Going To Iceland

"I Love Lucy", "The Andy Griffith Show", "Bewithced", "The Brady Bunch", "The Cosby Show". What do all these shows have in common? They represent various points in time when life was a lot more simple than it is in this day and age. As adults most of us long for the days when things were less intense and our worries were more about where to go and what to do over the weekend. We have all also been forced to learn that with each passing year there seems to be more and more than we have to think about, worry about, more to face and deal with, while we wish we could go back to a place in time when it was just easier. For myself, and I'm sure many of my former classmates, that was our time spent at A.T. Mahan High School in Keflavik, Iceland.

Now I realize that for a vast majority of people high school was an awkward adventure that went far beyond trying to figure how the hell we were going to use algebra on a day to day basis, or why did we really need to know the history of the world, or what is the point of understanding Hamlet. In the midst of all this academic turmoil, social anxiety and plotting schemes to have fun without getting caught, you come home from school one day and find out that one, or both, of your parents just got orders that, when translated in your own mind state the following terms: "Pack your shit-again, say goodbye to your friends-again, get ready for a new school-again...this time your going to Iceland!"

Now for someone like myself, whose claim to fame at this point had been typing every single word that had been printed in the previous school years yearbook. I say that pointing out the difference between "typing the words" versus "writing the articles". I was not popular in high school, was not into sports, clubs or any other extra-curricular activities. I was not preparing for college, I did have a job though and I was 18, which meant that I didn't have to go to Iceland if I didn't want to....and i didn't want to, nor did I go...well not at first.

It took all of about two months "on my own" before I called my dad and said I really screwed up and needed to come home. By this point "home" now meant going to a big old piece of lava rock where there was 23 hours of darkness in the winter and 23 hours of sunlight in the summer. A rock where the temperature rarely creeped up above sixty degrees in July and where the ground was pretty much hidden under the snow for six months out of the year. I already have a pretty bad attitude and anger management problem and the situation I was about to get into only served to make it worse...in the beginning that is.

I remember trying to tell myself that things wouldn't be as bad I thought they were going to be. My dad made arrangements to have my things shipped, I sold my car, made a trip to visit my granny and prepared myself mentally as best as I knew how at the time. I had a friend drive me to the base where I had to catch the plane for the eight hour flight from Norfolk, Virginia.

As they began calling everyone into order at the air terminal to walk us out to the flight-line to board the plane I forced myself to summon up a sense of excitement as we walked out the door into the sunlight and in one quick second my heart sank. I was about to board a flight from sunny Virginia Beach to desolate Iceland....on what??

Hawaiian Airlines!?!

WTF?