Chicago
January 2008
Lately Kami and I have been considering going back to being vegetarians. Which, for those of you currently aghast, means no meat. Not even turkey (one exchange we had with an older friend about vegetarianism:
Him: You want some turkey?
Us: We're vegetarians
Him: Yeah, but it's just turkey! That's okay, right?
Us: Tell you what, you show me the plant that turkeys grow on, and I'll eat that crap like my life depended on it.)
Anyhow, Kami had been a vegetarian for about eight years. For the last eleven months of those eight years, I joined her. Here's why:
Martin Luther King Day weekend, 2008. We lived in Cooperstown, and I was to fly out to Chicago with two other people in the Education Department early on Saturday morning for the Cubs Convention, where the Hall of Fame was doing some programming and hosting a panel discussion with various Cubs Hall of Famers.
We were on the 6am flight out of Albany, which is a 90-minute drive on the sunniest of days. This meant that, in the middle of January, we were going to have to get to the airport at 4:30am to go through security. You may be asking, "Why not get a hotel room?" And I would show you my pay stub, and that would clear up your confusion. It was cheaper to just get up at 2:30am, take a shower, and be out the door by 3am in order to drive to Albany and get on the plane.
Which is exactly what we did. So it's cold. Real cold. Ungodly cold. And we get on the plane in Albany and the pilot comes over the PA and says, "Just a quick weather update for Chicago. The air temperature is currently -2, with a wind chill of -50." I turned to my co-workers and said, "Did he say -15?" And like he heard me, the pilot reiterates, "-50." And if I could put numbers in all caps, that's what it sounded like.
So clearly God had abandoned Chicago.
Arriving, I quickly realized that I had never been as cold as I was at that moment in my life. Because we left so early, and got a time zone back, we got there at something like 8am, and we went off to find breakfast and a huge cup of coffee, preferably scalding hot, so I could pour it down my pants.
That taken care of, we checked in at the Cubs Convention (and as an Astros fan, Cubs Convention is the physical equivalent of the Absence of Faith emotion), saw where we were going to be on Sunday, and went off to check in to our hotel.
We had an intern in the Education Department the previous summer who went to school in Chicago, so she was going to help us with the programming. She was at work near Wrigley Field, and went to meet up with her. I'll shorten this part of the story, but we were there for about four hours waiting for her shift to end, whereupon we all went to dinner.
The restaurant was called the Raw Bar in Wrigleyville, a Persian restaurant, if I remember correctly. Now I am notorious - and Kami will attest to this - about not reading the entire description of the entree. I saw a dish called Koubideh, which was a lamb dish, and from the first few words, it sounded wonderful.
What came out looked like two turds on a bed of rice. And I'm not sure if you've ever been in this scenario before, but I actually got about halfway through it (after all, I'm a cosmopolite, I'm not going to disparage a Persian dish. It's apparently wildly popular in Persia.) before I realize that I had made a very serious mistake.
I was able to hold it together until I got back to the hotel, where it was still -40, and I fall asleep. For about ten minutes. Sparing you many horrific details, we can just leave it at the fact that I would sleep in 10-15 minute segments, and then have to race to the bathroom to utilize said facilities in one of two ways - and sometimes both at the same time.
Except there was one 15 minute segment where I was able to get some sleep. I had a dream - an incredibly vivid, terrible dream - in which I woke up next to a dead prostitute. I woke up screaming, and scurried to the corner of the room. Ultimately I checked the bed, under the bed, the closet, the bathroom, the hallway, looking for clues. Immediately relieved not to have committed murder, I thought, "Carrots don't make you do this." And I vowed to give vegetarianism a try.
Incidentally, as you can imagine, I looked like the very gates of hell the next morning. I was relieved of my duties for the Cubs Convention. I sat in the back and tried not to look homeless. After the program had ended, I went backstage to get my suitcase and hat/coat/scarf. I got all ready to go, and Ernie Banks was getting ready to leave, as well. I was standing off to the side, trying not to pass out. Mr. Banks was almost out the door when he said, "Has anyone seen my scarf?"
About ten people wandered around the room, and he follows up, "It's blue and brown, kind of a plaid pattern." A sick feeling came over me, and for the first time in about 13 hours, it wasn't due to sullied lamb. I retreated to the corner, and made sure that my coat was zipped up all the way because, yes, I had accidentally grabbed Ernie Banks scarf and put it on.
Put yourself in my shoes. What would you do? Unzip your coat, take the scarf off, and say to one of the greatest baseball players of all time, "Whoops! That was an accident, here's your scarf, sir." Especially looking like I did? No, you wouldn't. You would do what I did, and keep your mouth shut. And whenever you wear this scarf, you think of Ernie Banks. Fondly.
