Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [128]
So travel anecdotes was one way to go. The predictable way.
OR, and this was more intriguing, I could tell the students something else.
Given carte blanche to say whatever I wanted to, I was feeling more than a little rebellious that day and in the mood to spread unrest, which is never a bad thing in college, is it? Fired up by this, I began jotting down ideas.2 Not conventional ideas—stuff they might be expecting to hear—but, rather, stuff I thought they should hear. Life lessons. The kind of stuff that can only be taught from the perspective of someone who's circumnavigated the globe on someone else's dime, experiencing close-up and firsthand a wide variety of foreign cultures, and almost died doing it.
Delivered in no real order—although I find numerical works just fine—they came to me, as these lists often do, all at once in a rush, and went as follows:
#1: The news networks are wrong: it's not a hostile world. The vast majority of people out there are good, kind, and friendly. Go visit them, see for yourself.
#2: An excellent way to repel mosquitoes is to stick a sheet of Bounce fabric softener inside each of your socks. Bounce is kryptonite to mosquitoes.
#3: Courage is a valve. Turn it on, even a little bit, and the knob gets stuck.
#4: Most people stick with what they know—traditions, beliefs, boring studies, depressing jobs, stifling marriages—not because it's good for them or even because they like it, but because they fear what might replace it if they let it go.
#5: Strangely, what replaces it if you let it go is usually a thousand times better than what you had. Belief first, proof later, always.
#6: Nature is not our friend. (A concept most adults are entirely familiar with, but I figure it's never too early to begin indoctrinating the young with our fiercest prejudices.)
#7: The people who start wars are seldom the people who die fighting them. Ask your average Cambodian.
#8: Just because you believe something, doesn't make it so. For every principle you'd stake your life and reputation on, there are millions of people around the world who fervently disagree with you and think you're nuts. And very probably you are.
#9: There's no limit to the extent of human gullibility when it comes to believing what they're told. And the more far-fetched or ludicrous an idea is, the more people are likely to buy into it.
#10: Women are oppressed the world over. In fact, I'd venture to say that, except perhaps for where you live, feminism barely has a foothold. And don't even get me started on homosexuality.
#11: Hard work is good for you, but working too hard and stressing out will stop your liver from functioning and apparently can kill you.
#12: Most people in the world totally freak out if you try to hug them.
#13:
Sadly I didn't make it as far as twenty. I'd just scrawled “#13” on my pad when the phone rang. “Hi—Cash?” It was The Thumb. A TV person calling to talk to another TV person. Happens all the time. “How's it going?”
“Great.” Flopping down on the mat by the kitchen door, I felt my scrotum start to tingle. Uh-oh. “So is this it? Is this the call?”
“Yes…”
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
I couldn't bear the tension. It was like waiting for the results of an AIDS test. “And …?”
“… and …”
The balloon I'd been soaring in for the past year took one massive lunge into the air, buoyed up by the propane of hope …
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTTTTT!
“… I'm sorry …”
… and nosedived into a hedge.
“I know how hard you worked on this and how much