the Hundred and Eighth story

Once upon a time there was a scarf who wished to travel. She spoke with a breeze, and they figured it out. She let go at just the right moment to catch a gust headed for the train platform. It took a lot of effort, and a lot of careful calculations, but she was able to skip from train to train and made it all over the continent.

the forty eighth story

happens on the same trip as the forty seventh. We were both young, and silly, and one of the things we most loved to do together was to get lost. Inspired by the previous day's events, we decided to go ahead and deliberately do so, together. So we wrote up a plan. We would get on the metro. We would wait till we saw someone in an orange shirt, and take the next possible transfer, and get on whatever train we saw first. We would get off at the fourth stop, and go to the left exit off the train. We would turn left on getting to a road. We would take the third right, and walk past one bakery before turning left. Two blocks and turn right. And we would eat at a restaurant on the third block*. We ended up at a Russian restaurant with only two tables. It had red walls, red curtains, red tablecloths, red napkins, and red shades on the lights. We ourselves were red, with the tinted light coming in from the windows and through the lampshades. There was an open window to the kitchen, through which we were handed (red) menus. The menu was in Russian. There was a (red) wax figure of an accordion player sitting at the next table- except that, as we were trying to figure out how to order, the wax figure leaned over and very kindly asked, in very broken French, if we needed help. We were very happy to have any help, but it turned out we really could not talk with this man- he had so little French, and we had so little French, and there just wasn't much overlap. He kept apologizing, and finally, we told him to just order for us whatever he thought best. We ended up with Boscht, and some sausage dish, and some meatball type thing- a whole lot of food. We took much of it home with us. The next day, for dinner, we opened up our takeout containers, and you can only imagine our childish surprise at realizing that the food itself was all red.

*these are not the actual directions, but a recreation of how they were done. The actual ones were much more convoluted, but you get the idea

the twentieth story

Another story, this one set in Brazil.

Dustin and I flew into Manaus to meet my Brother and Yuka, and we all went out onto the Amazon. We had a guide and were out for maybe five nights? I'm not totally sure. One night, Dustin wanted to take a night walk- lord knows what he thought we'd see, but we all got ourselves together. At the last minute, the guide decided he didn't want to go, and sent us with the cook, instead. That is another story. This story is very short. We only had one flashlight, and the cook had it in the front, and somehow or other I was in the back. Only about 200 yards from the campsite, I stepped in a hole. I admit it- I squawked like a startled parrot. My brother, right in front of me, turned around quickly enough to see me still descending into the hole. It ended up only being about thigh deep, and I was totally fine, but much later in the evening, when we finally got back, he admitted to having a split second of envisioning himself trying to explain to my mother when he got home that he'd lost his little sister fall down a rat hole.

the thirteenth story

Today's Story: When I was seventeen, and in Costa Rica, I cut my thumb very badly on a bit of broken bamboo. I realized fairly quickly that I would need stitches. I didn't know what to do- I didn't speak a word of Spanish, and I was there as part of a college class- I didn't even know exactly where I was, much less how to find a docter. One of the other students, who DID speak Spanish, found one of the farm's owners, and persuaded him to drive us into town to go to the clinic. It was about an hour in, and then, when we got there, there was an incredible line. There were people camped out, clearly ready to spend days there in order to get antibiotics for very sick children, or to have badly broken bones set, or who knows what else. Suddenly, it didn't really seem like keeping the end of my thumb was so important. The man who had driven us there was quite a rich man, and walked us to the front of the line. I said nothing, embarrassed to tell him he'd driven me there for nothing, and unable to ask him to wait in line. I have never stopped feeling horrible about cutting that line for 12 measly stitches.

the sixth story

Today's short story, in honor of my impending flight to NYC:
When I was 17, I went to Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the summer. It was the first time i'd ever done any international travel alone, and it was before online ticket booking really caught on, so my dad booked the flights through his travel agent. The result of this was that, on the way home, I had forty minutes in the dallas airport. That's 40 minutes to get off a plane, get my bags, go through customs, get from the international to the domestic terminal, and get back on a plane. This is basically impossible, but, remember, I'd never tried such a thing before, so I didn't know that. I got my bags and hurried to customs. I knew things were iffy, and mentioned the situation to the fellow in front of me- he was some sort of youngish professional, possibly old enough to have a daughter of his own, and he assured me that this would work out, drew me a map of exactly where I needed to go, and told me to run. He let me in front of him in line, and the customs guy let me through real quick, and I took off. The same fellow caught up to me waiting for the tram thing that takes you from terminal to terminal, and shouted "there's no time for that!". He grabbed my (very large) bag, gave me his briefcase, and we took off. He got to my gate slightly before me, and when I ran up, huffing and puffing, I found him standing half in the door of the plane, blocking any attempts to close the ramp. We switched bags back, and I got on.