vamanos

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Over the past two days I've listened, with my naturally undivided attention, to flight safety instructions in English, Thai, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. I can now crash in any language.

At least my traveling calluses are toughened up after buses held together by colorful rubber bands careening up and down the road to Pai, up and through Mae Hong Son, all over bouncing and heads bobbing falling. At least I'm used to being uncomfortable and confined for long periods of time. Good for me.

There was a particularly potent irony teasing my freshly-stateside, ringing and pierced little ears ... stuck in a 767 with agitated Latinas with places to be, those carpeted walls were static with aidios mios and such proclamations of the departure of patience (rather than that of American Airlines flight 252).

First our captain went missing. Then we lost a screw. Literally. But, don't worry, the man from the speakers said, it's not holding anything on.

There was a row of young girls to my right haunting me like the three ghosts of high school past with their "aye"s and lilting gossip, every utterance jumping at the end like an excitable question, a question begging for a bone. Self-conscious and cruel giggling. Funny how at our most determined period of independence and "individuality" we are the most typical, hyper-cliches all doing the lemming like a hit new dance. At our most vulnerable, we are the cruelest. Such is the hyperbole of adolescence.

Oh but the irony ... what happened to the irony? It's all very do-si-do.

And by it I mean both this vignette and my neuron firing. I'm fried, man. So here's what passes for irony:

The first group of Americans (a group larger than, say, 3) I encounter in nearly two years, first powwow I find myself in the midst of, minutes after touching American soil, and here are all of them with their Miami-twang squawking away about how it's hilarious (by which they mean infuriating) that we're all stuck due to a missing screw ... jus' like dat stu-pid capi-tan. ayyyye.

Dust to dust, they say ... how about flock to flock.

Here I am again -- they would say, too, I gained a day back (it's been Saturday forever) ... it feels like I've zapped back 10 yrs. Uh oh papi.

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