The only time I have ever traveled out of this country was to go to Toronto, Canada for my senior trip in High School - 25 years ago. I do hope that our trip to the Toronto area isn't my last trip out of the country. I would love to visit as many countries, cuisines, customs, as possible. Mr. Mark Twain wrote:
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
Following an unfortunate set of events, I had to move from Quincy, IL to Payson, IL during my senior year of high school. Technically, I don't really have a senior class. I moved in November of 1985, and graduated 6 months later, in May of 1986. I left the class that I had grown up with, spending 3.5 years of my 4 high school years with these individuals, before moving to a total group of strangers 6 months before graduating with them. In a manner of speaking, since I left the class that I grew up with (and I couldn't stand many of those 700 individuals, either!), and I joined the Class of 1986 - Payson Seymour High School in their last 6 months, they didn't know me very well, and I really wasn't a part of that crowd, either.
Even though I am a hustler and bustler, I wouldn't consider the atmosphere in Quincy, IL to be "Hustling and Bustling", but the change to a quieter atmosphere was, at least temporarily, a welcome respite.
I had nothing in common with my new class. I went from a graduating class of 700 students to a graduating class of 43! Through thick or thin, 99% of those 43 students had a close relationship. Their school (Payson Seymour High School) was very small - one hallway, really, and these kids grew up together being a very close group. I was an outsider, indeed.
Not long after my move, my new class started some of their fund raising events for the senior year to fund the senior trip. They had already work hard in their freshman, sophomore and junior years, and had banked the money that they made in the previous years. Since I was not a part of this particular class when they started the fund raisers in their freshman years, many of the seniors were debating whether I could go on the trip with them, or if I would have to stay home.
God love her, the senior class president, Leigh Ann Maple, was one of the few people in that class that actually liked me. At a class meeting, she made a deal with the remaining students in the senior class:
"If Michael sells more candy bars and more pizzas than all of you, will you let him go on the senior trip with us?" They voted, "Yes", thinking that I could never pull it off. As is often said, "The rest is history." I sold more candy bars and more pizzas than any other student ever had - and that includes the previous 3 years!
Needless to say, I was allowed to go on the senior trip.
I did no harm to these individuals. You know how teenagers are, and since this was a tight, relatively closed, small community, they didn't seem to need any more ammunition, other than the fact that I was a stranger, to more or less shun me. Even though I had a **long** way to go, I was starting to become the "Michael" that you all know and love today! he he he
Translated: "I grew a set!" I realized that this was as much my world as it is anybody else's, and I staked my claim.
We were 10 miles out of Niagara Falls, NY, and I thought it had started to rain. I was sitting immediately behind the bus driver. I made the comment that I didn't want rain to spoil our view of the falls, and the activities that we had planned for the remainder of that day, and the following day. The bus driver reassured me that he drives that route quite often, and the 'rain' that we were experiencing was droplets of water that was blowing downwind from the falls - 10 miles away! I know, I know....!!! I am so easily amused! I thought that was fascinating.
As an 18 yr. old who hadn't traveled much, I wasn't aware of how iconic this view of Niagara Falls was, until a few years after I took the picture:
We had traveled overnight and (uncomfortably!) slept on the bus en route, so we wouldn't waste any time traveling. We repeated that feat on the trip back home. I slept on the floor of the bus, under 3 seats of students sleeping above me! Today, I don't think a human body would fit under coach seats.
When we arrived at the Ramada Hotel on Niagara Falls, NY, and I went to my assigned room.
This time period was well before digital cameras and smart phones. Actually, this was the first time I had taken a picture with a camera. There was no focus or zoom - it was a basic, cheap film camera.
To this very day, I can't hear the song "Live To Tell" by Madonna without being taken back immediately to that hotel that overlooks Niagara Falls. When I was on my senior trip - in 1986! I walked into the hotel room, put my luggage down, opened the entertainment center doors, pushed "ON", and walked over to the windows and pulled back the curtains. My room had a direct. I was looking down on Niagara Falls. That was the first time I heard the song, and I was experiencing a memorable view that I will never forget.
"Live To Tell" - Madonna:
This was the view from my window:
We were allowed to go explore the tourist / shopping district on our own for the remainder of the day, I toured every tourist sight that I could tackle before our curfew: Wax Museums, the functional Floral Clock, and in the evening, the breath taking million watt show on the falls. We had our umbrellas, and we were standing by the fence, marveling at a great combination of the efforts of human ingenuity and Mother Nature - the fabulous light show at Niagara Falls.
The next day, we boarded the charter bus to go 80 miles around the western end of Lake Erie, and on to Toronto for a couple days. I love to plan my vacations, and I hate doing things on a 'whim', impulsive, or spur-of-the-moment, for this very reason. When we reached Toronto, we saw this castle on a hill. Our chaperons correctly decided that it would be a good idea for this class of mostly farm boys and girls to get *some* culture, and since we arrived in Toronto a bit earlier in the day than we had planned, we stopped by this castle to see if we could get in a quick tour. The castle had been booked for the day, and they could not squeeze in one more tour.
The front door of the castle:
We did have the opportunity to get off the bus, and take a few pictures before proceeding to Canada's Wonderland (Canada's Premier Themed Amusement Park) for the day:
For more information on Canadas Wonderland:
http://www.canadaswonderland.com/
This theme park is really themed. The entire park is done in a Fantasy Medieval theme, with turreted castles, serfs, kings, lords and ladies, and as more 'serving wenches" than you could throw a dinner roll at! Hey! We were required to call our waitresses 'serving wenches', as they do at Excalibur in Las Vegas, or the Ye Royal Dump dinner theatres!
We also took a tour of the then-tallest free standing structure in the world, the CN Tower. It has been surpassed by a few structures since 1986, but it remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere, the signature icon of Toronto's skyline, and a symbol of Canada, attracting more than two million international visitors annually.
As long as I live, I will never forget the looks on the faces of the big, strapping, tobacco-spitting acrophobic (fear of heights) boys when they stepped off the elevators to the FIRST viewing platform. Trust me when I tell you: They wouldn't pull themselves off the wall! I looked at the tour guide, and asked her, "How do we handle this situation?" I am 5'4", and she was a full head shorter than me. She smiled wryly at me, and said, "I have to do this every day, several times a day." She grabbed both boys by the front of their shirts, one in each hand, and shoved them both back into the open elevator. She pushed the "Door Closed" button, followed by "1st floor", smiled again at me, turned on one heel - and walked off!
I need to mention that the thin strip you see going up the outside of the needle-like shaft is the elevator shaft. If you want to get to the top, you go in a glass elevator that goes 65 MPH - 147 floors, or 1,815 feet! I loved every bit of it! I think the butch boys honestly crapped their pants.
Info on the CN Tower:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower
We had a busy schedule, and were given specific instructions to meet our chaperons back at the bus at 5:00PM. Our next stop was the hotel for a quick change into our evening formal attire, then on to a production of "Kiss Me Kate / The Taming of a Shrew" at a dinner theatre. Mind you, most of these people just stepped off a farm, and had no idea how to behave in a formal setting. During my upbringing, I was never taken into a formal setting from the time of my birth until I officially moved out of the house and went on my own.
I was raised in what I now believe was a faux-religious setting. They were pretending to be religious people, but hindsight is always 20 / 20, and I now know better. Our family never had a television in the home until I moved out of the house and got my own. We were not supposed to listen to the radio, except to catch the news. We could not go to movie (or any other type!) of theatres, men could not have facial hair or long hair, and women could not cut their hair, wear make up, have pierced ears, and had to wear 3/4 length dresses at all times (no shorts allowed for either sex , and no pants, slacks, jeans, etc, for the ladies! They had to wear dresses at all times!)
Segway: Can somebody tell me how wearing make up (or a mustache on a man!) is going to condem them to hell? I'm thinking those self-imposed limitations had little to do with religion - and a lot to do with control! In the words of the immortal Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls, "But, I digress!"
Anywho, I had no role models, I lived in the country with little or no resources to the outside world. However, I was / am intelligent enough to figure it out on my own: "There HAS to be more to life than this, and even though there are a **lot**, and I do mean a **lot** of Hoosiers out there, there has to be somebody on this planet with a sense of style, decorum and class. I'm not talking about snot or snoot. Nobody needs those people, and nobody likes those people. Take Molly Brown from the Titanic (Margaret Brown, actually - She never knew the name "Molly Brown" during her life time, but once again - I digress). This woman was born in Hannibal, MO - my home town. She traveled west, and married rich. VERY rich.
She was born with no money, married rich, lived rich - and died in New York. She had money - she had class, but she was not a snoot. It is possible to do both.
For this evening at the Dinner Theatre, I was dressed in a white-on-white pin stripped double-breasted Don Johnson-style jacket, a dark gray shirt, a PINK bow tie, and gray shoes to match the shirt. I had huge Hal & Oates hair to match! Since the year was 1986, I was dressed to the '9's. Not a blemish and not a hair out of place! In the middle of the first act, I had enough of the verbal crap being hurled by our group at the cast of this play, and I was on my feet. The chaperons just stared at me - they didn't know what to do, and I believe they were embarrassed because I was doing the job that they should have been doing. I yelled, "Look, you tasteless hoosiers! We are guests in this place, and these people deserve respect, dignity, and your undivided attention. They do NOT deserve the gay slurs and rude catcalls that are spewing from your over-stuffed mouths! Now sit there, and shut the fuck up, and if you can't manage to do that, then get the fuck out!" And I pointed in the direction of the door, in case their ate-up minds forgot the way they came in. Mouths flew open, and I never heard a peep from those 42 individuals for the remainder of the time we were there. As a reward for my efforts, during intermission, the cast of the play brought me an extra dessert (REAL French Vanilla Ice Cream with maraschino cherries and black walnuts, and as much champagne as I wanted for the evening! The drinking age in Canada is 18 - and I had just turned 19 two weeks before our trip.
After a much-quieter-than-normal bus ride to our hotel for the evening, and a restless night with snoring individuals that I barely new, we had one more day of adventure left before we had to make the nighttime trek back to Payson, IL. As a part of our senior trip, we were required to visit at least one educational venue. The venue that was chosen for us was the Ontario Science Center, located in Toronto. The St. Louis Science Center is one of jewels in St. Louis' crown, but at 500,000 square feet, the Ontario Science Center is many times larger than the St. Louis Science Center. We spent 8 hours in this facility, and only covered 2/3 of it.
This is a sculpture in the Science Center that displays how much food a family of 4 eats in 1 year. (Panoramics weren't available back then - and I was using an old, cheap film camera:
I do have one question, though:
1) Why did the 'friends' that I was with not warn me that I had walked into a rope-off section of the Science Center? I had walked probably 30 - 50 feet into this section before I bumped into a legendary movie star!
This was not to be our last run-in with Sophia. As luck would have it, several hours later, we were boarding our bus to begin the journey back to the hills. As our bus pulled away from the curb, the driver had to go around a car that was parked in front of our bus before he could continue on to the exit of the Science Center parking lot. As luck would have it, I was sitting on the correct side of the bus this time. The car that our bus driver had to go around was Sophia Loren's limousine. She was standing at the door of the limmo, smiling and waving as our bus went around her car. Several students were looking on the side of the limousine to see if it had the name of the hotel she was staying written on it, but during the course of the conversation I had with Sophia, she told me that she did not use hotel limos, but that she had her own limo flown in each time she traveled.
That, my friends, was the day I (literally!) ran into Sophia Loren.
(I have more pictures, and more memories of this trip, but I will promise you that I won't prolong your suffering. My memory is still firing on all pistons, after 25 yrs, I would say!)
- Michael
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
Following an unfortunate set of events, I had to move from Quincy, IL to Payson, IL during my senior year of high school. Technically, I don't really have a senior class. I moved in November of 1985, and graduated 6 months later, in May of 1986. I left the class that I had grown up with, spending 3.5 years of my 4 high school years with these individuals, before moving to a total group of strangers 6 months before graduating with them. In a manner of speaking, since I left the class that I grew up with (and I couldn't stand many of those 700 individuals, either!), and I joined the Class of 1986 - Payson Seymour High School in their last 6 months, they didn't know me very well, and I really wasn't a part of that crowd, either.
Even though I am a hustler and bustler, I wouldn't consider the atmosphere in Quincy, IL to be "Hustling and Bustling", but the change to a quieter atmosphere was, at least temporarily, a welcome respite.
I had nothing in common with my new class. I went from a graduating class of 700 students to a graduating class of 43! Through thick or thin, 99% of those 43 students had a close relationship. Their school (Payson Seymour High School) was very small - one hallway, really, and these kids grew up together being a very close group. I was an outsider, indeed.
Not long after my move, my new class started some of their fund raising events for the senior year to fund the senior trip. They had already work hard in their freshman, sophomore and junior years, and had banked the money that they made in the previous years. Since I was not a part of this particular class when they started the fund raisers in their freshman years, many of the seniors were debating whether I could go on the trip with them, or if I would have to stay home.
God love her, the senior class president, Leigh Ann Maple, was one of the few people in that class that actually liked me. At a class meeting, she made a deal with the remaining students in the senior class:
"If Michael sells more candy bars and more pizzas than all of you, will you let him go on the senior trip with us?" They voted, "Yes", thinking that I could never pull it off. As is often said, "The rest is history." I sold more candy bars and more pizzas than any other student ever had - and that includes the previous 3 years!
Needless to say, I was allowed to go on the senior trip.
I did no harm to these individuals. You know how teenagers are, and since this was a tight, relatively closed, small community, they didn't seem to need any more ammunition, other than the fact that I was a stranger, to more or less shun me. Even though I had a **long** way to go, I was starting to become the "Michael" that you all know and love today! he he he
Translated: "I grew a set!" I realized that this was as much my world as it is anybody else's, and I staked my claim.
THE BIG TRIP
(Our tour bus, from Capitol tours - in the parking lot at
Payson Semour Hight School - May 25, 1986)
We were scheduled to leave Payson, IL on May 25 on a charter bus, and travel 870 miles to Niagara Falls, NY, and then another 81 miles to Toronto, ON, before returning home on May 30, and graduating May 31, 1986.We were 10 miles out of Niagara Falls, NY, and I thought it had started to rain. I was sitting immediately behind the bus driver. I made the comment that I didn't want rain to spoil our view of the falls, and the activities that we had planned for the remainder of that day, and the following day. The bus driver reassured me that he drives that route quite often, and the 'rain' that we were experiencing was droplets of water that was blowing downwind from the falls - 10 miles away! I know, I know....!!! I am so easily amused! I thought that was fascinating.
As an 18 yr. old who hadn't traveled much, I wasn't aware of how iconic this view of Niagara Falls was, until a few years after I took the picture:
We had traveled overnight and (uncomfortably!) slept on the bus en route, so we wouldn't waste any time traveling. We repeated that feat on the trip back home. I slept on the floor of the bus, under 3 seats of students sleeping above me! Today, I don't think a human body would fit under coach seats.
When we arrived at the Ramada Hotel on Niagara Falls, NY, and I went to my assigned room.
This time period was well before digital cameras and smart phones. Actually, this was the first time I had taken a picture with a camera. There was no focus or zoom - it was a basic, cheap film camera.
To this very day, I can't hear the song "Live To Tell" by Madonna without being taken back immediately to that hotel that overlooks Niagara Falls. When I was on my senior trip - in 1986! I walked into the hotel room, put my luggage down, opened the entertainment center doors, pushed "ON", and walked over to the windows and pulled back the curtains. My room had a direct. I was looking down on Niagara Falls. That was the first time I heard the song, and I was experiencing a memorable view that I will never forget.
"Live To Tell" - Madonna:
This was the view from my window:
We were allowed to go explore the tourist / shopping district on our own for the remainder of the day, I toured every tourist sight that I could tackle before our curfew: Wax Museums, the functional Floral Clock, and in the evening, the breath taking million watt show on the falls. We had our umbrellas, and we were standing by the fence, marveling at a great combination of the efforts of human ingenuity and Mother Nature - the fabulous light show at Niagara Falls.
(Half of my class in front of the functioning Floral Clock.
Get a load of those '80's fashion statements, and a shot of the boys in the back row...
they will make another appearance in this blog)
The next day, we boarded the charter bus to go 80 miles around the western end of Lake Erie, and on to Toronto for a couple days. I love to plan my vacations, and I hate doing things on a 'whim', impulsive, or spur-of-the-moment, for this very reason. When we reached Toronto, we saw this castle on a hill. Our chaperons correctly decided that it would be a good idea for this class of mostly farm boys and girls to get *some* culture, and since we arrived in Toronto a bit earlier in the day than we had planned, we stopped by this castle to see if we could get in a quick tour. The castle had been booked for the day, and they could not squeeze in one more tour.
The front door of the castle:
( Daddy, I'm home!)
For more information on Canadas Wonderland:
http://www.canadaswonderland.com/
(Main Entrance - Wonderland, Canada)
This theme park is really themed. The entire park is done in a Fantasy Medieval theme, with turreted castles, serfs, kings, lords and ladies, and as more 'serving wenches" than you could throw a dinner roll at! Hey! We were required to call our waitresses 'serving wenches', as they do at Excalibur in Las Vegas, or the Ye Royal Dump dinner theatres!
We also took a tour of the then-tallest free standing structure in the world, the CN Tower. It has been surpassed by a few structures since 1986, but it remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere, the signature icon of Toronto's skyline, and a symbol of Canada, attracting more than two million international visitors annually.
As long as I live, I will never forget the looks on the faces of the big, strapping, tobacco-spitting acrophobic (fear of heights) boys when they stepped off the elevators to the FIRST viewing platform. Trust me when I tell you: They wouldn't pull themselves off the wall! I looked at the tour guide, and asked her, "How do we handle this situation?" I am 5'4", and she was a full head shorter than me. She smiled wryly at me, and said, "I have to do this every day, several times a day." She grabbed both boys by the front of their shirts, one in each hand, and shoved them both back into the open elevator. She pushed the "Door Closed" button, followed by "1st floor", smiled again at me, turned on one heel - and walked off!
I need to mention that the thin strip you see going up the outside of the needle-like shaft is the elevator shaft. If you want to get to the top, you go in a glass elevator that goes 65 MPH - 147 floors, or 1,815 feet! I loved every bit of it! I think the butch boys honestly crapped their pants.
Info on the CN Tower:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower
(Most folk go to the big pod and do not go any higher...
a few braver and adventuresome
(myself being in that number)
went on to the smaller observation tower quite a distance above the main pod)
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW(S) !?!
We had a busy schedule, and were given specific instructions to meet our chaperons back at the bus at 5:00PM. Our next stop was the hotel for a quick change into our evening formal attire, then on to a production of "Kiss Me Kate / The Taming of a Shrew" at a dinner theatre. Mind you, most of these people just stepped off a farm, and had no idea how to behave in a formal setting. During my upbringing, I was never taken into a formal setting from the time of my birth until I officially moved out of the house and went on my own.
I was raised in what I now believe was a faux-religious setting. They were pretending to be religious people, but hindsight is always 20 / 20, and I now know better. Our family never had a television in the home until I moved out of the house and got my own. We were not supposed to listen to the radio, except to catch the news. We could not go to movie (or any other type!) of theatres, men could not have facial hair or long hair, and women could not cut their hair, wear make up, have pierced ears, and had to wear 3/4 length dresses at all times (no shorts allowed for either sex , and no pants, slacks, jeans, etc, for the ladies! They had to wear dresses at all times!)
Segway: Can somebody tell me how wearing make up (or a mustache on a man!) is going to condem them to hell? I'm thinking those self-imposed limitations had little to do with religion - and a lot to do with control! In the words of the immortal Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls, "But, I digress!"
Anywho, I had no role models, I lived in the country with little or no resources to the outside world. However, I was / am intelligent enough to figure it out on my own: "There HAS to be more to life than this, and even though there are a **lot**, and I do mean a **lot** of Hoosiers out there, there has to be somebody on this planet with a sense of style, decorum and class. I'm not talking about snot or snoot. Nobody needs those people, and nobody likes those people. Take Molly Brown from the Titanic (Margaret Brown, actually - She never knew the name "Molly Brown" during her life time, but once again - I digress). This woman was born in Hannibal, MO - my home town. She traveled west, and married rich. VERY rich.
She was born with no money, married rich, lived rich - and died in New York. She had money - she had class, but she was not a snoot. It is possible to do both.
Margaret Brown (right) giving Captain Arthur Henry Rostron an award for his service in the rescue of Titanic's surviving passengers.
Back to our trip, the the misbehaving hillbillies that I was traveling with. We were watching a live production of "Kiss Me Kate" in a smaller dinner theatre. Although the building was not tiny, it was a close, intimate setting when compared to larger theatre venues. It was of no concern to myself, but the vast majority of the men in this production were gay. This small detail did not go unnoticed by the "Good Ole Boys" with a piece of straw stuck between the gap in there front teeth. Halfway through the first act, most of the fine young men in my group proceeded to make unnecessary and rude *loud* cat calls at the males in the play. I sat there and was doing my best to mind my own business, but handling matters in that manner never works out well for me. I had consumed as much of their rancid behavior as I could stomach, and I jumped up from my seat, and slammed down my empty water glass to get their attention. Keep in mind that there was a play taking place less than 10 feet from our table - a table with 43 hillbillies that obviously 'don't get out much'.
Does anybody remember the Chess King clothing retailers that had a spot in most malls in the 1980's? I was a very regular costumer of this store, and I knew the managers of the local Chess King store in the Quincy (IL) Mall, and they would reserve any size 27" pants and small shirts, jackets, for me until I came in to look at them. I knew when they got their shipments in - on Tuesday! - and I would call them if I was not planning on making a purchase at that time, so they would release the merchandise that they had on hold for me back to the sales floor.
For this dinner theatre event, we were required to dress in formal attire. Along the same line of thought as, "You should never cook a dish for the first time for a large holiday gathering of your entire family: You should practice it several times before presenting it a group of people", the same goes for dressing sharp. It doesn't take the Tim Gunn's of the world to be able to look at someone that is trying to dress sharp (but they don't do it too often - if ever!), and say to yourself, "OK, baby. I know you are trying your best at this moment to look good for this occasion, but you really need to practice wearing make up more than just this once before you leave the house!" Or... (you should have seen the Good Ole Boy crew trying to look sharp!) Many of the young men in our group were not small people - they were big ole country boys with big ole country boy bellies! Some of them wore dress shirts that were *much* too tight, to match the dress pants that were high-waters, and a whole herd of camels didn't have anything on them, if you know what I mean! They were wearing poorly tied neck ties that were too short, which was demonstrated by the fact that the tip of the tie didn't go anywhere near their bellies, and the tip of it barely passed their breast flaps! (Translated: they were much too short!)
By some miracle - and I mean that in all seriousness - I somehow had periscope vision during my upbringing, and I could see a much bigger, more beautiful world than the one that I was currently trapped in. I knew that some way, some how, I would get the hell out of there, and I was going to experience as much of the variety of life in this world as I could while I was still on the surface of the planet.
For this evening at the Dinner Theatre, I was dressed in a white-on-white pin stripped double-breasted Don Johnson-style jacket, a dark gray shirt, a PINK bow tie, and gray shoes to match the shirt. I had huge Hal & Oates hair to match! Since the year was 1986, I was dressed to the '9's. Not a blemish and not a hair out of place! In the middle of the first act, I had enough of the verbal crap being hurled by our group at the cast of this play, and I was on my feet. The chaperons just stared at me - they didn't know what to do, and I believe they were embarrassed because I was doing the job that they should have been doing. I yelled, "Look, you tasteless hoosiers! We are guests in this place, and these people deserve respect, dignity, and your undivided attention. They do NOT deserve the gay slurs and rude catcalls that are spewing from your over-stuffed mouths! Now sit there, and shut the fuck up, and if you can't manage to do that, then get the fuck out!" And I pointed in the direction of the door, in case their ate-up minds forgot the way they came in. Mouths flew open, and I never heard a peep from those 42 individuals for the remainder of the time we were there. As a reward for my efforts, during intermission, the cast of the play brought me an extra dessert (REAL French Vanilla Ice Cream with maraschino cherries and black walnuts, and as much champagne as I wanted for the evening! The drinking age in Canada is 18 - and I had just turned 19 two weeks before our trip.
GOING WHERE FEW MEN HAS GONE BEFORE ME!
After a much-quieter-than-normal bus ride to our hotel for the evening, and a restless night with snoring individuals that I barely new, we had one more day of adventure left before we had to make the nighttime trek back to Payson, IL. As a part of our senior trip, we were required to visit at least one educational venue. The venue that was chosen for us was the Ontario Science Center, located in Toronto. The St. Louis Science Center is one of jewels in St. Louis' crown, but at 500,000 square feet, the Ontario Science Center is many times larger than the St. Louis Science Center. We spent 8 hours in this facility, and only covered 2/3 of it.
This particular science center houses a few musical interests. Inside, there is a playable section of a pipe organ that contains just a few keys, but shows how the mechanism works, but on the outside, there is the world's largest outdoor hydraulophone that is publicly accessible 24 hours-a-day.
This is a sculpture in the Science Center that displays how much food a family of 4 eats in 1 year. (Panoramics weren't available back then - and I was using an old, cheap film camera:
When I walked into this Science Center, I saw signs at the entrance of the individual hallways marked, "Gate 1", "Gate 2", "Gate 3".... I was a bit perplexed, but I walked on with a couple friends. How close those friends were to me, we shall soon find out - but let's continue, at any rate.
Even though I was well on my way to becoming the man that I would eventually be, I still had a long way to go. I know my self esteem could never be as low as that of the group of people that I was unfortunate enough to be born into (read: my family's), but in any case, I was not aware of it yet, but I still had the proverbial self-esteem ladder to climb before I reached the top. I didn't start at the bottom of the ladder. I would never allow myself to get that low. I believe I was somewhere in the middle, and I could see light at the end of the tunnel.
I had a habit of looking down and watching my feet as I walked. Not only was this a family trait that I inadvertently inherited, but as a result of being a handicapped child, I learned to watch my floppy right foot, so I wouldn't trip myself while walking. An ugly spill in the middle of 10,000 people is not the way I like to attract attention. Being talented and keeping myself looking rather sharp is the way I would rather accomplish this task! :) Anywho, I was walking down one of the hallways, and I was pretty much letting the scenery pass me by as I was looking down at my feet.
Suddenly, one of the few friends that was walking next to me - with the assistance of a body guard! - yelled, "Whoa! LOOK OUT!" and they both grabbed me by my right arm and tried to pull me out of harm's way. Too late. I planted my nose directly between Sophia Loren's boobs! Do you have any idea how many straight men would have loved to trade places with me on that particular day???
(She was wearing this dress!)
Hindsight being once again fairly sharp, I have no idea why somebody didn't say something before I accidentally walked behind a roped-off section of the Science Center, and ran smack-dab directly into Sophia Loren! She was wearing the typical low-cut red dress. Look mom, I found a nose warmer! Her boobs! Even though I came from a horribly sheltered existence, I did have sense enough to know that I was at this very moment, embracing a famous person. I thought I was a dead man! The body guards started to rush in to pull me back behind the ropes, but with one hand, she motioned for them to stop. She hugged me, and she had a good laugh.
This Science Center was so large that a film production company was using it to shoot an airport scene, hence the "Gate 1", "Gate 2" signs. After my hug, I found my way back around the roped-off section, and we continued our educational adventure. I got more education than the average person on this day. I realize that if I was watching where I was going, I would have never had the chance to hug Sophia Loren, but I vowed to never watch my feet again. I resolved that a better fate, in the long run, would be to take my chances at stumbling. My life has definitely not been stumble-free, but I have managed to avoid really serious falls due to this floppy foot!
I do have one question, though:
1) Why did the 'friends' that I was with not warn me that I had walked into a rope-off section of the Science Center? I had walked probably 30 - 50 feet into this section before I bumped into a legendary movie star!
This was not to be our last run-in with Sophia. As luck would have it, several hours later, we were boarding our bus to begin the journey back to the hills. As our bus pulled away from the curb, the driver had to go around a car that was parked in front of our bus before he could continue on to the exit of the Science Center parking lot. As luck would have it, I was sitting on the correct side of the bus this time. The car that our bus driver had to go around was Sophia Loren's limousine. She was standing at the door of the limmo, smiling and waving as our bus went around her car. Several students were looking on the side of the limousine to see if it had the name of the hotel she was staying written on it, but during the course of the conversation I had with Sophia, she told me that she did not use hotel limos, but that she had her own limo flown in each time she traveled.
That, my friends, was the day I (literally!) ran into Sophia Loren.
(I have more pictures, and more memories of this trip, but I will promise you that I won't prolong your suffering. My memory is still firing on all pistons, after 25 yrs, I would say!)
- Michael
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