A Week in Boston

Back in July, I went on vacation to Boston. And it's been about this long since I've been able to think about the trip without cringing. Not that anything bad happened during the trip, aside from me losing my DS in O'Hare.

That was a real bummer, but it was nothing compared to what happened upon my return. We had literally just walked in the door from our return flight to find the basement of our house, where I live, flooding. We've had floods before, and normally it amounted to little more than puddles and me spending a couple hours mopping up. Thism however, was a deluge. By the next morning, my basement had over three feet of water in it. Fortunately, I lost very few of my personal possessions, as previous floods had taught me to leave nothing on the floor, but it was still a loss. I slept on the floor of my sister's part of the house for almost two months.

But that's another story, and a sad one that I don't wish to go into presently. I intend to focus on the positive; namely, the fun time I had in Boston. We went there to visit my cousin Tami and her husband Denny,* as well as my young first cousins once removed Noah and Lilah. Noah will be turning three soon, and his sister Lilah was about 8 months old at the time we visited. While there, we did some sight-seeing, normal tourist stuff.

Here's one thing that I can't explain about myself. I am terrified of heights. If I'm any higher than two or three stories in a building, I won't go within five feet of a window. But I love flying. Put me in a plane, and I will spend the entire trip staring out the nearest window like a blind man who has just been granted the gift of sight. The only explanation I can come up with is that I feel safer sitting in a plane than standing by a window in a building.

Noah and myself

Noah was a lot of fun, if a bit too much at times. One thing that amused me to no end was that he had trouble remembering who I am. He's only seen me a couple times, and the last time was last Christmas, which is a long time ago for someone who isn't even three years old yet. For the first couple days, he confused me for my cousin and as a result would refer to me as "Uncle Jim." An understandable mistake from his perspective: Jim and I are barely six months apart in age, are of similar builds, and while we don't look alike, I imagine we must have a family resemblance. Noah understood that I was a male family member who wasn't one of his grandparents, so I must be Uncle Jim. Q.E.D. I corrected him each time, which seemed to cause even more confusion. A pattern soon established, as follows:

"Uncle Jim!"
"I'm not Uncle Jim. I'm your cousin Eric."
<beat> "Where's Uncle Jim?"
"He's in Chicago."

I think the last bit is what really threw him for a loop. He was born and lived the first year or so of his life in Switzerland, and probably only vaguely remembers that. By comparison, he was in Chicago to see us maybe twice, and only one of those times was he old enough to walk and talk. He probably had no idea what I was talking about when I said "Chicago," which my mom confirmed when she told me that I should just say "He's at his house."

My sister Jessi and Lilah

Lilah, on the other hand, being less than a year old, wasn't bothered by such trivialities as who the hell we all were. At that age, I imagine everyone is lumped into one of a few very specific categories: Mommy and Daddy, other people feeding me, other people playing with me, and random people standing within my line of sight. There's some overlap of course, but when you're too young to form long-term memories, it's pretty much a moment-by-moment thing.

As I stated before, as well as visiting my newly-minted relatives, we also did the tourist thing. Boston is a lovely town, and full of history. Being that I've lived my whole life in Chicago, it was both amazing and humbling to stand in front of buildings with signs authenticating the fact that they are in fact older than this country. There's a wide variety of beautiful architecture, especially the churches. I wanted to go see the Red Church, the oldest church in America, but alas, even a week wasn't long enough to see everything I wanted to experience.

But we did get to see a lot. We visited M.I.T. and Harvard. M.I.T. was strange. It wasn't built like a college. If I hadn't been told we were strolling through a college campus, I would have insisted we were walking around in some downtown area. It looked more like a busy financial district, with buildings of varying age and architecture, than one of the most prestigious colleges in America. Not that I'm speaking ill of M.I.T. Everything was well built and pleasing to the eye, it just wasn't at all what I expected.

Hahvahd

Harvard, on the other hand, was exactly what I picture a renowned University looking like. Sprawling acres of tended lawns, with trees spaced sporadically here and there with plenty of lounging students (especially considering this was July), buildings of red brick practically dripping with age and history. Also, I found it highly amusing that the tour guides I saw were wearing T-shirts that said "Hahvahd."

Speaking of the stereotypical Southie accent, during our last day in Boston we went on a tour of various locations in Boston where movies and TV shows have been shot (or at least used for second-unit photography). The tour guide had a so-called "neutral" American accent; i.e. a Midwestern accent pretty close to my own. He said this was because he went to college in Virginia, and had been made fun of for his Massachusetts non-rhotic manner of speaking, causing him to teach himself to learn a new accent. However, at point during the tour, we stopped at a bar where a scene from Good Will Hunting had been filmed. While in there, one of the barflies looked over at me, and we had the following conversation, pretty much verbatim.

Barfly: Ah you paht of the touah?
Me: Yeah, I'm with the movie tour.
Barfly: Have you seen The Depahted?
Me: (trying not to laugh) It's been mentioned a lot during the tour.
Barfly: It was filmed heah too, you know.

I mean, come on. Out of all the movies filmed in Boston he could have mentioned, he had to ask me about the one that has a name that showcases his accent?

Going back to Harvard, when we were entering, my sister asked us what the name of the school's founder was. I couldn't remember, and my mom said "John Harvard." That sounded familiar to me, so I said I thought that was it. About ten minutes later, we came upon a statue which, according to rumor, is not of John Harvard, even though the plaque has his name on it. My mom saw it and started laughing, stating that she had been making the name up earlier. For the rest of the day, just saying "John Harvard" was enough to get us all laughing.

The movie tour was a lot of fun, too, even though I had only been vaguely interested in it. I was much more interested in seeing historic sites in Boston, but as my sister had already done that when she'd been there a couple months earlier, I decided it could wait for another time. During the tour, our guide had a running contest going, where he would hand over coupons every time one of us answered a question correctly. There were points given out for other things, such as pointing out whenever we passed a Dunkin Donuts (which it turns out got it's start in Boston), but most of them were for answering questions. I thought I had it in the bag, but there was another guy there who gave me a real run for my money. I was thoroughly unsurprised when I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt with a quote from The Usual Suspects on it. This guy obviously knew his movies. Perhaps appropriately, we ended up pretty much in a tie, so we both got to go home with a little plastic trophy proclaiming us to be "Movie Buffs." I'll have to figure out what the hell I did with mine.

Denny, my cousin Tami's husband, was in Switzerland on a job interview our first day there, but he was back by the second day. Denny is good people in my opinion. He's got the most awesome German accent I've ever heard, and he's rather soft-spoken most of the time, a sharp contrast to my family, stereotypical loud obnoxious Americans all. I don't mean soft spoken in that he doesn't voice his opinion, he does, especially if you get him going. I mean it literally, his normal speaking voice is a good 10-20 decibels lower than most people I know. I had a good time sitting out on the back porch with him drinking beer and chatting about whatever.

One thing that was weird for me was the change of schedule. Boston is only one hour off Chicago, so there was no jet-lag. But I'm a night person. I think nothing of staying up till the wee hours of the morning and waking up well after noon. But on that trip, I found myself going to bed by 10 (and thinking about how it was only 9 back home), and waking up about 5 or 6 am.

"Waking up" might sound innocuous. It's one thing having an alarm go off, or having someone poke their head in to tell you it's time to get up. It's quite another to be jarred awake by a naked toddler leaping onto your unconscious form and demanding to be thrown around the room like a rag doll. This was a daily occurrence, as I was sleeping on a futon in Noah's play room, and like most young children he has absolutely no sense of propriety. It didn't even occur to him that I might not be ready upon the instant of waking to roughhouse with him.

Here's one thing I noticed while I was visiting. If there's one trait that all members of the Kasperek family have in common, it's that we all have the same eye color. I've noticed that every one of the blood relatives on my mom's side of the family has the same blue eyes I do, which is impressive considering pretty much all of my relatives by marriage have brown eyes. You'd figure the brown allele would have caught on somewhere, but our eye color seems to be indomitable.

But of course, it was eventually time to go home. It was raining when we got to the airport, and that rain seemed to follow us as it was coming down in buckets when we landed in O'Hare. And as I already stated, that rain had some very unfortunate implications for me. But I still don't want to revisit that, so it is at this point that I will bid you all adieu.

More pictures of my trip can be viewed here.

* In case you're wondering, that actually is them in those links.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights