A few weeks ago, I took a tiny plane up north to Monterey. Exhausted and running on empty I found myself at the wrong terminal at LAX and hustled myself in with other harried travelers on the shuttle around the airport, accidentally striking up a conversation with a woman whose flight to New Orleans via Houston had been cancelled twice. Perhaps it’s the New Yorker in me, but I always assume these momentary acquaintances to understand that they are just that—temporary—but by the end of the seven-minute trip, when she reached for her cell phone to get my phone number, I realized once again that these flash friends do not always share this assumption.
Shoes off, laptop out, boarding pass in tow I made it through security and was on the plane, passing out before take-off. Traveling has always presented certain challenges for me. My senior year of college, I returned to New York from South America with an unpleasant gastrointestinal souvenir. I saw a doctor who, thinking it could be a parasite, gave me a do-it-yourself stool sample kit, where you swap, package and send your fecal matter to professionals for analysis. I was flying back to California in two days, and the 48 hours of packing and goodbyes had prevented my DIY endeavor, so I packed the unopened kit into my carry-on, planning to “take care of business” on the west coast.
As I stood in line for security, I began to worry that the kit might look like some sort of do-it-yourself bomb. I hadn’t opened it, so I wasn’t sure what it looked like, but I imagined it to be highly technical and full of small parts. My anxiety increased as I approached the front of the line. I passed through the metal detector easily but my bag was held up. I saw several guards gathering around the monitor, examining the lethal weapon that was, in fact, my stool sample kit. I looked into the faces of those in line behind me and I saw the sheer hatred of being made to wait by someone who, they assumed, had packed her over-three-ounce-container of deep conditioner or complete knife-set in her carry-on luggage. Finally, it was too much to handle.
“Um, excuse me?” My voice cracked as I signaled the guard closest to me.
“Yeah?” He said, walking over. He was a tall black man, on the heavy side with cornrows. I could tell he thought I was, at worst, at terrorist, and at best, obnoxious.
“Well, I noticed you’re spending a lot of time looking at my bag, and I think I know why. You see, I have a stool sample kit in there.”
His eyebrows raised, “A what?”
“A stool sample kit,” I explained, “You know, you poop in bag and send it off? I was recently in Panama and Brazil and I’ve been having, you know, some digestive problems,” I looked at him, nodding knowingly, “and my doctor thought I might have some sort of parasite...”
He interrupted me, “Do you also have some sort of,” he mimed a shape around his neck with his hands, “some sort of neck pillow in there?”
“Oh! Yes I do.”
“Oh. Well that’s what’s setting off the alarms.” He stared at me. I stared back, in shock. What do you say to a stranger with whom you just discussed, unsolicited, the recent history of your bowel movements? But I digress.
In Carmel, I found myself at a book signing party surrounded by dogs—of the owner and of my host, a wonderful friend of the family who took me in despite my travel worn clothes and unwashed hair—and an audience of mostly woman who were at least thirty years my senior. I helped man the book table, where we sold copies of Phyllis Theroux’s memoir The Journal Keeper. I met Phyllis, a sharp-witted San Franciscan with east-coast sensibilities, and admitted I hadn’t yet read her novel, though I was planning to and knew I’d love it. She looked me in the eye and said, “You might be too young, but who knows.” I liked her instantly.
Hours later I sat around a fire pit wrapped in a poncho, surrounded by my host, Phyllis and their friends. They inquired about my generation’s perspective of the internet and its effect on the way we communicate and I tried to articulate myself well as an ambassador of the nineties. I was more interested in what they had to say as they told stories about their lives and their grandchildren, one my favorites being Phyllis’ about a questionably homeless man she took in as a young mother. Compelled partially by Catholic guilt and her own boundless generosity—a hidden virtue I didn’t expect, given her dry humor—she offered him the guest room and a shower (he only took her up on the former). This being the pre-cell phone age, her husband was shocked to discover an unwashed youth a wall away from his toddlers. At his insistence, they sent the young man off into the blustery mid-winter night, never knowing he would emerge once again in smoke of a northern California dusk.
To avoid rambling on further, I’ll end with a quote from The Journal Keeper which aligns with the subjects we discussed then and which I write about here:
“I cannot be in real time without wondering what other people have done or said in virtual time. Before voice mail and the Internet, there was a decent interval between cause and effect; one was forced to wait patiently on the other side of the door until someone opened it. But now, with time and distance being reduced to a nanosecond, my ability to delay gratification is weakened” – Phyllis Theroux
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