Confessions of a Sideline Parent, or "Pass it to Dakota!"

I’m not a crazy sports parent.  I’m not that dad climbing on the dugout, howling at the ump for justice.  Don’t call me the father who coaches his child’s every movement from his deluxe fold-up sideline recliner despite a soccer knowledge consisting of “foot good, hand bad.”  And in no way am I part of that dual-headed parenting beast, the mom-dad lacrosse combo that scolds any teammate who stands in the way of family greatness by screeching, “Pass it to Dakota!”  I’m not that guy.  Well, at least not anymore. 

Sure, I’ve said things – we’ve all said things, but I was only practicing “active parenting.”  Screaming, “Hey kid, take that piano off your back!” or “Mr. Referee, your incompetence is outdone only by your ineptitude,” or “You call that goal keeping?” was my way of letting everyone know I was paying attention.  Granted, I might have chosen a more elegant way of speaking.  But that’s in the past.

I didn’t learn those things from my parents.  Not much of an athlete growing up, I’d like to think the solo bike rides to my soccer and baseball games had more to do with the lingering effects of the OPEC oil embargo than my parents’ secret shame at Timmy’s two left feet.  And when my parents did watch, they never said a word.

When I was twelve, I started playing junior tennis, finally experiencing the power of direct parent participation.  My mom would drive me back and forth across the greater New York area to tournaments, resigned to the fact my Schwinn would only get me so far.  At one match, under an enormous bubble roof in Queens, my mom parked the car and wished me luck.  I arrived at the court and met my opponent.  His name was Barry Stambler, a boy I’d played a few times before.

I was no Harold Solomon, but I’d won a few matches in my day and had beaten Barry weeks prior.  But today Barry brought a secret weapon – his mother.  Mrs. Stambler settled in courtside as we began.  She sat mute and motionless, save for her crocheting Barry’s victory cardigan as her son made swift business of me.  She might as well have been yodeling, “We are the Champions” as Barry picked me apart, game by game, his cross-court groundstrokes combining with the soft clicking of his mom’s knitting needles to deliver a  prompt and humiliating defeat.  With each ace I wondered where my mom was, hoping the Stamblers would at least get me to the bus station.

Before I had kids, I’d laugh at the nutty dads who made the game all about themselves.  In high school, it was normal to witness men in pinstripe suits throw haymakers at one another during their sons’ heated lacrosse rivalries.  “Who does those things?” I’d ask myself. 

Pretty soon out of the parenting gates, I’d become the thing I mocked.  I once demanded a skating instructor move my son from the novice Brown Bears to the more advanced Golden Geese mid lesson, shouting at the teenage girl trying to corral dozens of confused children that she’d misjudged my son’s talent.  “He deserves to be with the Geese!  He’s a goose, not a bear!  He’s a goose!”  He was five years old and had never worn skates until that morning.

My parenting nadir came at a 3^rd grade soccer tournament as my son’s team played for the title.  I was relentless, providing constant “encouragement” to his teammates and launching a steady diatribe against the opponents.  “Hey, number fifteen – watch the elbows!” I said to a blonde-haired boy on the other team.  He was eight, and I, a grown man with a wife, two kids, a driver’s license, receding hairline and a college degree, pointed at him, telling him to “Watch it.” 

“You’re unbelievable,” another dad said to me.  I know!  I was sure he meant my shrewd analysis of this boy’s unchecked aggression was to be applauded.  Afterwards, at the trophy ceremony, I wondered why no other parents would make eye contact.  Did I have a problem?

This change from shrieking monster to normal human father was gradual.  A few years ago, my son’s middle school basketball team was locked in seesaw battle with a rival, and the gym was packed.  A lone voice rang out above the squeaking sneakers and cheerleaders, coming from an unnaturally tanned gentleman seated next to either his college-age daughter or second wife.  He ranted non-stop about the quality of refereeing.  “You are horrible!  That wasn’t traveling!  Who taught you the rules?  You’re ruining the game!”  This went on, at full volume, for most of the first half.  Is that what I sounded like?

It takes a boor to know a boor, so I stood up and said, “They’re doing the best they can.  Please stop,” prompting him to shout back, “If you don’t like it, then don’t listen!” 

I responded, “That’s impossible – we can all hear you!”  At this point, my wife tried to disappear, my daughter began crying, and Mr. Tanorama’s second wife started wondering if the daddy issues that led her here may have taken a sharp turn from Easy Street to Koo Koo Town.  Mr. Tanorama never said another word. 

But the real epiphany came while watching lots of indoor soccer.  There are few environments less conducive to positive parent participation than an indoor soccer complex.  It’s like a petri dish of bad parent bacteria, moms screaming at grandmas about sportsmanship, dads cursing at pre-teen strangers to make better passes, and the kids completely oblivious, their parents’ vitriol blocked by eight feet of thick Plexiglas.  Clusters of adults shouting at a wall of glass demanding immediate change.  They might as well be at home yelling at C-SPAN. 

The truth is that now my sports parenting outside voice is different than my inside voice.  On the surface, I’m calm and reserved - one might even call me pensive and aloof.  But inside I’m a stewing vat of put-downs and zingers that would ruin a 7^th grade girls’ soccer game in seconds.  But I keep silent and let those moments pass, hiding behind my camera or a cup of coffee, keeping my former Ugly Sideline Dad mask hidden.

It’s better this way.  Parents make friendly chit chat about politics or religion, I retain some sense of personal decency, and everyone drives home happy, win or lose.  Besides, this is all about the kids, right?  It’s all about the kids.

Man vs. Meat

I’ve made some bad decisions in my life. Celebrating my love of taffy minutes after costly dental work, taunting a 6’ 4” meaty-fisted bouncer, letting the glassy-eyed older brother of a friend “cut” my hair with rusty shears. Michael Dukakis. But this one tops them all. This time I may have gone too far. I’ve just finished my first mouthful of the Inferno Challenge burger, and I can’t feel my face.

It didn’t take much for me to accept this dare. There’s a place out in Boscawen that’ll put your picture on the wall if you finish a super-spicy one-pound burger in twenty minutes. So here I am at the Smoke Shack Southern Barbeque restaurant (“Where the Swine is Fine”) with my two kids, hoping they don’t see me burst into flames. Eating a one-pound burger and fries is old hat, but what I didn’t expect was the heat. This thing is like a loaf of hot magma with cheese, and my lips are searing. My wife is here too, offering me words of encouragement like, “Take your time,” and “Just how much life insurance did you say there was?” My head’s spinning and my entire face, mouth, lips, throat and stomach are engulfed in intense heat.

When I arrived twenty minutes earlier, I scanned the Wall of Fame, confident I’d soon join the ranks of the Challenge winners, this hale band of conquerors proud in their Polaroid portraits. There’s Jumbo Ketchum next to Haley Levesque right near Nathan Small, Andy Turgeon, Jack and a nameless photo of a kid who looks like he just escaped from a Doomsday cult, stopping in for a meal en route to the deprogramming. And then there’s Mark, who owns the fastest Challenge completion, finishing this monster chili pepper-infused beast in ten minutes.

Our server, Lexi Potter-Craigue, takes my family’s order and outlines the rules. “You have to finish everything in under twenty minutes – the burger, the bun, the jalapenos and all the fries. Don’t ignore the fries. You can drink anything you want – I don’t recommend soda. Stick to water or milk. Oh, and you’re gonna be in a little bit of pain,” Lexi says as she walks back to the kitchen after telling me a woman eight months pregnant met the Challenge earlier this year. “No pressure,” my son says to me.

I follow Lexi into the kitchen, and she introduces me to Joe Carey. Joe’s been working as a chef at the Smoke Shack for two years, and he walks me through the Challenge burger recipe, taking a metal mixing bowl and showing me the four types of peppers he’ll mix into the pound of ground beef. “I don’t wear a mask when I do this, but some guys do.” As Joe pours the liquid and flakes into the bowl, the other employees make slight moves away from him. It’s never a good sign when the people entrusted to serve the food don’t want to be near the food. “Are you eating that?” another chef asks me, and I nod my head. “Opportunity of a lifetime,” he says with a wide grin.

The Scoville Scale is a universal method used to gauge a pepper’s hotness. For example, a red bell pepper in your salad has zero Scoville heat units and no rating while a police officer’s pepper spray in your face has a upwards of 2 million heat units, earning a 10 out of 10 on the heat scale.

“We start with jalapenos,” (a mere 8,000 heat units and a 4 on the scale), “followed by the habaneros and the Scotch bonnets,” (both rated 350,000 heat units and a 9 on the heat scale), “and then we add the ghost peppers,” Joe says with no emotion. The ghost pepper, or Naga Jolokia, is one of the world’s hottest peppers, earning a 1 million Scoville heat unit and a 10 rating. “Naga Jolokia!” is probably what I’ll be yelping after the first bite, based on the tingling in my nose and eyes from this concoction Joe’s now kneading through his fingers. A few moments later Joe cooks the burger alone in a skillet. “We can’t use the grille because everything else we serve today would smell like this,” he says, the burger a bubbling brick of amber and orange in the pan. The scent is overwhelming as I return to the table.

Just as my wife and kids finish their lunches, enjoying every morsel on their plates, Lexi arrives with my meal. The burger sits in the center of the plate, surrounded by a burial mound-sized heap of Cajun-seasoned French fries. Lexi brings a glass of whole milk and water as well as a small bit of ranch dressing. “Your twenty minutes starts when you start eating,” she says.

I begin with three quick bites, hoping to head-fake my senses before the alarms go off. No such luck. In seconds my entire mouth is engulfed in flaming pain. I sip the milk to ward off this sensation, but it doesn’t work. Five minutes into it and I can’t talk, and any words of encouragement my family offers now sounds like Satan and his henchmen chortling in a distorted, slow-motion guffaw. Past winners – Jumbo, Jack and that kid from the cult – stare down at me impassively as I try in vain to balance fries with bites of what I’m now sure of is a special slice of hell on a bun.

My bites have turned to nibbles, and my hands and shoulders are shaking. The heat’s now deep in my stomach and even the fries, only lightly dusted in Cajun spice, hit my lips like yellow jacket stings. It’s been close to fifteen minutes when I give up. When your extremities start to tingle and your chest hurts, it’s time to reassess. “That was really sad to watch,” my daughter says, inquiring about the ice cream menu.

It’s 2 AM, more than half a day since the SS Inferno hit the rocky shoal that is my gullet, and I’m wide awake. It’s like I have the flu combined with the aftermath of a fortified wine bender. My stomach feels like a possum’s trying to mate with a Wankel rotary engine, and the noises emerging from behind my belly button sound like a family of tone-deaf tree frogs playing the Glockenspiel. Things are not good. The ghost peppers are more than haunting me - they’re mocking me for every bad decision I’ve made in my life. With every lurch my innards make, my conscience tells me to think twice the next time, to look before I lunch on something so intense.

And in the deep darkness of the pre-dawn, I vow to never make another bad decision. Except if it involves ice cream – nothing bad happens after too much ice cream.

A Brewed Awakening

“Pull your hair back, wear closed-toed shoes and a shirt with sleeves,” Sara the barista tells me over the phone. If she thinks I’m showing up for my first-ever shift as a barista in huarache sandals, a tank top and a free-flowing mullet, she’s got me all wrong. I’ve been dreaming of this day for a while, and I don’t dream in hairnets and flabby underarms.

I meet Sara Judy early the next morning as she’s opening up. Sara opens every morning at True Brew Barista, one of Concord’s true coffee houses and my home, off and on, for the next few days. I’m here to learn the ropes –to get a dollop of what it’s like to be a barista, to grind and brew some beans, make frozen drinks and try to look as calm and competent as Sarah and her coworkers do every time I’m in here.

True Brew hit the scene in 2009, when Rob and Steph Zinser opened the doors in Bicentennial Square to Concord’s coffee and tea drinkers who’d grown sick of the drive-thru selections, tired of the gas station varieties and bored with every-day home brewed beverages. True Brew’s been offering espresso, drip coffee and every variation in between ever since, not to mention more tea than a man can drink in one lifetime.

Sara’s been a barista at True Brew since the summer of 2010, when she came to Concord in pursuit of her then-boyfriend, now-husband and co-worker Sean Ring. Sara hails from a town of 650 people on the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada. “People love to talk to baristas,” she says, “and working here really helped me connect with the community.” And she means it. She and her husband Sean are so connected to this community of coffee drinkers that they held their wedding ceremony earlier this summer right out front of True Brew in the brick and fountain-adorned Square. “I’d live upstairs if there was an open apartment,” she says with a laugh.

About five minutes into the shift, it’s clear Sara’s customers feel that same connection – evident by the variation of the stink eye I’m getting from all of them. “Who’s this lurker? Why is he distracting my Sara? I bet he drinks decaf!” They eye me with contempt so I retreat into the shadows until Sara’s ready for me.

Now the lesson begins. Sara shows me how to prep, clean, grind, measure, tamp, brew, assess and pour a double shot of espresso, emphasizing the importance of never letting stray grinds into the brew. She cleans the handle, and after filling it, she has a lightning-quick habit of pressing down into the grind and tapping the sides to shake away any loose grounds. “The trick is to apply just enough pressure – too much and your espresso’s bitter; not enough and you have a mess.” She says this as “pulls” the shot and smacks the handle against the knock box, clearing out the hot grinds to get ready for the next double shot. She later explains that the quality of the espresso can be judged a few ways – first, you can see if your puck – the spent grounds – hold together as you “knock the puck into the box.” Secondly, just after the espresso shot’s been pulled, you can see what the “crema” looks like. The crema’s the tan-colored foam on the top of the shot, the liquid folding in and around itself as the hot liquid settles in the shot glass.

I try and pull a double shot of dark roast, knocking a so-so puck into the box as the crema envelopes the sides of my glass. “Apply more pressure next time,” Sara tells me. I drink the espresso fast and try again and again, drinking everything I pull. Sara told me that one of the benefits of working at True Brew is having all the coffee I want. I’m taking full advantage of this, at least until my heart gives out. It’s not quite 8:30 in the morning, and I’ve had enough caffeine to stop a rhino, win an MMA bout and watch The View simultaneously.

Sara doesn’t say things I thought baristas would say. Instead of statements like, “Decaf cap with a double hazelnut shot,” or “Dry macchiato extra hot skinny with vanilla,” she says things like, “All the vegans I know are chain smokers,” and “They call me ‘The Giant.’”

Everything about True Brew is groovy – from the seven-foot Viking to the chalkboard menus to the vaguely atonal acoustic music you can barely hear above the hiss of the steaming milk. Specialty drinks like the Bikini Bottom, Phrosty Penguin and the Fluffy Bunny compete with a roster of teas for attention. This place is a real tea party, minus the angry pensioners on Medicare-funded scooters. Where else in town can you choose between the Paimutan Peony, Russian Caravan and Green Mango, not to be outdone by the Dragonswell, a cup of iced Blood Orange or the ever-inscrutable Lapsong Sauchang?

I don’t recall how my training shift ended except I remember not wanting anymore coffee that day. A few days later I return. Today is Day One of Market Days, Concord’s three-day outdoor celebration of culture, community, commerce and cheese fries. Rob puts me to work outside, where I stand for the next three hours selling beer to the crowd checking out the rotating local bands, who play everything from foot-tapping jazz standards to original pieces to Grateful Dead covers.

I’m not sure serving beer is a real barista activity, but this is fun! Little girls twirl around in the late afternoon breeze as a couple arrives with ferrets draped across their shoulders. One customer’s making a dent in my canned beer collection, taking a roundabout course towards me every time – like he’d just shown up and was surprised we sold beer. “Cool! Gimme a PBR,” he says. I oblige and he sits right back down where he was before he did his slow serpentine through the crowd. A guy in plaid shorts is on stage with his band, rocking his ukulele like nobody’s business as the crowd cheers. Outdoor beer garden barista duty is a nice way to spend a summer night.

It’s finally my time to head inside, and Sara and Sean put me to work, sending me to Penuche’s for a bucket of ice. “Don’t forget to filter that ice!” Sean yells as I return. Nobody told me I had to filter it, I think, starting to panic. Sean starts laughing, knowing the new guy falls for the filtered ice trick all the time. I half-expect him to send me to the Capital building in search of the double-barreled left-handed bean grinder. Instead, he shows me how to make a smoothie, and seconds later I take my first real order. The customer wants a frozen coffee drink. Before disaster strikes, Sara quietly reminds me that I should probably stop making a hot espresso shot, explaining the physics of ice and hot liquids, pointing out the cold espresso for my use instead.

I recover to make a 32-oz. chocolate masterpiece to calories, ice and caffeine. As more customers arrive, I try my hand at a few other drinks, managing to not quite perfect my puck but drinking at least four more shots of espresso before it’s time to go. I notice one of tonight’s barista’s left a perfectly shaped puck on the knock box, a signature to master craftsmanship of espresso making.

It’s getting late. Sara hands me my share of tips for the night, the most gratifying $20 in singles and quarters I’ve ever held. Barista duty is fun. You need a little bit of skill, lots of practice and someone like Sara whispering instruction in your ear, even if her husband makes you filter the ice.

Grooves of Memory

My family owns a small summer home down a dirt road on the shores of Lake Winnipesauke. The roof needs fixing, the dock has issues, and the mice host winter-long rodent carnivals, inviting their squirrel and chipmunk pals to leap about and feast on morsels left behind on that inevitable brisk Sunday in October when we close up until Memorial Day.

We owe back taxes, the mattresses are lumpy, and the bathroom makes for a great “before” photo. Between my four siblings and me, our children, and my parents - twenty of us in all - we don’t use it very often, our renters have moved on, and if I never rake another wet springtime leaf, I’ll die a happy man. But it’s my favorite place in the world, and I can’t imagine life without it.

We’re selling the lake house. In a few weeks we settle on a price, and a long-time friend will buy it. Or maybe he won’t. If not him, then someone else. Selling’s not the tough part. Someone else jumping off our dock into the water? A new family sitting around the big table for a chaotic meal while the rain falls in sheets across the lake? A stranger’s daughter catching the first fish of the summer, begging someone else, between squeals of panic and laughter, to set the fish free? It makes me sick to think of this. These are our memories – our lake, our dinners, our rainstorms, our children, our grandchildren.

My grandmother bought this house on a whim in 1948. She was a dress-shop owning, chain-smoking single parent and former nun from Long Island who fell in love with the lake at first sight, buying this newly built house hundreds of miles away from her home, the drive taking more ten hours on pre-interstate roads and byways.

Twenty years later, near death from lung cancer, my grandmother insisted on one last trip to the house, hiring the local butcher to drive her, her nurse and her oxygen tank to Moultonborough where she watched her grandchildren swim and climb and dig. She died the day after leaving the lake, content she’d said goodbye the only way she may have known how.

My mother’s spent part of every summer since ‘48 at the lake house and doesn’t want to see it go. But she and my dad know it’s time. She told me a few weeks ago how the drive from Long Island only gets longer, opening and closing the house isn’t getting easier, and the taxes and upkeep show no signs of abating. They agree it would be nice to slow down as they reach their mid ‘70s. Selling the house helps them do that, providing a cushion that many don’t have. We’ve talked about it for a decade, and now it’s time to act.

Outside my parents’ bedroom, there’s a wall where we measured each other, tracking how much we’d grown year after year. It was the first thing we did every early summer, proving to ourselves that we’d spent the last twelve months growing, getting older, better, wiser. We were in a rush to outgrow those lines, not caring what we were so quick to outrace. At some point, we stopped growing, and the lines didn’t budge. Look closely and you can see my children, my brothers and sisters, their children, friends from long ago and so many others, their names etched into the pine boards like the graffiti of memory.

The other walls of the house are like a museum to inside jokes, past accomplishments and moments of fancy – Grandpa writes a book! Kara gets married! Tim finishes fourth in a five person race! Molly hates camp! Beer! Sharks! Mountain goat! America! First-time visitors can spend an hour walking around like it’s an eccentric art gallery, taking in everything we’ve hung, tacked and nailed up over the years, wondering how Civil War flags, movie posters, obscure Latin phrases and summer camp portraits tie together to tell the story of our family.

A short path leads from the house to the dock, a simple structure that juts out to give just enough runway for a hearty leap into the water. Sometimes, at moments of calm, the surface is a perfect mirror image of the islands in the distance and the indifferent blue and white sky above, shattered with a cannonball plunge.

This dock’s hosted athletes and actors, scholars and drop-outs, friends and future spouses, and even the Prince of Monaco (true story). This is the dock where my mom saved my dad from drowning and where everyone’s gone skinny dipping at least once in broad daylight. There are few moments more gratifying than leaping into the lake wearing nothing but a stupid grin. The dock’s where we’ve seen otters, bald eagles, moose and spiders that defy description – spiders showing calm defiance in the face of a wielded flip flop or a shrieking older sister. I asked my wife to marry me on this dock, getting the proposal in before she learned of the arachnid situation beneath. It’s on this dock where I felt noiseless for the first time, where I was alive in the moment, not tugged into yesterday or pushed into tomorrow, living for now. How do we put a price on that?

Practicality has a way of trumping most things, especially when money’s involved. In a few weeks we’ll pick a price, and then we may say goodbye quickly, or it may takes a little longer. If we’re lucky, we’ll spend one final week together at the lake, squeezing as much of the house into our lives to draw on it forever, like tiny sips from a bottomless cup.

If I could take one thing with me on the last day, I’d cut down that wall outside my parents’ bedroom and save it for all of us, our names and heights scratched like grooves in an old record that would play our memories every time we touched them.

Conquering China

If I learned anything in China, it’s that carny folk are the same the world over. It’s been a very long day scouring miles of market stalls, looking for deals I didn’t need, and I’m dog tired. My expat colleagues lead me from the massive four-story train station market, and we trek across the city, my arms loaded down with bags of Mao doodads and faux leather satchels.

As we stop to gaze upon another vast collection of semi-jade figurines, wallets, lighters, sunglasses, and countless heaps of scarves, a tiny woman motions to me from across the plaza. Behind her hang dozens of blue, yellow and pink balloons, and she beckons me to come hither, shouting at me in Mandarin. My five-day crash course in the local tongue hasn’t enabled me to decipher much, let alone why she singled me out.

Faster than I can say, “Gregory Peck and the defense of Hill 266,” I’m holding a plastic shotgun in my hand and firing at the balloons. “How much?” I ask, blasting away. She holds up two fingers. Two Yuan? That’s less than a nickel, and I’d try anything for a nickel. So I keep shooting.

For the next ten minutes I hit at least 75 balloons. At this point, Michael, my co-worker, eggs me on and I hit another 50 or so, the small woman staring passively over my shoulder as she pumps the twin-gauge toy gun, handing it to me in a rote muscle memory motion. Finally, with almost no balloons left and my hand cramping, I put the gun down. “How much was this?” Michael asks, and we look as the woman writes down, “200 x 2 = 400,” underlining the 400 for emphasis, holding out her palm in the universal carny sign for, “Pay up, moron.”

I don’t know much about China quite yet but enough to know that 400 Yuan is around $60, and I didn’t fly from Boston to New Jersey, New Jersey to Beijing, Beijing to Dalian, over 6000 miles across Canada, the frozen Arctic, through Russia and above Inner Mongolia to drop $63.50 on a classic midway canard. This is nuts. “This is nuts!” I shout. “Only 200 – that’s all I’m paying,” I say, holding up a peace sign that means anything but. The tiny woman’s voice grows shrill as a few people gather around. She bangs her finger down on the 400 figure. “I won’t pay it,” I say and then do what any cheapskate, embarrassed American would do – I throw down a 100 Yuan bill, beg Michael for another 100 and take off in a sad kind of speed walking stumble.

I’ve come to Dalian, China on business, my company setting up shop here a few months earlier, and despite the “misunderstanding” on the plaza, I think I’ve conducted myself well, straining to understand the language, accepting the ludicrous levels of service in the hotel and eating things I never would have ordered back in the States (sea sausage and seaweed, anyone?). I’ve learned to mutter the basics – “Good morning,” “Thank you,” “You’re welcome,” and my favorite, “Right On!” which is pronounced “DOO EEE,” exactly how Maury Finkel of Finkel Fixtures says it, Ben Stiller’s alter ego in the film version of Starsky and Hutch.

Dalian is a port city of six million on the northern coast of China. The city has more people than Houston, Chicago and almost two entire Bostons combined. Yet China refers to Dalian as a second-tier city, not fit to match the ranks of Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen. Here for almost ten days, I spend hours driving to all ends of Dalian, staring at the forests of half-built concrete towers that stretch to the horizon and the massive shipping container cranes in the harbors, like so many mutant red crabs poised to snap at unsuspecting passersby.

I make the very best of the nightlife Dalian offers, spending time in bars named “Brooklyn,” “Sisters,” and “Friends.” It’s at Friends where I meet the owner, Paul Collins from Hyde Park. About a decade ago, Paul set down roots in Dalian, fell in love with a local girl and now tries in vain to serve me homebrew hooch from one bottle and “snake juice” from another. I decline both, especially the one where the lifeless snake sits coiled, fermenting in the milky gray liquid. In the basement bar of my hotel, I witness New Visions, a drummerless cover band from the Philippine, crush a version of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Jesse, the band’s leader and keyboard player, attacks each stanza with vigor before telling me over a beer about his five kids and pregnant wife back home in Manila, a lonely look in his eyes.

One item apparent to the observant visitor is China’s attempt to generously translate most public signs into English. Phrases like “No Climbing. Thanks a Cooperation,” “Steam food of beautiful lake,” and the cryptically poetic, "Intention. Ten years of consistent,” abound, only to be joined by “Speaking cellphone is strictly prohibited when thunderstorm,” and the ever-relevant, “No Naked Flames.” My personal favorite is “Octopus Little Meatball,” a fair description of my physique after almost two weeks of bar-hopping.

On my one full day in Beijing, a city hard to describe other than it’s like the Los Angeles in Blade Runner except everyone’s either in a Bentley or on a bicycle, I take a guided trip to the Great Wall of China. I hadn’t believed the hype, thinking it was no more than a quaint stone outcropping, like Stonehenge. No. It’s massive, stretching across northern China for what seems like forever. Imagine a 30-foot high stone wall stretching from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, only to loop back again, across hills, valleys, ravines, crevasses and countryside.

It’s pouring rain, and as I stand outside “The Great Wall of Handcraft Product Shop,” I notice the sign, “Heart cerebral disease sufferer ascend the Great Wall to please watch for.” I am please to watch for and spend the next hour hiking up the steep steps into the hazy rain, surrounded by hundreds of others doing the same. A group of Chinese men are laughing, running up to the Attila-facing wall and its crenellations, screaming out towards the long-gone Hun hordes. I join them and shriek away, and they burst out cheering – “Very good!” one of them yells. As I near the highest point, I slow down to take a photo, and I notice the graffiti. It’s everywhere a person can bend or reach to write his name - Chinese characters, names in many languages and simple cartoon figures.

And then I see it, written in everlasting white paint - “Shary Fuckin Vasco USA” with “China 2012” bookended by a heart and a smiley face. Ms. Vasco has taken the opportunity to leave her mark on this ancient structure, one of the world’s great wonders, and she’s done so with gusto. It’s one thing to write, “Shary was here” for eternity, but another to use your full name, date, country of origin, current mood, and favorite adjective. I’ve traveled to the other side of the planet, been exposed to this timeless culture, eaten things that will haunt my dreams (raw horsemeat and ocean critters, for example), walked in the footsteps of emperors and had my eyes opened to how big this world of ours really is only to be confronted by Shary’s scrawl like she was doodling in her remedial Civics notebook. I could have stayed in Newark if I’d wanted to see this.

Doesn’t she get it? I’m now a World Citizen! I have a passport with a real-live visa glued in it. I laughed with the German guys from VW, had lunch with someone from Malaysia and even shared a fruit plate with drunken Australians. As a newly christened Citizen of Planet Earth, I consider shouting an apology for Shary’s choice of self-expression. But even if I wanted to, no one really seems to care up here on the Wall, everyone’s too taken with the surroundings to notice.

I’ve since friended Shary on Facebook. She’s a young woman from New Jersey with dozens of photos of her school trip to China on her profile, and she seems perfectly nice and well-adjusted. Perhaps I’m the one who needs to rethink things. Maybe that’s what being a World Citizen is all about – leaving a little image of yourself in a new place so a stranger on the other side of the world may learn more about you. Even if the adjectives don’t translate. Doo eee, Shary Vasco! Doo eee!