humor – Becoming Extraordinary

Today it’s back on the road, but different. My husband met me in Reno last night, and we will share the 3000 mile drive home as we visit family and friends along the way. I’m glad to be with him, even though I’m worn out from my time at Burning Man. Honestly, it also feels good to have a driving partner, and someone to help me get home.

However, the car is more crowded with him and his luggage, and we both feel cramped. We have 500 miles to go today, most of it through Nevada on Highway 50, the country’s self-proclaimed loneliest stretch of road. We keep the gas tank at least half full, stopping at almost every available station because we know how few and far between they are.

There are no trees out here. Hell, there are hardly even bushes. We marvel at the wide expanse of nothing as we take turns driving, and treating ourselves to coffee, sodas and coconut water purchased at each gas stop as we whittle down the miles.

After a while though, all those liquid treats begin to catch up with us. An eager look at the map shows the next town is, well, quite a few miles a way.

“We can make it,” my husband declares. But after about twenty more minutes he is squirming in his seat, and finally he pulls over.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve got to go.” He steps off to the ditch and does what he needs to do.

Now, have you ever really, really had to pee and listened to somebody else take a leak that goes on and on and on? If you have, you’ll understand. There may be no bushes to hide in, but at that point, I don’t care. I join him on the side of the road, doing my thing the way I have to do it.

“That was kind of embarrassing,” he mumbles. I agree. But nobody passes us from either direction, so there are some advantages to a lonely stretch of highway.

This wouldn’t be a story worth telling, except that we get back in the car and round a slight hill and there is it. A sign saying “Rest Area One Mile.” Now, I am sure we have not passed a single Rest Area in the entire state of Nevada. This one had no advance signs and is nowhere near anything. But there it is, a nice bathroom facility just waiting for us.

And they say the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Today’s rule of the road? Do what you have to do when you have to do it, even though you never know what might be waiting for you around the next bend.

Today’s song? Join me in enjoying the Goo Goo Dolls asking to be taken home. It’s exactly how I feel today.

If you’d like to read a short blurb from each day of my journey, check out
Day 1. The Journey of 6000 miles
Day 2. Rules of the Road
Day 3. Just Don’t
Day 4. Bloom Here.
Day 5. Yes Aretha. Respect.
Day 6. No Trucks. Just Corn.
Day 7. Cry
Day 8. There’s No Place Like Home
Day 9. It’s Okay to Ask a Human for Help
Day 10. Always Bring an Onion
Day 11. Gimme Three Steps Towards Nevada
Day 12. I Want to Scream.
Day 13. Dusty Virgin
Day 14: Magical ride
Day 15. As Nice as I Want to Be
Day 16. What Rules? What Road?
Day 17. If you get interrupted by a parade …
Day 18. I, Human
Day 19. A Border Crossing
Day 20. Someone to Help Me Get Home
Day 21. Time flies like an arrow and ….
Day 22. Stop, or Else …
Day 23. What’s Your Reality?
Day 24. If it seems ridiculous …
Day 25. Backing Up
Day 26. To Stop a Hurricane
Day 27. Lights Along My Path
Day 28. Grateful

Visit violets vegan comics

When I stopped eating meat the summer after my freshman year of college, I pretty much lived on cheese omelets and french toast. In my defense I was working at a 24-hour breakfast place and those were the options. I now occasionally eat meat, but my husband does not, and I am happy for the far greater variety offered to him these days and for the healthier eating choices that we are both able to make in restaurants.

So, I was puzzled when I read about the Red Robin ad that touted their garden burger as something for when “your teenage daughter is going through a phase.” Yikes.Talk about insulting your customers. About ten per cent of all Americans are vegetarian, and many more choose to eat less meat. Why would you make fun of them? Of us?

Then I came across another blogger’s take on the whole idea of exclusionary humor. In a wonderful post called Just a Joke: Confessions of a “Humorless Vegan” she provides one of the best analyses I have ever read on how little jokes marginalize anyone who is different and how the threat of appearing humorless keeps them (whoever they may be) from objecting.

Her solution? Try to put yourself in the shoes of the person telling the unfortunate joke, and remember that they are likely not nearly as hateful as they seem to you at this moment. She even quotes Gandhi. I love this lady.

Empathy is certainly the central part of this blog, and my heart does go pitter patter when it shows up once again. Empathy is the solution. When I stopped eating meat after my freshman year in college, I hardly ever heard the word empathy used. Now, it is the answer to rude drivers, rude relatives, and rude advertisers.

Some things never change. As society evolves, we keep finding new folks to make fun of.

Some things do change. We work together better to find ways to take the sting out of the joke. Yay us.

For more on how things change with time, visit my z2 blog here for thoughts on human trafficking and Broadway musicals. Also visit my y1 blog here for thoughts on gay psychiatrists and my hoarding disorder.