I have some things to get off my chest, and I can’t really talk about it anywhere else, so you, Big Wide World, you will just have to put up with me.

   Years ago, I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote when I was happy, I wrote when I was sad; when I was angry, confused, frightened, apathetic; when I was defeated, victorious, lost, found, mistaken, mistook, tired, wired. I wrote.  There was something about typewriter keys– NOT word-processor keys– clicking away, clacking my innermost thoughts onto pristine, newly fallen paper.  Some of my very first memories involve perching on multiple phonebooks in a chair in Mimi, Bu, and PawPaw’s attic, typing on the electric typewriter.  I would press the button and watch as the little metal key would spring into action.  The ribbon (yes, I said ribbon.  It’s a very technical thing involving a small spool of cloth and some ink. Sometimes two colors of ink.) would jump up to catch the key, and my world would order itself into lovely, crisp, black-and-white.  In the case of that beloved typewriter, the dot of the “i” was a bit sharp, and often bit through the paper, leaving a delicious random lace.  It was my idea of heaven. 

    In my later years, I added the pen and lined paper to my tools of solace. I found comfort in beautifully formed letters flowing across a page. Not only did the words soothe the beast, but even the look of the actual letters themselves could calm my heart. The combination of both formed the most powerful drug I could find. By the time I reached my teen years, those around me were resigned to the writing (I literally slept with an electric typewriter turned on and paper-ready at all times in case I awoke in the night).  It was the norm for me to read 500 pages a day and write 50 or more.  I wrote with both hands, at all hours, seemingly possessed by some demonic muse.

    I disdained the obligatory writing assignments given out by the teachers. I mocked them, taunted them, made cruel fun of them. Each beginning of the school year brought the same assignment from at least four teachers: Write an Essay Telling About Yourself. Sometimes, they would throw in the variant Write an Essay About What You Did This Summer. I loathed those mimeographic exercises with every fiber of my being and made my stance on them crystal clear upon turning in the required paper.  One would be in iambic pentameter, one lyric prose reminiscent of too much acid dropped ( “I am the color blue”), one would be straightforward essay prose but written backwards and upside-down, one would cause at least one teacher to suggest I seek shock-therapy treatment.  They seemed as a whole to be convinced I would write The Great American Novel. Mrs. Stroud, bless her soul, even went as far as to voice that opinion to me.

   “You’ll be a great writer when you grow up.”

    I looked at her aghast. “G-d, I hope not!” I replied.

   “Why not?”

   “Because they are all dead.”  Despite all the words that flowed from me, I could not explain to her that the words were not something I really controlled, rather, they very much controlled me.  I would agonize over the way a certain word sat on the page. How it fit in the sentence, how it flowed in the paragraph. To actually pursue my master?  It was not something I wanted to contemplate with the light off.

  I grew up, married, had children, divorced, lived, cried. The demon lessened, relented. To an extent.

  And here I am, forty-two-and-a-half, and I sitting once again in front of the keys, whispering in the dark, seeking solace.

Teenagers can go zero to insane in the blink of an eye, all designed to drive me straight out of my mind.  Take my sixteen-year-old son, MovieStar Jones. After two weeks at camp, he bops into my car and announces that he wants colored contacts.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because DeShaun had them and they were really cool.”

“Who’s paying for these unnecessary contacts?” I ask.

“I will.” MovieStar replies.

“Okay, I guess,” I reply.

End of conversation.

Next time I hear about it is 11:30 at night, after being up 20 hours and working for 12 of them.

“Mom, you need to take me to Irving Mall tomorrow,” MovieStar begins. Said mall is thirty miles, one way, in the opposite direction of my office.

“I have to work tomorrow,” I say.

“But I have to get my contacts,” he replies.

“Can’t you get them somewhere closer than forty miles one way?” I think this is a fair question, but alas, I am so wrong.

“I don’t know of another place closer to home,” a familiar note is beginning to be heard in his voice. This should be a warning to me, but I am distracted by trying to stay awake and drive home while talking to him at the same time.

“Hm, well, I think you need to research and find them closer to home. What is the name of this store you are going to?” This, too, is rational, I believe.

Notice, this entire time we have both been, for the most part, predominantly sane.  It’s here that we see the remarkable ability of a teenager to completely vanish from Planet Rational.

“I don’t know what the name of the store is, Mom,” (still sane) he says. “It’s some gas station over by the mall.” Poof.

I blink and swerve back off the highway shoulder. Where the hell did he go?

“What did you just say?” I ask. Maybe I misheard. It’s late, I’m tired, I could have misunderstood.

“There’s this gas station by Irving Mall that has these really cool purple lightening contacts for only 30 dollars. You said I could have some.”

“WHAT?” I shriek. Have I lost my mind? Did I really agree to something so insane as this? “What are you talking about? I never said anything like that! Have you lost your mind?” One of us surely has.

“Yes, you did, Mom,” MovieStar huffs. “When you picked me up from camp, I asked you and you said I could.”

“You asked me for colored contacts and I agreed you could have them, provided you pay for them,” I said. “I don’t know WHAT you are talking about.”

“Mom!”

“Don’t you ‘Mom!’ me! Let me replay this conversation, we’ll switch sides. You be the Mom and I’ll be the teenager, only I’ll speak MomSpeak so that you can hear clearly what I just heard.”

I can literally hear eyes rolling.

“Mom, I know that you are working fourteen hours a day, every day for the next month, and, in an effort to make your life even harder, I want you to drive me sixty miles roundtrip, before you go to work, to a seedy gas station so that I can buy some stuff to stick in my eyeballs. You promised.”

“It’s not seedy!”

“How would you know? You don’t even know exactly where it is, just ‘around the mall’ someplace! What part of this sounds like a good idea? A) Drive sixty miles round trip before going to work. B) Just to go to a gas station to buy some stuff, C) buy stuff from some gas station to stick in your eyeballs. D) Tell your mother she agreed to this harebrained scheme, or E) NONE OF THE ABOVE!”

“Does this mean you aren’t going to take me?” Apparently, I did not get through to him.

” I have an idea. If these contacts are sold at gas stations, why don’t you just wait until they sell them at a gas station by your house? That way, you can ride you bike over and buy them I won’t know what happened until you go blind.”

You read about parents doing all kinds of horrible things to their kids all the time. I can just hear my arraignment hearing on this one.

District Attorney: You drove him to a gas station to buy contacts?

Me: Yes.

District Attorney: And you thought contacts from a gas station were a good idea?

Me: He said I promised.

District Attorney: Ah, well then, I see. That’s entirely different.

Air travel is the number one way to get to Rome from the US. That being said, the key is to book early. Whether you are paying for your airlines tickets or cashing in your airlines frequent flier miles, booking early enables you, for the most part, to get the best deal overall.  While it is true that many air carriers offer last minute “get away” specials, last minute planning a trip to Rome is not what I call fun.  Hoteliers/apartment managers in Rome have a completely different idea of what “timely service” means. It can take several days to get an answer via email, and calling multiple places internationally could cost the monies you just saved on those last minute tickets. So save yourself a ton of stress and some money, too: BOOK EARLY.

What does ”BOOK EARLY” mean exactly?  Well, that depends on when you are going and what you are doing when you get there. If you are going during school breaks and/or major holidays, “book early” can mean more than six months in advance.  Going during school or during the low season, or during the month of August means less people travelling, and you can get away with two-to-three months in advance, if you are flexible on dates and times.  Using your frequent flier miles? If you are not opposed to multiple stops, four months is a minimum. Want the smoothest, least stops/nonstops? Add three months to that. Peak time travel? Another four months.  All this confusing you? Let’s look at some examples:

Person A wants to buy a round-trip ticket Dallas/Fort Worth to Rome for Easter holiday/Spring break travel. To get a reasonable price and minimum stops, Person A needs to book six-to-eight months in advance.

Person B wants to do the same thing using frequent flier miles: nine plus months.

Person C wants to go during the summer and is flexible about exact dates, doesn’t want to go in August,  (What’s wrong with August? We’ll get to that later, be patient.), and will buy tickets: Four-to-five months is good.

Person D is going to do the same thing using miles again: Make it six-or-seven months.

A Real-Time example, you say? okay. I knew I was going sometime late August/early September, and I was staying at least two weeks. I also knew I could leave mid-week and return mid-week, that I could make multiple stops, and that I was using miles: I booked May 15 for a trip departing September 02 Dallas/Fort Worth to London Heathrow, early morning arrival, staying the night and departing non-stop the next morning to Rome’s Fuimicino; returning Rome-to-London-Dallas/Fort Worth all in one day September 17. In coach. ( I was too late for business/first class tickets and certain Beloveds were not amused.  Again, later.)

I am pleased with our itinerary, however; I must admit that I am secretly hoping for a schedule change by the airlines that could allow me to eliminate that stopover on the front-end of the trip. It’s nice and The Beloved has never been to London, but costly for what little we could do in that short amount of time.

Okay, now I’ll answer the August question.  Why not Rome in August?  Well, aside from the ninety-plus degree heat in ninety-plus degree humidity, August is a Roman Holiday. Many of the shops, museums, and restaurants are actually closed the whole month of August. That being said, you can get some great deals in August and while some of the shops, restaurants and museums are closed, there is still more do in Rome than a lifetime can cover.

Ciao for now.