Travelin' Man

As a man ages, he becomes adept at packing for a trip.  His plans consist of five pair of underwear which, if he doesn't sweat too heavily, could easily last for five weeks.  He also packs two shirts, one pair of Bermuda shorts (which he plans to wear for the entire trip), and a couple of pair of socks.  He also packs one pair of dress pants in case his wife wakes up one morning and announces, "Let's go to the theatre."  The remainder of his packing is completed by his wife, who removes the five pair of underwear, the shirts, and the shorts and inserts entirely new offerings that she believes will be more consistent with her own wardrobe selection and color scheme.

The traveling man, upon arrival at the hotel, is flabbergasted to find a completely different attire than he packed himself.  But he is grateful for the help and agrees to buy his wife some nacho chips or a big pretzel from one of those street vendors who specialize in botulism and certain types of bubonic plague. 

When the older man travels he also comes prepared with charts and maps.  These he has drawn up himself on small slips of paper, having planned the entire trip late at night during Conan reruns.  When he arrives at his destination he scraps these charts when his wife says, "Let's just wing it."

The traveling man also prides himself on being able to hail a cab--especially if the driver is from a Far Eastern nation or has a twelve-inch scar running diagonally across his face that is still oozing puss.  An older man is not put-off by these idiosyncrasies, but, in fact, embraces them as part of the melting-pot diversity of America.  He wishes that his own name had forty-seven consonants and no vowels.

In time the traveling man settles into his new surroundings and wishes that he and his wife had not brought along the eighteen-year-old college freshman.  They wonder if they should have left him in Queens instead of watching David Letterman and wondering, "Could we have been sitting in the Letterman audience tonight if we had joined the stand-by line?"

Rather, the traveling man comforts himself with cold showers each morning and ventures out onto the street to find a cup of coffee strong enough to strip veneer off a piano bench.  He says "Good morning" to complete strangers and stares up into a facade of skyscrapers so tall that some of them have their own zip codes.  He does not try to hide the fact that he is a tourist, but embraces his own nerdiness, not ashamed of the fact that he has wondered onto the street without shoes.  But he is at home among the derelicts and drops a few dimes.

Later, when he greets his wife, he offers her a morning newspaper and his undying gratitude.  That, of course, is something he can take home.  But he realizes it only when he is on vacation.