THAT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY

My dad wanted to help me with my homework but he wouldn’t do it for me. Long division wasn’t all that hard; you borrow when you need to and carry, then transpose to the right as you subtract. I thought to myself, ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ I would not say so out loud. He would get mad and either yell at me or leave me to do for myself and I wasn’t getting anywhere by myself. It’s an expression I heard a teacher say to another teacher and it sounded so cool, “That’s easy for you to say.” I understood perfectly. Just because you know how doesn’t mean that I do. I can do long division now but it’s still pretty mysterious.  

I was traveling with a lady I know, to a place neither of us had ever been before. I was driving, handed her the map and asked how far to the next town. She studied the map for several minutes and replied, “I don’t know.” I told her, “We just went through Cadillac, headed west.” She studied some more and put the map down, aware that I was waiting for her answer. She said, “I still don’t know.” Then I realized that she didn’t know how to orient or read a map. As I kept my eyes on the road I gave her a crash course in maps, told her to turn it so all the words were right side up. She did that. I asked if she understood floor plans to a house. She did. I went on; “It’s like a floor plan for a state except the lines are not walls between rooms, they are roads between towns and cities. North is always at the top, east to the right and so on.” With a glance I saw that her head was nodding an affirmation. “Check the road leading west out of Cadillac and find the next town, then use the scale at the bottom of the map to gauge the distance.”  She folded the map and handed it back to me along with, “That’s easy for you to say.” She graduated Magna Cum Laude from university and my expectations were overestimated. I stopped the car, glanced at the map and drove again. She apologized, I told her, “No problem.” How does anybody grow up and not know what to do with a map? I don’t know but obviously it’s a skill set that you don’t need to graduate with honors. 

I don’t think of myself as a traveler, more of a ‘Keep moving but don’t go homer.’ Over coffee with friends and a few other nice people, don’t know them well enough to consider them friends; we were comparing notes on foreign countries. I had spent a fall and winter in Patagonia and a few years later, a summer and fall in Canada. My friends on their travels hung out with other tourists and followed itineraries, I hung out with locals and explored. Later a man I didn’t know very well pulled me aside and ask, “How do you do that?” I said, “It’s easy, you pack some things, get a ticket and don’t look back.” The pause and the look on his face told me that I didn’t really understand his question or he thought I was having fun at his expense. Unspoken, the message was universal, “That’s easy for you to say.”

My next, ‘Un-coming home’ will take about a month, through the Grand Canyon, visit friends on the west coast and try to capture quality photographs, wherever they may find me. Sooner or later I’ll end up where I started and that will be alright too. It’s a nice mantra; Wherever you go, there you are, and that’s easy for me to say.