Life at DrTom's: Mostly Humorous Anecdotes by a Mostly Retired Cornell Professor. Thomas A. Gavin
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happier than they could possibly have realized.
But the crème de la crème was later that evening at the Villa Leonor, where I had made reservations for a Valentine's dinner. The place is nothing fancy and, frankly, I wasn't expecting the evening to flip my wig. The place is run by Cliff, an ex-pat from Colorado, and his tico wife Anna. The idea was to come at 5pm for drinks on the beach, and to watch the sunset. Then, we would all retire to the open-air restaurant of theirs about 200 meters back from the beach for live music and dinner. We had preordered our dinners the day before. The formula was as romantic as one could construct on paper for this day of days for sweethearts.
But about an hour before we were to leave the house to go to the Villa, it started to rain, really, really hard. It rained so hard that a large tree fell down near our house, knocking out the electricity for the next 12 hours. But we had ordered our dinners already, and we thought we owed it to Cliff to show up for the food he had probably gotten in especially for this night. We drove in a pounding rain to the place. When we got to the parking lot, Cliff greeted us with an umbrella and escorted us into the bar area. He obviously had to cancel the beach soirée. Cliff brought us a complimentary cocktail, and we then realized that his electricity was also off. About ten couples are coming for a rather elegant dinner on a special day and the guy has no electricity just as he is about to prepare a 3-course meal.
But Cliff is laughing and seems totally calm, and says something about making do when in Costa Rica, and my wife is trying to make him feel relaxed during a probable tense time like she usually does, which makes me feel less relaxed because her ruse is so obvious to me, because I have known her for so long and I have seen her do this a thousand times before. Basically, Cliff's message was, "we have no electricity, so let's party". Guests kept arriving, and we all sat around while it poured like the devil only a few feet away, and I could hear frogs calling in the rain under the eaves of the open structure with the thatched roof. Candles were lit everywhere, and it was wonderful! Cliff went around to each guest and asked them how they wanted their food cooked, not one person complained about anything, and the orders were sent to the kitchen. Turns out they cook with gas, so the kitchen was lit up with flashlights and candles and they proceeded.
At about this point, a young man from San Isidro picked up his guitar and began to sing. He continued for about two hours with a fantastic collection of old and new ballads, some in Spanish and some in English. He was surprisingly good. Our dinners came, the music continued, and about this time, the electricity came back on. I realized that my first impulse was one of disappointment. We were eating by candlelight before the power came back, not because we chose to attempt to strike a romantic mood, but because we had to eat my candlelight to see our food. To me, that REALLY was romantic. Cliff caught the change of mood immediately and turned off the incandescent lights that had just flickered on, and we continued almost seamlessly.
I don't consider myself a romantic, mushy kind of guy. My wife says she would like me to be more so, but I doubt that really. Last night's dinner was as romantic, in the fullest sense of the word, as it gets. My wife did look fantastic, but it was so much more than that. It was romantic because it could have turned completely sour if the attitudes in the room had been different, but they were not. The ambiance was perfect, but not so much out of purposeful design, but because the guests and the restaurant staff went with the flow, improvised, laughed at the inconveniences, and were dissuaded from the idea that weather or power outages would keep us from enjoying the moment.
It was also romantic because Robin and I fully recognized the experience as yet another memorable Costa Rican evening that enfolded in a way not quite expected. And OK, it was also romantic because we held hands for most of the night. Some mush is allowed.
What if the last face you ever saw was David Schwimmer’s?
I had a very upsetting moment on a recent flight from Costa Rica to the states. We were flying over the Caribbean when I looked up at the tv monitor above my seat and noticed that a rerun of the sitcom "Friends" was showing. At that moment, David Schwimmer, one of the main actors in that series, was on the screen. I had no earpiece so I had no idea what he was saying or what the scene was about. At that exact instant, the plane hit some turbulence, the fuselage shook from side to side, and I had one of those fleeting thoughts in the air when you wonder if this is the time. You know, "the" time when the plane goes into the ocean and you have to remember where the flotation device is actually located, even though you have been told its location by airline crews about 500 times. But worse, what if the image of that goofy, forlorn face of David Schwimmer's was the last thing I was ever going to see?
This scenario occupied me for the next few days. Maybe we should be more careful about what we observe, just in case it is the last image your brain ever registers. I have labeled this the "Schwimmer effect"----the fear that the last image you see in life is something unsettling, ugly, unpleasant, or goofy. Image if you had a fatal heart attack immediately after watching Anderson Cooper crying over a dead cat on CNN, or you were hit by a Mack truck shuffling across the street while looking at a pic of your ex-girlfriend still lingering there on your cell phone, or you drowned at the beach after startling Pee Wee Herman while he was urinating behind a sand dune wearing a Speedo suit and flip-flops. These examples just prove there is a hell on earth. You don't have to die to go there.
On the other hand, what if the last image David Schwimmer ever saw was that of DrTom? You know, he heard about this book, he actually read this chapter, he was disturbed about what I had to say, he had a heart attack as he scrolled to the top of the page where there is a picture of me sitting on a horse, and he died. Would the "DrTom Effect" be any less damaging to him than the "Schwimmer Effect" would be to DrTom? These are questions worth pondering in Philosophy 101 this fall at institutions of higher learning around the world. In fact, it would be informative to see a list of images created by respondents that would define their "Schwimmer Effect". Send me an email with your suggestions.
So what should we do to avoid the "Schwimmer effect"? Watch only National Geographic specials on tv---rivers, mountains, and polar bears. A brief look at the Miss America contest is probably ok, as long as Rosie O'Donnell is not the host. If you go to the movies, a flick like "Happy Feet" is good--mostly animated penguins. Only use real trees at Christmas, not aluminum. And if you must read blogs, read Huffington Post or DrTom. And think only pure thoughts.
Walk a mile in my shoes
The heavy, tight-fitting leather shoes were hurting my feet something awful, and I couldn't take it anymore. So I removed them as soon as we disembarked from the subway near our room, and set them in an obvious place on the sidewalk against a building. I walked the remainder of the distance to our room in my socks. I suppose this was the first time an American had ever left a pair of perfectly good shoes on the sidewalk in the 16th arrondissement (the Trocadero section) in Paris. My feet felt better instantly and I felt liberated generally. Nearly barefoot on a Parisian sidewalk, and I didn't give a damn.
About a year after this, I was in Kenya for an international meeting in Nairobi. After the meeting, I went on a little safari to the Maasai-Mara, where I stayed in a small tent camp. On this trip I took a pair of sandals, to wear around the camp, and some high-top hiking shoes for daily excursions onto the savanna. My Maasai guide and I hit it off right away; he knew all the birds in the area, and I wanted to know them all. But during my two days with him it was obvious that he coveted my sandals, which he saw me wear to dinner each night. When I was about to leave on the third day, I made a gift of the sandals to this young guy, who was extremely pleased to receive them. He promised that if I ever returned, one of his wives would fix me a nice dinner. Sounded good to me, as long as the dinner did not consist only of cattle blood. By the way, if you have any good recipes using this "food", please pass it along. I don’t see any on cooking.com.
Then, last month in Costa Rica my feet developed a rash that would stop the bulls in Pamplona. I was convinced it was due to the Crocs I had been wearing, and they weren't very comfortable anyway. However, I admit that the Facebook group that I had only just discovered titled "I Don't Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like A Dumbass" was haunting me. I seem to have a deficiency when it comes to buying footwear that works for me. So I gave the Crocs to the cleaning lady at