I’ve kept a journal since I was nine years old. And from my fairly sizable stack of composition notebooks, my favorites have got to be the ones that cover my traveling experiences. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but they are a riot. Probably because I was so drunk on the marvelous stuff all around me. So every single sentence, every syllable had to exude the same degree of passion that I felt.

But it wasn’t all intoxication and excitement. Some of it was downright silliness. I came across the following, amidst colorful descriptions of sunrises and the black sand beaches of Santorini:

“Emily and I concocted a wild story about an Egyptian-bound cruise ship from Canada with maple syrup dripping off the sides, which was attacked by whales with knife-like tongues. It became shipwrecked; Sara lassoed the whales to bring us to safety. We made it to an island of flowing rum & coke and ice cream plants. And Nutella grew from the trees, but we didn’t have any crackers! We met the natives, who were half-whale, half-human. And then we found an underground passageway to the lost city of Atlantis where we found Mike Meravali chatting it up with the underwater creatures. Then we took our rocketship to the moon.”

Wha?

A thought: I think it’s really sad when I go back and read old journals, and there are phrases & quotes that were obviously inside jokes at one time, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the hell they mean.