and Words
I’ve got you on the loose
I left you groovin’
I’ve got you on the beat
I left you broken
But won’t you take my place
Since long ago I wandered
Way out on a cliff
With the brilliance of an angel
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On the summer of 1991, I walk into the men’s room at work. Much like you’d expect, I simply walk in for a nature call. As I stand there at the urinal, I do my business. My mind wanders, and for a brief moment it turns to absolutely nothing. Next, I absentmindedly zip up and walk to the sink to wash my hands. As I lather up, my mind fixates on precisely where I am. I panic.
I stand in the men’s room at Microsoft’s Building 13; I started my professional career a few days ago. A whirlwind of activity led up to this week. First, I had a short vacation days before I left Florida, where we drove up the East Coast to visit friends in Philadelphia and Connecticut. Next, I arrived in Washington a week early to take care of administrative tasks. I used this week to accomplish tasks like getting a new license, transferring my registration, finding an apartment. Subsequently, I tackled all these.
While I didn’t realize this back then, my mind works precisely this way. Upon becoming laser-focused on an activity, I tune out all other distractions. However, once I resolve these tasks, my mind relaxes and allows other details to trickle through. It was in this particular moment when I realized the enormity of everything that transpired. I graduated with my engineering degree from the University of Miami. After waiting weeks for a response, I got a job offer at Microsoft. Having accepted that offer, I moved across the country to the Seattle area, away from all my family. I’m here alone in an unfamiliar city.
Now, standing in the men’s restroom is when I finally panic. However, everything has already transpired. All the difficult tasks are done; there’s no longer a reason to panic. I return to my office.
It’s not entirely true that I was in Seattle all alone. There were a couple of classmates from Miami that arrived here weeks before for internships. Anil and Eduardo were also engineering students; I only had a casual familiarity with them. They helped me acclimate to my new surroundings in this new city. At first, I was in temporary housing, then I transitioned to my new apartment.
My first summer here was packed; I filled my days with new activities learning my craft. I befriended my officemate Rich, who arrived here weeks before I did. He helped me navigate the procedures and idiosyncrasies of the technology. He introduced me to like-minded people with whom I shared tasks and meals. Our friendship lasted for many years, long after we each got our individual offices.
I filled my evenings and weekends with activities suggested by Anil and Eduardo; that and unpacking and getting settled into my first apartment of my own. We all worked in different teams, and Microsoft had many of them, so we didn’t cross paths during the day. We spent much of our time chatting and coordinating over e-mail, since we had yet to develop instant messaging. It was here that I learned more about each of my former classmates. Anil had a fascination with flying and worked on finally getting his pilot’s license while he was here. We discovered that Eduardo paired peanut butter with mayonnaise in sandwiches; no that’s not a typo. There was even a discussion what could possibly be worse than this combination; one suggestion was peanut butter and Prego.
I joined a regular penny-ante poker game; yes, it was literally penny-ante. I would navigate the dark roads to the remote recesses of Woodinville to join on this game. It became a collection of familiar faces, and truthfully, it was more about the friendships than the game of poker. A pocketful of change would be enough to fund the festivities, and it was cheap entertainment for a Monday night. The dealer rotated around the table, and we played many variations of poker; none of us ever called to play Texas Hold’em. Thank goodness too, because I might have rage quit. No, poker is not synonymous with Texas Hold’em.
As Anil meticulously added flight time to finish his pilot’s license, he invited us to accompany him on some of these trips. I distinctly remember his asking me on these trips, “How much do you weight? Don’t lie!” In these small Cessnas, the pilot needs to know precisely how much the contents weight; it’s a question of safety. On one especially spectacular day, we flew into the San Juan Islands. We landed on a modest airport on one of the islands. It sat a short distance from the water, and we subsequently climbed out of the plane. We walked the short distance to a restaurant, right on the water. We dined at that restaurant, where I reflected on how phenomenal this entire experience was… though truthfully, I can’t remember what we ate that day.
In some ways, a trip to the Snohomish Parachute center highlighted that summer. A group of interns coordinated a day where a gaggle of them would go skydiving. I’m not sure how I agreed to go skydiving, but somehow, I acquiesced.
Anil and I decided to do tandem skydives, so that we could each experience a moment of weightlessness; Eduardo tagged along and took pictures. We even paid a little extra for additional altitude, to get a full 30 seconds said freefall. We got some basic instruction, much less than you needed for a static line jump. The extent of the static line instruction was basically, “Step on that ledge beneath the wing and let go”.
Then four of us (two plus our tandem instructors) packed like sardines into the back of a small plane without seats. The way that we were seated, I was to be the first out of the plane. As we climbed to our target of 10.5k feet of altitude, I mentally reserved the right to change my mind about this activity. My instructor buckled himself to me in about four different places, his chest to my back. My apprehension skyrocketed once we opened the door to the plane, felt the wind, and saw the altitude. He leaned to me and directed me to, “Put your foot on that ledge.” I merely leaned to look out the door at the ledge beneath the wing; he used his legs to push out of the plane.
Uhm… WTF just happen?! Okay, now I was stuck; there was no way to go back into the plane. The wind rushed at over one hundred miles (or more accurately, we rushed past it). I remember counting up to about ten before I felt the chute open. I’m not sure if that meant that I lost the sense of time or perhaps that I passed out in panic for a portion of the freefall. As the parachute opened, I felt the harness tighten around my gut. Once we got situated, the instructor loosened the harness a bit for my comfort. He then proceeded to give me instructions in steering the parachute as we approached our landing, which we did, uneventfully.
Anil who was immediately behind me in the plane, alleges that he asked the instructor if he could land on me on the ground. I’ll never know if he really asked that question, nor if he actually meant it, but it remains to this day, part of that lore.
Anil’s fascination with flying (and later skydiving) was marked by his fondness for (and subsequent playing of) this song as he drove. He flung his arms to the drumbeat of this song at stoplights. To this day, I’ll never really know precisely what that means, “Fly Me Courageous”. However, it bookmarks that crazy summer. Between this madness, my new friends at work, and the extreme change in scenery, it made my transition a tad easier.
I continued to play on that penny-ante poker game for years; Monday nights were filled with a pocketful of change and the generic house sodas. That officemate and I became good friends; we continued gaming for decades past our working together. Though I have not been in a small plane, nor have I skydived since.
Anil and Eduardo ended their internships and returned to Miami. Neither elected to return to Microsoft to work upon finishing their studies. While I lost contact with them for a while, we have since reconnected. Anil is still fascinated by planes; Eduardo still eats peanut butter and mayo sandwiches.