Costa Rica Diaries, Part 2

January 28, 2017

I’m headed to the airport – just said goodbye to Ben.  I will miss him but since we only get to see each other on the weekends, this week will be like normal but with more expensive text messages and no hope of meeting my daily FitBit step goals.  I fully intend on seeing Costa Rica, through the looking glass, as it were.  If I wanted to commune with nature and animals and those who don’t necessarily understand me while sweating in the heavy humidity, I could simply go to Mississippi.

 

I’m sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge as I got to the airport very early to ensure a stress-free passage.  When I showed Delta my return flight ticket for Alaska Airlines, they said, “No problem” and I fairly zipped through security arriving at my gate a full four hours ahead of my flight boarding time of midnight-thirty.  The Sky Lounge is very quiet with comfy seats and great food and now that I’ve experienced it for the first time, I am hooked.  Gonna go peruse the buffet.  Yes, I said buffet.

 

January 29, 2017 (7:00 am – 1:00 pm)

Sleepless flight.  I’m in row 18 and the light outside the restroom is shining in one spot and that would be directly into my face.  I asked if they could turn it off, point it elsewhere or at least dim it.  I never realized how many ways you can be told no.  At least I caught up with my TV viewing, watching Season 9 of Big Bang Theory.  It’s not as funny as it used to be.  Awoke tired but with the bonus energy often afforded travelers, I was able to speed through customs like a visiting dignitary. 

 

First impressions:  cool and windy at 8:30 in the morning.  Costa Rica doesn’t seem any more “foreign country” than Miami if I’m being honest.  Just bought a bottle of water from a very friendly lady, paying Lord only knows what as I don’t understand the exchange rate or their currency – colonnes.  For my change I received colorful bills and two rather impressive coins.  These coins have personality as if they might have magical properties or allow me entry to somewhere off-path and spectacular. 

 

I was instructed by my hosts to wait at the airport for the other attendees to arrive.  Unsurprisingly I got here first.  There is nowhere to sit other than this concrete bench so I guess my “roughing it” has begun.  Via the wonder of Facebook Messenger, Zeke Tyrus (of the San Buenas Writer's Retreat) gave me the scoop on the one restaurant at la aero puerto; Deli Malinche, where I had a ham and cheese croissant, because I could recognize what it was and point to it, and a café con leche.  Delicious.  Not to take away from their culinary prowess but if I’m being honest, at this point, I would have tried to eat a boot or a dead body if you had melted cheese on it.  Soy Queso!

 

I’m sitting here alternately reading The Tangier Diaries, as recommended by Zeke, and people watching.  I just marked a great passage, “The difference between our god and theirs is us.”  I’m experiencing some truth while I wait.

 

After several hours I am hungry again so I am attempting to order food at the restaurant.  I pointed to what I wanted (it was cafeteria style) but when I tried to ask if it was spicy I couldn’t think of the word for ‘hot’.  Asking if it was ‘not cold’ caused confusion.  My brain took over and used the only other language with which I have any familiarity – American Sign Language.  I abruptly signed ‘hot’, which is forming a claw with your dominant hand, placing the thumb and fingers at the sides of your mouth.  Then you quickly turn your hand toward the other person as if removing something hot from your mouth.  The servers eyes widened in fear.  Afraid this choreography was going to leave me bereft of food, I smiled, pointed at what looked like tuna salad, smiled and said, “Gracias”.  She did not smile back.  Where, oh where, is Senora Franklin (my high school Spanish teacher) with her side pony-tail and snide attitude when I need her?  Luckily I can say chicken, watermelon, bathroom, ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ in Spanish.  Also, should the need arise, beer and party.  I think I’m all set.

Rolling on the Floor with Fat People

            I should have been suspicious of any activity that requires me to be poorly dressed and voluntarily on the floor.  To get myself out of my comfort zone and experience new things, I have been telling myself to say “Yes!”, so I agreed to partake in what was called yoga/couch potato stretching with some people from my church.  Although I do not watch TV, I do read on my couch with a frequency I could keep hidden if it weren’t for my FitBit weekly report.  And while I like to believe if I were a potato, I would be a great one (perhaps twice-baked), a tater is still a tater so I said, “Sure”.  It was held at the Southern California Dance Academy and, as I danced more than most Baptists while in college, I felt I would reasonably fit in.  Ah, delusion.

            I arrived at the appointed location and time to find the small building filled to capacity with leotard-ed toddlers and tweens.  I immediately retreated to my car to wait for my friends to show up.  Bear in mind I am wearing (with extreme irony) running shorts and a t-shirt.  I did not wear a Spanx undershirt because I felt it might lead to some sort of internal organ damage should I twist inappropriately, as I am wont to do.  When bereft of my foundation garment, the excess skin from my weight loss tends to hang in an ineffective manner.  By ineffective I mean assisting in the illusion that my body is shaped normally when in reality it appears to be melting with a decidedly laissez-faire gait and path.

            The back row of the class consisted of four men from my church, plus me and a strange young man who may have inadvertently wandered in as he was ill-prepared both by his outfit and lack of mat/towel.  The front row held three actual ballerinas, one normal woman and Jeff! who was Super! Pumped! to be there.  Based on the size, shape and motor skills of the inhabitants of my row, the class could have been called “Rolling on the Floor with Fat People”, but I digress.

            We lie down on mats purchased expressly for this purpose.  Sadly they were not for napping as we did on very similar mats in kindergarten.  Once we were prostrate, I looked up and only then realized the entire wall was mirrors.  Quelle Horror!  Not only am I being viewed in clothing that leaves me feeling vulnerable especially with so few discernable seams, I am directly behind a ballerina who couldn’t be more than twelve and I’m not being sarcastic about her age; I think she was literally twelve.  As waves of self-loathing threatened to sweep over me I again took notice of those in my row.  This is what winning looks like, y’all.

            The chirpy gentleman in the teacher’s role, I will call him Snape as he is pure evil (not really), starts talking to us about how this is low-impact conditioning.  And in the beginning moments it wasn’t too bad.  However, as we made our way through the motions, I felt a bit like Judd Nelson from The Breakfast Club, on the back row with attitude, eye-rolling, a little smack talk and what can only be described as a smoker’s cough.

            Snape asked us to lift our legs but only about six inches off the floor.  Then he said to hold them there as long as we could.  I was about to reach my breaking point when he said, “For those who feel advanced enough, feel free to scissor your legs while keeping the height.”  I thought he was surely joking as my yoga-neighbors had begun to collapse around me.  However, the young man to the left of the old man began scissoring his ridiculously in-shape legs, grinning like a 14 year-old Eastern Bloc gymnast on her first trip outside of “Mother Country”.  I could see his smile as I had long ago given up on the lifting of the legs to scan the room and rest from all this impact.

            Snape walks alongside me and encourages me back down onto the floor and then asks me to elevate my pelvis, which was alarming.  I followed his instructions but apparently not to a sufficient degree so he grabs my pelvis pulling it into the air encouraging me to “Lift your hips higher! Clench your buttocks tighter! Stop growling!”  To be honest, the growls were involuntary and not so much as a way to communicate my displeasure but more a way for my body to tell the world I am not who I appear to be (i.e., reasonably in shape).

            Do you remember the Stretch Armstrong dolls from the 1980s?  You could stretch his goo-filled limbs and he would typically return to previous form.  However, if you stretched him too hard, too far or one too many times, he did not return to his original shape and you would just cut his hand off and squeeze out the goo.  At least according to my cousin Jody.  To save whomever is my handler the trauma of having to cut off an appendage and squeeze out the goo, I have decided to refrain from further stretching other than my paycheck ‘til the end of the month and the occasional truth for entertainment purposes.  It’s for the best, y’all.

            And that’s all I’m saying for now.

Banquet Behavior for Baptists

                This weekend I was reminded of a simpler time, during my formative years, when a brief, fleeting romance was the most color-coordinated of my life and I thought I should use that as a gentle foray into schooling the tacky masses on proper attire for a date.
                When I was in 8^th grade, we were living in the bustling metropolis of Bogata, TX, home of the alliterative food-related businesses, Tip Top and Kwik Korner.  We had moved into Bogata proper from the village of Fulbright and I was feeling rather fancy as our neighbors were more posh than those previous.  In Fulbright, our neighbors were cows, hay bales and the occasional wolf.  In Bogata we lived across the street from a judge and a church converted into a home and next door to the Wood family homes, both residential and funeral.  Two of the three Wood offspring were my besties; the twin sisters Denise and Juliann (Hey, y’all!).
                During my two years in Red River County, I had acquired, and somehow lost, a fair number of girlfriends; otherwise known as “girls who I was going with”, to use ‘80s Texas Teen vernacular.  Christy Northcutt, Eyvette Hannah, Cindy Davis, Leslie Johnson were all lovely girls who had responded positively to my hand written note asking them to check ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but then wandered away to other activities, I suppose.  George Strait didn’t invent it, y’all, he just recorded it.
                In an attempt to provide G-rated activities for youth,  a Valentine Banquet had been planned at Bogata Baptist and I was to acquire a date and the young lady I chose to send the note to was none other than Becky White, ginger pianist, flautist and wearer of “Annie” eyeglass frames.  It was a match made in the hallway of the church, literally, because that’s mostly where I saw her other than at school.  They lived near the nursing home which was not far as the crow flies, but since I was walking, it was too far.
                One day, a week or so in advance of the event, Becky called and asked if I had selected my outfit for the occasion.  I informed her that I would be wearing my newest favorite outfit; a Christmas gift from my grandmother, the sainted Mama Dot.  On top, a burgundy and slate grey Ocean Pacific (OP) sweater with a thin rainbow stripe across the chest.  Bear in mind that OP was a very popular brand in 1983 and this had been purchased in Dallas, people.  Dallas!  I paired this with grey brushed-corduroy trousers and felt that I was just about the fanciest boy in all of Red River County, which truth be told wouldn’t have been difficult a feat to accomplish.  Not wearing boots would have immediately placed me in the Top Five.
                When I arrived at the White residence on the night of the event, Ms. Becky walked out wearing a grey dress with a burgundy jacket that matched my outfit exactly!  I couldn’t believe it.  Her mother, the talented Alice Ann, had made her outfit especially for the occasion.  These were my people, people.  I felt sure that we would summarily be crowned king and queen of the banquet, because Baptists love a crown, y’all.  By the way, we did not win the crowns, but it may have been the last time they did that because several girls who also did not win, left the room in a flurry of tears and emotion, which is frowned upon unless you are “feeling the Spirit” and even then there are limits.  Baptists are very British when it comes to public displays.
                However, Ms. White and I did make a dashing pair and I remember having a thoroughly grand time for what couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours because (1) we were 12 and (2) we were Baptist.  Only Methodists and other heathens were out too far past dark.
              My point is if 8^th graders in the wilds of East Texas can get our act together, you millennials can surely dress appropriately for a date.  I wouldn’t wear some of the outfits I saw last night (on my Fit Bit-inspired loop down 2^nd street) to take out the garbage.  I am more color-coordinated while sleeping.  Yoga pants are only allowed in yoga class and I’m betting dollars to donuts that you weren’t at yoga.  And even if you were, that is past tense so change your outfit already.  And booty-shorts should only be worn if you’ve already given up on life because your mother named you Tanqueray.  And gentlemen, on the off-chance your date is dressed to the nines, you should at least strive for sixes.  For a frame of reference, t-shirts with jeans and flip-flops is a minus four.  See how I’m using math as an grown-up?
               Suffice it to say the relationship between Ms. Becky and myself lasted for a little while or maybe it ended after the next pep rally, I can’t be sure.  But I remember she was kind, bright, and talented and a red-head.  That’s a pretty complete package, y’all.  Oh, and she also had an in-ground pool.  I probably should have proposed.
              And that’s all I’m saying for now.