Category: Funny Stuff

Maestro-ing

Over twelve summers, I have had a lot of roles in our short-term program. I’ve been a team member, a team leader, a Quito Quest host, a site host and an additonal staff member on teams. I even once helped train a couple of hosts who would both the next summer become my maestros. But I have never actually done the Maestro roll until now.

Since 2008 I’ve been telling people that Quito Quest is the most work not the least sleep you’ll ever get, and I use that statement to make a point of just how much I love this program, because I keep coming back and doing it again and again. And while my perspective has slowly changed over time about how much sleep you actually need to do this job (I’m old… I need way more sleep now than when I was 22), my perspective has changed dramatically this summer on who it is that really has all the work to do.

When you’re a team host, you are responsible for all the people on a short-term team, for their food and housing and schedule and translation and cultural acquisition, and their medical needs. You’re there to take care of them from the moment they walk out of the secure section of the airport until you drop them off right back there eleven or so days later.

When you’re a maestro, you’re responsible for all that stuff, except for the interns, and for three months instead of a week and a half. And when seven of your eight hosts have never hosted before, you wind up being responsible for a lot of their job too, because it’s simply impossible to learn how to do this job perfectly in the two weeks between intern arrival and the start of Block 1 of teams.

An intern asked me after my Basilica orientation, “How much of that are we supposed to remember?” She had this seriously worried look on her face, and I just laughed, and tried to compassionately explain that I’ve been doing Basilica orientations for 11 years, and I’ve been there with all kinds of people, so I have learned a lot about the place. I dumped it all on those unsuspecting interns, hoping they’ll be able to regurgitate 40% of it or so this summer. I want give them all the information and experience and wisdom I have, but I certainly don’t expect them to know cold in one summer what I’ve been compiling since 2007.

Cameron has been laughing at me all summer as I ask deep questions to the interns and then press for answers. She remembers exhausted 2008 Danny who had to be forced to give more than one-word answers. I hadn’t figured out back then that it was okay to be an introvert and an internal processor. But I also hadn’t quite figured out back then how much the staff needed me to get out of that comfort zone and verbally let them know how they could take care of me. She also remembers 2008 Danny who would debrief teams until 11, get home at midnight, blog until 2am, and get up at 5 or 6 to do it all over again, because he thought you had to just run yourself into the ground to lead a team well. And now she’s watching me tell interns to hide out in the book bag room and take a nap or catch up on finances so they don’t have to stay awake so late at night.

It’s also a lot of work to put team hosts together as a pareja and to match those parejas up with teams. Figuring out how to compliment people’s gifts, and how to match them up with projects and team leaders and teams and ministry sites is a giant puzzle. And just as it’s impossible for the hosts to do their job in a perfect way, we (maestros and directors) will never quite get this part of our job perfect either. But I can tell you we talked about it and processed together way more than I ever thought would be necessary.

I love being here for summer, and I love getting to train and oversee all these hosts. But as I jump in and out of teams’ schedules and ministry sites, and do my best to care for our hosts who are caring for them, I have a lot more appreciation for Bryan, Dana, Darío, Christy, Manuel, and Kristin, who were all maestros for me at various times.

Bus Buddies (or Tuning Out and Tuning In)

This is going to be a long one, but it’ll be worth it to read all the way through. Trust me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It blows my mind that I can go literally weeks without unexpectedly bumping into someone in Elizabeth City, a town of 18,000 people, and yet in the 2,000,000-person city of Quito, I can’t walk down the street without running into multiple people I know. This phenomenon has resulted in being accompanied by friends on every single one of my bus rides for three days straight.

First Miguel rode with me back from Guajaló to my neighborhood, which resulted in another unexpected meeting with Roberto. Then the next morning I got on the Metro instead of my usual Trole adventure, and as I was standing in line, Jorge walked up. That one was definitely a God thing, because he explained to me that on the North-to-South route there is potentially more bus-changing involved than on the reverse trip. I wouldn’t have felt quite so much the master of Ecuadorian public transportation finding myself at the total opposite end of some random route I didn’t know I was on.

At the end of that ride, I walked into the tienda and just behind me was Maria Jose (who had apparently been chasing me… I need to take off my headphones when I get off the bus). I had just been wondering when I’d get to see her, having already run into her brother and sister more than two weeks before, so it was just another bit of amazing timing. And then at the end of that same day, I was thinking it strange that I still hadn’t run into her mom, Maggi. But after hanging out upstairs with Adrian that afternoon, I “happened” to choose the 30 seconds that Maggi was downstairs to leave. Lo and behold, Maggi became my third consecutive Bus Buddy for the week, as she was taking the Ecovia almost as far North as I was.

There are several reasons that it’s fun to have someone to ride the bus with, especially since I take these long rides on a regular basis. Not the least of these reasons is that if you are talking to someone, you are much less likely to get asked to give up your seat (being a young, male, gringo, I’m at the very, very bottom of the pecking order for seats on the bus, regardless of the fact that I’m riding it literally from one end of the city to the other). But more than that, you just get to have some real conversations and find out what’s going on in people’s lives. I thought I was tired the other day until Maggi mentioned she had been off one job just long enough to go home for a bit, but now it was 5:30ish PM and she was heading to her other job at the hospital until 6:00 AM (Oish!).

Now we’re getting to the reason that this post has such a Tolkien-esque title: because it’s almost two separate trains of thought. Just pretend it’s a Family Guy episode, where the second half is always completely unrelated to the first.

Anyway, The time that I’ve spent on the bus/Trole system this week has remnded me a lot of the time I spent on it last year. And I spent a lot of time on it last year. In fact, as I was fond of saying, I spent my life on the Trole. And in one of my meetings with Brad (director of Youth World, and one of my supervisors last year) we were talking about that. He said something that I really took to heart, which was pointing out that I wasn’t exactly driving for my commute to and from the office. I was not, in fact, doing anything other than sitting (or hanging on to the “‘Oh, crap!’ bar,” before I figured out how to get a seat that old ladies wouldn’t take from me1). The point was, especially since the Trole isn’t really book- or laptop-friendly for various reasons, it was (is) a great opportunity to take some quiet time.

“Quiet time” is, of course, a very relative term here. The Trole is never quiet. Aside from the honking and squealy brakes and the recorded voice telling you the next stop (which I now have memorized thanks to hearing it so much), there are people talking, and generally someone selling something or singing. And when I say they are selling something or singing, I don’t mean in an unintrusive way. It’s generally at the top of said someone’s lungs, and prefaced with a long story, and ends with them shoving their way through the way-too-crowded space collecting money. You can’t possibly hold a conversation while this is going on, or even attempt to ignore it without headphones. So even as easily-distracted as I can be, that was why I started taking my iPod on the Trole.

I know I can probably sound a little cynical when I talk about “ignoring” people and “tuning out.” And I certainly don’t want to seem that way, either to the two of you who read my blog anymore, or to the people I’m talking about. But that is an entirely different post, so suffice it to say that it’s on my mind, both as a topic to write about and as a conscious effort in my life. So back to the “quiet” time.

After the multiple times I’ve been pick-pocketed and held up in Quito, taking my iPod on the Trole is probably slightly stupid. But I figure if I’m actually listening to it, I’ll know if someone messes with it when I suddenly go from listening to “The Sound of Silence” to the literal sound of silence. So I throw on some Hillsong or Jeremy Camp, cram my earbuds in to the point that I’ll have no sense of hearing by my 32nd Birthday (I picked a number more random than 30 so people wouldn’t think I was implying that that’s old), and bask in the lack of overly highly-pitched sales pitches.

Sometimes it’s still pretty hard to shut things out. There might be somebody leaning on me (we’ll come back to this example momentarily), or making out directly in front of me (and I do mean directly, and not far enough away), or I might see something out the window that sends my A.D.D. mind in another direction, or I might just get too caught up I the words to the song that’s damaging my eardrums so. But the goal is to tune all of that out. Because as Quito Quest reminds me, I don’t ever want to waste a day when I can be growing or just worshipping. And as Mrs. Dwan taught me, having God time is less about taking the time you have, but about intentionally making time and setting that aside just for Him. Because there are tons of other things Brad could have suggested I do in all that commute time. And sure, God doesn’t function on my schedule. But when was the last time I made time for something other than a song and a half of Taylor Swift between Winfield and Ehringhaus Street back in Elizabeth City? I can’t think about ridiculously long bus rides now without having the positive thought of “Hey… God time” now, and that is a great thing.

So I’ll round this one out with a return to the “Bus Buddies” subject and the aforementioned potential somebody leaning on me.

I’ve been super unlucky with the Trole rides since my string of bus buddies that I actually know ran out on Thursday. I accidentally hit on a girl on the Trole today (Si estás leyendo esto en Español por Google Chrome o algo así, el frase “hit on” en Inglés significa “coquetear,” o “flirtear,” no “golpear”). But still much worse than that was the guy who sat down next to me yesterday afternoon.

This guy took the seat next to me when its previous occupant got off the Trole. The previous occupant was a rather large woman with a baby. I don’t know how, but this single old man took up literally twice as much space as two people, one of whom was twice as wide as him. I guess it’s just one more way that the Trole is not real life. Conventional physics do not apply. So aside from the fact that this guy was leaning on me and had no “bubble” whatsoever, he had a briefcase of sorts with him, which he felt the need to open. This necessitated throwing his elbows out to either side. The side I cared about, obviously, was the side that meant his right elbow was basically up my left nostril. And my right ear was already up against the window, so it’s not like I could have done anything to rectify the situation short of saying something to him.

Now, something that I learned from my dad (despite my mom’s best efforts) is that you never ever ever ever ever complain to someone, no matter how obnoxious they are or how uncomfortable they are making you. And I also recognized the war going on in my heart and my head between his culture and mine. My culture has large personal bubbles his culture has very small bubbles. In his particular case, no bubble. Now the fact that he was old could have pushed me either way. Because I think you should just be nice and respectful to old people. However, you know how some old people are just cute? This guy… Not so much. The words that come to mind were more like “chapped” and “oozing.” (Aren’t you glad you’re still reading at this point?) So while agedness was pushing me not to say anything to him, gnarliness was pushing me to say something. Gnarliness won out, but it won out in the sense that I didn’t say anything for fear of his potentially gnarly reaction. But at this point I was quite simply seething and I had to do something.

So I started praying. And it might have been the most selfish prayer of my life. Rather than asking for patience or some other virtue that would mean I had to continue putting up with this situation while I learned that patience, I asked God to impart the knowledge directly into this man’s brain that gringos have bubbles and he was all up in mine. I truly believe that God was listening and answering, because a few seconds later, oozey geezer man put away his briefcase, and fell asleep. On me.

So God taught me some patience after all. And fear. Because the old man got really still for a while. And I started thinking, “What if this guy dies right here on the Trole… on me?!” It may sound like a leap of logic, but you didn’t see this guy. So there I am frantically praying that God’s sense of humor not be as sick as those of a couple members of my family, and scanning this guy for any movement at all. His fingers twitched a couple times, but that just made me worry that these motions were really tiny death throes. Finally, as it was becoming more and more likely that I’d be the one having a heart attack or something, he grunted and titled his head to the other side, and from there on out he’d open one eye and check our location out the window every time the Trole stopped, so at least I knew he was alive up to the point I had to climb over him to get off at La “Y.”

All that to say, he became my most recent Trole Buddy to encourage my relationship with God. And extra 25 cents or not, I’m sticking to the Ecovia route from now on.

 

 

1You try properly punctuating that parenthetical sentence on an iPad!

Welcome To Ecuador

A couple of days ago, I decided to go on an adventure. Having received a notice that I had a package at the Ecuadorian post office, then having received a second notice because I waited forever to go and get it thanks to hosting a team, I realized I probably needed to go relieve the delivery service of whatever it was that they either couldn’t fit in Youth World’s mailbox at HCJB or for which they simply wanted to charge me.

The first part of this adventure was asking a million people where the post office is. Knowing that I’d be going by myself, I got several good directions and landmarks before I hit up Google Earth and drew myself a map that I could actually decipher. That was probably a little bit on the anal retentive side, but my Spanish isn’t perfect, and I figured I’d reduce the potential stress of the operation in any way possible.

A 25¢ Trole ride and short walk later, I saw the post office, exactly where I expected it. Many times we ask our short-term teams how their expectations lined up with the reality of their experience. This was exactly the spot where my expectations stopped lining up with reality. Even remotely.

The office wasn’t extremely busy when I walked in. There were two individuals and a couple sitting on benches in front of me. There was a window with a man working behind it, a door into his little area, a counter with a series of stations, and a Bank of Guayaquil/Western Union counter. Hanging from the ceiling above the counter with the different stations was a digital sign that said “Turno” and “Modulo” (Turn, or “Customer Number” and “Station”), but I didn’t see the typical little red plastic thing that spits out numbers. A woman was walking away from the door into the room with the window, and nobody in front of me seemed to be stepping up, so I just walked to the window and handed the man inside my slip of paper with the notice I’d received a package. I’ll also note that this seemed a perfectly logical decision because the door was clearly marked as the Package Center.

To put it mildly, window-man freaked out. He was outside in the main area at breakneck speed, telling me “No, no, no,” and that I needed to take a turno and wait for my number  to appear before I could be helped, and that I would have to go up to the counter and accomplish a series of tasks before I could come to his window. He was speaking very slowly, loudly, and clearly, but very simply and miming everything as he went, because (obviously) I’m a gringo. I was a little bit insulted at first that he didn’t even try to ascertain my level of Spanish (I understood every word he said to me), but I (1) gave him the benefit of the doubt in that (despite the lack of posted directions anywhere) I had, in fact, already screwed up his very much defined process and (2) was afraid that the directions would get more complicated later and that I might appreciate the miming down the road.

He took the turno (number) from the typical little red machine, which was hiding on the opposite side of an architectural column in the middle of the room. I went to sit down, but as I turned to face the seats, a heard a “bong!” and changed my about-face into 360 to see that my number had appeared on the sign. The guy at the first station behind the counter had been watching this entire exchange and waited until window-man had finished his diatribe to hit his button and call me up, as I was clearly the only person in the building who had not been helped. Great. I’ve been in the building for less than 30 seconds and two people think I’m a moron so far. Things can only get better, right?

At this point, I was at least prepared. I handed over my package notice, and was totally ready when he asked me for my two passport copies. Knowing how things change in Ecuador, I’d also brought two copies that included a copy of my Censo (Ecuadorian ID) as well, along with my actual Censo and my actual Passport. Probably because I was prepared for the worst, none of this was needed. I did have to fork over somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.00, though. By the Grace of God, I had some cash in my wallet, which (due to experience) I don’t normally take on the Trole.

I also had the presence of mind to take my turno and put it in my otherwise-empty back left pocket, where it was accessible, and as opposed to the trash. After a few minutes while counter-dude processed my papers and got my change, he returned and asked for my turno number, (which I remembered to be 321, but had to prove to him with the actual paper anyway). Counter-dude proceeded to write #32 at the top of my papers and told me that he would give them to window-man and that in a few minutes, window-man would call my number again. There was slightly less miming involved this time.

This gave me the opportunity to rest for a moment and laugh at the situation. From the benches in front of window-man’s area, I noticed there was a second digital sign with turno numbers, which was sitting on #30. People slowly trickled through the door to the right of the window, and the numbers ticked up to #32. I walked toward the window, but window-man saw me coming and just ushered me through the door. I suppose this was because it would be easier to mime directions when I could see more than just his shoulders and head. Insulted as I was still trying not to be, I just held out what paperwork I had left from counter-dude rather than ask what I needed to be doing in the cramped little office with employees in various uniforms from postal stockroom workers to a rather imposing soldier in an officer’s jacket. I basically spent the next several minutes handing papers to people, receiving those and more papers back, and handing them to other people running in and out of the office through a back door that led to a warehouse.

Finally a female postal employee told me to come with her. Of course, the most complicated questions and directions would come from her, and she did exactly zero miming. I followed the conversation for the most part as we walked through the warehouse and she picked up my package on the way. The problem was I had no idea the answers to any of her questions. “Who sent your package?” “I don’t know.” “Is it of any value?” “I don’t know.” “What is it?” “I seriously have no idea.” I think she just assumed I was saying “No sé,” because I didn’t understand her, rather than that I actually had no clue. I thought pretty hard about giving her my series of complaints that the notice they sent to me was completely useless in that regard, and because it included no useful information, I had no way of knowing things like who sent it or even from where or what they had declared was inside, so she was actually much more likely than I was to have a clue.

She turned the large cardboard envelope over and over in her hands, telling me that she didn’t like this kind of package because when you slice it open, stuff floats out that is really bad for you to breathe. When she finally got around to slicing open the package, I caught a glimpse of the sender’s name (someone totally awesome and near to my heart) and the description “Cotton hat.”  Even before she had totally gotten into it, she asked “Un gorro de lana?” “Wool” was close enough for me, and I was so frustrated (wondering why they brought me all the way down to the post office if they knew it was a hat and basically what it was made of) that I couldn’t think of the word algodón anyway, so I just nodded.

As she sliced it open and held her breath, I did have to give it to her that I understood why she doesn’t like those packages. Brown floating stuff the consistency of attic insulation went everywhere and stayed airborne for a while. Allergy-girl2 verified that it was, indeed, a hat, and sent me back to window-man, without my package. Window-man called in the uniformed army officer. They conversed for a while, then sent me over to a desk with a pretty young guy working behind it. Desk-guy had me sign a ton of papers, and asked me my name (Ecuadorians tend to have a hard time reading gringo handwriting, which I understand, because I have a terrible time reading Ecuadorian handwriting). I told him “Daniel” and he laughed and made some comment about “Daniel el Travieso” (which is “Dennis the Menace” in Spanish and which I actually already knew and therefore got his joke). I nodded and chuckled politely because I wanted my hat.

Desk-guy handed me a stack of papers, and sent me outside the office, back to the main part of the building to see the nice fellow at the bank counter. Desk-guy told me on the way out that I’d need to give those papers to bank-fellow and pay him half a dollar. I passed my papers and 50¢ through the space under the glass to bank-fellow, who looked at me like I was an idiot and told me it was 90¢ instead. I switched out the half dollar for a whole one and bank-fellow sent me back to counter-dude, who took my remaining papers, had me record my name and passport number, and finally handed me my re-taped package. He turned around and began a conversation with someone else. Normally I would stick around in this kind of situation and as “Am I really 100% done?” In this particular instance, with my package in hand and two hours of my life given to the post office, I power-walked right out the door before they made me pay for or sign another thing.

1At the rate I was going, and seeing as it was only 9:00am, I wondered if I was the 32nd person served on Thursday, or since the Ecuadorian Postal Service was founded in 1960s.

2I decided this was a better nickname than my originally-planned “package-girl.”

Now and then

Today we were supposed to have our first spring sort-term team on the ground. Well, you can guess how that turned out.

Dario and I were on our way to Hostal Bosque in a taxi when we were informed that our team would not be arriving tonight, and we were unsure exactly when they would actually make it into the country. Stuck in Toronto, the team leader finally called to let us know when they had some semblance of an itinerary, and now we hope to be picking them up at the airport at 10:30 in the morning, which means we won’t be headed to Carmen Bajo for church.

It’s funny to look back almost two years ago to the first team I hosted with Sarah. We were in the same situation, having planned for a team that ended up being delayed almost a full 24 hours. I remember sitting in the kitchen at Dana and Ashley’s house, staring across the table at Sarah with absolutely no idea even where to begin dealing with the situation as we learned about it, and knowing exactly how lost I would have been without her. This afternoon, however, Dario got the phone call that our team hadn’t even made it out of Canada yet, and we both shrugged and went about our plans. I mentally pulled up the schedule and knew that the simplest thing we could do was to cut Carmen Bajo totally from our day tomorrow, and we’ll make the calls as we go along about how much touristy Quito activities we do, based on time and how settled our team gets. Dario (since he managed to get some saldo) called Fabian and Rogelio and let them know the revised plan and neither of them freaked out either.

In 2008 I wrote an entry called “Flex and flow”, a manta-like phrase around Youth World, and something Sarah Miller would say multiple times every day. She even has her own personal sign language for it. I think at the time I titled the post that way and talked positively about the concept more to actively teach myself to believe it more than anything. I’m not the most flexible person in the universe, but I’m certainly much more flexible now than I was two years ago. Part of that has been learning what solutions are even available when a schedule crisis like this one occurs. Part of it has been adjusting to how South American life in general just functions. And part of it has been having some really awesome examples.

After a day putting away groceries and setting up the hostal with absolutely no hurry (and then watching funny movies with Dario all night) I can really appreciate all three of those things.

Thank You, First Amendment

Not my usual topic of discussion, but I couldn’t resist. In certain ways, you see a ton of total propaganda here in Ecuador. Granted, I’m sure that Yahoo news did not intend for this headline to come across the way that it did to me, but when gems like this appear in American news, it really makes me appreciate our Freedom of the Press.

I can’t imagine the heads that would roll if a sentence like this was published in some of the countries where I currently have friends residing. The mere fact of how true that statement can be adds to the hilarity in my book as well.

Socks, Sickness, and Breakfast

As Cameron said tonight, “There might be some truth to it, but…” Every time anyone gets sick here, it gets blamed on the temperature and your awareness and preparedness for it.

Kelsey and I constantly joke around about wearing socks. For instance, after having been seriously sick last week (which was 100% due to dehydration, though Lourdes blamed it on my not having on a sweatshirt that day) I have had a small cold for the last two or three days. I feel perfectly fine, but I’ve just been coughing a lot, and it’s going away now. But I came home to Lourdes’ house yesterday afternoon just in time for it to start raining as I was walking from the Trole station back to the tienda. If it had started raining while I was on the Trole, I would have stood around and waited for the bus, but the bottom dropped when I was almost exactly halfway between the station and the house. No sense turning around, I ran for it, but go drenched anyway. Jose laughed at me a little when I walked in the tienda, but concernedly made sure he told me to go upstairs and change. I did just that, but having taken almost all of my clothes back to the intern apartment in the north in preparation to move back there, I had no socks in the house. I walked out of my room barefoot to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen, and Lourdes came upstairs at just the same time. So of course, I immediately got the “You’re sick because you’re not wearing socks” lecture and went to put on tennis shoes.

The next story won’t seem related at first. Be patient.

I tend to be late for morning meetings because of breakfast. Breakfast with the family is both non-negotiable and a bit of an ordeal. In the US, if I had an 8:30 meeting with an 60-90 minute commute to get there, I might grab a Pop-Tart on the way out the door, or more likely just skip breakfast or hope the meeting was finished before Hardee’s stops serving Cinnamon & Raisin biscuits at 10:30. That’s not an option here because (we don’t have Hardee’s, we don’t have Pop-Tarts, and mostly because) nobody in the house, from abuelita down to the kids, is going to let me leave without sitting down and eating with me. One morning I had to be at Youth World early, so I made myself coffee so I could honestly tell Lourdes I had breakfast already (coffee is always the main component of breakfast and dinner). I should have left the dishes out so there would have been some evidence, but since I washed them, Lourdes asked me all that day and literally all the next if I was sure I had made myself breakfast that morning.

Today I was in the kitchen helping Marta when Miguel (my friend and both Lourdes’ and Marta’s nephew, therefore Adrian’s cousin) started frantically looking around the house for some things. Adrian came out of his room a minute later and I realized he was not feeling good. Miguel told me he was taking Adrian to the hospital. As Miguel was running around the house, Marta started asking him about food. It went something like this (though it was, obviously, in Spanish):

Marta: Have you eaten breakfast yet?

Miguel: No.

Marta: Are you going to?

Miguel: No.

Marta: You have to eat breakfast!

Miguel: Well, not this morning.

Marta: I have the water boiling already. I’m pouring coffee right now.

Miguel: I don’t believe we can right now.

Miguel then proceeded to run downstairs to hop in the car, Adrian stumbling along with him, clutching his side like it was going to explode any minute. Marta scoffed at them under her breath until they were long gone, bemoaning her ridiculous nephews, skipping breakfast.

Tonight, Cameron and I had talked about Adrian, and before she dropped me off at my apartment, Cameron called Lourdes to check on the situation. Turns out Adrian had pneumonia. He’s doing much better, but he’ll have to stay in the hospital for three days due to a torn membrane in his lung, which is what allowed him to get the infection. Lourdes’ theory, however? “He works in a restaurant over a hot stove, and then they go in and out of the freezer all day. Hot, cold, hot, cold.” Again, as Cameron said, maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe. Some. At least he was wearing his socks.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

Unique Halloween

Heather asked me last night how my Halloween had been. I described it as “uneventful.” I think that analysis came to my mind because at that point Jerry, Adam and I were sitting around my house doing nothing and it was 11:00.  But upon further reflection I decided it was one of the most eventful I’ve ever had.

I went trick-or-treating with Kelli, Nick, Christopher and Madeline. I was Johnny Cash. But even walking around with a guitar, you don’t get much recognition when you’re escorting a 4-year-old Batman. A sculpted 4-year-old Batman, at that. I don’t think my Batman costume was that buff back in the day.

We were mostly done trick-or-treating when “Yan” attacked me with what I thought was silly string. Turns out my hair was full of spray cheese. Yeah. Spray cheese. Not remotely silly (or tasty. I wasn’t even sure if it was cheese after consuming some of it- out of the can, not from my head).