What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

by Kristin Newman

asked me which I’d rather have: a vacation with no friends, or one scary moment. So I gathered up all of my courage, and swam over to the kids, and there was one scary moment … and then I had friends for the first time on vacation. After that, one scary moment became something I was always willing to have in exchange for the possible payoff. I became a girl who knew how to take a deep breath, suck it up, and walk into any room by herself.

You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you.

when you find yourself sick in a foreign country, ignore the cost and check yourself into the nicest hotel in town. High-end hotels have doctors on call, room service, and daily clean sheets, and accept credit cards.

Watching someone straighten her hair before spending a night in a giant mud toilet during a rainstorm is a special kind of maddening, and might, perhaps, be a great way to torture me if you are trying to get state secrets out of me someday.

(The Dutch taught us the word swaffle, which means “to hit something with your flaccid penis.”

I need to travel to keep from dying of boredom from my own internal monologue.

When you travel you’re forced to have new thoughts.