Since March of last year, I have slowly been writing down a bunch of tales about some of the travel I have done over the years. It’s been a project that I pick at from time to time and I have no idea if I will ever try and get it published, but I’ve really felt compelled to write about it.
So tonite, I was finishing off a chapter about Las Vegas and I found myself getting a good laugh at my own history.
When I think of the person I am now, I tend to think of myself as a geeky, quirky kind of a guy with a weird sense of humor, but an all-around pretty normal and average guy. The “nice” guy. People who know me and some of my history know that archetype very well and know that I fit it to a tee. But as I am writing about some of the stuff I have seen and done, I find myself laughing at certain things I’m doing because in many ways, it seems so out of character.
Tonite was another example of it. As I am writing about Las Vegas, I’m recalling all of the various experiences I have had while in that particular city. As I am perusing through my own mind looking for things to write about, I recall one very memorable experience during a visit to the city. I start racking my brain trying to remember a name and no matter what I do, the name keeps escaping me.
I turn to Google and I look up “stripper names” and go through the lists only to discover that none of those names are ringing a bell. Then I looked up “girl names” and after looking at a couple of pages, I finally hit the name Madison and the light goes off in my head. “That was her name” I said to myself.
Sitting at my desk in my office, I then start to chuckle realizing that I just spend 15 minutes trying to remember the name of a stripper who gave me my first lap dance. For a moment, it seems a bit surreal because I’m thinking to myself, “Is that really me? Did I really go get a lap dance from a stripper in Vegas?”. I chuckle again as the memories of sitting behind that curtain start to come back and I smile. Yup, that really did happen.
Most days I’m the mellow geek who builds LEGO with his son, wears tiara’s while playing with his daughter, and sits at the kitchen table and talks to my wife. I’m about as normal and as run-of-the-mill as it gets. That tends to be what I see myself as these days as it pretty much is what fills my life and I’m pretty happy and content with that.
But every now and then I am reminded of the parts of my life that are not wrapped up in picking up after my kids, or making supper for my family. Those moments, which can be big departures from day to day life, surface and because that side of you doesn’t come out very often, it almost seems unreal. It’s as if you see or remember things you’ve experienced and have a hard time believing that they happened to you versus someone else because it’s such a contrast from the person you normally are.
It makes me smile and reminds me that no matter how routine life gets, it’s always good to get out of your own skin once in awhile.
