You're Doing Great!

by Tom Papa

  I’m not saying date night is easy. You don’t just show up at dinner and instantly turn into that carefree couple you once were. Of course we’re going to talk about what’s happening at home, it’s unavoidable. That would be like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg getting together and never mentioning computing. But they don’t sleep with each other. We do. So at a certain point we have to stop talking about our business of raising children, caring for pets, fixing the leaky roof and just have a good time.

  That’s the key. Dates are supposed to be fun. You would never go on a date and spend the entire night talking about the most annoying people you know and all the horrible things they are doing to you. You can vent a little, but at some point you have to turn the conversation back to more romantic pursuits.

  I know a couple who never went on date night. They just chugged along for years focused solely on raising their kids. They stuck together, not as a romantic couple but as business partners. And it seemed to really work until the kids went away to school and they were left alone for the first time. They were forced to see each other as a couple once again. They were reeling. They didn’t know what to do. It was so bad that before they would go to dinner my friend started making a list of things to talk about. A conversation cheat sheet for the woman he’d been married to for twenty years! So sad and yet so avoidable. If only they had gone on a date or two along the way.

  We recently went to a tiki bar. This was perfect. First of all, a tiki bar is unlike any other bar you can enter. It’s hard to take anything too seriously when you are surrounded by pictures of hula girls, life-size tiki statues, and blowfish hanging from the ceiling.

  This place claimed to be the oldest tiki bar in L.A., with a menu filled with “classic tiki” recipes. Be warned: Do not drive to a tiki bar. These fun drinks with their joyful colors and fun names like Zombies and Blue Hawaiian are going to knock you on your butt. Perfect for date night, horrible for driving home.

  If you want to quickly stop talking about your kids, or forget you even have kids, order a couple of Scorpions and put some fun music on the jukebox. Within minutes we were laughing and dancing together. Just the two of us as we always were.

  You know date night is working if you’re flirting again. Flirting with this person you fell so deeply in love with that you promised to stay with them to the end of your days is a sign that you’ve found your way back.

  The next morning was painful, and I felt like maybe the end of our days was upon us. I found multiple paper umbrellas on my pillow and my kids gave me a look at breakfast that told me we’d come home way too drunk and loud.

  But we were happy.

  As Cynthia and I buzzed through the kitchen, we didn’t have time to talk about the night before and all our tiki fun because we were right back to work. That conversation will have to wait until next week when date night rolls around again.

  HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN UP SO EARLY FOR A FLIGHT THAT WHILE YOU WERE BOARDING YOU REALIZED YOUR UNDERWEAR WAS ON THE OUTSIDE OF YOUR PANTS? I HAVE …

  I’M GOING TO MARS!

  IF MY WIFE WILL LET ME

  I’m going to Mars. It’s all planned out. I’ve watched some reports, checked out some websites. It looks pretty amazing. All I have to do now is convince my wife to let me go.

  Elon Musk says I have to go, or that “we humans” have to go. I haven’t spoken to him directly, he seems like he might be tough to talk to, but he’s right that the mission is necessary to preserve humankind. There’s only one hitch—we can’t come back. It’s a one-way ticket to a rough and inhospitable planet, kind of like a one-way ticket to Staten Island.

  I’ll admit that I’m a little worried that I’ll get there and find out that it’s not as good as the brochure and then have to stay there for the rest of my life. This happened to me once on a road trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They made it look like a quaint hotel hosted by a nice Amish family, but it turned out to be a creepy hotel hosted by a man who looked like he just got out of prison on a technicality. In that case I just got in the car and was back home in three hours.

  I can’t do that on this trip, but ultimately I’m okay with that. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, and unlike being in Lancaster, however poor the accommodations, I imagine it will be offset by the fact that I’m standing on Mars. That’s pretty cool stuff. If only my wife thought the same way.

  I don’t know what her deal is. She seems to think that I’m going on a golf weekend with my friends till the end of time, but I don’t think they’ll even have golf there. Now that I think of it, they actually did golf on the moon. That must have really irked the wives down on Earth trying to look supportive in front of the reporters for Life magazine.

  But seriously, how can I deny all of civilization? They’re counting on me. How can I sit down here wasting time at Taco Bell and rubbing sunscreen on my belly by the pool when there are planets to populate? What if it’s my destiny? My manifest destiny?

  This must be why Lewis and Clark weren’t married. They couldn’t focus on their journey out west while someone was following them around asking how long they’d be gone.

  Could you imagine Clark putting on his coonskin jacket, saying, “No, I told you I’m leaving this Saturday.”

  “Well, change it.”

  “I can’t change it, Lewis is waiting down by the canoe. You’ll just have to go to the Bernsteins’ bar mitzvah without me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I have to cross the Mississippi and cause problems for the indigenous people, that’s why.”

  This is what I’m dealing with as I prepare for my trip to the giant red planet. I’m thinking about what to pack and my wife is acting like it’s not even happening.

  I’m assuming there won’t be any training. I hope there’s not. That’s not going to work for me. I mean, I’ll go to Mars but I don’t want to have to join a gym to do it. It’s not like I’m going to have to steer the ship or anything. I see my role more as a special guest: the funny guy who makes an appearance now and again. When things get boring and people are a little homesick, I come into the cafeteria, crack some jokes, do something funny with a carrot, that kind of thing. Like one of the guest actors on The Love Boat.

  And that reminds me: As a special guest, I am not flying coach. That won’t happen. I don’t fly coach to Baltimore, I’m definitely not flying coach all the way to Mars. I hope Elon understands that. I wonder if they’ll have those sleep pod things like they do on Big Planes. Those are really cool and come with a bunch of movies and a kit with a sleep mask, earplugs, and a pair of socks. The socks are always a little weird to me, but I guess with so many people out there who think that flip-flops are acceptable travel footwear, regardless of their age or how disgusting their feet are, maybe the socks are a good idea.

  The best pods I ever experienced were on a flight from JFK to Dubai on Emirates airline. It was the best flight of my life. I got lucky and some company paid for the whole thing. I was waiting in the lounge with my first-class ticket on a late-spring night, staring out at the giant plane that I was going to be boarding. It was one of those behemoths with two stories. It made more sense to try and fly an apartment building.

  I was trying to act like this was nothing new to me. That waiting in the first-class international lounge for my flight to the Middle East was just something that I did all the time. It’s hard not to look like a rube in a situation like this, and I was definitely a rube.

  I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but everything is free in the international lounge, which is disconcerting when you’re used to having to pay for everything that you can barely afford your whole life. It’s not until you hang around the rich that you realize how much free stuff they get.

  There was a full bar with bottles of expensive liquor just sitting out for the taking without a bartender, hostess, or police officer anywhere in sight. There were giant buffets of food that looked like a spread for some oil tycoon or a drunk Warren Buffett. I wonder if Warr
en Buffett is aware that his name is one letter away from being Warren Buffet. Someone should tell him, it could give him some good material when he’s at brunch.

  I felt like I was stealing and didn’t want to get caught. I’d sneak up to the bar, take something, and scurry back to my seat like a squirrel who sees a pile of nuts and doesn’t trust that it’s not a trap. I nabbed a beer and ran back to my seat. When no one came to arrest me, and I felt safe again, I bolted back up, grabbed some sushi, put a few in my cheeks, and ran off like a child who comes across candy he’s not supposed to have.

  This lounge was so fancy that when it was time to board my flight, a woman came and whispered in my ear and walked me to the gate. I did my best not to spit out the giant wad of cashews in my mouth.

  When I boarded the plane they led me up a spiral staircase to the second level. Stairs on a plane are not normal. A lot of people don’t have stairs in their home. I was expecting a nice seat, but what I discovered was pretty much my own room. It was gigantic. I poked my head up from my pod like a gopher and looked around, but I was completely alone. It was just me and seven of the most beautiful female flight attendants I had ever seen, and their entire job on this flight would be to do nothing but wait on me.

  They brought out steaks, salads, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, ice cream sundaes, exotic chocolates, entire bottles of Bordeaux, and a coffee service that seemed to combine all the knowledge of all the coffee that had ever been made. All I had to do was sit in my nest with my mouth open like a baby bird.

  I didn’t want to sleep and miss any of it, but I was only able to hang for so long. I fell into a long, deep sleep as the plane flew over the top of the planet, straight above the North Pole. I dreamed vividly about the Middle East, a place that I knew very little about. This was a part of the world that I had constructed in my mind from slanted news stories and public school geography classes that taught us to be afraid.

  I remember waking up, not understanding how long I had slept or how many time zones I had crossed. I stood up and stretched. There’s something about waking up in a place that gives you more ownership of it. This plane was now my domain, and as I made my way to the back I discovered a full round bar. I startled the staff, as if the captain had just made an appearance on deck unannounced. I gave them a little smile to put them at ease and, again trying to act like I did this all the time, ordered a gin fizz.

  I’ve never had a gin fizz in my life. I don’t even like gin all that much and have no idea where the fizz comes from. I wanted to sound like James Bond but ended up sounding like James Bond’s silly gay cousin. But after two or three drinks and some free bar snacks, I regained my mojo and chatted them up and got some good solid laughs. Just like The Love Boat.

  I ate some more, drank some more in my pod, and watched a bunch of movies as the flight attendants came by every three minutes or so just to deliver another smile. It was a twelve-hour flight and one of the nicest times I could remember on sea, land, or sky. I didn’t want it to end.

  The rest of the trip I was in Dubai and Beirut, and as you can probably predict, I met beautiful people and learned that they were just like you and me.

  As great as the Middle East was, I did start to miss home after a while. I was with people, but not my people. I don’t mean my countrymen, I mean my loved ones. My wife. My family. My dog. My car. My TV.

  That’s always the way. It’s always fun to travel, but if you don’t have your family with you at a certain point, what are you doing? At a certain point you’re no longer traveling, you’re running away from home.

  I guess this is what my wife is thinking. I mean, I don’t want to leave them forever. A one-way ticket to Mars is like announcing to your family the exact day that you’re going to die. While it’s somewhat convenient and allows you to get all your paperwork in order, it’s probably better for them to be surprised. It’s better to get a call from the hospital than know he’s out there playing gin rummy on some other planet.

  But I have faith. I have faith Elon will figure out a way to make it a round-trip ticket. Lewis and Clark eventually went back home and got married and had nice, normal lives. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll go, hang out for a couple of years, boost up my social media, and eventually return safely home.

  As a gesture, for my willingness to cut my trip short, I would like to request that my wife and kids throw a nice ticker-tape parade or at the very least have a WELCOME HOME banner over the fireplace and a big bowl of Butterfingers.

  There’s no way she can say no to that. Right?

  HAVE YOU EVER FALLEN ASLEEP DURING THE NEWS AND WOKEN UP TO A HORROR MOVIE AND YOU COULDN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE? I HAVE …

  PLAY BY THE RULES

  As much as I root for us all, there are some people out there who are not playing by the rules. And rather than give them a free pass I think it’s important, for the good of all humanity, that we call them out.

  I don’t like sneaky people.

  They’re wormy. I don’t like worms. They’re always trying to get one up on the next guy but don’t have the courage to fight for it, so they just wiggle and slither around. I see them at the airports all the time. In the last couple of years I’ve been on planes pretty much every week. And I’ve seen a lot of sneaks.

  They’re like scavengers on the African plains, skulking around with hunched, guilty shoulders and shame-filled eyes. They slither around like hyenas, avoiding eye contact because they live in a constant state of being found out for their miserly deeds and petty thefts. And make no mistake, they are stealing from us. They think we are suckers and that’s what bothers me most of all.

  In the airports they cut in line. No one liked a cutter when we were little and no one likes one now. It’s one of the first social violations we learn to detect, and whoever cut got hit with a lunch box. The problem with stopping these people as adults is that we no longer have lunch boxes and most of us don’t want to fight with a stranger.

  But at a certain point something has to be done. I confronted some of these creeps not too long ago. I was standing in line patiently waiting to board a plane, and admittedly I was a little cranky and tiring of my fellow man. I was lined up with the rest of zone one when this guy in his sixties and his wife started worming their way past everybody. We had all been there for a while. We had established a quick social order and were getting along just fine. And here they come, acting like they didn’t see us, slithering their way in and cutting us all.

  You don’t fly for a month straight witnessing injustice without eventually reaching the breaking point. You get to the point where, in the name of justice, you find yourself having to stand up for yourself and the rest of the class.

  “Excuse me,” I said. This was a great start. Here is the voice of someone who might have been wronged but is about to politely ask a question on behalf of everybody else.

  “Did you not notice all of us who are standing here in line?” This is another great phrasing, because it gives the worm an opportunity to repent. I also pointed out “all of us,” letting them know that we’re a group, that while they were probably shoplifting gum from the Hudson News, we came together and have established laws and you’re breaking them and there will be punishment if you make the wrong choice.

  The husband played dumb, looking at his crumpled-up boarding pass as if he were seeing it for the first time. This is a classic technique. His wife took a more arrogant approach and snapped back.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not taking your place,” she said.

  “This isn’t about me. This is about all of us. We are all in line and there’s absolutely no reason you can come up with that will justify you cutting in front of all of us, as if we aren’t here,” I said.

  This wasn’t exactly elegant, but it’s sometimes difficult to speak when you want to scream. I did manage to throw in “cutting,” which got everyone’s attention.

  “Cutting? Who’s the cutter? Where are they? Who has a lunch box?”


  The gate attendant made an announcement that boarding was about to begin. They wouldn’t move. The husband kept up his dementia act while his wife glared at me and they both inched ahead, as if it were out of their control, that momentum was simply pulling them along.

  I was angry. My usually exemplary, passive-aggressive witticisms were thrown to the wind. I was in shock. I was at a loss. Who does this? What kind of people act this way?

  “Shit People.”

  That’s who. And that’s what I declared them to be. Out loud. In a crowd.

  Although I tend not swear, it was accurate; that’s exactly what they were. But once you use profanity you lose supporters. Maybe the people in zone six would cheer, but with all the older, conservative people in zone one, you lose fans pretty quickly.

  I tried making eye contact with one of my line mates but they weren’t having it. I was on my own, but I was determined, so I said it again.

  Now, the good thing about profanity is that it signals to everyone that you are willing to break the social norms and you have become a bit of a wild card. Everyone wants to know how far you’re willing to go. What will you say next? Will you turn violent? Everyone was on edge, except the two of them. They just kept moving forward. The wife gave me a nasty smile like she’d heard it all before and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  I was stuck. As much as I wanted to give them both a spinning karate kick, I could do only so much. They were winning.

  Until they ran into the sheriff.

  The sweet and mighty gate attendant. She was our last hope, but you never know how this will go. Will she let them go through because she’s working at this too long and just can’t be bothered? Will she not notice them until they’re halfway down the ramp? Or will she lay down the law?

  The sneaks handed over their boarding passes, while making some lame joke to win her over, another wormy technique.