A Few People Who Needed to Be Whacked with a Cane

Okay, I promise, this is the last entry that deals with whacking people with canes, but I really don't think I can resist.

First, the guy I met on the Trans-Siberian, back in 1989, who sent out a newsletter to over 300 people he went to high school with. Pre-internet days, so we're talking the guy bought stamps. He was, possibly, the second most boring person I have ever in my life met (no, wait, third), so it's easy to guess what those 300 people did with his newsletter.

The guy on the bus back from Wonder Lake, in Denali Park, who whistled the first four bars of "What Can You Do with a Drunken Sailor" for eight hours straight.

Very nice man in the train compartment, Canton to Beijing. But he had a tapedeck, an endless supply of batteries, and only two tapes: Michael Jackson and Bob Marley. We convinced him we were going to have epileptic seizures if we had to listen to Michael Jackson, so 48 hours straight of Marley. So much trouble in de world. Never listened to reggae again.

A particular Bavarian. Nobody needs to know why. He knows why.

Here's the thing. When people travel, they are not themselves. Ever. They are an image of themselves, sometimes a better one, sometimes a worse one. For me, one of the best aspects of travel is that there is no controlling it. Being a control freak by nature, I find this oddly relaxing. Things happen when they happen, the bus breaks, the train dies, the goat vomits on your shoes.

These people, though, brought themselves along for the trip.

Think of it as a failure of imagination. Failure to realize that all the world demands is attention.

One more: the smurf ass. Oh, he absolutely gets whacked with the cane.