Synergy

By the time our two weeks in London were up, I had just about had it with them, and they with me. We took a train to the place where we could get an overnight ferry to Ireland (they sure didn’t make it easy to get to that particular country, tellingly enough). We were all supposed to share one sleeping compartment, but it was mighty small, even by our standards, and I decided to walk around a bit and maybe sleep on one of the benches. After an hour or so, I came back and knocked on the door, having changed my mind. My mom opened the door, none to pleased to see me, and then shut the door in my face. I know that she had shut the door to move stuff around so there would be room for me, but that was just the final straw. I had suffered these irritating adults who knew nothing and controlled everything long enough, and when the door closed in my face, I made sure that I wouldn’t be there when it opened again.

I went up to the lounge, and crawled under a table to spend the night. My plan was to hide out there until we landed in the morning, and then slip off the boat undetected and go live my life the way it should be lived. The way I wanted to live. In, er, Ireland.

Okay, so it wasn’t the best plan, and, fortunately, the trip was long enough for my resolve to soften by the time the sun rose and the boat landed. As the gangways were lowered, I caught the eye of my mom, and we slowly wandered back together. She silently received me back into the flock and I, just as silently, acquiesced.

Our time in Ireland was relatively uneventful, and the mood was a little better for having broken on the boat. My mom was having terrible back trouble at the time, so getting around was extremely difficult for her, but she soldiered on and we got to the end of our vacation alive.

Then there was the matter of getting home. This should’ve been a simple (though time-consuming) affair, but it quickly turned into one of the worst travel experiences of my life.

Aer Lingus, our scheduled carrier, was on strike, so its flights were being handled by another airline. With much smaller planes. After innumerable delays, we finally boarded the plane several hours late. Right after take-off, the pilot came on and explained that the reason we were flying so low is that there was something wrong with the pressurization system, but they were going to make a stop (in Wales, I suppose) to get it fixed before we headed out across the pond. Very reassuring. They got that squared away, after another long delay, and we were finally on our way home.

Because of the length of the flight, they were going to show a movie. Two movies, actually, but, perversely, they showed them at the same time on alternating screens that had been pulled down into the aisle. While they served dinner. Because the movies were shown on alternating screens, you got the sound for the screen directly in front of you. But, directly in front of me meant, in this case, one seat, so my angle was so oblique that I couldn’t really see anything on the screen. But I could see the next screen just fine. Too bad I couldn’t get the audio for that one, so I watched one movie (Benji) while listening to another (Telekon).

It didn’t really matter that the two didn’t go together, because every time somebody walked down the aisle, they’d push the screen out of the way and it would swing back into position for several minutes, giving you a bad case of motion sickness if you actually tried to watch what was being projected. Which, apparently, was what the kid behind me was trying to do and, before long, he had thrown up all over the back of my seat. I had to quickly scoop up my carry-on bag to keep it out of the puke that started seeping under my feet. The odor was bad, and it kept me from eating my dinner, which was just as well, because there were lots of little green bugs crawling around in my salad. The smell of vomit quickly permeated the cabin and some lady a couple of seats in front of us decided that the thing to do was to spray some perfume around to mask the scent. Too bad she dropped her brand new magnum of perfume, which shattered and soaked into the carpet, poisoning the plane for the next few hours.

We finally arrived several hours late, just in time to run like maniacs through the airport and just barely miss our connecting flight back to Michigan. But I didn’t care, I was so glad to get off that plane and back to the good old USA that I would’ve gladly slept on the floor of the airport. Which, I’m sorry to report, did not happen. The airline put us up in a hotel for the night and, the next morning, feeling considerably better, my mom and I bid Oma farewell and made our way back to Interlochen.

Now, you may be surprised after that litany of abuse, but that trip was, in some ways, the most important and exciting and successful trip of my life. Sure there was all the adolescent tension and angst and all those endless hours in museums (the Portrait Gallery? Why would they do that?) and there was the time a newsstand owner almost called the cops when he caught me trying to steal a skin mag (listen to Ian Dury’s wonderful Razzle in My Pocket for a reasonable facsimile of the experience). And not all the plays were terrible – I did get to go see Jesus Christ, Superstar at its original venue and there was that naughty accidental farce which was great lecherous fun. But there was something else that happened on that trip, something wonderful and miraculous that changed my life forever and opened up whole new worlds for me.