ONE WITHOUT NATURE
I was recently discussing with my friend
Sandra the beauty of Las Vegas, and since she has never been and basically has no desire to ever go, my point of view was "don't knock it 'til you try it." Her point of view was, basically, that she is a big nature-person, which is true, and therefore Vegas sort of goes against all that I guess.
Anyways, I just had a moment on my roundabout way home from work that made me realize just how much I am NOT a nature person, and I probably never will be.
First of all, I am a city-kid through and through. I was born in Chelsea, MA and lived for the first couple of years of my life in Allston, MA. Allston is a section of Boston that is very, VERY, city. (I still visit Allston occasionally for the bar scene and excellent restaurants).
When I was little and we had moved to the suburbs, whenever we'd take a day trip into Boston the tall buildings would absolutely hypnotize me. I always said "when I grow up, I am going to live in Boston. I want to live in the city." New York City has become a frequent weekend getaway of mine, and even though I have never lived there a day in my life, every time I arrive in Manhattan I have this overwhelming sense that "I'm home." When the twin towers of the World Trade Center were attacked, I felt that the loss of those buildings was as almost as devastating as the thousands of lost lives inside them.
Anyways, I digress ever so slightly, but I am most definitely a city-slicker. Let's pair that with the fact that I am HYPER-allergic to all animals. Well, maybe the term ALL is an exaggeration - I am allergic to all animals that have fur or feathers. Which really only leaves snakes, reptiles and fish, all of which are gross. (first clue that I am NOT a nature person). I bring up the allergies because animals freak me out, and I always thought that I was strange because of that, that it made me weird. But now I am thinking maybe animals freak me out because I have NO IDEA what to do with one, based on the fact that I have never interacted with an animal in my entire life!
Okay, okay, getting WAY back to my story, I was driving down route 27 in Sharon after work, going a healthy 45 mph, and a deer started to cross the road in front of me. I absolutely FREAKED out. If I were a nature person, I would have found the sight "breathtaking," or I would have been scared for the poor lost little thing - he was definitely a baby.
But no...I FREAKED out because I had the top down on my car. In the half a second where he darted out towards my car, all I could think was "he's going to hit me, and he's going to land on my unprotected head and crush me and KILL me. Why did I have to put the top down?" I don't have A/C in my car, so when it is 97 degrees out like it was today, top down is really the only option. These thoughts all raced through my head in a half a millisecond, but just as quickly the little bambi changed his mind and cleverly darted back into the woods. Probably half as scared as I was!
I am not a nature person, for certain. I can appreciate it and all of its majestic beauty....but only from afar.
(the exclamation point to prove this whole point is that the only reason I was on this road to begin with is because I am moving in less than six months, and I was trying to find a Starbucks between my new house and my office, so that I won't be without my morning fix. Yet I don't really need to worry about this until December. Hmm.....maybe not being a nature person isn't the biggest of my issues!!!)
