Today, my mother’s usual (and chronic) lateness led me to stomp off to the hotel breakfast alone, which, although I’m sure appeared pathetic to the average person, seemed perfectly fine to me as I was still half asleep (at 11:00 am).
Anyway, I think that this one waiter felt kind of bad for me, so he came out to chat since there was no one else who needed to be seated anyway. We got to chatting, and the 21 years old double major in Drama and Business turned out to be a New Orleans native.
My annoying self: “Wow! That’s so cool! Man, it must be so fun to live here. Do you go out on Bourbon a lot?”
Him (names have been forgotten): “Na, not really. It was fun when I was younger, when I had to pay a 20 to get into one of the clubs. But now it’s just like… I’ve already done it. It’s boring.”
WHAT? NEW ORLEANS BORING? was my first thought. But, when I thought about it, we all feel this way, like where we are has become too stale, whether we live in Paris or Sydney or a small tow in New Jersey.
When I moved to my current town, it actually wasn’t so bad. We drove around the dark streets at night, standing in fields and stargazing. We built forts in the backyard next to our bonfires. We swam in the neighbor’s pool till we pruned, then crept home in a spook. Then, we did it all again the next day.
But it seems to me like no matter where you live, you reach a point that, for many reasons, the romanticism fades away and cabin fever takes over from the outside in. Who knows, maybe one day that kid will come back to NOLA and I’ll go back to my mountain town. Or maybe, he will move far away and never even call. Who knows.
Life Aboard the Traveling Circus 