Living Out Loud: Tempting Fate
This is inspired by geniealisa's Living Out Loud project. I've been meaning to write a bit more, and I really enjoy reading the works her prompts inspire.
Have you ever looked back and realized how close you came to not getting where you are now?
In a proper world, where I listened to the wisdom of my elders and paid less attention to the pressure of my peers, I imagine I'd be in a very different place right now. In fact, a far-flung friend who grew up in the same places I did and at the same time is retiring this year after a 20 year career in the service, from which he'll take lifetime salary and medical insurance. He's looking at a question few people my age do: your basic needs and those of your family are hereby taken care of; it'll be 25 years or more before body parts start falling off... what next?
But that's not my story.
I never really figured out what I wanted to do with myself growing up. I took a bunch of tests in high school to try to narrow my options, to no avail. For example, I took this test from the Army called the ASVAB which is supposed to tell you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. I got all the questions right, which the recruiter said meant, 'Well, you can do anything you want'. Not useful. But I'm the son of a military man, and military bases feel like home, so I jumped through a whole bunch of hoops to head for the Air Force Academy. I put 'engineering' on the application because I couldn't be a pilot and that was the next most potentially lucrative thing on the list. My grades weren't stellar but I had a lot of high-powered recommendations, and I made it most of the way through the process before evidence of a previous car accident knocked me pretty far down the list and out of the running. "Are you sure you've never had a concussion, Mr. Smith?" the doctor asked me, looking at an x-ray of my sternum, which I couldn't remember having broken in the way she was pointing out.
I could have waited a year and tried again, or gone to one of the academy prep schools like a good friend and probably gotten in from there, but the social pressure in my school made it almost impossible to take a year off (a 'gap year' as the Aussies call it- I think now this is the best thing a 17 year old can do). Most of my peers were heading to the Ivies, and I felt I had to do -something- interesting to separate myself from the 2 or 3 people in my class who weren't. So I picked a school in Florida that had rolling admission, and a reputation for feeding NASA engineers, and headed that way.
It didn't go well. That's not totally fair, I had a great time, and I left on my own a quarter or so before they asked me to leave, but it certainly wasn't with a degree. Afterwards, I kicked around Maryland for a little bit, but I was swamped and distracted with questions of my own self worth and suddenly shaky trajectory. I felt I had to get some breathing room, while at the same time my folks made it clear that school was important, and wherever I went there was probably a school there they'd help me attend.
I don't remember where the idea came from anymore, but somehow I found a service that offered $180 one-way flights to Europe (as long as you weren't picky about exactly when you left or precisely where you landed). Around the same time, I heard of a drug study at UMMC that paid $1600 if you stayed in it for a full 4 months, testing the rate of absorption of some generic painkiller. It involved a whole lot of needles, but a great big paycheck at the end (in mid-summer, conveniently well before I'd need to face questions of enrollment for the fall). I also picked up a companion who was in a similar mental state and who convinced me he'd be an asset on a one way trip to some un-named European nation, as he spoke German and I spoke Spanish and that covered at least, well, 2 of the countries we knew about.
Naturally, the world decided that wasn't interesting enough. We signed up for the flight service after the study ended, and a couple of weeks later we landed in Paris, a city in which Spanish is nigh on useless and German is actually a negative asset. Particularly on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the city from the Nazis. In addition, our bank cards had a nasty habit of breaking French ATMs, so we had $200 in traveler's checks between us and no idea when the glitch would be fixed.
Paris, in late summer, is a very expensive place to be. We couldn't read enough French to find a hotel room for less than I had in traveler's checks. A (fluent) friend I was meant to meet didn't show up for several days, but the promise of eventual contact kept us in a tight orbit around the 1st arrondissement. We slept on the steps of the Opera, and on the benches outside the Louvre with a dozen or so homeless-by-happenstance tourists and migrants. We were moved on by police with dogs every morning an hour or so before the paying customers showed up to queue for entrance. We got screwed over, cheated, threatened, and ushered along from a dozen fine establishments and perching spots. We heard from buskers and bums that the place to be was in the south, where there was migrant farm work picking grapes from Perpignan in July to Alsace-Lorraine in September. We were told repeatedly that everything was less expensive and the people were nicer outside of Paris.
We finally met my friend, who had been detained in Bordeaux at the palace she was staying for reasons I cannot remember. She bought us wine and laughed at our stories and said, "bicycle to Avignon, it'll take a week or two and be a grand journey and then you can explore the south a bit and take a flight home". She told us how to live a little more cheaply, and the banks fixed their ATM glitch giving me access to money once more. "Don't buy a bicycle in Paris", she said, "They're much cheaper south of the city".
Fate, I suppose: We took a bus to the south of Paris, after cleaning up in my friend's auberge, and decided to hitchhike a little further before buying our bicycles. We'd hardly stuck out our thumbs when a maniac bounced his little Fiat up on the sidewalk, nearly taking out some kids feeding pigeons, and waved enthusiastically at us. "Where are you going?" and "Are you Americans?" "South", we said, "just south, and yes we are, you could tell?" He was a chef, driving back to a chateau in Fontainebleu after dropping off some catering in the city. He taught us our first French words (Steering wheel, Tree, Ashtray, Cow, Car, Asshole...) and spoke a mile a minute in broken English about travel, adventure, the French, hitchhiking and how to do it properly (never on the freeways, they're not allowed to stop for you) and he dropped us off 50 miles from Paris, about 48 miles further than we expected to get. Also, 10 miles from Nemours, which we had thought would take a week.
"That... was really kind of fun"
"yup"
"We should try that again, and see if it's really that easy"
"maybe we should"
"Besides, bicycles, they're kind of expensive. And it's really hot out"
"yeah."
And less than 15 minutes later we were in what I swear was a Gremlin, riding with a kid in a heavy metal t-shirt who talked about Pink Floyd and why it was better to roll your own cigarettes than buy Gitanes, and how every town in France had a municipal campground where you could pitch a tent for pennies and use their shower in the morning.
That was the start of some vagabond years- around the start of every semester I'd think about America, and college, and 'real life', and weigh it against the field I was picking, the bar I was tending, the ski school I was teaching for, the ridiculousness that was becoming my life... and decide to stay put, or hitchhike to a new country to try something different. As resistant as I was to the idea of a year off between high school and college, my 'semester abroad' lasted 2 1/2 years before I returned to the U.S. to finish a degree. Since then, having "Migrant Farm Worker" on my resume has gotten me in to interviews, and the ensuing conversations have gotten me jobs I was definitely not qualified for before I started. We never did buy those bicycles, and I'll never forget the French words for car, tree, or ashtray.
Have you ever looked back and realized how close you came to not getting where you are now?
In a proper world, where I listened to the wisdom of my elders and paid less attention to the pressure of my peers, I imagine I'd be in a very different place right now. In fact, a far-flung friend who grew up in the same places I did and at the same time is retiring this year after a 20 year career in the service, from which he'll take lifetime salary and medical insurance. He's looking at a question few people my age do: your basic needs and those of your family are hereby taken care of; it'll be 25 years or more before body parts start falling off... what next?
But that's not my story.
I never really figured out what I wanted to do with myself growing up. I took a bunch of tests in high school to try to narrow my options, to no avail. For example, I took this test from the Army called the ASVAB which is supposed to tell you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. I got all the questions right, which the recruiter said meant, 'Well, you can do anything you want'. Not useful. But I'm the son of a military man, and military bases feel like home, so I jumped through a whole bunch of hoops to head for the Air Force Academy. I put 'engineering' on the application because I couldn't be a pilot and that was the next most potentially lucrative thing on the list. My grades weren't stellar but I had a lot of high-powered recommendations, and I made it most of the way through the process before evidence of a previous car accident knocked me pretty far down the list and out of the running. "Are you sure you've never had a concussion, Mr. Smith?" the doctor asked me, looking at an x-ray of my sternum, which I couldn't remember having broken in the way she was pointing out.
I could have waited a year and tried again, or gone to one of the academy prep schools like a good friend and probably gotten in from there, but the social pressure in my school made it almost impossible to take a year off (a 'gap year' as the Aussies call it- I think now this is the best thing a 17 year old can do). Most of my peers were heading to the Ivies, and I felt I had to do -something- interesting to separate myself from the 2 or 3 people in my class who weren't. So I picked a school in Florida that had rolling admission, and a reputation for feeding NASA engineers, and headed that way.
It didn't go well. That's not totally fair, I had a great time, and I left on my own a quarter or so before they asked me to leave, but it certainly wasn't with a degree. Afterwards, I kicked around Maryland for a little bit, but I was swamped and distracted with questions of my own self worth and suddenly shaky trajectory. I felt I had to get some breathing room, while at the same time my folks made it clear that school was important, and wherever I went there was probably a school there they'd help me attend.
I don't remember where the idea came from anymore, but somehow I found a service that offered $180 one-way flights to Europe (as long as you weren't picky about exactly when you left or precisely where you landed). Around the same time, I heard of a drug study at UMMC that paid $1600 if you stayed in it for a full 4 months, testing the rate of absorption of some generic painkiller. It involved a whole lot of needles, but a great big paycheck at the end (in mid-summer, conveniently well before I'd need to face questions of enrollment for the fall). I also picked up a companion who was in a similar mental state and who convinced me he'd be an asset on a one way trip to some un-named European nation, as he spoke German and I spoke Spanish and that covered at least, well, 2 of the countries we knew about.
Naturally, the world decided that wasn't interesting enough. We signed up for the flight service after the study ended, and a couple of weeks later we landed in Paris, a city in which Spanish is nigh on useless and German is actually a negative asset. Particularly on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the city from the Nazis. In addition, our bank cards had a nasty habit of breaking French ATMs, so we had $200 in traveler's checks between us and no idea when the glitch would be fixed.
Paris, in late summer, is a very expensive place to be. We couldn't read enough French to find a hotel room for less than I had in traveler's checks. A (fluent) friend I was meant to meet didn't show up for several days, but the promise of eventual contact kept us in a tight orbit around the 1st arrondissement. We slept on the steps of the Opera, and on the benches outside the Louvre with a dozen or so homeless-by-happenstance tourists and migrants. We were moved on by police with dogs every morning an hour or so before the paying customers showed up to queue for entrance. We got screwed over, cheated, threatened, and ushered along from a dozen fine establishments and perching spots. We heard from buskers and bums that the place to be was in the south, where there was migrant farm work picking grapes from Perpignan in July to Alsace-Lorraine in September. We were told repeatedly that everything was less expensive and the people were nicer outside of Paris.
We finally met my friend, who had been detained in Bordeaux at the palace she was staying for reasons I cannot remember. She bought us wine and laughed at our stories and said, "bicycle to Avignon, it'll take a week or two and be a grand journey and then you can explore the south a bit and take a flight home". She told us how to live a little more cheaply, and the banks fixed their ATM glitch giving me access to money once more. "Don't buy a bicycle in Paris", she said, "They're much cheaper south of the city".
Fate, I suppose: We took a bus to the south of Paris, after cleaning up in my friend's auberge, and decided to hitchhike a little further before buying our bicycles. We'd hardly stuck out our thumbs when a maniac bounced his little Fiat up on the sidewalk, nearly taking out some kids feeding pigeons, and waved enthusiastically at us. "Where are you going?" and "Are you Americans?" "South", we said, "just south, and yes we are, you could tell?" He was a chef, driving back to a chateau in Fontainebleu after dropping off some catering in the city. He taught us our first French words (Steering wheel, Tree, Ashtray, Cow, Car, Asshole...) and spoke a mile a minute in broken English about travel, adventure, the French, hitchhiking and how to do it properly (never on the freeways, they're not allowed to stop for you) and he dropped us off 50 miles from Paris, about 48 miles further than we expected to get. Also, 10 miles from Nemours, which we had thought would take a week.
"That... was really kind of fun"
"yup"
"We should try that again, and see if it's really that easy"
"maybe we should"
"Besides, bicycles, they're kind of expensive. And it's really hot out"
"yeah."
And less than 15 minutes later we were in what I swear was a Gremlin, riding with a kid in a heavy metal t-shirt who talked about Pink Floyd and why it was better to roll your own cigarettes than buy Gitanes, and how every town in France had a municipal campground where you could pitch a tent for pennies and use their shower in the morning.
That was the start of some vagabond years- around the start of every semester I'd think about America, and college, and 'real life', and weigh it against the field I was picking, the bar I was tending, the ski school I was teaching for, the ridiculousness that was becoming my life... and decide to stay put, or hitchhike to a new country to try something different. As resistant as I was to the idea of a year off between high school and college, my 'semester abroad' lasted 2 1/2 years before I returned to the U.S. to finish a degree. Since then, having "Migrant Farm Worker" on my resume has gotten me in to interviews, and the ensuing conversations have gotten me jobs I was definitely not qualified for before I started. We never did buy those bicycles, and I'll never forget the French words for car, tree, or ashtray.