Chris Kamler

One of the best naps I ever took was after I decided to hike to the top of a mountain. Well, mountain is a little bit of an embellishment.

I need to be somewhere else. But not just anywhere else. A specific somewhere. I need to move to that magical, mystical place called “Around Here Somewhere.”

Now, if you've never had the pleasure of experiencing Wyandotte County's unique brand of economic schizophrenia, let me paint you a picture. This is a place where you can buy a $47,000 sectional sofa at Nebraska Furniture Mart in the morning, then drive three miles down the road to celebrate your purchase with a bucket of fried gizzards at Go Chicken Go for $4.99. Now, I've never had them, but my dad says those gizzards deserve their own parade.

In the long ago times, before Covid, nobody had heard of the fist bump. We survived on the handshake's earnest, slightly sweaty cousin and the high-five. A celebratory handshake in the air. Then, as the world shut down six years ago, those smarter than us decided that our social interactions would be changed forever. The Fist Bump was born. It was all the rage for several years. A way to safely greet someone without contracting whatever hand disease they had dipped their body into. We called it the “fist bump,” “knuckles,” “Yo, Gabba, Gabba.” And it was universal.

I have finally reached the age when I can do nothing but complain about the game that I love. I love baseball.

This might be a time to question the luxury of a space program. I know the space program has given us hundreds of advancements—memory foam that makes naps possible in trains, ballpoint pens that write upside down, and that stubborn urge to look at a map of the solar system and pretend we remember where everything is. It's easy to fall in love with the stars when your apartment has drafty windows and your neighbor's cat has claimed the radiator as its personal starship. This is also a time where privatization of space travel has never been bigger.

Two Type A travelers, one with a schedule so tight you could fit a bullet train through the eye of a needle, and another with a to-do list so long it could double as a kimono, are joined by two Type B souls who wander with the grace of sunbeams and occasionally forget their own names. One of them literally left the Air BnB leaving the door wide open. My boy, bless his heart, is the die-cut in the middle; he's the duct tape of this expedition, the one person who can say, “Let's try both the temple and the ramen bar and see which one we still like after the third bite.” And that, dear readers, is where peace begins to throw you a lifeline in the shape of a soggy dumpling wrapper.

Later that day, I headed out to a high school graduation. Unfortunately, the graduate won't be getting a warm loaf of banana bread and will have to settle for a Chipotle gift card instead. But I had heard a buzz about a new way of announcing graduates this year. That they may be using an AI speaker. Fortunately, it was only a rumor. However, all this week, other schools that did choose to go that route got a teachable moment about how to screw up a recipe.

But you are really missing out if you haven't been watching foreigners coming to the US and trying United States things. Things that we take for granted. Like going to Target, or Costco, or Bass Pro Shops. The videos of awe-struck shoppers looking at the giant displays and the huge bottles of mayonnaise. It's a whole side of Insta-Tok that you really need to seek out.

If you didn’t already know, election season is here. There are primaries next month, and then the big midterms where, quite literally, the future of the co