Here's Looking at You

While the girls have been on their five-day field trip, I keep thinking about all the wonderful class trips I took when I was in grade school. I count myself lucky.

At Catholic school, we made annual trips to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, with the Henry Ford Museum nearby. As we got our yearly slice of early Americana, I always remember the feel of having a small piece of colonial New England right there in southeast Michigan. We held class in the one-room schoolhouse and each got our turn being swatted on the backs of our hands with a switch. The corporal punishment experience.

In eighth grade, we took our social studies trip to Washington D.C. and I busted my knee walking one block from the White House. They used a needle nearly a foot long to draw the fluid out of my joint.

Then, in high school, I went to France and Spain for two weeks when I was 15 years old. I cruised the streets of Barcelona with my friend, Larry, who nearly got all of his money stolen from his rucksack. A young boy reached his hand up to unzip the pack and I got him. He and his brother fled the scene before Larry even realized what had happened.

In Versailles, I had my first taste of Nutella (I was done for) in my very first crepe. In Paris, I learned how to read a street map and learned how to navigate the underground metro on my own.

At 16 and 17 years old, I spent spring break in New York City with a small group of theatre students. We attended somewhere around 10 Broadway and 5 off-Broadway shows. My first Broadway show was Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten." It was also my first experience waiting backstage to meet the cast - something we did after nearly every show, after that. Gabriel Byrne and Cherry Jones. I still have the picture of me and G.B. I was in love with him after that. I still remember what he smelled like.

The girls return tonight from their little trip up to the northwest of China. I wonder if they’ll have some of the same sort of memories I have from my own school trips. Somehow, I doubt it.

In the meantime, I have been tempted to have a cigarette. It doesn't help that I've been watching old black 'n white movies, where every Bogie and his Bergman or Bacall was lighting up. For the past couple of days, after dealing with the first cravings I’ve had in a very long time, I folded and bought a pack. If they only sold single cigarettes. I quit smoking over four years ago and today I had the first smoke since then.

I considered just going out and buying some champagne, but I didn’t. You know a writer should be able to drink, but I’ve never really been able to. Maybe I’ll have to work myself up to that, too. Whiskey – that’s a writer’s drink. I used to drink it in college, but couldn’t handle much more than a couple of shots. Perhaps I’m no fireside writer.

It was both a relief and awful at the same time. One cigarette certainly enough to remind me that I am glad I’ve given up the awful habit. I quit because it eventually made me nauseated. So now I have a pack of cigarettes stashed away in my bedside table and no reason to smoke them. Maybe I’ll hang on to them as a reminder of my weak will.