From the moment I entered the room I knew it was going to be painful. I could hear the laughter through the open porch door. It haunted me; my shoulders shivered.
Don't get me wrong, laughter (especially the laughter of strangers) is a beautiful thing. To walk down a quiet street at dusk and hear chuckles echoing through open windows is like catching the aroma of baking cookies on a breeze; it's an intrusion, but one that invokes an air of mystery that elicits immediate forgiveness.
But when you're forced to penetrate that mystery and become a part of something you were more than content to witness from afar, the majesty is lost. It's sticking your nose into a spoiled rose; there is no more wonder involved.
We stood on the porch and Rosanne appeared behind the screen. She's the type that will latch onto an insignificant phrase or joke in the first five minutes of your acquaintance and will accost you with it for the rest of your life (or hers; whichever comes first...) You know, the kind almost incapable of profound friendship. "Ah, our True Tenor is here!" she announces in the low light of the porch at dusk, while I whisper a prayer of gratitude that eye-rolls aren't audible.
She opens the screen and to admit me. They sit at the table behind the door, their bowls of ice cream reduced to carefully combed fields of Hershey's Syrup. They've been here awhile, already entrenched in their evening of revelry.
And I don't know a single one of them.
I'm ushered to the kitchen where I'm coaxed to fill a bowl with ice cream and why not a little chocolate and maybe you could use some more M&M's. What an ungrateful child I am to bear such a sullen expression while a nice old lady begged me to put more sugar in my mouth
I guess I was just waiting for something to set me off, but when the right phrase came I was still surprised at the amount of self-control it took to pacify my mouth with my spoon.
It was Rosanne who finally said something worth hating. She was talking about her trip to Italy, and lamented that she didn't have time to really witness Italian culture during her THREE WEEK VISIT. "I would have loved to have traveled to some smaller places, but we just had to see the tourist traps. You just can't travel in Rome without stopping at all the important places."
In that moment, she should have feared death. It was mostly shyness that kept me from striking her. I wished to slap her in the face and belittle her foolishness.
When I was younger I hated choose-your-own-adventure books. I only ever read one. You know why? Because they had nothing to do with adventure. Sure, you got to pick whether your next page was 167 or 32, but the whole thing was already determined. It seemed less like an adventure and more like the author couldn't make up his mind. It wasn't an adventure in the same way that connecting the dots isn't drawing.
Just like Rosanne. She wasn't on an adventure, she was connecting the dots. After she finished photographing some monument, she looked at her list at the next destination "they" planned for her. So she returned from Rome with a bunch of pictures and complaints, because her trip to "discover Italy" was really no more profound than opening a coffee-table picture-book.
I hated my time in Rome. I was obligated to visit the important sites, and the obligation threatened to ruin me. I was following orders instead of pilgriming. On the last day I violently threw away my itinerary, set off down a side street, and discovered a secret hidden gelato shop that no one would have ever told me about. Unlike the books, I actually chose my own adventure. I drew outside the lines, and created something magnificent.
I sat there fuming. I had chosen my words, about to lay into poor Rosanne who was just trying to make conversation in her own home. Then Father saved her. "Well, we have to run." I gave her one last look and thought,
Your safe, Rosanne.
This time.
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