This past weekend, I got the text message we all dread from our parents. We know it’s coming someday, and we think we’ll be ready when the bad news arrives. But how can anyone prepare for something so heavy and grim? Are we ever truly ready for it?

Kelaine
I would like to talk to you about snapchat for school. ARe you available?

GOD, NO. WHYYYYYYY.

I stared at my phone and this wave of imminent frustration fell over me like I was on a capsizing ship. Snapchat? Is this dude serious?

First of all, my dad has a burner phone from before Barack Obama was inaugurated. There is no email. There is no GPS. There is no Snapchat. There is no world in which this man is going to lead the charge on integrating mobile technology into the classroom. So why, suddenly, did he have this burning question for me?

Second of all, I was damn near out the door on my way to brunch.  I was already hungry, irritable, and pretentious when he hit me with this conundrum. To call, or not to call? I could feel my heart rate climbing, tapping on my rib cage like a pestering little cousin. OK, fine. I’ll do it.

I could hear the excitement in his voice as he answered with his signature, “Yeah, hi, Kelaine?” I counted backwards from ten, breathed deeply, and closed my eyes, picturing my happy place.

“Hi Dad. I got your text. What’s up?” And as I listened to his response, this other wave crashed over me. It wasn’t frustration. It was pride.  This guy had an incredible, original idea.  And he just needed some help before rolling it out.

So let’s take a step back. My dad does something that most of us would find unthinkable. After retiring, he decided to become a middle school math teacher, teaching Pre-Algebra to students at the most awkward and hormonal time of their lives. This is by choice, mind you. Mostly for fun.

This was not always his career. For my entire childhood, he worked in business, managing the medical device and engineering divisions of a multinational corporation.

I can’t even read that sentence without getting bored, overwhelmed, and exhausted, so it’s no surprise that he wanted out. Whether the corporate climate changed or just the years of a gridlock commute got to him, the job seemed increasingly soul sucking.

So, when I went off to college, my dad started on his path to retirement by enrolling in a Master of Education program. I can’t say it surprised me.

As the unwilling recipient of many of his annoying lectures, I can tell you that teaching is The Thing my father was born to do. I distinctly remember doing my homework at the kitchen table, a needy sycophant wanting to be less than a shout away from my parents.

My mom would bustle around the kitchen, fixing everything from my and my sister’s lunches to the plumbing or mechanics of our dishwasher. My dad would stand (not sit!) in front of his reclining chair in our family room, drinking a beer from a pint glass while watching PBS.

“How do you spell sycophant?” I’d ask the room.

“Sound it out!” my dad would respond, a little too eagerly. After I stumbled on the second letter – I vs. Y – I’d plow successfully through the word, not even knowing I was learning how to learn.

And if I asked a simple follow-up, like, “Dad, what is a sycophant?” he’d be even more eager.

“Look it up, dear!” he’d say, parroting the Encyclopedia Brittanica commercial we had seen a million times on Nickelodeon. With a deep, exasperated sigh, I’d sulk over to the red, beat up dictionary on our bookshelf, collapse into a pretzel on the floor, and drag my finger along the pages until I found it.

“A person who praises powerful people in order to get their approval,” reciting aloud to anyone who still cared.

Yes, my dad lived to teach. And not just on the core curriculum either. When I hit middle school, I endowed him with the nickname Moral Man, a futile attempt to squash his righteous soapboxing about Happy Meal toys (“More plastic junk to end up in the waste stream”), the joys of bare footedness (“Let your doggies breathe!”), and Sunday drivers (“floaters clogging up the left lane”). He never met a topic on which he didn’t have a principled stance. And though we all tried to interrupt him, to enjoy one goddamn second of silence – for those scoring at home – it never worked.

These days, he has found an entire new system of children to harass, torment, and yes, to teach Pythagorean theorem. And though not as much as I do, boy, do they love this guy.

This guy who joined Twitter at sixty because he wants to be clued in. This guy who comments on every one of my blog posts because he can’t help but encourage me in everything I do (Hi, Dad). This fucking guy, man!

He listens to Hot 97, New York City’s top hip-hop station, so he knows just enough of the latest Fetty Wap jam and can understand slang he has no business knowing as a fully gray-haired white dude.

He teaches his students how to calculate slope by measuring the axes of a hill, and then rolling each kid down it in a barrel.

He lets his students paint themselves into the outdated Norman Rockwell painting that classroom learning often is, inserting Spanish and Portuguese and Ukrainian and Arabic phrases into his lessons to make sure that his many international students have a chance to enjoy a moment of levity, to be special, to enjoy the spotlight.

And in a phenomenon I’m calling Berlin syndrome, they beg my dad to yell at them in German because they think it’s funny.

My dad, everyone. He is corny and annoying and tries too hard, but isn’t that the whole point of dads? And when you’re thirteen and too cool for school, isn’t that the same kind of person you want at the front of your classroom, bothering you about doing your homework and teaching you about systems of equations?

Goddammit.  He’s annoying because he’s effective and he’s effective because he’s annoying.  The whole thing is a trap.  And I just figured it out right now.

On this particular Sunday, he called me about his latest ploy to make his students want to learn. He called it “Rams Leap Day,” named after his school’s horned mascot. In 2012, my dad figured out that his eighth graders were on a “Leap Cycle.” If they stayed on track, they would graduate middle school, high school, and college in a Leap Year. So, he had them forecast their lives, projecting what they’d do, where they’d be, and where they’d go in the next four years.

His students wrote letters to themselves, sealed them up, and then my dad buried them in a time capsule outside the middle school. A fucking time capsule, guys. Is your heart exploding all over your insides?

So on Monday, my dad planned to dig it up. He invited his former students, now on the verge of graduating high school, to come see how far they had come. After school. To the middle school playground. He wanted them to use Snapchat to chronicle the experience, to take pictures and share them with friends.

And so I suppose after thirty-three years of watching the sensei, it was only fair that I try to teach my dad about Snapchat, like he asked. After fifteen minutes of tech-splaining, I convinced my Dad that his decrepit phone would mean that he wouldn’t see a damn thing the students posted on Snapchat, and that most of it would vanish on sight. I told him to maybe use a Twitter hashtag, which I had to explain in great detail.  We agreed that #RamsLeapDay was a solid choice, said our goodbyes, and got on with our respective Sundays.

I found myself more frustrated than I should have been. More impatient than I should have been. I cut him off, “Dad. Dad! DAD!” before he offered what I thought was a bad suggestion. I didn’t explain the why or the how. I skipped to the fastest solution. I didn’t show my work. I just pointed to the answer and hung up the phone so I could get to brunch. Cool daughter you got there, pops.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re worried that his former students would also be too cool, texting while driving around in their first cars, smoking their rebellious cigarettes, and Snapchatting with their little bastard besties. You’re worried that my dad put in all this time and thought and effort making something special, and that these kids would take the whole thing for granted.

You can see it happening, right? My dad standing there alone in his classroom, holding the capsule in his hands, still covered in dirt from the extraction. Waiting. Never losing hope.

Well. They didn’t use the hashtag. If you type #RamsLeapDay into your Twitter search, you’ll see just two lonely, mostly incoherent tweets from my dad. I’m not a very good teacher.

But they came. Forty students came. Forty high school seniors. Forty kids with a lot more cool shit to do than to go back and visit their middle school math teacher.

They came. And they laughed and they joked and they remembered. They guessed who wrote each letter. They shared memories. His students came, guys.

They came because they wanted to be there. In person. And you don’t need Snapchat for that. Funny how that works, right?

If your idea of international travel is all-inclusive, speaks fluent English, and involves limited interaction with people browner than you.

If you are impatient. If you can’t handle uncertainty or chaos or change. If you can’t be bothered to convert to metric, Celsius, or another currency.

If you are scared of your own shadow. If you are scared of vaccinations. If are scared of letting go.

If you are scared of people who look, dress, and sound differently than you do. If you are scared of asking people to repeat what they said because you didn’t understand them the first time. If you are scared of not being understood the first time.

If you are scared of planes, of jet lag, of indigestion, of strangers. If you don’t know a life without internet, without television, without cell signal.

Fuck your bullshit Middle America vacation. Counterfeit kingdoms made of plastic and money. Go somewhere without a fucking trademark.

Embarrass yourself with your poor handle of a new language. Surprise yourself with what you remember from 7^th grade French.
Shrug and accept when you’re not supposed to tip. Be generous when you are supposed to tip.

Pack light. Leave your expensive jewelry at home. Run out of clean underwear.
Learn to haggle in cold blood. Tell a scheming cab driver to go fuck himself. Eat some unidentifiable street meat.

Harden. Soften. Figure it out.

Go now. Before everything everywhere changes. Before the safe places turn scary and the scary places turn safe.
Go now. Lose track of time. Get lost. Get confused. Be nervous.
Go now. Miss your flight. Get ripped off. Be a sucker. Experience mudbutt.

Beware of safety, comfort, and luxury. They are frauds and despots who manipulate you with their breezy palm trees and combed beaches and over-salted buffets and frozen drinks with umbrellas.

It’s a trap. Under the guise of protection and relaxation, they lead you to your cage and say, You deserve this. Don’t walk in on your own. Resist the urge to lock the door.

Do you hear that?

The mellifluous notes your heart plays on loop until some no-name sophomore from Wofford drains a last second three over your team’s senior captain (possibly playing through an injury?) and ruins your life.

March Madness, you mystical enchantress, I’ve been waiting for you. I know you will find new ways to break my heart like you always do. I know you will bust my brackets, give Melo Trimble a concussion, or maybe even make me watch Grayson Allen cut down a net with that no-lipped smile plastered across his very punchable face. And yet, like a siren most foul, I cannot resist you.

That song. It comes from every bar. Every household. Every TV set. Every March.

My God, it’s so beautiful.

I’ve even done us all a favor and written lyrics for it, which you can sing from your office or cubicle while trying to stream two games during a conference call on Thursday.

I’d rather be watching bas-ket-ballllllll
But I’m stuck here in my cuuuuuube

You’re welcome, America.

Today I woke up with that Selection Sunday feeling. That confident, righteous flutter of knowing we’re headed to The Big Dance, just waiting for Clark Kellogg to say it out loud. Fantasizing about the moment the camera cuts to my guys sitting in a row of folding chairs, their arms linked like they’re playing a high-stakes game of Red Rover.

You know that feeling, don’t you? You’ve been here with me. Filling out a kamikaze bracket, picking your team to win it all because your loyalty is worth more than the five dollars you give and pride you get for winning your pool. You’ve got nothing to lose. You’re all in.

But before I get carried away on clouds of confetti, I remember that this Selection Sunday feeling also comes with the uncomfortable, barfy anxiety hanging low in my gut, telling me that my beloved Terps will probably get a five-seed and face off against a surging Mid-major. You know, the kind of team that starts four seniors with very skinny arms and 3.2 GPAs. The scrappy team that plays disheveled basketball but wins games on hustle, heart, and over-trying. The team that is most analogous to how we see ourselves as human beings. The Everyman. The Underdog. The Cinderella.

The kind of team I would root for if they weren’t playing the Terps. But they’re going to play the Terps, and now I want them to die.

It’s also the feeling of watching poor Alex as he sweats out Vanderbilt’s fate, teetering between relief and disappointment of a team on the bubble. As a four-year manager of the Commodore’s basketball team, it’s even more personal for him. So many Selection-y Sunday-y feelings.

Together, we silently stress-eat an entire coffee cake, not in slices but bite-by-bite, sharing a fork that we’ve left in the box.

The Selection Show, a ritual ripe with the anticipation and nervous armpits of millions of proud alumni, has barely even started. It’s way too soon to speculate so obsessively about what will or could be, but I can’t help it.

My mind has already skimmed over all the good parts of the tournament and is drowning in doubt, thinking about how my Terps have been backsliding for a month. I have visions of losing in the first round, of that awful moment when we stop fouling and watch as the clock ticks down to zero, some other team’s guy hoisting the ball into the air while my guys eat their jerseys and look up at the scoreboard because they don’t want to accidentally make eye contact with their parents.

I have visions of that same moment where no one talks to me; they just let me stomp with heavy heels into the kitchen where I pick up a cleaning spray and just unload on everything in sight, passive-aggressively issuing instructions like rinse out your bowl to no one in particular.

And then, as I watch the brackets unfold across each region, the hope comes back. Strong.

I start believing again. I see the one-seed in our region and scoff. Overrated. Beatable. I think of the power of momentum and what might happen if we recapture that mid-season swagger. I think about the hearts we’ll break and the dreams we’ll dash if we relax and start having fun again. And then I think about how much easier it is to win when people wrote you off a month ago.

Yes, that Selection Sunday feeling. That dangerous combination of uppers and downers that may lead to a cardiac event.

I print out my bracket and start with the championship game, writing MARYLAND in all caps. I can’t wait to get my hopes up.

I’m currently sitting at an outdoor desk, carved of wood by on-site carpenters.  It’s ornate but functional, the kind of desk that begs you to start your goddamn novel.  To have great ideas, powered by the occasional menacing snort of the hippo.

A loud, annoying insect terrorist won’t leave me alone.  I just want to sit in peace and admire the impala walking through the safari brush, the chirps of birds that sound like cartoon lasers, and the perfect view of a lake where we’ve already seen hippo.  No matter how many times I swat, this half-terminator, half-impotent hornet won’t quit.  This little fucker is relentless.

It’s over 100 degrees in the sun, so hot that even the Maasai take cover in the shade.  There are no thermometers because you don’t need a device to tell you how hot it is when the answer is dripping from your pores.  In qualitative terms, we’re somewhere between so hot that you see God and so hot that – that’s not God, that’s obviously Satan, now prepare for eternal damnation, you vile, wicked heathen.

We arrived here in Selous an hour ago, and the first thing we did when we got to our tent was take our shirts off.  At a certain temperature, keeping clothes on is more indecent and repugnant than removing them.

To call this thing a tent is an egregious understatement.  It is a temple.  The vinyl and screen “tent,” if that’s what we’re calling this monstrosity, has solar electricity, an outdoor shower, and is octagonal in shape to maximize airflow.  “Airflow” is a cute theory, but if you can feel a breeze in there, you’d be the first.

There is a forty-by-forty foot thatched roof structure above it, designed to protect from extreme equatorial weather – rain, hail, sun, wind.  We’re one heart short of calling Captain Planet.

Right now, the thatched roof is putting in work as a shade-maker.  It absorbs the sun’s direct heat, releasing the hot air baked beneath it through triangular holes on either side of its peak.  The laws of thermodynamics tell us that heat rises, but in this part of Tanzania, it falls too.  There’s no escaping it.

The safari jeeps are parked and the other guests at our camp are getting lunch.  At this time of day, when the sun hangs directly overhead, animals mostly take cover, finding shade and protection deeper in the brush.  While they rest, we rest, preparing for our first safari excursion.

This afternoon, we’ll go on a boat to tour the wildlife of the lake, and then, I’m told we’ll enjoy a “sundowner.”  I don’t exactly know what a “sundowner” is, but it sounds too sophisticated for someone unapologetically sitting outside in her underwear like one of the Clampetts.

Will report back.  Also, very excited to meet our guide.  I understand he will lead us on our safari adventures for the next four days.

Laura and Andy are archetypal British characters, but I swear I didn’t make them up. They exist in real life. They are tidy and proper, with amusing highbrow accents that had me laughing with delight at literally everything they said. Yes, they were quite clever and funny, but if I’m honest, I probably laughed too hard at their jokes.

Yuk-yukking like a goddamn schoolgirl. Too giddy and enthusiastic. In my neon athletic shorts and backwards baseball cap, I’m sure I came off like an unrefined American simpleton.

Oh, what’s that now? Well, it takes one to know one.

As I leaned over to shake their hands, they explained that they too are on their honeymoon and that we’ll be paired together for the next four days. “That’s awesome,” I said, crashing down onto a nearby couch. I picked my head up and saw an unrolled park map on the beautiful dark wood table in front of us, weighted down with books about wildlife on each corner.

The grounds at Siwandu were so masculine and idyllic that Ernest Hemingway would have spat out his whiskey in disbelief.

It was almost too literal; everything leather-bound and perfectly weathered, in shades ranging from red-brown to tan-brown to brown-brown. If big game hunters used Pinterest, Siwandu is what their “Dream Home” boards would look like.

The staff practically ran laps to bring us ice water and iced tea before we headed on our afternoon riverboat safari. We sweat like Texan linemen doing two-a-days, the staff seemed completely unfazed. They elegantly patted themselves with handkerchiefs and kept moving. Show-offs.

I tried to charm Laura and Andy with my dumb jokes, remembering that America would be counting on me to make a good impression abroad. Anything for my country, I thought.

And then, the conversation paused awkwardly. I nervously sipped my ice water, condensation falling from the glass onto my bare legs. They all stared at me, and I could tell they were waiting for me to do something obvious. But here’s the catch, folks: it wasn’t obvious to me.

I did what I always do in these circumstances. I smiled cluelessly. And then I noticed a shape moving toward me from the corner of my eye.

I looked left and noticed a man, slowly standing from his seat. A man, full-grown, and I missed him entirely. Didn’t even see him sitting there, not four feet from me.

To be fair, he wore neutral safari colors head-to-toe. But I’ll tell you, I knew this reflected poorly on my ability to spot living beings in their natural habitat, which, I need not remind anyone, is the whole purpose of a safari adventure. How could I have missed this man, this full-grown man?

“Hello! I’m so sorry!” I said, overcompensating with niceties and exclamation marks, like adding sprinkles to overbaked brownies. “I’m Kelaine!”

He reached out to shake my hand, and I reached back, blushing and feeling like a tremendous dickslap.

“Apollo,” he said, smiling.

In that moment, my face lit up, and I found myself positively drunk with wonder.

“You know of Apollo?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“From mythology?” I knew the answer should carry a period, a hard stop, but I didn’t want to sound like a know-it-all.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I was named Apollo, for my grandfather—” He paused for effect, because he knows how to tell a story. “—because we both love adventure.”

If Laura and Andy were textbook Brits, this whole thing was setting up to be an honest-to-God epic in the making. A story of magic and spirit and corporeal creatures roaming freely, the kind you’d only ever imagined. An epic story I’d have to tell.

And while all the while I had thought myself a protagonist, a new one had moved in for the kill. Apollo. The man, the myth, the legend.

Apollo loaded the four of us into a riverboat the same size as a short bus, with a quiet, round man at the motor in the back. Apollo stood at the helm, facing us, and told us to keep our arms and legs inside the boat. A desperate stooge needing to be funny and validated, I asked, “What about heads?” and pretended to lean outward from the dock. Apollo laughed, amused, but then reminded me he wasn’t joking. “Crocodiles can leap six feet in the air and take you down,” he said.

For a moment, I thought he was kidding and wanted proof, maybe from Wikipedia or YouTube. But we didn’t have Internet access out here. Not just here on the boat, but here in Selous. Getting away, being remote, and disconnecting entirely were more than half the point. I tucked my body parts inside the boat and resigned to not knowing. It reminded me how gratifying and open the world feels when the answers aren’t always at your immediate disposal.

I had to remember how to imagine. How sad is that? Goddamn you, Internet!

We sputtered from the dock to different spots on the massive lake, spotting African fishing eagles and pods of angry, angry hippos. With each new animal we saw, Apollo spit out a hundred new facts. Dude knew everything, including English and Swahili.

I just sat there, taking it all in, including the relentless heat and sunshine that my body craves. Like always, I ignored everyone’s guidance and didn’t bother with sunblock, begging for the sunny seat and doing my best to land a direct beam, like a kitten napping in the afternoon. Go ahead and wince. I didn’t get a spot of sunburn.

And just like that, rain. We hadn’t even been on the lake a half hour when the storm clouds rolled in and water emptied from the clouds. The drops smashed the lake with increasing intensity, starting as polite polka dots and growing to full welts on the brown water.

Apollo handed us rain ponchos, though he didn’t take one for himself. He acted like the rain didn’t touch him, and based on what I saw, I’m not sure it ever did. He seemed to defeat the rain, which we’d see each afternoon as the heat peaked and the humidity released onto the grateful ground. He kept going without saying a word, completely unfazed by the incoming pellets.

The rains grew heavier and the lightning moved closer, and I couldn’t hold out or act tough anymore. I fussed with the poncho, finally finding the top hole and putting my head through it, struggling to find the shape so I could both cover my legs and valuables and not suffocate inside of it.

I noticed how different Apollo’s attitude was from Americans, who relish in mocking the sissies as a means for bolstering our own status. Don’t call me a hypocrite; I count myself among the guilty. It struck me how insecure we are, or should I say I am, how prone to comparison, judgment, and competition, while Apollo sat quietly confident and tough as fucking nails.

“My mother is real Maasai,” he told us. Several times. Not until two days later did we learn exactly why that makes him so proud, so strong, so aptly named after Greco-Roman deities.

He still seemed calm, but I could see his concern when he looked at us and said, “Now it’s getting serious,” and then broke into Kiswahili to ask the man napping at the motor to take us back to the dock. We could see lightning closing in on us and hear the thunder on all sides.

The crocodiles whose snouts and log-shaped bodies floated atop the water acted like they didn’t even notice the weather change. Unflappable, cocky, and defiant, which I guess is the general attitude for leaping, saw-toothed predators that lived through prehistoric times. Those guys don’t have any more fucks to give. They handed them all out in the Cretaceous period.

We quickly got to shore and sprinted to our camp’s outdoor bar, covered with an impermeable thatched roof. I’m not sure why I bother telling you it’s outdoors because literally everything is outdoors at Siwandu. The closest thing resembling a wall is made of canvas. It is a tent. For all in-tents (⛺️ pun!) and purposes, you are always outside.

As the skies attacked, we sat safely upstairs in an outdoor saloon, where Apollo had become our favorite impromptu bartender. He mixed drinks and poured me a hot tea. “Karibu sana,” he said, then parroted it back in English for the slow learners. “You are welcome.”

Now, I’m not sure about you guys, but my mom placed a high value on manners. Through repetition, intimidation, and mild threats she drilled me on the importance of minding your Ps and Qs. In my mind, there was no mistaking the sequential art of manners. I ask for the thing and say please. When you give it to me, I say thank you. Then you say you’re welcome.

That’s how it goes, right? That’s the whole exchange. I mean, that’s what I thought, too.

But in Tanzania, sometimes they’re so polite and hospitable, they even preempt your “please.”

A host leads you to your seat, but before you have a chance to sit, karibu.
A waiter pours you a drink, but before you have a chance to sip, karibu.

It’s an actual invitation – you are welcome to partake and enjoy – before you even have the chance to ask. It blew my mind, made me think about the literal meaning of language, and served as yet another example of travel opening my eyes in previously inconceivable ways. Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.

The skies continued to explode with lightning, and the rain hit the ground with such force that you could almost hear the drops bounce and land twice. The storm was still too aggressive and violent for us to go back to our tents just yet, so we continued to sit at the bar and have a chat. If you want to be a dick about it, we were trapped. But here’s what I really think happened.

You know how in general, tourism feels weird? Here you are, this foreign item in a new place, and you look at it, watch it, study it for a while, and then you go home and tell all your friends about it using plain words that would be used in a workbook when learning a new language. The food was amazing. The beaches were lovely. The art museum was beautiful. The people were nice. We enjoyed our trip. Dónde está el baño, por favor?

You pray for good weather, search for good food, and try to stay in the nicest place your budget will allow. You try to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. It’s a constructed falsity. A nice one, a pleasant one, but false nonetheless.

It’s too perfect to be real life.

You don’t often meet real people; you meet employees who are paid to “arrange” things for you – tours, day trips, airport transfers, taxis. They go out of their way to make you feel important and special. They say shit like, “good afternoon” and put Andes mints on your damn pillow. This is nice, I think to myself. I must be special. And then it all comes crashing down when I come to my senses. Hey wait a minute! Who the fuck says ‘good afternoon?’

Perhaps it’s from having grown up in New Jersey, but I raise a skeptical eyebrow to people who are professionally nice to me. In some ways, the whole concept of capital-H Hospitality fits awkwardly, is too snug, and smells like jasmine-infused bullshit. Do we have to do this phony-baloney, rooty-toot-toot, song-and-dance, dog-and-pony, hyphenated-colloquialism show? Do they have to keep me so separated like I need to be washed in the delicates cycle? Can’t I just be somewhere?

I suppose I just want to know how I fit in a new place, or how I could. I want to know if I am accepted, not in the same way a Visa or visa are accepted, but as a human person.

I want to understand whether culturally and personally, I can see myself in this new place. See myself, as in imagining myself, a common nobody walking in the streets. Also, see myself, as in my reflection staring back at me. And it’s OK if the answer is no. I just want to know the answer. Straight, no chaser. Maybe you don’t feel the same. Maybe I’m just needy.

Cut back to being trapped there in the saloon, the sky falling down like Chicken Little wasn’t just a manic conspiracy theorist. In that world of fantasy vacations, this would have been a real downer. We had just barely started our boat safari, had so much still to see out there. We were missing it. We wouldn’t get to make it up. Nature doesn’t reschedule. But that disappointment never even made it to my limbic system. And why not?

Because just like that, with the literal switch of the wind, Apollo didn’t feel like a tour guide anymore. The five of us were old friends visiting his spot, just shooting the breeze and catching up on what we’ve missed all these years.

I blew on my tea, listening to Laura and Andy tell us about London’s fox infestation, which I thought sounded rather adorable. They assured me I was wrong – foxes are nasty little buggers – but I could only picture their cute little fluffy tails whisking through the city streets. I’m not a very good listener.

Which explains how I missed the gravity of Apollo’s previous job. When he said that he had been a park ranger here in Selous, I pictured what I’m sure you all are picturing. A guy with a rigid green hat puttering around in a golf cart, clearing brush and collecting litter. Maybe, on a hard day, tending to an ambitious idiot’s broken ankle or shooing away a black bear. A gig perfect for the middle-aged nature lover in your life.

But guys. I can’t tell you how wrong I was. Being a park ranger in Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve means navigating through the park on foot. At night. Just you and a shotgun, alone with your over-active imagination. Hearing the call and response of nearby hyenas and every rustle and cracked twig in the grass. Chilling in the pitch-blackness, the smallest and slowest of all the prey out there.

And before you get too brave and comfortable, remember that the most dangerous motherfuckers out there aren’t wild animals. The animals don’t need help. They got this nature shit on lock.

Poachers, man. Many of them former soldiers from Rwanda, Uganda, and the Congo. Bad guys, man. Unfathomably bad guys who do unfathomably bad things. Guys who would kill the first or last living unicorn without a second thought. Guys who care about money and profit and power, and don’t give a single fuck about anything else. Guys too evil, stupid, and myopic to understand that they’re on the verge of wiping out the very animals that put food on their table. Irony? They’ve never even heard of it.

As a ranger, your job is to stop them. And they shoot to kill, so what’s your move?

Apollo didn’t bother adding in all that drama. He was too unflappable to start flapping. He just talked about how his mom was happy that he took a job as guide instead of being a ranger anymore.

“Why is that?” I asked, naively confusing bravery with stupidity.
“Being a guide is much safer.” That was the extent of his color commentary, for now. And we didn’t press him on it.

Instead, Apollo turned his curiosity on us and started digging. He wanted to know everything about the U.S. and UK. He wanted to know what we did and how we lived. You know that story already. It’s your life too. It’s boring and common. But not to Apollo.

He had explored so much of Tanzania, by jeep and bus, on foot and aerially, from Arusha to Selous to Dar Es Salaam. But a man like Apollo is too curious to contain. He talked passionately about saving up so that he could travel beyond Tanzania’s borders.

Apollo had big plans to see the world, to sop it all up, and learn everything he could, just like he had about Selous. Already, he was saving to buy a jeep and planned to start his own safari company.

“In the U.S., we call that hustling,” I said. “You’re a hustler.”
“Hustler,” he repeated. “I like that.”

We sat in that saloon until the sky turned still again, which happened even more suddenly than the storm had started. I don’t know about anyone else, but I wanted to stay there. I didn’t want to go back to our tent. I didn’t need dinner. I didn’t need anything else. I just needed to be somewhere.

Before sunrise, a man called through our tent with a “good morning” light enough not to capitalize or punctuate with an exclamation mark. His was the most polite wake up call you’d ever heard, as he carried freshly steeped tea and a tin of biscuit cookies into our tent to perk us up before our morning game walk.

The morning was so proper and civilized; we almost forgot that we spent the night sweating under oppressive heat in a vinyl den of brain-melting stagnant air.

Usually, I dress in dingy sweats and haphazard bright colors, you know, like how teenage boys look when they return from paintballing. But in the bush, that kind of irreverence may get you gored by a water buffalo. So I put on my most neutral colored clothes, sprayed myself with bug spray, and walked to the reception area ready for a long day of safari excursions, on foot and by jeep. There, Josh and I were set to meet up with Apollo, Laura, Andy, and as many wild animals as we could encounter.

An interesting German couple had joined us this morning. They had come with their son to Tanzania for the year, and had spent months exploring the various parks and regions of the country, just for perspective. Despite being twenty years older than all of us, they fit right in. They were funny and outgoing and jovial, disproving every generalization I wanted to make about Germans. Very disappointing.

Apollo carried a shotgun. We tried to make light of it, asking Apollo how many rounds are in there and whether we were to kill our own breakfast, but I’m not sure he understood our nervous sarcasm. He answered in earnest every time. Most demonstratively when Andy asked him if he’s a good shot.

“A very good shot,” he said with a smile. It was confident but not boastful, which is exactly how I’d want to describe the guy holding the shotgun, protecting us from territorial creatures with hooves and claws and small brains. Baller though it was, Apollo’s answer stuck me right in the sternum. I saw Andy’s big, expressive eyes open even wider, and I reflexively did the side-lip face and pulled an imaginary collar that suggests “is it hot in here?” (Trick question: it was hot everywhere).

There was something cinematic about six neophytes following a man named Apollo into the bush. We tucked closely behind him, first and foremost because we didn’t want to die from a hippo mauling, but also because Apollo’s voice didn’t carry very far. It got caught in the trees, perhaps by design, not wanting to disturb the wildlife all around us.

As we approached animal footprints, velvety Christmas mites, or hideous piles of impala shit with a three-foot radius, he explained not just what it was, but why. Later that afternoon, I poured everything I remembered into an unintelligible document in a desperate attempt to capture every bit of information Apollo gave us. I didn’t want this whole experience to simply be on loan from the library; I wanted to own it, to be able to pluck it off my shelf and recommend it to friends, to relive it whenever I felt claustrophobic and the same. I wanted to keep it.

In rereading my notes, I could almost hear Apollo’s pleasant, steady voice lifting up from the paper. The kind of voice that carries a smile and just enough of an accent to make me lean in and listen more intently. The kind of voice I’d like to read me children’s stories. With every new fact he spurted, I nodded like a sycophant. He could have told me anything, and I would have believed it.

But Apollo is too earnest, too passionate about wildlife to make things up. Besides, he didn’t have to. He could identify every species of plant and animal, and some incredible adaptation that it had evolved to survive in this extreme climate with brutal competition and predators.

Like how ants nest in the thorns of one type of acacia plant to protect themselves from being eaten. And if an impala chomps into their branch or thorn, they dispatch with a vengeance, climbing onto its face and punishing it with thousands of angry ant bites.

Or how impala and zebras like to kick it with giraffes for protection. While tall people mostly annoy me for their relative lack of coordination, poor dancing ability, and for obstructing my view at concerts and sporting events, giraffes are veritable heroes of the grazing world of Animalia. They have superior eyesight (for starters, they can perceive color); their long necks makes it easy for them to see longer distances; and they almost always travel in groups so they can survey in all directions and warn each other if a predator approaches. It’s like a alarm clock. WOO WOOOO.

And, with apologies to the avid birding community, he told us things about birds too, but I zoned out. I just can’t get into birds. I’m a good student, but even an apple-polisher like me has to draw the line somewhere.

The sun climbed higher in the sky and baked the ground beneath us. Our footsteps grew heavier, and if some other group had been tracking us, surely they would have believed we’d been hit by a tranquilizer dart. We slowed to a sweaty, overheated crawl, and our stomachs grumbled with every step.

Having just listened to the dire daily conditions of animals living in the bush, I thought it might be a little tasteless and selfish and aggrandizing to casually announce how hungry I was. We had been walking for four hours, and no one had complained. I was too stubborn, principled, and annoyingly conscious of my American privilege to be the first. I wanted it to be the Germans. Please, Germans, do us all a favor.

I fought off that brownout feeling, like when you give blood and your body slides off its chair and onto the floor where it feels cooler and you can sleep; I believe it might be called ‘passing out.’ I did, however, have my first and only angry thoughts toward our beloved Apollo, when he told us we’d have to walk another hour before getting back to camp for breakfast.

Predators be damned! I was certain that my body had already begun to eat itself from the inside out. Surely, I thought to myself, my remains will be left here for the vultures. It had been a great run, but no mortal could fight the circle of life. You know, the one that moves us all?

We walked just around a bend, into a tree-covered alcove where I thought about lying down in the shade to die of starvation or mauling, whichever took me first. But that sly pup Apollo had tricked us. There, in front of us, was an oasis. Heaven, thy name is a perfectly set breakfast table and a kitchen crew lined up and ready to cook eggs to-order. So much for my rebukes of American privilege!

We sat down together, Apollo next to the Germans while Laura, Andy, Josh, and I yuk-yukked around at the other side of the table. Between bites of biscuits and jam, and the juiciest papaya you’ve ever tasted, we got on famously.

Our energy restored by the calories and thirty minutes in the breezy shade, we walked back to camp the way I like my eggs, sunny side up.

Disclaimer: I wrote this last January but wanted to give it time to cool off, to get some distance from it, which deserves reflection and commentary in its own right.  But please know that I did not take liberties; all of this happened, and all of it in one day.  Specifically, January 29th, 2015.  How do I know?  Because I just triangulated three crucial parts of the story: (1) The Terps Men’s Basketball team lost horribly to Ohio State 80-56; (2) The episode of This American Life I reference aired on Sunday January 25th; and (3) I checked my work calendar and had an afternoon meeting with the client I reference.  Having said all of that, go on with the borophyll.

Today is much better than yesterday.  Yesterday was not so great.

At 7:15 A.M., I stood on the corner of 16th & P waiting for the light to change so I could continue with my run while a man stood two feet behind me and audibly told me what he thought of my ass and what he’d like to do to me.  Not with me — this wasn’t an invitation to dinner or the zoo — there was no consent or acceptance.  This was just his public declaration.  He didn’t even say hi first.

On the other side of the street, I watched the clock tick down, but there were still 20 seconds.  This is a long light on a prominent road.  You know, the one that leads to the White House, which I could see from where I stood.

The little red hand hadn’t even shown itself yet, which was fitting.  No one told anyone else to stop.

The man continued his soliloquy.  I stood there and took it, like I always do.  I say “always” because this isn’t rare.  Any woman can confirm this.  I pretended I didn’t hear him, which was easy because I had headphones but hard because I did hear every word.  I ignored it, applying the old schoolyard methodology of “if you ignore it, it’ll go away.”

I played it masterfully.  Paid this dude no mind.  Ignored the whole incident and didn’t mention it to anybody because this wasn’t unique.  But more importantly, because I’m tough.  Because I don’t let bullshit losers get to me.  Because I’m a strong woman who knows the world is unfair and that I have to be bigger than this.

I was minimally angry.  But where do I put it?

At 10:25 A.M., one of my colleagues posted this image in a company-wide Slack channel.

Another colleague replied, “a russian designer in hawaii. checks out.”

I cringed on every level.  Why was this woman showing herself this way, but more importantly, who the fuck cares?  What made my colleague think it was an appropriate thing to communicate?  And while I’m skeptical of the perfectly catfishy bio of a busty dreamgirl from Hawaii via Russia, I also wonder why having a nice rack disqualifies you from being talented or credible.  In my heart of hearts, I hope this woman is a fucking boss who doesn’t apologize for being hot.

It seems unlikely, but why?

At 10:44 A.M., I told my colleague that it made me cringe as a woman and his colleague, and he immediately and sincerely apologized, said point taken, and thanked me for bringing it up rather than letting it stew.  It was absolutely over it, and I felt fucking great about the interaction.  I felt like that is how we make progress together: caring and understanding each other.

It wasn’t awkward during or after that moment.  And if the day had ended there, I think I would have felt like a winner.

Then at 5:25 P.M., my favorite client — who had never shown me anything other than respect and care for who I am or what I do — went to snap a photo of what we’d drawn on a whiteboard using his iPhone, and when someone suggested he use Siri, he responded with, “I don’t trust women.”  He smiled and said just kidding, and I’m sure he was.  But let’s replace women in that joke with another minority group.

“I don’t trust Blacks.”
“I don’t trust gays.”
“I don’t trust Jews.”

Can you even imagine saying that, during business hours no less?  Sweet heavens, I’m horrified just thinking of it.  And yet, I’ve heard men I love and respect make jokes about women belonging in the kitchen.  Is it any different if it’s off the clock?

I scowled, but no one noticed.  I didn’t say anything because this is a client, and this is a client I really like.  In an instant, I weighed it against all the other interactions I’ve had with this man and realized that this was the outlier.  I still like him.  He’s still great.  He didn’t say anything about me personally, right?  Just about women at large, the group I’d been trying to distance myself from for decades by being “one of the guys.”

But then where do I put this?  This little orb of anger.  I just let it slide, right?  Because I’m tough.  Because I’m bigger than this.  Because I’m a reasonable woman who works in business.  Because I can’t let this get to me.  I Lean In, is that right?

At 6:15 P.M., I walked home, listening to this week’s This American Life Podcast, in which a woman writer, Lindy West, was trolled in awful, horrible, disgusting, inhumane ways.  People saying they don’t usually rape people as fat as she is.  Some asshole who created multiple Twitter accounts to harass her, including one impersonating her dad who had just recently died.

At 6:25 P.M., the next story started, one about “vocal fry,” uptalking, and other stereotypically female vocal patterns that enrage and annoy radio listeners.  I listened hard and couldn’t even detect what the issue was.  But apparently, it’s so grating that people write in to the show en masse, saying it ruins the credibility of the reporters, the program, the craft.  As if the content doesn’t matter.  It’s the container in which it’s transported.  The voice.

This had never been an issue for me.  My voice is clear as a bell, medium-pitched, and doesn’t drift off.  But still, this animosity exists and I never even thought about it.  When I open my mouth and say words, people are actively but subconsciously tracking whether my voice, tone, or affectation makes it worthwhile to listen to me.  As if it might be better to just stay quiet, no matter what I have to say.  So, where do I put this again?

By 8:00 P.M., it was halftime and the Terps were losing terribly.  I was in a really bad, completely irrational emotional state.  This is my brain on sports.

Josh and I started talking about This American Life because he wanted to tell me how sexist the story about vocal fry was.  He was so offended and pissed off about it.  We agreed loudly in the way that someone from New England and someone from New Jersey communicate best.  I loved that he didn’t know he was a feminist.  We agreed so fast that the Terps hadn’t even come back out from the locker room.

With the remaining ten minutes of halftime, we turned to the story of internet trolls going after Lindy West.  This was when Josh — who had made me dinner so I could pay full attention to the game because he “felt like he hadn’t made dinner in a while,” and who bought me a supply of apples when he “thought I was running out” because he is thoughtful and considerate and a good fucking listener  — said he found the woman annoying.

He explained that if you’re a writer in the public space, you need to expect trolls and negative comments.  You don’t even have to read their comments.  You can ignore them.  You have to be tough.  You have to let it slide.  You can’t engage with them.

Of course, this is when I yelled at him that I didn’t think he could ever possibly understand.  I stopped the conversation.  I gave up.  I didn’t explain.  I didn’t know what to say and wished Atticus Finch could come tell him to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.  Or run a mile.  Or run a few miles and then see how sick, how despondent, how fucking angry it makes you when you feel like you can’t do anything but “let it slide” when a street troll tells you he’s going to put his fingers inside you.

I wasn’t actually angry at him, but I was still angry.  I thought he couldn’t possibly understand where I was coming from, so I just stopped talking about it.

But where should I put this?  Any of this?  I didn’t know, so I just shoved it in a box and brought it with me to bed.

I got up this morning and ran again, obviously, because I’m tough.  Earlier and longer than usual, because I’m tough.  I didn’t know I brought the box with me, but I did.  I carried it with me, heavy in my heart and on my mind until I opened it on mile 11 and started unpacking the whole thing.

See, it’s not the single incident.  It’s the full story.

It’s the same thing that happened with Hollaback’s controversial but eye-opening street harassment video.

It’s not the single dude calling us beautiful or baby, or telling us to smile. It’s that the shitheads and the people we care about may think our voices are grating, or joke that they don’t trust our gender, or imply that if we have a nice rack we probably don’t have anything else. They do it casually, one at a time, until we can’t tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

It’s that it happens all day, everyday.  Without our consent.

It’s that people tell us to “ignore it” and “let it slide” but that doesn’t mean the behavior stops.  It just means that we carry it with us.  Which makes it particularly ironic and infuriating when people tell women to lighten up.

It’s mostly that we’re fucking angry that we have no place to put all this shit.  And we shouldn’t have to carry it because you shouldn’t have put it on us in the first place.