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One audiobook I’ve been having a lot of fun listening to is How To by Randal
Monroe. Basically he explains how to do totally normal things…
BUT EXTREME.
Go to audible.com/timtom or text "timtom" to 500 500 to try Audible today!"
Long distance relationships suck. I once dated a girl for a whole year,
but we only hung out in person for... 4 weeks. Does a month count as a real relationship?
Probably not! It was the worst, but I got a trip to England out of it, so we’ll call it a wash.
To be clear! The girl I was dating, we’ll call her… Shmanda… was actually really nice,
but being in wildly different time zones made finding time to talk a nightmare, and being poor
highschool students meant saving up for flights to see each other would take roughly... forever.
But I’m getting ahead of myself! One of my friends in highschool… we’ll call her…
Shmarly... used to live in England, and while she lived there, she made some friends. As you
do. But then, her family moved back to the US, and her friends didn’t come with her. Typical.
Fast forward a few years, and one of Shmarly’s British friends decided to come visit. Naturally,
Shmarly introduced her old friend to her new friends, (that’s me) which
is how I met my future British Ex-Girlfriend. When we all met up for the first time, we thought
it would be a good idea to get some grocery store fried chicken, you know, the good stuff,
and have a little picnic while we got to know each other. But there was some miscommunication,
and we didn’t get everyone together until it was already dark out, and the chicken was cold.
Also, we forgot paper plates and napkins. So there we were, a bunch of 17 year olds
sitting around a picnic table in the dark trying not to get chicken grease all over our dumb
little faces while we talked to the new girl. I didn’t really know what she looked like,
on account of how dark it was, but I had a crush almost immediately.
You see, there was this thing. Um. So. When she talked. Uh... I liked how it sounded. Look,
I just have a small brain, and when it hears a British accent it goes, *ding* Ooh, that’s pretty.
We didn’t get to hang out for long, but after she left, we stayed in touch. Eventually,
I got up the courage to tell her that I had a bit of a crush on her, and to my surprise
she told me that on the night we first hung out, she thought to herself “Blimey! He’s the
funniest guy I ever met. Govn’a!” ...nailed it. We lived almost 5,000 miles apart from each other,
neither of us had a job, but for some reason we thought it would be a good
idea to date... Spoiler! It wasn’t. She lived 7 hours ahead of me, and our
school schedules didn’t really align, so it was basically impossible to talk at normal hours.
I remember regularly staying up late to call and talk while she got ready for school. Now, my sleep
schedule has never been great, but that year was by far the worst it’s ever been, and honestly
it took a massive toll on me. I even ended up failing a few classes because of how zonked I was.
And again, none of this was her fault. I was a dumb kid in love. What was I supposed to do,
not talk to her constantly? I know I say this all the time,
but just because you’re young, doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t real. There was very little reason
for either of us to feel this way, but for the 2 years between that late-night chicken picnic,
and eventually closing that chapter in our lives, we had an extremely close connection to each
other. Which is the other reason long distance relationships suck: Being separated from each
other was excruciating! Like, I spent the better part of a year just yearning. I yearned so hard.
“Hey Tim, whatcha doin’ after school?” “Oh nothin’ much I’m just
gonna go home and yearn.” Ugh. And don’t even get me started on the longing.
I yearned and longed for days at a time, and that’s just no way to live.
Anyway, we talked as much as we could. She introduced me to the wonders of British
television... I told her facts about the solar system. Pretty normal romantic stuff.
Did you know that it takes less energy to leave the solar system from Earth than it does to fly
into the sun? That’s pretty sexy. I saved what I could,
and after graduation I had enough to go visit. Someone told me that to travel internationally,
you need: a passport, and a visa. Not like the credit card, but a thing from England
that says you’re allowed to be there. So I bought my plane ticket, I got my passport,
and I applied for a visa. Then, about a week before the trip, I got a letter
saying my visa application was... denied. Nice. That’s when I decided to Google it. I remember
it said that you don’t need a visa for a “short visit,” but it didn’t say how long “short” was.
Thanks Google! Is that a day, a week? I dunno, but I already had my plane ticket! So, despite
the British government having directly told me that I couldn’t go, I did a little thing called...
do it anyway. I was pretty sure that all I needed was a signed letter from her mom saying I had a
place to stay. But there was one, tiny little baby problem. Her family was on holiday that week, and
they didn’t have cell service. To get that letter, I’d have to break out my master hacking skills.
We’d have a small window of opportunity between when she was scheduled to get home, and when I’d
be boarding my flight. I had a week to solve this puzzle, but the plan was simple: Find
out if one of her neighbors had a fax machine. Shmanda would get home, print and sign the letter,
then run down the street to a neighbor who had already been briefed on the time-sensitive
situation, and whose fax machine would be revved up and ready to go. *car engine*
Then on my way to the airport, I’d swing by my mom’s office, pick up the letter from their fax
machine, and be on my way. Google, guide my mouse.
I looked up the street she lived on, and found someone in the most random way. A dog show
judge lived two houses away, and had a phone and fax number listed online. So, I called a
complete stranger in another country and asked if my girlfriend could use their fax machine.
Of course, it should be no surprise that... it totally worked! Nice.
So, I got the letter, I got on the plane, and made it to England. The lady who interviewed
me before I was allowed to leave the airport asked if I had ever been denied entry to the UK.
I wasn’t sure if my rejected Visa counted since I didn’t technically need it in the first place. So
I said no, and then she... just walked away. Oh ok, I’ll just wait here I guess. I knew I
shouldn’t have come. I can’t believe I thought they’d let me into the country with a fax and a
smile! Anyone can get at least one of those. But she came back and I was free to go.
Something about riding in a car makes me tired, and I didn’t get great sleep on the plane,
so when I got in my girlfriend’s mom’s car, I passed out immediately. In fact, I was pretty
jetlagged the entire trip, so I fell asleep in the back of her car practically every time we went
anywhere. It made the trip feel like a dream. Wake up, ooh, the London Eye! Back to sleep.
Wake up, ahh, cheeky Nando’s. Back to sleep. Wake up, wow... a third thing.
We went to Brighton Pier, and there were some dudes trying to Parkour over the rail to the
rocky beach below, but a few of them were too scared to drop. Being a bit of a traceur myself,
I decided to show off and make the jump without hesitating. At first they looked
down in amazement, but I just had to open my dumb American mouth and say “It was easy, guys!”
One of them must not have been super stoked to be shown up by a dumb American,
because as I climbed the stairs to leave, a rock hit me straight in the face. He might
suck at Parkour, but dude’s got an arm. I’m not even mad, the accuracy was astonishing.
That whole trip was easily one of my favorite life experiences, but it was
over before I knew it. Back to yearnin’, I guess. Eventually, my girlfriend saved enough to return
the favor and come visit me for two weeks, but flights were cheaper into San Francisco,
so my mom and I drove down to California to pick her up, and thought we could do
some sight seeing while we were there. I only remember one thing from that trip,
and it has haunted me ever since. We were at a gift shop in Fisherman’s Wharf.
Which I know sounds more like a pokemon than a neighborhood, but stick with me this is important.
My mom was chatting with the shop owner, and when I walked over to them, she introduced me.
He noticed that I was tall, and said “You must play basketball!” but when I told him I didn’t,
he replied without missing a beat “Ah... so computers.”
Yeah. Wait, do all tall people either play basketball or like computers? Cuz,
I love computers! How did he know? At first I thought maybe my mom said something,
but apparently she didn’t! This man took one look at me and read me like a book. Did he have some
kind of terminator vision? What else did he know? Unfortunately, we left before it set in just how
much I needed to know how he knew. Computers are like, my whole thing,
dude! It couldn’t have been a lucky guess. Right? Am I really that obvious? What
does it all mean? Who am I? Anyway, the rest of her visit
was much less ominous, and we had a lot of fun. Then she went back to England, I got my first job,
and we both got busy with other things. We didn’t have time to talk as much as we used to,
and slowly but surely we drifted apart. One day I asked if maybe we should just
be friends, and she said yes. We still talked occasionally,
but at some point she went on another holiday without internet access, and we just didn’t end
up talking when she got back. I hope she’s doing ok.
A few years later, I was in San Fransisco again, and I tried to find that gift shop
so I could talk to that guy, but it turns out, the gift shop had been burned down for 40 years.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next month!