We agreed after this trip that you don't really know someone...I mean REALLY KNOW them...until you go on vacation together. For example, my travel companions and I work together in the same office. We've known each other for multiple years now. My desk is an approximate 45 second walk from one of their desks and about 7 feet away from the other's. The three of us eat lunch together practically every day. We talk all the time and frequently hang out outside of work. But I gained a deeper understanding of both of them after this trip. I would have never dreamed I had so many things yet to learn about them. And about myself.
Although unplanned, this was not however a difficult feat. It seems that one's oddities become much more clear and more evident when reflected in the eyes of friends. I know ours were!
Let's start with Harmony:
Many of her odd behaviors revolve around her nighttime routine. She beds down like a dog for several minutes before she actually lies still and goes to sleep. This activity combined with the crispness of fresh hotel linens results in what sounds like someone crumpling a paper bag repeatedly in the bed next to you. This noise, however, does not in fact offend the offender as...alas, she happens to sleep in earplugs. Among her other faux pas...she loses all decorum when trying to hail a cab, lacks the ability to avoid looking like a tourist, and is incapable of maintaining her balance while standing in a moving subway train.
Now on to Anna...
This chick wakes up freakishly early in the morning. Even on vacation! She also lacks the capability to go back to sleep! Finding herself subject to her own pre-trip rule (that the first person who wakes up is NOT to awaken the others), she consequently lined the bathtub with pillows and read a book until we decided to get up. Which is probably the main contributor to her next quirk: an intense desire for all things breakfast! Among her more impressive traits is her uncanny knack for using her love of Auburn football to make fast friends (or enemies if the case may be) of any group of fellow sports enthusiasts.
My turn. Although I'd love to be able to say that my performance on this trip was nothing short of flawless...I, too, was ridiculed for my eccentricities. Those who know me realize this isn't easy for me. I'm pretty uptight and don't generally enjoy being the butt of a joke. However, on this trip, it's safe to say that I found myself on the tail end of quite a few of them.
Here goes...
My biggest overshadowing quirk is my inability to just let loose, cut up, and have fun. I overcame this inhibition as best I could over the past weekend, as evidenced by my posing for this photo with a piece of sushi hanging out of my mouth. I was teased for my general obsessive compulsive behaviors...a major one being my need to begin on the right-hand side of a store and work my way back around systematically in a counter-clockwise direction...rather than just meander through. My secret fear of revolving doors was brought to light. And my religious dependence on my iPhone Maps app, while well-intentioned, sent us in the wrong direction more than once. You can also imagine the skeptic looks my friends gave me as I covertly used it to run checks and balances on our cab driver to make sure he wasn't ripping us off with his little detour through Wrigleyville.
While it may sound like these quirky behaviors were the annoyances of our trip, the opposite is in fact true. They were the highlights! The things that made us laugh so hard we cried and that caused us to be so loud in the cab that I actually apologized to the driver for having to put up with us! And in reality I couldn't have been any less embarrassed. We. Had. Fun. Just being who we are and doing what we do...which, when you really break it down...is dang funny.
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