What's the big deal?

Today has been that oddest of days that seemed to drag on with no end in sight, all the while having a surreal, finality to it. Its as though I’m Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer (well, maybe not those last two, but…) all in one, walking down the street in that little town during the final episode and wondering what’s next. However, there seems to be no next. That peculiar guitar pickin’ sequence that has for years been a suitable stand-in for some theme music curiously absent, they just walk as we, the viewing public wait for the camera to pan out, for somebody to say something profoundly climactic, or to end with that bit of tragic hijinx that only the Seinfeld crew can pull off. Only, there was no voodoo womancaught rubbing oil on George’s bald head, no freeze frame of Jerry running to victory having caught a flyer in the race of the century. There was just me doing my laundry, straightening the kitchen, and packing clothes for a trip that seems to have many of my friends quite concerned.

All day folks have been greeting me like Michael Clarke Duncan walking the Green Mile in that Tom Hanks flick from a few years back. I heard “good luck” or “travel safely” and “see you when you get back”, and even “have fun” from most folks, but it wasn’t what they said with their mouths so much as what they said with their eyes. People looked at me long and hard, in earnest even, as they gave me the firm shake that’s usually reserved for a soldier going off to war. Folks at church said prayers for me, but those prayers seemed altogether deeper than the regular ones bestowed upon a casual traveler. In case I hadn’t given it much credence before, the reputation of Colombia in South America indeed is quite notorious.

The American public clearly must subscribe to the theory that if a Hollywood film or television show says that something is so, then it truly is so. I went to Nicaragua and Panama , both countries that had episodes of civil war in the last 25 years, but no one even batted an eye when I took those trips. Making small talk with a client in Nicaragua, , I asked what the country was famous for or if there were anything that I ought to see or pick up before leaving. “Bullets" he said, with a cynical laugh. I too laughed as after having spent 3 or 4 days with Sr. Leonel Roman, I had come to expect and enjoy his sense of humor, I usually being the object of pranks between he and his right hand man Augusto.

But there had been no movie about Nicaragua, or Panama and no hip hop songs had glorified the nefarious activities that took place there like they had for Colombia. Had CNN and Fox News been the force that they are today back in the 1980s during those Central American conlicts, perhaps somebody may have questioned my trips there or maybe raised concern. Without a doubt, the biggest factor in Colombia's infamy was the fact that movies like Scarface and Blow are huge parts of pop culture and that it had such dominant role in the narcotics trade that really exploded in the 1980s.

As I left church yesterday, after saying goodbyes to well-wishers, I was chased down in the parking lot by one of my fellow door keepers. At first, I thought I had forgotten something and he were rushing out to hand it to me. But he just wanted to have a last word. It didn't seem like the words were coming easily for him, and his eyes suggested something much more dire than the small talk that he managed as he shook my hand for what seemed like a minute. He too gave me that dead-man-walking look. This one had me a little alarmed though. He and I are usually strictly on the small-talk level and it seemed strange for him to look at me like a ghost. The clencher was when he brought up the memory of one of our colleagues, recently gone on to glory.

These are the reasons why I keep what they call an even keel. I keep it together so that others don't have to. It's a good thing that my prayer heals all attitude is still firmly intact. A few years ago when this wasn't my thing, I might've let all of these long looks get to me. But, when I lay me down to sleep tonight, I'm just going to pray that I wake up in the morning to catch that flight to Bogota, and when I get on that plane tomorrow, I'll pray that I get there safely and that I come back safely. That's all I can do.