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Author: Joshua SMITH
Format: online manual
Pages: 496

 

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True Story #13: A week on an Indian underwear model's couch

 

In preparation for my move from The U.S. to France, I either sold or gave away everything in my possession that would not fit into two carry-on suitcases.  I was sad to let go of my 25 year old electric bass guitar, but I nearly cried as I watched the new owner of my red ’94 Ford Probe pull out of my driveway.  I had bought her at a police impound auction in Georgia, and even though she was a magnet for cops, resulting in at least one un-ticketed pull-over every two months for the two years that I owned her, she was the most reliable car I had ever owned.
Finally, to avoid paying an unnecessary month of rent, Sotar, a Nepali friend of mine who was studying as a foreign exchange student at my university, offered his couch to me for a week until my flight to London from Atlanta, GA. Sotar, living the life of a typical foreign exchange student, was so scrawny and skinny due to severe sleep deprivation and an inadequate diet in order to save money, that any self-respecting mother would have had a heart attack.

One weekend, while aimlessly wandering the local shopping mall, Sotar was scouted by a modelling agency.  His monthly stipend of $500 that the university library paid him to stock the returned books suddenly quadrupled and he now draped himself with top-of-the-line clothing and so many gaudy accessories that any self-respecting mother would have disowned him.

At last, the day had arrived, my final day on the North American continent for the next year.  I woke up at 5:00 am the morning of my flight, and carried my suitcases three blocks to meet Rebecca, a friend who was going to drive me to the airport shuttle bus stop. As I carried the two 45 pound suitcases down the street, beads of sweat began forming on my forehead and excitement soon tempered into worry as I realized that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to carry them both around Europe with me. This dilemma continued to haunt me as we sped down the highway at top speed to make it in time.  Construction on the highway had caused us to run late, and I arrived only minutes before the bus was about to leave. My friend, on her way to another meeting, dropped me off and continued on her way, so from that point on, I was on my own.

Now what? I asked myself as I stood at the passenger loading dock scratching my head looking at the two suitcases by my feet.

The bus driver, seeing me standing there with a confused and frustrated look on my face as the other passengers loaded their baggage and boarded the van, assumed that I must have been mentally challenged and didn’t know how the process worked, so he walked up to me and spoke in a very slow and enunciated manner.

“Put your suitcases (he pointed at my suitcases) into the back of the van (he pointed to the back of the van), and get inside (he pointed at the open sliding door of the van). I’m leaving in three minutes (he then tapped on his watch a couple of times).”

I paused just long enough to shoot him an evil glance, then, without thinking, unzipped both suitcases open and dumped their contents out onto the parking lot, grabbed only that which I felt I could not live without, threw them into one suitcase, and tossed it into the back of the bus as he started up the van to pull away, abandoning the other suitcase to its fate, never to be seen or heard from again.
True Story.
 

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