It was Friday, late morning and a trip to the gym was planned. We arrived and I walked about for a few minutes to get an idea where the machines I would be using were located, always a challenge at an unfamiliar workout facility. During gym visits at this hour I often find myself pondering what others who are there do for a living. What profession could you be in where you would have free time at 11:45 a.m. on a weekday? Perhaps these same people are pondering a like question about me. Fair enough. Some are old enough to perhaps be retired. Some may be prosperous enough to set their own hours. Certainly people in the airline industry, or like myself, in retail, work erratic, non traditional schedules. Restaurant and bar workers are two other possibilities.
I was wearing an old tee shirt, the sleeves cut off long ago, picked up during a visit to Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, notable for it's sizable collection of roller coasters. One youngish man asked me where Cedar Point was. "Ohio" I replied, thinking nothing of my answer. He then told me his mother had a summer home at a place called Cedar Beach in Maine. I smiled, nodded politely and continued my workout.
It was only sometime later that I realized how foreign Ohio may have sounded to the inquisitive lad. From Chicago Cedar Point is a 5 to 6 hour drive away. From an Arizona perspective it could well be viewed as being on another planet.
It was a moment where those famous words echoed through my head, I'm paraphrasing here, "Toto, I don't think we're in Chicago anymore!"
Much less Ohio
ReplyDeleteOhio is from another planet.
ReplyDelete