“We have a saying here: If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes!”
In fact, almost anytime I travel somewhere and the topic of weather comes up, I hear someone say this phrase. The person that says it is usually trying to make the point that their weather is worse than mine. They want me to know they endure the most drastic temperature swings, the humidity is worse, the snow is colder, the wind blows harder. But it’s not a complaint, is it? It’s worn like a badge of honor. We live in a tough place and we can handle it.
The first time I heard the phrase, I had just moved to Western Colorado to pursue an internship with a small nonprofit. Pretty much all of my belongings stayed with my parents in Kansas. My clothes and a pillow drove out in an old Ford Taurus to the Rocky Mountains in search of a future in the high desert.
Before making the trip, I arranged on craigslist to buy a bike in Denver, which was about the halfway-point of my trip. I pulled into a Starbucks parking lot near Arvada and drank a hot chocolate and nervously checked my phone. I saw a man get out of his hatchback Subaru (Denver, right?) and pull out a phone and type a text. My phone vibrated. This was my guy.
It felt strange to hand over an envelope full of cash to a stranger in a parking lot, but he seemed nice enough. He told me that he was a bike mechanic, and he and his fiancee had just split up. He was selling off some of the many bikes they had accumulated together. It had been going well, he said, but things just change, you know?
The first few months of living in Colorado, I lived in my boss’s parents’ RV. The most time I’d ever spent in an RV before then was at the Kansas State Fair in high school. After the band played for the music contest, we made a beeline for the RV’s -- the only quiet, air-conditioned places on the fairgrounds. We would usually get kicked out after an hour or so, but it felt good -- righteous, even -- for us to take a 60-minute bite out of the life of someone with enough money to buy a vehicle with a kitchen in it.
After a few nights in the RV, I was bored. The internet connection from the nearby house was pretty weak, so I made a trip to Barnes and Noble to buy a book. Trail of Blood by Lisa Black. A murder mystery. I tore through it in 2 nights. I bought another. Elegy for April by Benjamin Black. A week. I would read in the dim light until two in the morning, jumping at the sound of possums waddling by my window when I came to a particularly suspenseful chapter.
I began to fear that I was becoming an introvert, so I tried plugging in at a local church and working longer hours at my internship, but every time I pushed open the thin door to the RV and slumped down on the bed, I was relieved to be alone.
A few months later, I was living in a single room my boss’s basement. The pitter-patter of his two kids’ footsteps always accompanied the morning routine, and I found myself smiling when I heard them. A 4-year-old and a 6-year-old. They fought and laughed and played and were always wanting to sit on my shoulders. They wanted to hold my hand.
I had never thought about having children before. I mean, in all honesty, the thought had never crossed my mind. Not once. I was a bachelor, right? I didn’t have an income or a girlfriend or any semblance of a plan for what my life was supposed to look like. What was I supposed to do? Why were these kids so interested in me, anyway? Is fatherhood something I could do? Would I dare bring a child into a world as insane as this one?
I eventually moved in with a friend from church. He worked in construction for an oil company. Mainly helping build the wells and structures before the fracking crews set up their equipment. He told me he used to work on a fracking crew. Good money, he said. One day they began fracking in a location somewhere in the mountains, and as they began pumping the water and other fluids down into the ground, he asked his boss what’s in this stuff we’re pumping down there anyway? I can’t tell you and you don’t wanna know, he said.
My roommate had a Jeep that he liked to take out into the desert and drive around. He would take me camping, or we would go out to the shooting range and shoot his rifle. We took his Jeep up on a path through the mountains one afternoon. Just beautiful, you know? Green scrub and red flowers, far as the eye could see. Sand and birds. Old, grey stones jutting up, raising their hands, demanding attention.
I wondered aloud what would happen if we got caught in the rain. Oh, we’ll just wait five minutes, and the weather will change.
A year later, I was on a plane to San Diego. Three months after that, I came back to Kansas. Then back to San Diego. And back to Kansas again.
In Kansas, I looked for jobs for a whole year. No, I take that back. I looked for jobs for 363 days before I was hired. That’s a real number: 363. Hundreds of applications were sent out with a grand total of three interviews in that year of job-hunting. I was so resistant to the idea of working in Kansas that I intentionally didn’t apply for any jobs within 200 miles of my home. I just didn’t want to be the guy that grew up in a small town and never left, and I railed against the idea that the rest of my life was going to be lived within walking distance of where I took my first shit.
Two of the three job interviews I had were for organizations that were headquartered fifteen minutes from my house. After 363 days of looking for work, I accepted a job. I go to my home church every Sunday and see my parents. They invite me over for lunch every week, and sometimes I take them up on it.
So here I sit. In the place I told myself I would never be. Working at a place I tried so hard to avoid. In a business I never would have chosen. I don’t know if I like it. I don’t know if I’ve failed myself or my dreams, whatever that means.
I just can’t help but wonder... what will happen if I get caught in the rain?