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Pondering the Imponderables

The Source

The old fellow was sitting on the deck of a Caribbean cruise ship. I’d seen him on the boat for the past few days and he seemed a lonely sort of fellow so I took a deck chair beside him. He told me that he was from New Jersey and ever since his wife died several years ago, he’d tried to find a bit of solace by traveling. I asked him how it was working, and he replied, “So-so. It helps, but there’s loneliness even when you’re in a crowd. Sometimes you don’t feel quite so lonesome when you’re by yourself and not reminded of that fact that you’re alone.” He was a pretty cool old guy. I then asked him how he’d spent his morning. He took a drag off an especially sweet-smelling cigar and said, “Pondering the imponderable.” Huh? “Summer’s a good time to sit back and try to figure out the things that have puzzled you all winter. I find that sitting in the open air with a good cigar in June is a great time to figure things out.” I asked him what he was trying to figure out and he gave me a short list including the economy, how to achieve world peace, why his New Jersey neighbors let their grass get so tall before mowing, and how often he should submit to a prostate exam.” An interesting bag of paradoxes. I had to catch a tour that morning and excused myself, promising to meet with him again, but the size of the Carnival boat caused me to lose him in the crowds. Too bad. He was one of those rare travelers who only talked about himself when asked. But the experience did spur me to come up with a list of my own imponderables as summer rolls in. …things that I just can’t seem to get figured out during the winter. Like……. My county, Cass, sends out tax forms with a return envelope that is so tiny that you must bend both the tax bill and your check to return them. They’d done this for years. Why is that? It’s imponderable, man. President Obama only sends me “personal” emails every four years. Doesn’t he like me the other three? Imponderable. Some fast food places ask if you want a small, medium or large drink, then offer free refills. What sort of idiot would ever order a medium or large? I don’t think it’s my imagination. The size of a traveler’s suitcase is in direct inverse proportion to her size. The tiniest little old ladies seem to be pulling the largest bags. Do they have their own private gigolos tucked away inside their Samsonite? I know that weather is a factor, but is there a reason that the road construction season is timed to exactly coincide with the heaviest travel time? And is it true that the orange construction cone has become the new state tree of Illinois? Those folks whom you see the mall or grocery store…the ones who have been blessed with a corpulent shape but who insist on wearing clothing that fails to cover the required acreage….Do they have no mirrors at home? I dropped my vest by a one-hour dry cleaner. They told me it would be done in three days. The imponderable just became maddening. When I walk into a restaurant alone and the hostess looks so disappointed or even disgusted when she says, “Just one?” should I apologize? True story: a café in the Detroit airport….When the gal greeted me with her disapproving “Just one?” I told her, “My rest of my party just crashed and they’re all dead.” I thought I’d shock her out of her numbed stupor. Instead she said, “So you’ll be eating alone?” Imponderable. Two weeks ago I was shepherding a group of our boat passengers to ticket stand where folks were in line to ride to the top of the St. Louis Arch. The fellow in the ticket kiosk said, “You folks going up?” Do they have cars that go sideways? And since summer’s here, I’d might as well bring it up again….How can anyone who’s ever eaten a fresh garden tomato manage to stomach those plastic things they serve in most restaurants? I wish I could have found the little man from New Jersey later on the cruise, since I was anxious to learn what conclusions his pondering had produced. He seemed wise enough to have figured out a few things, and I did want to ask him what brand of cigars he smoked.