As I type, there is a 1977 Airstream Sovereign reclining by the curb. I can see it from my room in the house. We are only separated by a pane of glass and strip of grass.
Apparently, I am the co-owner of this 5,000 lb aluminum whale. I know this because my wallet is empty. It yawns at me like a baby bird wanting to be fed.
Team Whitmore, for better or worse – in sickness and in health, is going to live inside that whale.
Why, both those who are still reading and several of our neighbors, might wonder: why?
The evolution (or de-evolution) leading to this reality began simply enough. When we first moved back to the States I had grand ideas and a plan to make those grand ideas come to pass. Team Whitmore was going to work hard and get a leg up. We weren’t going to be some washed up TEFL teachers working as grocery store clerks. We were going to make it.
Unfortunately, 50% of Team Whitmore was not in agreement with my program. James absolutely refused to join an Alaskan fishing ship for a 3 month stint. I tried to convince him with handy quips such as, “What’s losing a few digits to gaining six?” but he pretended to not be amused. It was hard for him not to laugh but as I’ve said before, he has a remarkably good poker face. In fact, if we believed that gambling were ok, that probably would’ve been part of my program.
Stubbornly, James also refused to work on an oil rig. My last resort – and I really thought it was a fair concession – was for him to spend a few months sheering alpacas. But sometimes your life partner isn’t reasonable and you have to settle for working together. And so, like the supportive wife I strive to be, I revised my program. As the old wisdom goes, if you can’t beat him, join him (even when that means letting him work in a grocery store).
From all I could tell the usual route for teachers returning to the homeland went something like this: First, spend a few months looking for a job. Meanwhile, move back in with parents while simultaneously trying to replace the car you sold before leaving the country. Finally, settle into an ok job and proceed onto the slow trek of life in society once you learn that your teaching certificate doesn’t count in America.
That was The System and Team Whitmore was going to beat it. As I mentioned, I had watched other teachers and learned the inevitable steps. Some people would try to avoid these steps, these dues to life. But not Team Whitmore. Sometimes – as I have already noted – the best way to beat something is to join it.
Since these steps were irrevocably inevitable we embraced them in order to beat them… to outfox the fox, if you will. Higher level thinking concepts like this are difficult to understand. Luckily, we understood them intuitively. So instead of waiting around being unemployed, we used those requisite months of unemployment to travel around the country and visit the family and friends who had managed to elude us for the past two years. This also gave us places to live in the meantime (11 places to be exact).
By the time we’d tracked down all 150 people it was nearly October. So, according to the program, we decided we should start looking for jobs and give back the van we had borrowed from my parents. They didn’t say much about the extra 7,000 miles we had added to their odometer. And who could blame them? Highway miles are great for engines and basically all 7,000 were highway. Some people express gratitude more tacitly than others. It’s all in the glowing eyes.
The first phase of our plan complete, we logically moved to the second step. In place of the minivan we purchased a well used Subaru Outback (also chalk full of highway miles) – which I named “Subie Jack,” a friend named “Black Jack,” and which James named “the car.”
It had lots of highway miles so I knew it was healthy. 180,000 to be precise. Hey, it’s not only common sense; it’s science. Science proves that marathon runners are way healthier than couch potatoes and guess who has more miles? Case closed.
But unfortunately, it was at this point that we faced our first setback: a traffic ticket. It was also at this point that the game changed. A new, profound piece of information had revealed Itself and changed the nature of our world.
I realized that The System was not only onto us but also out to get us: the officer had pulled us over for going 26mph. He had also accused us of not having license plates on the car we had purchased 3 days before. And when I mentioned that the DMV had been closed since we brought the car back from the big city where we had purchased it to the village where we resided (the village DMV was only open 2 days a week), he only looked at his clipboard and said we had to register it immediately. He listened politely but said nothing as I again tried to explain that I had actually called the DMV to ask how long we had; they had told me that we had 30 days. He disagreed and before I could disagree with his disagreement, he docked us for having a tail light out.
Hopelessly, I explained that we were in fact just on our way back from Napa Auto Parts – where we had gone expressly to buy a new bulb – but it was closed, being after 5:00pm in a village, but he would have none of it. I was stunned and that’s when I came to the new realization: this man in black standing outside our car was – in all probability – not a real cop at all. He was a part of The System sent to thwart us. This was a lucky realization and made the $70 seem like a slap on the hand compared to what could’ve happened. Little did I know what The System would do next.
Step three of The Plan was just flexible enough to be realistic while at the same time giving us definite direction. Simply put, the plan was to find jobs. We had chosen a city (step 2.5). We only lacked the funds to live there. The obvious choice was to find employment where we had experience and education. The only problem with obvious choices is that The System also knows about them. James had six years experience working at a post office (which is a considerable working-life percentage for a 26 year old). While he applied to the USPS, I applied to an organization that sent English teachers abroad. Obviously, I had just returned to the country from doing that very thing. They wanted experience and they wanted a degree in counseling. I had both. It seemed like a no brainer so we applied and kicked back to let our degrees and work experience do the rest just like all college advisors advise. Little did we think that The System was watching us sip the proverbial lemonade from its place in the proverbial shadows.