A Great, Bearded Twinkie
I saw a commercial recently by a very large shoe company that encourages viewers to try some new sport or activity, even if they suck at it. I suck at a lot of things, so it took me a little while to narrow down what new thing I should focus on sucking at. I considered putting some time into learning to rub my belly and pat my head at the same time, but ultimately decided there’s no money in that. Unless after you’re done doing it you walk outside and mug people.
Mmmmmm. Twinkie. (Puerto Carrillo, Costa Rica; May 2021)
One thing I’ve been wanting to suck at for some time is surfing. So I tried it during a recent family vacation in Costa Rica. I quickly mastered the pedestrian ways of wiping out: feet first, head first, butt first. But then my aging frame with minimal upper body strength and abs that haven’t been used since the Clinton administration grew too tired to fully propel me into a standing position on the surfboard. So I was reduced to developing a new way to crash: catching a wave, weakly pushing myself into a pseudo kneeling position, feeling vaguely overwhelmed with the whole enterprise, and so simply rolling sideways off the board into the water, like a great, bearded Twinkie.
One thing people may not know about me, besides me sucking at surfing, is that I was asked to be the keynote speaker at my daughter’s high school graduation ceremony. Well, technically, nobody asked me, I just stood up in the front of the audience and started speaking. Also, there may or may not have been only five people in the audience, and it’s possible all five were either my offspring or my wife. Also, one might say we couldn’t attend the real graduation ceremony in Provo because we were on vacation in Costa Rica so we just held our own program on the beach in Puerto Carrillo. If true, none of this would change the fact that I was the keynote speaker at a high school graduation ceremony.
Keynote speaker. Very important person. (Puerto Carrillo, Costa Rica; May 2021)
I always knew I’d amount to something and prove my critics wrong. You might be thinking, “Wait, don’t you have to actually matter to have critics?” To which I would answer, “Shut up, you’re ugly.”
I can’t sleep in airplanes, and that’s why I’m probably the only person awake at 4:30 am on our red-eye flight from L.A. to Costa Rica. All up and down the fuselage passengers are contorted in their seats, window shades pulled down tight, hoping that assuming a sleeping position is roughly the same as actually sleeping. It is not. This I have learned from many years of being really tired on really long flights.
I lean over my wife and daughter fitfully sleeping beside me, I gently slide up the window shade to see if dawn is approaching. It is. The colors, the topography of the clouds, it’s all impossible. An anvil-shaped thunderhead is bubbling a couple hundred miles to the north, burning purple and magenta from the weak dawn light seeping from the sun, still hidden beneath the eastern horizon. The thunderstorm flashes every few seconds, wrapped in ropes of electricity arcing in and out of the wispy, condensed water vapor.
The sky is damp, dewy, soft somehow, strewn with torn up clouds that look content to hang there, beautifully murdered and flecked with pink and robin’s egg blue. This window is the only one open on the whole plane. Nobody sees this but me.
I’m coming home to a place that isn’t home. The longer I’m alive, the further I drift, the more familiar this sensation is to me. The less you belong somewhere, the more you belong anywhere. Nobody sees this but me.
