thought about meeting Bill Murray at the hotel bar. I thought about sitting in a quiet hotel room with cable TV and getting rid of my sore throat with some sleep and a warm bath. I wondered why my usual spontaneity was completely absent when I really needed it.
Just after take-off, I watched as we climbed over Brooklyn, which was made up of tiny bright orange lights, as if someone had pegged its shape on a Lite-Brite. It looked just like it does on maps, but didn't look real at all, and it seemed odd that I was able to see a big, recognizable land mass in its entirety. I could make out the flashing lights on JFK's runway (I was coming from LaGuardia), and I had the irrational thought that it would be easy to land a plane, because, look! the runway's right there, so obvious.
The Atlantic matched the black sky and looked like nothing, just darkness. At that moment, I could see the flashing lights of twelve other planes—I counted—flickering like lightning bugs all around.
It was a big enough gift that it covered a handful of occasions, and it was completely unexpected. I'd just come back from camp—I was nine—and I saw it through the kitchen window, standing prominently in the yard, its round nylon nucleus and its shiny metal springs. I yelled an excited "thank you" as I ran out the door to greet it, to climb on it, and to jump around like popcorn until my legs and energy collapsed.
I spent every sunny day of the next several summers on it; my friends and I would play various skill-intensive games, we'd lie on it in our bathing suits until our skin melted into an unhealthy shade of brown, and we'd set the moving sprinkler underneath so we could jump through the water. We'd teach each other jumps and handsprings and flips and became springy little gymnasts. We pushed the trampoline next to a tree house and fell from the sky like acorns. My dad would sometimes "coach" me at my request (although, honestly, I don't recall him really criticizing my attempts). A few times my friends and I camped out on it in our sleeping bags.
Sometimes we hurt ourselves by falling through the springs or landing on each other in a ball of sharp elbows and knees, but we were young and resilient, and jumped right back on.
My parents eventually were forced dismantle it when I was in college, thanks to a pack of random kids who'd regularly make use of it and leave trash scattered around the yard. I've jumped since, though, on other trampolines, and have discovered I can still do most of the things I used to be able to do; the difference is, I'm only brave enough to do the things I already know, unlike the young version of myself, who'd try relatively reckless stunts without much coaxing.
Anyway, it occurred to me that I should look out for a trampoline while I'm visiting NC over Christmas. It also occurred to me, a few weeks ago, that I ought to go bowling with some friends who had invited me. Perhaps it's a good sign, but I keep completely forgetting that I recently broke my arm.
These days I'm no longer going to physical therapy, due to the stingy limitations of my health insurance, despite my physical therapist's insistence that this is a "critical time" for me. So instead, I'm trying to force myself to straighten and strengthen my arm on my own.
It's not going very well, and I can't figure out why. I can't figure out why my arm isn't more important than making mix CDs or sitting at the computer doing whatever seems productive or hanging out with friends or sleeping an extra ten minutes. It's a mystery.
I'm trying to do better.
My dad brought it back from Israel in 1998, along with a few other souvenirs for himself, for friends, for me and my brother. When he unpacked, he spread the items out on the bed and asked what I was interested in having. I immediately claimed the goblet, a hand-painted porcelain creature with a collection of unrecognizable images filled in with watery blues and greens and browns. The goblet was of course the item he'd picked out for himself, I later learned, but he told me to take it and shooed it away with a flick of his hand.
Whenever my parents give me something, I feel bad if I don't use it enough, if I don't like it, if I break it, or if I lose it. By giving me something that he actually wanted, my dad unknowingly fed that guilt, which (admittedly) is out of proportion and glows like an aura around the goblet's porcelain edges.
I keep loose change in the goblet, but rarely do I actually "use" it or even go near it. I did today, however. In a sad Christmas-induced financial emergency, I poured all of the change out on my dresser and scooped the silver to one side. Three seventy-five! I had soup for dinner.
Tomorrow is payday, which means, among other things, I'll again begin replenishing the goblet-bank with shiny metal snacks.
I was eighteen when I went to Europe for the first time. Straight to Romania, rather than to the traditional west, because that was the opportunity that was presented to me; I certainly wanted to see the west. It was 1993, less than four years after the Iron Curtain had parted, and so I imagined there weren't very many of us yet that had ventured to the other side.
Our plane landed in Budapest, where we caught a train that hummed over the Hungarian countryside. All I saw of Budapest was through the smudgy glass of a swerving taxi, and, honestly, all I remember of it was the outside of the train station and the pictures of naked women that were taped to the taxi's dashboard.
The train ride is equally spotty—I remember yellow earth speeding by, and that the train was constructed so that you could stand outside and feel the wind whip past you. And that the train cars were divided into small rooms, enough for six people to sit snugly and stare at each other. That the conductor wore a crazy hat and punched holes in your ticket and eyed your first-world passport.
We crossed into Romania by VW van, after dark. (It was the vehicle we'd be driving around the country for the next fourteen days, and the first stick shift I would ever operate.) At the border, we were greeted by a snake of cars that extended for probably a mile, cars containing people who were waiting to make polite conversation with the border guards and clear the check point; their presence promised hours of cramped longing, turning the engine off and on, braking and gassing, inching forward.
Our driver was savvy, however, and knew that all we needed to bypass the line was a $10 American note. As we sped by the staggered mess of parked cars, I slouched down in my seat, embarrassed. (Later, we would get out of two speeding tickets by paying off the respective cops with a mere 50 cents each, and we'd undeservedly feel like generous heroes when we'd leave a $1 tip for a waitress.)
I've been playing my guitar again. Well, some. For the last few years, my guitar sat in the corner like a child that's misbehaved, stuck there so I can ignore it. Ignoring it over a period of time, it recently told me, makes its fretboard pale and dusty, and turns its strings into sharp, skin-piercing wires. It also makes my fingers soft and naive, like the hands of a businessman; the callouses that were once there have been neatly absorbed into my skin like lotion. There's more: the brain in my head and the brain in my hands have forgotten how to be dance partners, as well as some of the steps crucial to "dancing." They don't want you to watch them as they try to relearn. They really hope their neighbors can't hear them make the pear-shaped wood cry.
For Christmas, I am asking for the ability to see the present time with the clarity with which I'll see it in the future. Meaning, I want the wisdom of hindsight right now. But it seems to be as difficult as trying to see the New York skyline while standing next to the Empire State Building. Not happening.
Also on the list: no more snow, a new computer, a right arm that will straighten completely, vaporized medical bills, a particular camera lens, and something realistic, like, I don't know, a DVD or something.
I've turned into the sort of person who doesn't like Christmas very much. Not in the exaggerated hackneyed Scrooge manner, nor in the frenzied stressed shopper manner. Rather, I dislike it in the quiet headache let's-not-talk-about-it manner. I will probably put up my clear green inflatable tree again this year anyway.
It's totally untrue that New Yorkers are not nice.
Walking toward my apartment yesterday, I saw some 10-year-olds pounding a car with big sticks as if it were a piñata. Pieces of metal and glass were flying off the machine the way water flies off a wet dog, which clearly made the kids happy.
I slipped into my apartment and returned with my super 8 camera. The kids had stopped chipping away at the car, but they were still hanging around, their sticks resting on their shoulders like baseball bats. I didn't want to upset the boys or make them nervous, but figured that they were ten years old, after all, and didn't pose any major threat to me or my camera, that the worst that could happen is that they'd ask me to leave.
I began filming the car. The windshield looked like it had accepted a meteor; the only glass that was left was around the edges, and that was barely holding itself together into a pattern of tiny clear shards. The car itself looked like a crumpled piece of paper, which fit in nicely on my street.
As soon as they noticed me, the boys ran up to me and excitedly reported what happened in a single breathless run-on sentence: the guy whose car it is didn't want the car anymore and was beating on it himself but then got tired and said we could finish the job.
I asked them if they would do me a favor and continue beating the car for a few seconds more while I filmed them. They were wary and didn't want to be on film, but agreed to help me out. Without thinking, they slid their heads inside their jackets so that their shoulders disappeared and their faces were hidden, like little street nuns. They gave the car a few more whacks for my benefit, smiled and asked me whether that was okay, and had they beaten the car enough?
Really sweet, right?
