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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

“Tell me about yourself.”

That’s what the fellow seated next to me on the airplane said.

When someone says, “Tell me about yourself,” where do you begin?

I replied, “I’m a father and a grandfather. I was born in Naeve Hospital in Albert Lea. I have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious family.”

I thought that ought to hold him, but he asked what I did for a living.

“I breathe. I’m the official bird inspector for the yard, a spider-in-the-shower consultant, and because of the shrinking population in rural areas, I’m now the village idiot in four small cities.”

His follow-up question was what I had done before I had those critical jobs.

“I was and am a post turtle.”

When a farmer worked his fields, he looked for turtles. He loved turtles, and the heavy farm machinery wouldn’t do them any good. If he encountered a turtle, he picked it up and put it on the top of the nearest fencepost. Why didn’t he put the turtle in a wagon or a box until his work was completed? If he’d done that, it’d have ruined the story. The point is, if you ever see a turtle on top of a fencepost, you know one thing–it didn’t get there by itself.

I’d talked to a 100-year-old woman who shared her secret to longevity.

She kept moving.

Years ago, on my first speaking gig in California. I flew into LAX — Los Angeles International Airport. The pilot stuck the landing. I grabbed my motley bag held together by everything that could hold a bag together (duct tape, barbed wire, twine — nobody cared in those days) from the baggage carousel and hiked to the rental car shuttle, which took me to the rental car place where I could pick up a rental car. The agent collected information and had me sign forms galore before asking if I knew where I was going. I was a post turtle. I wasn’t sure how I got to where I was. Those were the days before GPS and cellphones. I showed him a notepad with handwritten directions on how to get where I needed to be. He smiled an insincere smile and wished me good luck. I was Alfred E. Neuman, a MAD Magazine cover boy who was famous for saying, “What, me worry?”

He gave me the keys to a Dodge and a spiffy map folded properly to serve as a confuser. I put my battered bag into the rental car. It was much nicer than the car I owned, which doubled its value each time I filled it with gas. The rental car started like it was supposed to. I followed the explicit commands of my high school driver’s ed teacher on what to do before hitting the road. I adjusted everything that could be adjusted—mirrors, seat, steering wheel and attitude. I even pulled up my socks before taking off like a herd of turtles. I came to an intersection where I saw more cars, lights and signs than I’d seen in all my life in my hometown. The directions notepad had fallen to the floor. I couldn’t read or reach it. Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
I had to go that way or this way to keep the driver of the car behind me happy. I made use of my excellent followership skills and turned the same way the car directly ahead of me did, which was the wrong direction. Being a man, I was unwilling to admit there was a possibility I’d made a wrong turn.

I was the only driver who didn’t know where he was going. Everyone else appeared to be hurrying to get somewhere they didn’t want to go. I didn’t take my foot off the gas because I didn’t want to be run over. I was making good time going in the wrong direction.

I wanted to be elsewhere, but the light at the end of the tunnel was the size of a pinhole. I kept going because I knew that one day, it was going to be a good story.

Like that 100-year-old woman, I kept moving.

I may have circled the Earth, but I got to the right place.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.