Epic Banality

Like many people out there, I used to know everything. I knew what was best for me in all circumstances, my parents were dated and simply couldn’t understand what I was going through and I was a beautiful and entirely unique individual that the rules applied to in a different manner. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all unique, just like everyone else, and as such you can’t statically apply the life experience of one person to another, but what you begin to understand as 30 looms is that experience certainly has its place and shouldn’t always be ignored.

More than just listening to words of the older an wiser, today I’m reflecting on how much my personal perspective on so many things around me has changed in the last ten years. This was brought about because earlier today I opened up contact with an old friend whom I had a falling out with a little over three years ago. The details of the falling out are unimportant, not only because no one needs to know them for the sake of the points I’m making but because, the truth is, they’re generally unimportant. They were important when I was turning 25 and had to be right and everyone who disagreed with me was wrong. They aren’t now.

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“I’ve never cooked shrimp before,” she said, looking at all the little gray crustaceans scattered about on the table. “They look horrible raw.”

“They do,” the master chef responded, smiling softly at his apprentice. “Fortunately, they become a very nice shade of pink and sometimes orange after they’re cooked. Ironically, I’ve never really cooked shrimp before either but I’m sure my experience with other things will work just fine here.”

The two went to the main table, an old oak monstrosity the chef had possessed for many years, and began to shell the shrimp. The clear outer casings were discarded into a trash bin and edible portions were placed into a large glass bowl with a mild brine mixture in it.

Once all the shrimp were shelled and placed in the bowl, the two allowed them to sit for a while. During this time the apprentice suggested, “We should probably wash our hands. You know how I am.”

“I do,” the chef responded as he walked to the sink, turned on the water and lathered up with a bar of mango soap. She followed and did the same and once clean, she reached under the sink for a bottle of lotion she kept there.

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I hate flying. Actually, that’s not true. I’m indifferent about flying. When I’m in a hurry to get from place to place, it’s the best method of travel. What I hate—and I mean I hate—are airports. I never liked them pre-TSA and now, with the whole Homeland Security nightmare, it’s worse and it continues to get worse. I’ve never flown with ID and still do my best not to, though I fear my days are numbered in that regard. For those interested in the policy change, it can be found on TSA’s website.

Why on earth does someone need ID to get on an airplane? What does it prove exactly? I’m not opposed to better security scanning and random checks and such. Those are fine since they actually accomplish something. If I’m carrying an explosive in my bag, checking my bag will theoretically prevent that explosive from getting on the airplane. Checking my ID will not. This obsession with ID has become a point of insanity in modern life. So, let me explain my most recent fiasco.

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Mornings and I have had a strained relationship, at best, throughout my life. I think the only time I ever consistently got along with mornings was on Saturdays when I was young enough to look forward to cartoons. That was a good era. However, still being two hours ahead of my native time zone, mornings are brutal. This is compounded by the fact that I’ve always had trouble sleeping when out of town. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hotel or a friend’s place. It takes me forever. I had a Josh Turner song and Brad Paisley song on a continuous loop as I tried to sleep last night because both songs, as corny as a lot of people would think they were, remind me of K.L. I miss her.

Hotels, no matter where I go, always seem to serve a “continental breakfast” in the mornings. I’m not sure precisely what a continental breakfast is since the contents differ from place to place. I always forget to look it up too. Hopefully, next time I have an internet connection (I’m on the road right now) writing this will remind me to look it up.

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The morning came too early this morning. It’s not as if this is a new thing. About the only morning I can think of in recent history that didn’t come too early was Tuesday morning and that’s entire the fault of K.L. and her mood. Well, not her fault I suppose, since she makes it clear to me on a regular basis that nothing is her fault. The point is though, Tuesday morning coming pleasantly, despite nearly no sleep, was entirely her doing.

We’re in the central time zone. Aside from my brief stop in Houston on Tuesday and the actual flights across the country, I’ve never been two hours ahead before. I’ve done three and one and I’ve even been on Arizona time before. Two is new though. That being said, had we left at the same time from Charlotte, my body would be running as if it had awoken at 3:00am rather than about 4:00am.

While getting pizza last night with Tacita I noticed one of the service station, a place called Huck’s which proudly displayed a picture of some guy with a straw hat and missing teeth, had a sign for “homemade donuts.” We sort of agreed to check it out in the morning for donuts. Turns out that Huck’s don’t do donuts anymore. In retrospect this is probably a good thing. Since I radically changed my diet six or seven months ago, sugar affects me pretty badly but I still have issues saying no to copious amounts of baked sugary goods. So yeah, no donuts this morning.

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I arrived in Charlotte yesterday to help a friend of mine, Tacita, move back west to Salt Lake City. By help I mean we’re trading off the role of pilot and co-pilot/chief-napper over the approximately 2,100 miles of driving to get her, her car and her stuff back west. While a part of me has been dreading this trip—those who know me know I always have massive anxiety issues about traveling and being apart from K.L. isn’t exactly a picnic—the other part has been looking forward to this trip since it was planned. When I visited Charlotte, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. in April, it was the first time in my life I’d left the confines of the southwest. Having seen what the ends of America had to offer, I was curious about the middle. And, although Tacita probably wouldn’t publicly admit it, we tend to have a good time in our travels, even if I’ve been mocked to no end and she’s been forced to listen to me carry on about K.L.

I have to say, although I didn’t make any stops, I’m quite enchanted with both Tennessee and Kentucky. The rolling hills and the green all over is just beautiful and it’s a different kind of green than Northern California that, for whatever reason, makes me feel alien. I felt very at home driving around here and was actually interested in the idea of living here despite only seeing things from the highway. (I’ve been recently afflicted with wanderlust which is a completely new feeling for me. I’ve also enjoyed traveling despite my anxieties. I hope to do it a lot more over the next couple years.)

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All of the above are synonymous with “banal.” For those of you unfamiliar with the term, let me give a bit from my dictionary: “so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring.” Considering the state of blogs since their inception, I figure that’s a pretty fine title for any blog really!

Given what I think of most blogs, someone might ask the snide question, “Well, if they’re so boring, why are you writing one?” Rather than answer this directly, let me digress a bit and discuss another subject I comment on regularly: penis trucks. You’ve all seen them I’m sure; souped-up, diaper buffed, over-powered gas guzzlers that don’t appear to have been driven off-road and have never hauled a boat or carried a bed full of anything in their entire existence. They’re almost universally operated by some rich prick trying to capture his completely depleted masculinity, or worse, some obnoxious woman toting a bumper sticker that reads, “Silly boys, trucks are for girls.” I don’t think I need to state that I hate these things, but I’ll do it anyway. I hate these things.

A few months ago I was driving around town in my relatively modest truck—a truck so modest in fact, only a midget could hope to use it to compensate for his own undersized equipment—and saw one of these monstrosities. Typically, I’d make some sort of comment to myself like, “homo” or “pansy ass” or merely snicker, but before I could do so in my own pavlovian manner, I saw a bumper sticker on his bumper that made me giggle a little. It read: “Does this truck make my penis look bigger?” Bonus points for being ironic. It was like this VW bug I saw puttering around a few weeks ago with a tiny pair of those fake testicles hanging from the back.

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