I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
What we meant to do while we were there: zip-line canopy tour of the Cloud Forest, wander near the molten sputterings of Mount Arenal at night, snorkel in the Pacific Ocean with neon fishes, read at least three to five books apiece, acquire golden skin and blonde-streaked hair.
What we didn’t expect to do while we were there: go to bed at nine-thirty every night, six hour cab tours, consume homemade sorbet from a fruit I can’t even google correctly. Was it a coz?
Greetings from … well, I wish I could still say Costa Rica, but last night we returned, significantly browner and peelier than a week before.
As a result of that trip, I am now a little bit more fond of monkeys, a little less fond of cats — which were feral and whining about it everywhere — and much more fond of paved, straight roads, which were stomach-lurchingly absent in our area. Also, I want a pony. (Whenever we wanted to go somewhere, we drove on dirt roads through green hills dappled with white oxen, grey-spotted horses and unicorns, apparently. It was always sunset, and there were always mountains in the background. I began to harbor fantasies of owning a ranch. It would have an wooden gate painted bright orange, and every morning I would enjoy a breakfast of Cream of Wheat with black coffee.)
(Step one: stop hating Cream of Wheat.)
(Step two: stop hating coffee black.)
How’s springtime in Kansas City? It’s kind of nice to be back home in Boston, even if it is a bit chilly and forecasted to rain for the next week. I like to think that I attained a level of zen in Costa Rica, because when a car tried to plow through me this morning in the middle of a crosswalk with a walk signal, my inclination to give him the middle finger was almost cavalier, dispassionate, like a friendly tip o’ the hat to his douchebaggery.
Sometimes I worry that I’ll become too accustomed to this city.
The last time I went home to Minnesota, I got together with my best friends from high school and we stayed up through the night — first watching an ill-advised screening of “2 Girls 1 Cup” and then recovering for the next six hours, talking and eating flan — until eventually we’d convinced Adelia to break her teaching contract in Korea.
“Yeah!” she said. “What am I doing?”
“Seriously,” we concurred. “What are you doing.”
“I don’t even want to go there!”
“You don’t even want to go there.”
“I want to go to Europe again!”
“Dude, you should seriously go to Europe again.”
“I’m going to email the program director right now and tell her to send me back my diploma.”
We watched her do it, then we convinced Kristy to kick out her silly boy roommates (with their utter lack of pans), then we convinced Adelia to move in to Kristy’s newfound living space, and then we played a Dave Matthews song I won’t tell you I like and danced in our sweatpants by the over-sized windows in Kristy’s living room. “Is this . . . the kind of thing I do?” I wondered briefly, flailing my arms around like I was at some Lilith Fair concert. “Oh, baah.”
It was something like three in the morning, and every now and then I could hear the oncoming and fading swishhhh of cars driving down Grand street, their tires throwing brown slush onto the curb.
The first time I got into trouble with the cops, I was wearing nothing but a damp towel and some sand. The sheriff’s jeep had come bumbling down the hill toward the lake, brights on, stupidly indignant. “You kids know it’s illegal to skinny dip in public? I could arrest you right now. Is that what you want?” He shone a flashlight in our eyes, looking for answers.
My dripping friends and I were speechless. There was something about my complete vulnerability at that moment, however, that also enraged me. I grasped that towel and glared. I . . . probably had rights, right? This guy couldn’t just push us around.
“And what makes you think we were skinny-dipping?”
He sighed, tired. It was late at night, probably long after curfew for kids our age. He could have easily gotten us on that. “Miss, please . . . are you trying to tell me you weren’t?”
Out of nowhere, a poker shark began to show its pointed fin in that lake. Do it, a voice said. He won’t call your bluff.
“Yes . . . yes, I am. We’ve done nothing wrong here. We were all wearing swimsuits.”
He looked me up and down.
“You’re wearing a swimsuit right now?”
If you’re going to go, go all out. I maintained eye contact and confirmed that yes, I was in fact wearing a swimsuit.
“So you’re trying to tell me,” he began, voice wary and weary, “that you are completely clothed under that towel?”
“No way,” I said. “I hate that church.”
Heads raised in surprise. I looked down at my plate of Christmas Eve meatballs, chest swelling and constricting with confusion. I hated that church? Seriously? Wasn’t that an ignorant thing to say? As a Unitarian I’ve always claimed to be open to other ideas and curious about all faiths. I’ve chanted ohm and listened to nondenominational poetry readings, sang in Latin and Hebrew praising different Lords, been baptized twice and for two different religions, claimed to be on the cusp of converting to Judaism and Christianity and Buddhism, all in the space of about two years. I’ve been attracted to boys because I didn’t know much about their beliefs. (All that mystery surrounding your faith! It’s sexy! Oh, tell me more about your customs!)
I’ve devoted my spiritual life to open-mindedness and curiosity, and here I was saying there’d be no fucking way you’d get me three feet the fuck near that church.
“Uh, why do you hate St. Andrew’s?” someone asked.
A reasonable question. The rest of my family liked St. Andrew’s just fine. It’s large, it’s Lutheran, it’s near our house, people sing, there are candles. All nice things, which I usually try to respect.
“Last year they insulted every other belief but their own, and I was offended,” I responded self-importantly. (Also, the preacher kind of had a Billy Graham thing going on that rubbed me the wrong way, but I try not to get wrapped up in aesthetics.) “They went on and on about how obviously, we were only there if we believed certain things, and frankly it just wasn’t very welcoming to newcomers.”
My sister raised an eyebrow, as if to say “whatever, you crazy.” Everyone resumed eating.
Yeah! My brain cried. You hate that church!
It felt amazing to dislike a church, and even more so to say it aloud. I shivered with a strange, foreign glee (which thankfully no one observed aloud), and we continued to debate where we would attend our Christmas Eve services, which faith it would be this year, which pastor — and whether or not we could survive the long, snow-feathered drive into the city without simply falling asleep, slumbering away the birth of someone else’s savior.