As the concluding bookend of my trip to Guatemala, I flew to Orlando to visit my best friend from high school. He was busy with classes but we had great fun when he was home, eating eggs and chicken and cookies and cream milkshakes fortified with actual Oreos. When he was gone I passed the time falling back in love with Arrested Development online. Our hangout finale was the midnight showing of District 9, this sci-fi movie that we had gotten ourselves all pumped up for, and it did not disappoint. We arrived an hour early to a crowd whose overheard speech consisted solely of Halo and Xbox and things one might consider Nerdy and I therefore felt safe and comfortable and at home among them. The great thing about going to a movie that is mostly for a Nerdier side of the population in such a crowd one can do or say anything and it is actually more acceptable the more outlandish and unexpected it is. It’s a good thing to be able to leave judging to the tune of what’s Cool or Not behind. This is an especially good thing when one, for example, dresses up for Pirates of the Caribbean in a costume that was planned out months ahead of time and has a sword fight in front of an appreciative crowd of ten thousand (or however many sit in those stadium theatres), but not so good a thing when one goes to Star Wars accompanied (acceptably) by the usual characters like Han and Luke and Anakin but whose girlfriend chooses to dress as some obscure Jedi who needs face paint and a robe and looks more like a Franciscan monk who is very confused and you wish she could have just been Chewbacca or the Millennium Falcon.
As we sat in anticipation, heavy with excitement, we watched those pre-movie slideshows and I wondered who had the audacity to assume that audiences could somehow be entertained by the same five slides played over and over until ten minutes before the movie starts. There were quotes that merited at least a sympathy-nod of appreciation solely because well-known actors said them, and even an ad advising the crowd NOT to shake their babies, though many of us were actually thinking of doing that right at that very second.
And then the movie began, and the middle came, and then it ended, and I must say it blew away my expectations like a plasma grenade. It was completely unique and a whole new twist on alien-human interaction, but had all the needed elements in a sci-fi, namely laser guns that made people explode and a mech suit that decimated the bad guys and caught an RPG midair. Consider the crowd pleased.
We were justifiably jazzed as we drove home, and had planned on staying up all night till my flight. Leaving had occurred in a similar fashion up until then; I stayed up until my flight talking to my good friend in Buenos Aires before we left, we danced until dawn in Lima, my first visit to Orlando we stayed up all night talking, and I left Guatemala with only an hour and a half of sleep after a grand-finale hangout with the crew there. So, I figured the trip would end in like manner, keeping the streak of spending the last amount of time together in the best way, aka not sleeping. So we talked, and then decided to watch an hour-long video on YouTube of all the cutscenes in Halo 3. After this awakeness-drain we threw out any notion of staying up for the last two hours and set every alarm in the house we could find, which, as you could already guess, did nothing but allow us to wake to a cacophony of three alarm clocks and an oven a scant fifty minutes before my flight left, with a forty minute drive to the airport. We knew we could make it.
And that is how, in a state heavily drugged from lack of sleep, Martin and I said goodbye and I waddled my way into the airport with my ridiculously overstuffed backpack and waited in line at the counter for Southwest, watching the clock until “Yep. There goes my plane. Hmm…” Upon arriving at the counter I informed the clerk that my flight had left ten minutes earlier (yes, do the math, we made remarkable time and I waited twenty minutes in line) and she said it’s okay, we can get you standby to Dallas, and I said Okay, can I go to Houston instead, and she said Okay. And I thought, if it was that easy, why not go to L.A.? And she shook her head No, because people always think that. And It just so happened that by missing my flight, and by flying to a different city, I was able to be on the same flight as my cousin and his wife as they returned from Scotland after a year of studying there. I was really tired and my stomach was empty so luckily the full improbability of the situation did not fully settle on me and I was able to have normal conversations with them that did not center on how crazy the world was and a terribly awkward rendition of It’s A Small World After All. I’m trying to avoid jokes that get the pity laugh lately.
That last statement is absolutely untrue. I live off pity laughs.
With that flight, I made it back to Texas, my home. Right when I flew back into the States from Guatemala City people had joked with me about my Argentina jersey, asking if I was Riquelme or however you pronounce that name, and I loved it, loved the ignorance of soccer players and the easy manner of speaking to anyone, and it was all English, so effortless to joke back or order pizza or organize a standby flight when I missed mine. And I loved being back in the midst of the U.S. culture that I grew to appreciate so much more being gone. But nothing was like being back in Texas.
And then we walked out of the airport and it was freaking hot and as my eyebrows began to singe I thought about the perfect climate back in Guatemala City…
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