10 About that dinner with my classmates in Quito

Lowell Whiteman School Class of 1985 Photo: Joe Roberts

During every foreign trip there was alway at least one dinner that the teachers attended and the school paid for. Somehow the itemized receipt was always lost along the way. I won’t say that there was drinking at the table, but yeah, there was a ton of glassware and bottles on our long table at Peter’s Place. These meals would always start out talking about what our experiences have been like so far on the trip. The good, bad, and ugly. I do not remember where in the timeline this particular meal fell. MAYBE immediately after we went to Otavalo and the well-known weekend market.

Again, I will eventually dust off my orange spiral-bound journal and find out if I wrote about what I had for dinner as filler in the required page-per-day assignment for English class. I can tell you one thing, my drink was either Crown and Coke on the rocks in a short glass or either Baracardi or Captain Morgan and Coke on the rocks in that short glass. Since the school was paying, it was most likely lobster, shrimp, flounder, or something else that was swimming hours before.

As the adult beverages started to kick in, the multiyear students (pretty much all of us) traded war stories about the previous year(s). The trek to Everest Base Camp was talked about, and a few other subjects. I was usually on the quiet side of the conversations. I have never really been a bragger, and really believe in confidentiality. Well, at least I did until a couple of years ago when I started to open up about the horrors of my youth.

Eventually, the white-hot spotlight was directed my way when someone, and you know how you are, uttered these words, and yes, I quote, “Lepow, did you really f!#k _____!” I will never forget this person saying this, half smiling and knowing he was putting my deepest secret at school (to that point) under a microscope, and I so wanted to disappear.