Sandwich

This post is less about Japan, and more about the journey. But so much of that journey has been wholly realized here that I still feel it to be appropriate to post.

I vividly remember the moment I left my high school self, the last remnants of my boyhood, behind.

It was my first year of college. I commuted that year. Every morning, I'd barrel down the stairs and eat an egg sandwich that my mother would make for me. A simple sandwich, just two pieces of wheat toast, a fried egg, and some mustard. I twirled at the end of the staircase and met my mother's eyes, and I felt her realize that I wasn't her boy anymore. I was a man now, a young man taking his first steps outside of home, getting ready for the real world.

And life did change from that day forward. College was very different from high school. I became a new person, the world and people I knew were different, and what I was capable of and expected to do was different.

It's hard to nail down why I felt such a metaphysical thing so strongly, and in such a bizarre, benign moment in my life. But I did. I definitely did, and it wouldn't be the first time, either. Getting that egg sandwich was the first in a series of definitively ordinary moments that would mark huge changes in life.

Another moment I can remember, where I felt the doors of a chapter in my life close behind me, was when literal doors closed behind me. We had a "booze cruise" at the end of my senior year in college. We got on a cruise ship with an open bar and went cruising around New York harbor. It was pretty fun, from what I can remember. We got on the bus to go home, and when I left the bus, and those doors closed behind me, I felt my college self die.

That chapter had ended. No more erratically scheduled classes, giving me free time in the middle of the day or allowing me to get them all over with in the morning if I wanted to. No more classes, period. No more restaurant or bar hopping with my college friends, that's for sure.

I never saw some of those friends again after that.

Like the sandwich before them, the doors on the bus became a landmark for what was old and what was new.

Almost immediately after getting my B.A. in English, I ended up working food service at the local supermarket, cleaning greasy chicken skin off of the bottom of a rotisserie machine, emptying chicken grease out back, and making sandwiches. I had gone from Dickens to chickens. In the blink of an eye, life was again different, and I was once again expected to do different things.

I certainly wasn't expecting to do those things.

I will now hate rotisserie chicken on mere principle for the rest of my life.

Life would be full of moments like this, going forward. A party at grad school, talking with people in my field and eating crackers and cheese. Another tiny little sandwich marked another shift in my life. Shortly after this, I found myself at academic conferences. Student teaching. Writing a thesis, or a "special project" as they called it in the Education field. Doing bigger and heavier things than I had before. Things that bigger and more well adjusted people were supposed to do, not me.

I guess I have a very strange metaphysical connection to sandwiches. But I digress.

I felt it again when I got the acceptance letter to JET. At this point, I thought I was ready for these moments of change. I knew it would be a big experience. I knew it would be life-altering.

I wasn't ready. I don't think anyone ever is. And we're lucky if the moments that mark these shifts in our status quos are as well telegraphed as an acceptance letter. Most of the time they're stupid little things like doors or sandwiches.

I felt it again signing my contract to go home in the summer. I don't know what's ahead of me, and this time I know to let go of any pretense that I'll be ready for it, but I know that the moment has passed. I felt it looking at a sign that said "lifelong learning office," hanging above the cubicles at the board of education.

That time it was startlingly well telegraphed. I'll be lucky if I ever get another moment as blatant as that.

Things are shifting again. As they will until the end. Lifelong learning, eh? I suppose.

Ever since I went to grab that sandwich, the world has felt alien. Every landmark moment since that sandwich has felt progressively more alien. I assume it will be like this for the rest of life.

The adult world is a weird place. There is some comfort in knowing that it will stay weird, and change in how exactly it is weird. It's even kind of exciting, knowing that another level of weird waits around the corner all the time.

I personally believe in an afterlife, in a heaven, and part of the reason I do is because there has to be a place that feels like home, away from all this weirdness and awkwardness and constant transition.

But that's another story. Recognizing the weirdness is the point, here. Life is weird. Weird enough that a sandwich can become a deeply metaphorical experience. And the sooner you embrace that, the better. You don't need to move halfway across the world to realize that.

It does help, though.