Speaking Spanish

April 6th, 2008 | By Larry Habegger | No Comments »

“Perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrro,” I stuttered, failing completely to roll the r’s as my seven-year-old daughter laughed with glee.

“No, it’s perro,” she said in a perfect Spanish accent. “Like this.” She twittered like a bird demonstrating how to do it. “You need to practice.”

“Do you think I can learn?”

“Yes. Practice all the way home.”

So I did, spewing spittle left and right as I tried to trill my r’s to my daughter’s delight. All the way home, which meant about a ten-minute walk, I was a blithering idiot cut loose from some overcrowded psych ward, but Érne loved it. She couldn’t wait to tell her sister and mama. (more…)

Who’s Aging?

June 18th, 2007 | By Larry Habegger | No Comments »

It seemed like just a short time ago that I threw a surprise 50th birthday party for a close friend. He wasn’t impressed because he never liked to celebrate birthdays, and turning 50 was more than he wanted to face. But he played along, a good sport, and when it was over got back to his normal life.

I thought of him the other day when I was sitting at my desk in a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. He loves England, was thrilled when he learned I’d be touring the country mostly by train for two weeks. He wanted to hear everything about my trip and I’d already called him a couple times to share experiences in London I knew he’d appreciate: having a drink in St. Stephen’s Tavern, Winston Churchill’s favorite bar; finding the Duke of Wellington’s former office in the Horse Guards Building in Whitehall; pausing outside Banqueting House where King Charles I was executed in 1649 when Oliver Cromwell seized power; climbing to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral to look out over London from the heart of the old city.

I thought of him because I discovered something in my hotel room that told me he isn’t 50 anymore. In fact, he’ll be turning 65 in a couple of weeks. Where did those 15 years go?
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What Are the Chances?

March 19th, 2007 | By Larry Habegger | 1 Comment »

A friend flew from San Francisco to Panama last week and reported that his flight arrived late in LA, causing him to rush through the terminal and out to the shuttle at LAX worried he’d miss his connection. The shuttle bus took forever to circle the grounds and delivered him to the terminal for his flight on Copa Air to Panama City. It was the same terminal where his LA flight had landed! With just 20 minutes before departure he rushed to the Copa Air counter, got a hand-entered boarding pass, set off the buzzer at security with his pens and keys and coins, managed to get through, then rushed up the stairs to his gate to discover it was the very same one where his SF-LA flight had come in! If he’d simply sat and rested he could have checked in at the gate and read a book. Luckily, he made the flight with only moments to spare.

It reminded me of the time in Dublin, Ireland, in the days before easy wifi and DSL. I was visiting my in-laws and having trouble with my dialup connection from their home. I called the tech support line for my ISP, but because my in-laws have only one telephone line and there wasn’t a cell phone in the house, I couldn’t talk to the guy on one line and try to connect on the other. So, once I’d written down everything he told me to do to get online I hung up and gave it a try. Of course it didn’t work, and now it was past midnight and I was fuming. I called the number again, heard the same voice, and said, “I was on the phone with you just a few minutes ago and what you told me to do didn’t work.”

A gasp came across the wire. Then, “You talked to me a few minutes ago?”

“Yeah,” I said, then repeated my problem and his suggested solution.

“This has never happened to me before,” he said.

“What, that someone was able to call you back?”

“Yes. Do you know how many people work here? No one has ever got the same person twice!”

It must have been my good luck, because this time, knowing that his first solution didn’t work, he gave me another one, which I tried after we hung up. Happily, I didn’t have to call him back again!

A Thought for Christmas

December 8th, 2006 | By Larry Habegger | 2 Comments »

A few years ago I was in Australia in the weeks before Christmas and found myself in Adelaide. I didn’t know much about the city, but what I discovered there prompted a simple story I call “Christmas Carols in Adelaide.” Here it is, below.

Christmas Carols in Adelaide

I didn’t have high hopes for Adelaide. No one I knew had ever said anything good about it. They’d raved about Melbourne and Sydney, even Darwin, but Adelaide hadn’t generated much enthusiasm. So I planned just one quick overnight before heading up to the tropical Northern Territory after a week in the arid outback of South Australia.

I was staying six miles from Adelaide’s city center in Glenelg, right on the beach at the end of a streetcar line adjacent to Moseley Square. The December sun was still high above the sea when I looked out my window and saw the party going on. The wide, brown beach was full of people enjoying themselves. The sea was calm, a bay without breakers, and people were strolling along a jetty that reached far out into the harbor. I was hot, tired, and dirty after a long ride from the outback, and it took a heartbeat to decide the best way to cool off was to go for a swim in the sea.

The water caressed me as I swam back and forth, floated endlessly under the blue sky wondering if I should just stay there until the sun went down. I didn’t, but after I took a shower and looked out my window again, I knew I had to be outside. It was one of those moments when everything conspired to create good feelings: the balmy evening, the sunset, the people enjoying the festivity of simply being out together seemingly with no cares.

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