It has been two weeks full of heated emotional exchanges, fierce competition, and moments of sheer glory.
And no, oddly enough, it has had absolutely nothing to do with me...although I am finding it endlessly amusing...
The subject and object of the drama, and the endless days of fretting and fanaticism, are due to one momentous yearly event: Chas is going away golfing with the boys.
Mind you, I have always been interested in the way people travel, whether near or far. I have also always been curious about the way men plan for and undertake trips versus how women do. Being somewhat of a travel nerd, I am oddly interested in how people plan, how they pack, how they approach air travel, and how they actually behave once they arrive in their final destination.
For me, travel is one of my ultimate joys and, having done it professionally for almost a decade, has become a routine that I am used to.
Sure, we all have our habits...and mine is still sometimes throwing everything into a suitcase at the last minute and hoping "mascara" has a character in Mandarin if I forget it...but travel is kind of my "bag," no pun intended, so I tend not to stress too much.
Plus, I have almost always traveled, at least for pleasure, with women. The travel I have done with men, and it has been a significant amount, has not necessarily allowed me to closely observe their travel habits as I have usually been their employee or employer. In that role, no one usually tells me if they forgot their hair gel or if they need to run out for an emergency dose of Imodium...it just doesn't often unfold that way.
And, if it is women I happen to be traveling with, we have all long before figured out each other's strengths and weaknesses and have formed a working cooperative relationship so everyone knows their role and there is minimal competition.
Oh, and if a girl forgets a razor, shampoo, a makeup item or something needed for a headache or a stomachache, you can pretty much rest assured that someone has it and is willing to share. Even if there are only two of you...
Because, and I don't say this out of disrespect for men, women are planners and tend to think of contingencies all the time (hey, we bear children, right? We're programmed to look out for two people at all times, minimum...). So when I travel with women, I never worry about whether I forgot something because I know one of two things: a) she will have it or something very close to it, or, b) she will be more than willing to come into foreign stores with me and spend hours trying to divine symbols on the back of jars, tubes and containers to find the nearest thing that I am looking for.
Hey, girls rock, right?
But men? Oh, men are a different story altogether.
Chas has been doing this golf trip with his older brother and their two close friends for more than twenty years. And, he reports, each year is another soap opera-style drama leading up to the actual pleasure...the golf.
Thank God that Chas has no desire whatsoever for me to partake in this sport as I find golf about as entertaining as watching someone scraping barnacles from the bottom of a boat but that doesn't, under any circumstance, mean I am exempt from the preparatory measures.
"Baby, get out here! You simply have to see this!" he called, two weeks ago upon checking his email.
I came in from the other room to watch Chas manipulating the most complicated Microsoft Excel spreadsheet I have ever seen in my life.
"What the hell is THAT?" I asked.
"THAT would be Bill's (his brother) attempt at planning. You see," he pointed to the screen, "we have tee times, locations of courses, addresses of courses, websites of courses, directions to the house, directions to the nearest restaurants, mileage from the house, mileage from the airport, and also this column with his own personal suggestions..."
Honestly, I have seen some pretty complicated spreadsheets before but this one was even a bit much for me.
"Haven't you been doing this for over 20 years? Don't you have a system worked out yet?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Oh yeah, we have a system...and it starts with this fucking spreadsheet. But I don't get involved in that crap...I am just there to golf," he declared, emphatically.
I didn't believe him for a second.
Over the next hour, Chas proceeded to look up each and every one of the recommendations on that spreadsheet and then spent an hour writing an elaborate email back to his brother and their friends with HIS suggestions, including corrections on times, distances, and mileage.
Dinner was getting cold and I mistakenly said, "Baby, you said your brother and his friend have the final word on everything anyway and you don't have the time or the care to deliberate this so can you please, maybe, get off of the computer and eat dinner? It's getting cold..."
He looked at me as if I was Judas tempting Christ in the garden while he was talking to the Big Man Upstairs.
(In my case, I was tempting him with spaghetti and meatballs while he was finding the exact distance to the closest Hooters... but, hey, whatever...)
"I just need to finish this...and I don't care...not really...but I have to have my say," he declared.
This went on for two weeks.
Every morning, a new spreadsheet or a new email.
Every afternoon, an infuriated or surly Chas.
One evening, he took me aside in confidence and said, "I always take the kid's bed...you know that, right?"
A tad confused, and, yes, perhaps also a bit concerned, but still unwilling to raise the beast, I said, "OK, Baby, I am sure you do..."
He gripped my elbow...
"No, listen to me...I always take the CHILD'S bedroom WITHOUT the en suite bathroom because I DON'T CARE and I am down there to GOLF and every year we get a four bedroom house and there is one room for children and I take it and sleep in the too-tiny bed on the Winnie the Pooh sheets EVERY YEAR because I DON'T FUCKING CARE!!!"
His eyes were wild.
"Baby, it's OK...I love you for, um, consistently taking the child's bedroom. It was one of the things I loved about you first...not that you sleep in children's bedrooms, of course, um, but that you rise above the fray!" I said.
And this is absolutely true.
Chas usually doesn't get involved in petty dramas and he doesn't pay a lot of attention to people who do. I, on the other hand, usually spend way too much time listening to other people's crap so Chas has been very, very good for me that way.
So, of course, I appreciated his willingness to sleep in the Winnie the Pooh sheets.
"But what would you do?" he asked. "Would you be willing to sleep in a tiny kid's bed to avoid conflict?"
Ah, the rub.
The answer, ultimately, is yes.
But I can't picture a scenario where that would be an issue.
If it were my four closest friends...we would probably figure out who was in need of more comfort or more space or more alone time or more together time...and no, this would NOT go into a spreadsheet.
It actually would likely have never been discussed. Females have a natural sense of hierarchy combined with ingrained intuitiveness. We might fight on men and ideas...but we don't fight over beds.
Money was the other issue that was driving Chas and his golfing buddies insane.
Chas is, thank God, not uptight when it comes to money. He is prudent and has that natural Philly shrewdness about getting the most for your buck but he is caught between two people, on this trip, who are either completely stingy and uptight or frivolous and careless. One counts ever dime and the other orders six appetizers at dinner and only takes one bite of each, driving the tightwad mad.
This stresses Chas and his brother out as they generally see the trip as a chance to spend some money to have a good time. No, not extravagantly and not breaking the bank...but hell, why bicker over an extra appetizer, right?
But still...as this problem, two people disagreeing over how funds are spent, is a possible contingency that cannot be dissected and put into a spreadsheet, it needed to be discussed thoroughly.
"Here's the issue," Chas, who doesn't care, of course, told me, "Steve likes to order a lot of food but doesn't eat a lot of food. So when we're out, he'll order, say, 150 Buffalo wings or two main courses when the rest of us are just having burgers and beer."
"OK, honey, I understand, but..." I try to reply before Chas cuts me off because he didn't finish explaining the WHOLE scenario.
"Wait, let me finish. OK, so Steve does that but do you know what Bob does? Bob who is cheap as shit and gets mad at Steve for ordering too many wings...that Bob... Do you know what Bob does?!!"
"No, Baby, I have no idea what Bob does..."
(Insist on early morning laps in the kiddie pool? Do every one's astrology charts before the trip? What, exactly, does Bob do?)
"Bob," Chas spits, "throws personal hygiene items into the grocery cart when it's ONLY supposed to be things that each of us will use at the house...you know, like coffee, creamer, orange juice...that kind of shit..."
"Well, why don't you say something, then?" I ask him, knowing the response.
"Because I don't fucking care...really, I don't. But what dude throws disposable razors into the kitty? Like we would all have a group shave with his goddamn razors while enjoying a cup of coffee together in the morning! Who the hell does that?" he demands.
Well, obviously, Bob does.
"This doesn't happen to you when you travel with your mother or Connie?" he asks.
No, it doesn't.Here's the reason why (and, again, I apologize if I am being sexist here, it is not the intention):
When you travel with women you usually have this discussion (mind you, I said discussion) well beforehand and come to a consensus on who is paying for what and the manner in which these financial transactions will be handled.
When I travel with my mother or my best friend, Connie, we usually agree that if the combined airfare and hotel costs are comparable, one of us pays for the tickets and the other picks up the hotel tab. If there is overage or underage at the end of the trip we resolve it peacefully with someone picking up an extra dinner tab or something similar. And if Connie threw an extra box of say, tampons, into the shopping cart, I would not go ballistic.
Why? Well, see above. I might need to borrow them in the future in case I ran out or didn't bring them so it would be beneficial to both of us for her to do that, right?
I explained this to Chas and he looked at me like I was some exotic species of plant life that he had just realized was sitting next to him on the couch.
"That's disgusting," he told me, "Men would NEVER share a tampon!"
I sighed, resigned to my fate.
The other thing worth mentioning here is that Chas is a touch neurotic about travel preparations himself.
While outwardly very laid back about most things in life, he worries incessantly about the details when it comes to travel. The "unknowns," which he mostly embraces in all other aspects of life, drive him to distraction when it comes to travel.
(And, between you and me, if Chas' brother hadn't done that Excel spreadsheet first...Chas would have. He just won't admit to it...)
Last week, he dragged out each and every golf shirt, pair of golf shorts, shoes, socks, and golf accessory that he owns. He laid them out carefully in the living room before trying on each and every item and carefully sorting them into the "yes," "no," and "maybe" piles.
Granted, I do this too but here's the thing: I do it ONCE. Chas repeated the routine every few days and might have done it every few hours if I hadn't started teasing him about it and he didn't have to attend to 36 emails a day regarding tee times and how to arrange the luggage in the car upon arrival at the airport.
The broken shoe discovery was, by far, the all time low over these past two weeks, I must say. It nearly drove him over the edge.
"Patti, look at these!" he said, proffering up a pair of golf shoes with one missing the sole.
"I have only had these for a few years and they are very expensive and the sole just peeled off! I am going to send them back to Nike and demand compensation! I only have brown and white golf shoes now and I need black golf shoes too, you know? I am writing to Nike now!" he declared.
Then I said what might have been the stupidest thing in my life.
"Baby, they have shoe glue for those sorts of things. You won't get them, or compensation, back from Nike in time so why don't we just try the shoe glue stuff?"
Chas might have literally flown from his position in the living room surveying his broken shoe to the computer in under two seconds, flat. I swear, he definitely orbited.
"You're right! It's called 'Shoe Goo' and it's available at Rite Aid...let's go there now!" he said.
"Chas, it's 10:30 at night, let's just go tomorrow..." I said.
Clearly, this was not the correct response.
How dare I suggest that we postpone patching up his wounded comrade until tomorrow? What kind of traitor was I?
So off we went to Rite Aid and, while I busied myself reading recipes at the magazine stand, Chas swept the premises for 'Shoe Goo.'
Unfortunately, Rite Aid didn't have it. The internet had lied.
"I hate this fucking store! They're all liars..." he told me, despondent on the way home.
The next day, however, after another few hours of online research, Chas found that Walmart might carry Shoe Goo too.
And, the Gods were in their Heavens that fine day...it did.
Shoe crisis averted, we were now ready to face the golf course, properly attired.
Almost.
Last night, in the few hours before he left, Chas once again tried every outfit on and walked around the house neurotically trying to figure out how fit everything he owned into one small suitcase.
"You want help?" I asked, "I am pretty good at packing...I used to do it a lot."
"No, no...this is a one-man show, I can handle this," he insisted.
Mind you, as neurotic as Chas is about travel---from everything to the packing to the actual flying---he DID put aside his phobias to take me out to a wonderful dinner and present me with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers because he knows I love St. Patrick's Day.
He is a good man. He is just a bit of a crazy man, sometimes.
"Baby, can you help me pack? I just realized that my balls are defective..."
I nearly spit up the beer that I was drinking but then realized he was holding the packages of golf balls that his brother had given him for Christmas and there was a problem.
"I have never seen balls shaped like this! All these defective balls! See? It's a good thing I checked before getting on the plane with these. I would have had an immediate handicap with these misshapen balls!" he said.
So I packed, Chas sorted out his balls, and, in the end, it all came together beautifully.
On the way to the airport this morning, Chas asked me if Connie and I would be discussing our planned trip to France in a couple of months.
You know, going over the details and such...
"No, of course not. It is only March and we're not going for at least another few months...why would we talk about it now?" I said.
"Well, I figured you might want to get down who is bringing the tampons..." he said, and winked at me slyly.
Men and women definitely have different travel styles...and now I know how Chas operates...but hey, he's got something on me.
I would have likely thrown those defective balls into my luggage without even checking.
And there I would have been...hobbling around the golf course in one shoe with square balls after eating only a small portion of the 150 Buffalo wings that I hadn't personally ordered at a Hooters that was at least 50 miles in the wrong direction.
Men may have something to teach women afterall.
