Seat of Our Pants

I’m a girl and girls sometimes cry. We can’t help it. Well, I can’t help it at least, especially when I’m tired. One wrong word or move and I become a fountain. Combine exhaustion, near constant bus rides and a new hotel every night. The result: a recipe for Jaime Disaster. This week’s trigger was, embarrassingly enough, a fingernail.

You all remember my A-mazing basket, right? Well, the damn thing is still with us. I’ve become so stubborn about using it that any hope of transitioning back to a daypack is gone. Anyway, the basket was riding on the top of the bus with our backpacks (it’s too large to ride with us inside). A few hours into our drive the driver was reorganizing the bags and accidentally knocked my basket off the back of the bus.

What did I do when I saw this happening? I lunged at the dumb basket, fearing it’s destruction, and bent a fingernail back. Now, we’ve all had a fingernail bend back. It hurts. But you get over it, right? Apparently not when you’re as tired as I was. My face immediately puckered in all the wrong places and my chin burst into a fit of quivering: my precursor to a fountain.

To avoid a scene, I climbed into our van. The tears were falling and to make matters worse, our bus-mates were all Tibetan. Tough as nails, they lose a foot and keep on walking type of people. And here I was sobbing over a bent fingernail. Martin of course was there to comfort me, which calmed me down enough to dry my eyes. A few minutes passed and one of our bus-mates brought over two band aids.

Did I thank him in a calm, cool and collected manner? Of course not. I burst into a fresh explosion of tears and was unable to say a word. So my fellow westerners, I’m sorry to say it, but I did nothing to prove our toughness to the people of Arunachal Pradesh. In fact, I’d go as far as saying I made us look like big-fat-cry-babies.

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