Welcome Home

January 7, 2003 by David Blackman

The first thing I did to celebrate returning home to New York was to get really sick. No, wait, the first thing I did was eat a turkey on rye sandwich, the second thing I did was eat a brisket on rye, and the third thing I did was get sick. Then, just to make everything circular, I celebrated leaving New York by getting deathly ill. I'm still sick, and sure enough, everyone who told me that flying while sick is the worst was right. This vacation wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was exactly what my parents predicted.

As much as I try to pretend it's not true, my mom and I are almost identical people. We have this terrible habit of working ourselves to death, living life to the point of exhaustion, and then refusing to come home because we know that when we hit home we'll crash and burn. So it's not like I wasn't expecting to go back to New York and not get sick. That's exactly the payment I expected to be due after not sleeping for two months. But this sick? This is just universal karma getting me back for some kid I made fun of in grade school or something. You know it's bad when you're standing over the toilet with a fever in the low hundreds and a thought occurs to you "wouldn't it be nice to just collapse here in the bathroom and wait for my parents to find me." Yeah, that sick.

But today I stop being a columnboy and become a columnman, for today, I'm writing a column that's due later in the day on a plane flight. This is how Real Columnists do it, I'm sure. If this all sounds like undirected ramblings, that's because it's the feverdreams of a poor freshman slapped into print to meet a deadline. After reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" I don't feel so guilty about the focus of my writing anymore. Someday I hope to achieve the ideal that is "gonzo journalism", if it's good enough for Faulkner, it's good enough for me.

I'm sitting next to a woman I've nicknamed Jabba [the Hut] who bears more of a resemblance to my dead grandmother [nickname: Twineball] than I'd like to admit. She's rapidly becoming concerned about my health, because periodically I slump over in pain with my nose almost touching the gelatinous neon yellow substance in the hot portion of my in-flight meal that may or may not be eggs. I'm too scared to find out. In her sleep she rubs her belly and looks in my direction in a way that makes me leery of submitting to the charms of the sandman.

To my left is a man who has just proved his physical prowess to his wife by crushing a Sprite can in his bare hands. Good job. He is seemingly concerned about my health as well, but for entirely different reasons. He's been watching me rock out to my music, clutching a pillow and a book of Phillip K Dick short stories to my chest and rocking back and forth. I must be autistic, or on the verge of a psychotic episode. I don't think he wants to find out. The Stanford University t-shirt I'm wearing must be purely for show.

In sports news, the Jets and the 49ers won. I can deal with this. I don't need to worry about my split allegiances again this football season unless they both make it to the Super Bowl. In which case I'll just flip a coin to determine which team I'm rooting for. I really feel a special bond with the Jets, they left Queens for the same reason I did, the dirty bathrooms at Shea Stadium.

Of course I'm bitter and belligerent and condescending, that's what New York does to me, and that's why I left. The martian death flu I've contracted just makes it worse. All this compounded by the teeny tiny seats on the 757 I'm strapped into, the people walking in the aisle who keep bumping into me, and Jabba who is clearly taking up more than one seat, and this searing headache that makes smashing my head into a wall repeatedly sound pleasant.

There's one thing that makes it all bearable, one thing that prevents me from doing anything that violates FAA regulations. It's the beautiful girl I have waiting for me on the other side of the country. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than having someone you love waiting for you by baggage claim (after all, letting people into the terminal is now a Terrorist Threat(tm), as is transporting food) who's ready to brush away all the troubles and aches of a long crosscontinental flight and make you realize why you get up in the mornings. (I hope I didn't just violate my ban on talking about relationships, oh well, it was worth it).

It's good to be back.

And of course I still felt like crap when I got back to Otero, and of course none of my computers work, and my guitar is totally out of tune, and my luggage has exploded all over my floor. I'm not yet carrying enough units to qualify as a fulltime student and I have no idea what other courses I'm taking and classes start tomorrow, but in the grand scheme of things, none of that really matters, does it?

And just like my dad said I would, and just like my mom always did, I've been back at school for less than a day and already I'm starting to feel better.

Mr. Jones and me (David Blackman [an undeclared freshman]), they're gonna be big big stars. David wishes he was just a little funkier. Any tips on how? Email me at blackmad@stanford.edu or alittlefunkier@whizziwig.com