COLUMN: D.C.

For about five straight days I don’t think I slept more than a few minutes.

Just about every type of trouble I could get myself into I did, and it felt so good doing it 2,000 miles away from home. There were rules, but I was like a 1970’s punk rocker in London and I didn’t care.

Despite all of this, I also learned a lot about the history of the United States.

I was scrolling through social media the other day, which I complain about all the time, but spend half my time on anyway. I came across someone talking about how their kid would not be able to make a trip to Washington D.C., something they had been saving and planning for over the course of years. I really felt bad for them because not only did they put a lot of money into it, but it really is a life opening experience. I also learned a lot about history.

Hopefully, they will be able to go next year because I cannot forget mine which was well over 20 years ago.

I had just finished my final year of junior high and was at the age where I thought I knew everything and really didn’t know much other than how to do a tight roll on my jeans and how to sport a flashy pair of Reebok pumps. Looking back, I hate that age so much because all anyone seemed to care about was appearance or “fitting in”. I had raised money for my trip to the Nation’s Capital and my grandparents also helped me out a lot. The trip was through one of the programs you still find today. When we loaded up on the bus to Salt Lake City, we had a few teachers and chaperones, but I don’t think we were technically under the jurisdiction of “school rules”. It was a grey area that we would test.

Not only was I excited to be able to go to the east coast and D.C., but I was also just excited to go to the first time without any real supervision. As I said, there were teachers, but they were very chill and didn’t really care as long as we didn’t burn the hotel down. There were also parents, but they were not mine or those of anybody else I knew well so there was no way I was going to listen to them. Not a chance.

The bus was surprisingly quiet on the three-hour trip to Salt Lake, but that probably had more to do with the fact we left around 4 a.m. After about an hour in the airport, we all started to get a little wound up and by the time we had a layover in Chicago the flight attendants had probably had enough of us. I remember one telling me that if I knew how to give the speech about directions on emergency exits and oxygen I should just get up and do it myself. Which I did.

We arrived late in the early evening in D.C. and it was hot. A muggy type of sticky mess this guy had never seen before. We were ushered off to an Embassy Suites where we were supposed to sleep the five days of our trip but never did.

During the day it was awesome to go to places like the White House. This was back when you could get a pretty good tour. We also went and watched Congress in action, and other stops like the Washington Monument, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Smithsonian, Ford’s Theater, Mount Vernon, Alexandria, Arlington Cemetery, and probably more, but the lack of sleep probably did not do me well to remember.

The day was full of learning but doing it our way. It was not an awkward family vacation dictated by your parents; we took it in the way we wanted. And it worked. The night was a different story. There were “guards” on all the floors preventing kids from sneaking out, but we still did.

I could fill a novel with the stories from the rooms, but one stood out. A friend who was in my room was a genius and ended up being our class valedictorian. He had bought some sort of replica jet fuel at the Air and Space Museum and wanted to test it out.

This was back in the day when they still had matches in the room, so he put a bunch of match heads in with the powder he had purchased and boom. It was a mess of smoke in our room. We all started freaking out and I thought it was be a good idea to rip the smoke detector off the wall.

A few moments later smoke detectors were going off and a guard was knocking on our door. I guess it was not as replica and one would have thought.

The teachers were mad and said the one thing we asked you not to do was burn down the hotel, but they got over it. They didn’t rat us out to our parents or administration and I’m thankful for that.

On the way home there were some issues with our plane, and we had to make an emergency landing in Iowa. Had this happened now, I’m probably sure I would have had to change my pants when I got off the plane, but we took it all in stride. Another learning experience for sure.

I’d really like to visit Washington again sometime soon, but this time I’m going to sleep a bit more.