I Feel Lighter Than A Feather

SFcam: 2012: Part Fifteen
(May 6, 2012)

Among other things, my experience in Washington DC and New York City proved to be an ironic foreshadowing of events that would occur very soon in my life. For better or worse, my eighth grade school trip would break down the barriers of mystery and imagination that surrounded some of the country's most prominent regions and leave a basket of memories forever lodged in my cranium.

I'll begin this collection of tales by letting you in on a little secret: I'm a horrible sleeper. Not just in bed, though naps during the day are nearly impossible unless I'm sick. Trains, planes, automobiles, you name it and I've probably tried to doze off in it. So when I learned to my delight that our class trip to DC would be a red-eye, I nailed myself to the seat and hoped for the best.

That may or may not have been the White House a few photographs ago. It's an interesting phenomenon when you've glanced over the same iconic image hundreds of times in your mind and when you really get to see what it's all about, the first thing that comes to your mind is "wow, that is way smaller than I thought." That would be my description of the White House. Not only did the building look smaller, so did the lawn, which I was told had been angled for Secret Service agents to lay in ditches unnoticed in case some lunatic tried to climb the gate.

More notable was an unspecific aviator museum nearby. I can't remember its name for the life of me, but I do remember a massive drone that hung somewhere towards the front of the exhibit. Again, my first reaction was "wow, that is way smaller than I thought." Of course, my second thought was "I wonder how much collateral damage that thing has racked up?"

I think it was at this point that I began to feel a funny sensation in my head. As I took a gander at the block pyramid and the tin tree, I thought maybe I was having an existential crisis. Unfortunately, it was my blood pressure or something along those lines because I became very faint.

It would be a good time to mention that I never got any sleep on that plane trip. In all technicality, I had gone two full days without rest. It hadn't really occurred to me that I was experiencing sleep deprivation, but I'd taken my fair share of dizzy pills and I knew what it felt like to pass out. I was more curious as to why I didn't feel light-headed so much as exhausted to the point of being removed from reality. I had missed the obvious conclusion that I was half-awake. At the Vietnam and Korean War Monument, I sat on the benched and slowly drifted from consciousness before being abruptly awakened and dragged to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. And no amount of head injury could keep me from capturing its splendor. Of course, I did plop on the lawn the second I was finished.