Travel Talk is Cheap

The summer before my senior year of college, Mr. Wayne C. Martin, a former high school teacher turned mentor-father figure, invited me to brunch. We met at a funky, retro diner where he treated me to a ridiculously large breakfast, all the while extolling the virtues of its low price, Texas-size portions and value for the buck. Since I usually made do with cereal or some synthetic vending machine donuts before my early classes, I actually thought him quite extravagant and politely requested more syrup as I listened.

It seemed the real crux of our conversation would have to do with my career choice dilemma.(I suspect my mom might have put him up to the whole thing, but this cannot be verified in the usual way as she remained inconspicuous and I never once caught sight of her head popping over a booth to snap our photo as a record of this monumental, life altering exchange.)
 

Ultimately, there are two options for an English major for whom gainful employment is merely a novel idea: teaching or law school. Ironically, it was the college profs, who themselves had just mastered the fine art of university politics and finally received tenure after 15 years of one to two semester stints shuffling around the country, who had taken me aside to recommend law school with visions of dollar bills dancing in their heads.  But, it was Mr. Martin's shrewd scheme to bring me over to the dark side - educating young minds and feeding my hungry soul with virtue.
 
Actually, the teacher point was moot, already decided. If I became a lawyer, I knew I'd want to specialize in constitutional law instead of criminal defense, so I readily foresaw that I would end up working for some corporate law firm & feel guilty for not doing enough pro bono work - after all, what good can a theoretical, constitutional lawyer ever do for the world? (Unless you count becoming a community organizer, returning to law school to position yourself to help those most in need, lecturing as a Constitutional law professor, rising to US senator, and then becoming America's president & the leader of the free world as doing 'good'? Thankfully, I stuck to my high moral standards & taught in a private school that catered to the overprivileged upper classes instead.)

So, what approach would a world history teacher take to entice someone to spend her days locked in a classroom with 150 kids? Travel. He wanted to assure me that I could make a teacher's salary and still travel the world. Frankly, this took me by surprise as I thought, based on consistently poor quiz grades from his nitpicky classes years before, that it would have occurred to him that I had learned very little about the world and lacked all essential curiosity. If so, he discreetly kept it to himself that day.  I also failed to mention then, mostly because I was preoccupied with the rapidly cooling hash browns, that all my world travels in the past ("world" referring here to 30 miles or so away from home plus a couple of out of state ventures) had taught me that places didn't matter because people had a unique ability to make themselves absolutely miserable regardless of their surroundings or proximity to desirable amenities.

Still, this was his own, personal rasion d'etre and he was going to make it mine. He explained that if I was frugal about money in other areas, I could save enough to go to Europe or anywhere else on those three month summer vacations that only teachers, not lawyers, enjoyed.  He had done just that for the last thirty years, plus built himself a house with the help of only one contractor, and had an extensive collection of classical music records of which, no matter how many hundreds of times he replayed their selections with amplifying frustration, I never once successfully identified the entry notes of the cello and always mistook them for those of a viola...  Really, I was a lost cause and he probably should have just let me slip through the cracks as hopelessly ineducable.

Upon exiting the esteemed eatery into Houston's stifling 10 am heat, Mr Martin directed my attention to a two story building across the street which declared itself to be "Blue Bird Circle." He said he had one more thing to show to me and, lured by visions of Mr Martin as fairy godmother and me as Cinderella encircled by singing, highly skilled seamstress bluebirds, I followed in meek but expectant certainty of the eternal happiness that was surely in store. Twenty years before it was cool in Paris Hilton's eyes, this trailblazing, trendsetter teacher had brought me to fully air-conditioned, 35,000+ square feet thrift store nirvana. Here, he revealed, is where he'd found many of the antique treasures I'd no doubt admired in his home. Sounding eerily like Bob Barker, he began pointing excitedly in all directions and asking "Can you guess the price of this item? What about the complete set of mismatched dishes here? An almost unbroken vase there?" 

At that time, I was making my way through college with scholarships and minimum wage jobs and living with four bohemian-type roommates, with whom I had little in common except a predilection to share $100 rent, in an ancient house that mysteriously kept losing its monthly condemnation notices. What did I need with used furniture? I'd salvaged cinder blocks & plywood planks as bookshelves and they worked just fine. What other furnishings did a person really require anyhow?

Still, I absorbed all his carefully imparted knowledge, examined scratches and dents with expertise and left with a parting gift: an Egyptian statuette of Bastet, the goddess of war & solar energy for only $2.25!

I appreciated his efforts, truly, but I'm proud to say that I was sensitive enough not to share my ultimate impression: World travel? That's not why I chose teaching. This morning would never, ever have any relevance to my life.

I left a bit befuddled but mostly in a hurry, eager to get over to my boyfriend Chris' house where we could spend our afternoon doing significant, meaningful things like watching soccer matches that ended in a 0-0 tie.

Eighteen years later...