Adventure at any age

There's something incredibly comforting about getting older. You get to that age...your kids have left home, your career is secure, you've sold your family home and your life gets so much more simple. It's at that time that you want to pack a few ginormous suitcases and head off to Taiwan for a year or so.

Yes, once the sole territory of the university graduate with their single moldy backpack, people with actual luggage are taking the plunge and putting their domestic lives on hold to teach English overseas. Kinda makes you think, eh?

I'm in my mid-twenties. I graduated from university an eon or so ago. I know that I should be flying to Taiwan or Korea or, god forbid, Japan to teach hyperactive children to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, but I don't really want to. Not now anyway. I don't have time. I'm just getting things together, and the getting's pretty good. I want the adventure, but I can't go now! It would be ridiculous. I have a cat! By the time she made it through quarantine it would be time to come home already. But this is the time to go isn't. Before you start your career. Before you have kids. Before you get too old.

Thanks to my parents, I am no longer under this delusion. My dad just celebrated his fiftieth birthday. We had a party at the Keg. It was a birthday celebration as well as a going-away shindig. A week later I was helping them fit all their belongings into three oversized suitcases, and a few undersized ones. The destination? Taiwan. The goal? To teach hyperactive children to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb. My parents are my heroes. They prove that you're never to old. Never to old to sell you house and couch-surf for the summer. Never too old to take a break from your career to try something new. And they prove, to me anyway, that you don't have to do the whole ESL thing right out of university.

Whew! I can relax.