A Reasonably Fun Time

My trip to San Francisco wasn't all drugs and hippies. On the second day of the blue grass festival, I opted out in order to visit Susan, a welcomed reprieve from the music and atmosphere that became overwhelming the previous day.

Susan picked me up from Desiree's apartment and brought me to her new place. She's living on a coastal town that's beautiful which she in part selected because of its resemblance to Cabot Cove, the fictional location of many episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Apparently, it's also recently been discovered to house at least a couple of brothels, so she'll never be short on entertainment. ("Kevin!" I can hear Susan saying as she reads this. Oops.)

The big activity for the afternoon was walking through a cornfield maze. I was excited yet apprehensive for this activity, since I have an irrational fear of mazes. I am afraid of anything that has the potential to last forever, so the idea of wandering into a maze and never finding my way out is sort of terrifying. I'm not afraid of things jumping out at me (it turned out it wasn't that kind of maze), but spending an eternity trapped in a maze, living off corn would be all sorts of hell.

It was interesting to go from the bustling activity of the city one day to the desolate windy roads of the country the next. We met up with Kim and her clan, some of whom were at the Price Is Right taping, for the big event.

The corn maze didn't seem too intimidating. Children were entering it, so I figured it could not be so difficult than children were dying in there. That's got to be a liability or at least bad for the crops. The farmer operating the maze, however, was scary. He was elderly and lecherous, expressing a romantic interest in Kim and offering her a private nighttime walk through the maze. As unfortunate as it probably was for her to give up an opportunity for a lifetime supply of pumpkins, I think she made the right choice to forego waking up every day at sunrise to a wrinkled figure in overalls. As long as the farmer would not be accompanying us in the maze, I was game to proceed. If ever we got too lost in the maze, we could plow through the corn to the perimeter for an exit, crops be damned.

We employed a system of taking a right turn at every opportunity so we could at least keep track of where we had traveled when we needed to backtrack. We walked, hit dead ends, walked, joked, walked, questioned our methods, walked, and walked some more. We hadn't seen where the exit was when we entered, so there was some concern that the corn maze (the Native Americans would call it a maize maze) might be some sort of trick. When we covered ground that we thought we might have covered again, someone suggested leaving a trail of something as a reminder. I recommended that we poop every so often so that we would have both a visual and scented clue to assist us, but this idea was not well received.

After about an hour, we finally found our escape. The exit conveniently let out to the spot where pumpkins were available for purchase, demonstrating that the creepy farmer had sales on his mind in addition to women 1/3 his age. Upon finishing, I said, "Well that was a reasonably fun time," which I fear might have offended some of our party. I modified with the word "reasonably" because it was a corn maze, for crying out loud. We walked and we got frustrated; I mean it wasn't a party. On the other hand, it wasn't a blue grass festival. Hence: reasonably fun. The fun part was a credit to the company, I promise.

Yesterday, Anna and I were driving around and were a bit lost. Anna pointed out that it's funny how in some contexts trying to find something is fun, like in a scavenger hunt, but when you're lost as to a destination, it's just stressful. It brought to mind how I felt about the cornfield. I paid to intentionally get lost in a labyrinth. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, or, you know, reasonably so, but I can't help but question what the difference between these events is. People are a peculiar species. Particularly that farmer.