When people talk about adventures, you picture them climbing mountains, eating in a crowded city street somewhere on the opposite side of the world, maybe sky-diving. But my adventures have mostly been atop bar stools, on front porch steps, in slouchy sofas of coffee houses, in flip-flops on sidewalks in Florida.
I can’t tell you what was adventurous about anything I’ve ever done, really. It all comes out rather mediocre, if I'm being totally honest. I can only tell you about the blonde-haired, blued-eyed lady who sang in Spanish to us as we sat street side in our chairs watching the world go by, the time when we first met Kevin and he left his job at the gallery to do shots with us next door, the bride I got drunk on mango margaritas on the patio the night before her wedding, getting thrown out of a bar with the boys from South Carolina...and then the street fight! I think of bike rides and sunsets with my friends, and dancing until the club shut down, or at a moment's notice - deciding to go camping or meteor shower watching, and always having a friend who said YES, sleeping in Susan’s convertible BMW on the side of the road in the Keys, and the time Tony said I made his day just because he met me, and these old guys I went for steak with - I don’t even remember their names. And the stories of Victor when he was a musician. And the ones of Karina’s life when she was a model. And the one about how Ron hitchhiked an airplane ride in Jamaica. And the time I drank moonshine with hillbillies. And that time Moses picked us up after a hurricane to do relief work, and we barely got through a military checkpoint after curfew in the pitch black of night.
Someday I’ll travel. When I do, it will likely not be to visit monuments or galleries as much as it will be to sit in local bars and cafes, strangers’ kitchens around the world, and listen to them tell me about their lives. I'll invite the eye contact. I'll welcome the stories that are sometimes so hard to tell to that you can only tell them to a stranger.
I wish the people who looked at my life and judged it “got” that about me. That this has been the joy, not the result of poor choices. In all the actual awful things I’ve been through, these conversations with people, these mundane conversations in the middle of perfectly average times, have been exhilarating.
---------- Update December 3, 2023 ---------
I've read this over again through the years. Sadly, I can say that since I've written this, not only has Ron passed, he was passed when I wrote it and so was Kevin - but Moses passed in March of 2021. Jonathan (one of the South Carolina boys) passed just this year August 2023. Knowing them all made my life feel like an amazing adventure.
