Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

The sea was angry that night, my friends.

A chartered bus had taken us from Grantham, England, all the way down to the western edge of Wales to the ferry that would take us to Ireland. We’d set out in the afternoon so we arrived at the ferry dock at around ten p.m. It had been raining all day and the wind had picked up. High waves rocked the ferry. As soon as we got onboard we all headed to the lounge for drinks. One of our adult chaperones sat down with his pint of Guinness then grabbed a trash bin and threw up in it. He walked out.

The ferry boat continued rocking and others followed him. There were open cabins with bunk beds and I guess they thought lying down would help.

By the time the ferry was well under way there were only three of us left in the lounge: me, Drew, and Eric Ian. Drew, Eric, and I had all had a few drinks by that time. I was laughing about everyone else being seasick because I’m a terrible person. Then I announced I wanted to explore the ship and Drew and Eric came along with me. We found the cabins and the duty free shop, which wasn’t open, and there didn’t seem to be much else so we decided to check the deck. The ferry was still heaving up and down, the wind was blowing, and the deck was slick with rain or seawater so we held tight to the railing and walked all around the deck. The blackness of sea and sky blended together with only the occasional whitecap lit by the ship to show us where the water was. Waves lapped up onto the deck. I heard a rushing sound and looked to my right. A huge wave had hit the side of the ship and was now sliding along the deck toward us. Drew and I tripped over the bulkhead getting back inside. We turned around to see Eric, still holding the railing, look to his right just in time to get splashed in the face and nearly swept away.

Drew and I lay on the floor laughing because we were terrible people.

I remembered this while listening to a Fresh Air interview with neuroscientist Dean Burnett, author of Idiot Brain, explaining why people get seasick.

So what’s happening there is the brain’s getting mixed messages. It’s getting signals from the muscles and the eyes saying we are still and signals from the balance sensors saying we’re in motion. Both of these cannot be correct. There’s a sensory mismatch there. And in evolutionary terms, the only thing that can cause a sensory mismatch like that is a neurotoxin or poison. So the brain thinks, essentially, it’s been being poisoned. When it’s been poisoned, the first thing it does is get rid of the poison, aka throwing up.

Do you ever get seasick? I seem to be one of those lucky few who’s never had a problem with motion sickness. Well, I used to think it was luck. Now I think my brain is even more of an idiot than most and just ignores the mixed signals. Maybe it has something to do with being a terrible person.

The one predictable thing about Nashville weather is that it’s unpredictable. Maybe that’s why I rarely bother to check the weather report even though this sometimes means getting caught in the rain without an umbrella, although there are worse things to be caught without, like my bus pass or my pants, and then there was the time I’d ridden the bus halfway home before I remembered I drove to work that day, but that’s another story.

And then there was the January when snow was in the forecast but I can’t tell you how many times the weather reports have called to snow only to have a few scattered flurries, or to have the temperature shoot up to around ninety degrees. Celsius. That’s the South for you. It had started snowing when I set out for the bus but I was bundled up warmly and it didn’t look like it was going to amount to anything. Then again it never looks like it’s going to amount to anything. It’s only when snow starts blowing across the street that it looks like we’re in for nasty weather.

Oh yeah, it was blowing across the street when I set out for the bus, but I kept going. I’m an optimist.

I got to the bus stop but there was no bus and according to the schedule it wouldn’t be along for a bit, and even though bus schedules are about as trustworthy as weather reports I set out for the next bus stop a block away. Sometimes I get antsy just standing around at bus stops so I’ll walk down to the next bus stop—in the opposite direction of the way home, but I figure if the bus is coming toward me then I’m really getting closer to it, if that makes any sense. I’ve walked a mile or more, passing by at least half a dozen bus stops before I pick one and stop, afraid the bus will be just around the corner and I’ll be caught between stops.

The snow was really coming down and was getting thick on the streets. Cars were creeping by. Still I kept trudging on. I came to a hill where I could see a long distance. There was no sign of the bus. There was even less sign of traffic even moving. I decided to stop and wait. And I waited. More than an hour had passed since I’d set out. I hadn’t seen a single bus in either direction. Wherever they were they apparently weren’t going anywhere.

I didn’t get upset. Hey, I’m an optimist. I just happened to be an extremely cold and damp optimist.

That’s when my wife called.

“Why don’t you come and meet me where I work? You’re not far from your office, are you?”

Why, no, of course not! I wasn’t going to admit that I’d wandered hither and yon, or at least hither, or maybe yon—I’m not sure which is distance—from the bus stop closest to my office. I turned around and started trudging back the way I’d came. And amazingly I moved pretty quickly. It didn’t take me that long at all to get to where she worked. This was at least partly due to the slow-moving traffic which meant I didn’t have any trouble getting across intersections. And I think I was motivated by a desire to get out of the cold.

The heat in the middle of summer is brutal but it has one major advantage. It doesn’t stop, or even slow, the traffic.

“Hey, how was the movie?”

I’d just stepped into the elevator and there was a woman already in there, slightly shorter than me with streaked hair and glasses with thick black plastic frames. There was something vaguely familiar about her but I work in a building where a lot of businesses and people come and go. And I’m sorry to say I don’t make a note of who’s coming and going unless I actually work with them.

So my brain was whirring with activity. Movie? What movie? There were a million little me’s running around pulling papers from filing cabinets screaming, “Everybody, boss needs information STAT!” Except over in one corner a group was arguing that I really should upgrade to a paperless system and another group was arguing that there’s no way my brain could be that organized and this was all an elaborate metaphor anyway. Oh yeah, I’d been to see a movie the previous Saturday.

“It was great,” I said, adding that it was at the Belcourt Theater.

“No,” she said, “about a month ago. When I saw you at the mall.”

More rushing around pulling files, except now the group that had been arguing for digitizing everything picked up a snack machine and threw it through a window. And that’s when I remembered where I’d seen this woman before. Or at least the last non-work place where I’d seen her. About a month earlier at the mall. And I didn’t remember her so much as the intense sense of awkwardness I’d felt.

At the time I still didn’t have a driver’s license. I didn’t get one until I was thirty-seven but that’s another long and complicated story. If I wanted to go see a movie my options were to hitch a ride with someone else or take the bus. Mostly I took the bus, but this meant a lot of planning. Most of the time it meant a trip all the way to the downtown bus depot for at least one transfer, all of which could take up to an hour. Because it was usually Saturday, a day when bus service is cut in half, I’d have to set out early and I’d arrive early for the movie, so I’d wander the mall or the various nearby stores. Going to see a movie would involve up to four hours of either riding or standing around waiting. It was while I was waiting that I ran into this woman who, for some reason, recognized me from the building where we both worked–on different floors and for completely different places.

“Hey, how’s it going?” she’d said. And while there was a large group in my brain that wanted me to say, “Who the hell are you?” but they were shouted down by the group that instead made me say, “Great! How are you?” I’m still half-convinced she didn’t really recognize me. A lot of people tell me I look like someone they know and we just happened to work in the same building because everybody in Nashville either has or will work in my building. But we still chatted politely although I was overwhelmed by an awkward feeling. I was embarrassed that I was dependent on riding the bus to get where I wanted to go. It hit me that riding the bus limited where I could go, what I could do. It made me dependent on someone else’s schedule.

I didn’t–and still don’t–look down on anyone who rides the bus. I still ride the bus regularly, although now it’s more a matter of choice than necessity. At that time though a lot of those me’s turned out to be right. An upgrade was needed.

Also I’m sure some of them escaped and that’s why strangers think they’ve met me before.