I think all of us have those times when we chastise ourselves for being stuck in rut or a little resistant to change. We even do the whole inner monologue pep talk, where we tell ourselves that it’s time to break out of our routine or perhaps even challenge a well-worn philosophy that we’ve judiciously lived by. Recently, my husband and I did all of the above.
Together as a team we threw caution and, dare I say, wisdom right out the window and broke with our years-long tradition of never going on a vacation (and by that I mean basically not leaving the city limits) during a major holiday. It will be fun, we told ourselves, to be in Lake Tahoe, California, over the Fourth of July. Never mind that for years, as in decades, we had assiduously avoided the spot during any holiday.
At least for my husband, the first sign that traveling during a very busy time of year might have been a mistake was when Delta Air Lines changed our seats. We were both rerouted, if you will, to middle seats. For me this was no big deal.
I’ve made peace with the middle seat on airplanes. But my husband, “Mr. Aisle” hadn’t enjoyed the pleasure of being squished between two fellow travelers for “decades.
” His complaining about it was so dramatic I feared that we had switched personalities. Hello, I’m the one who treats my family to Oscar-worthy whining. I told him he needed to stay in his personality lane and deal with getting up close and personal with his plane neighbors.
When we lande.