Accidental Traveller

(Through Rose-Coloured Glasses)

You yearn to travel. This urge grows proportionally with your age.

You used to believe, with the advance of technology, with the Internet, you can just sit in front of the computer, surf through all these websites, and can enjoy a virtual tour of all the far away wonders of this world, without even have to leave your chair at home.

But not so at all. As you count the number of years and days remaining to be on this earth, you want the real deal, to widen your horizon and knowledge, before your cataract-induced eye-sight, osteoporotic bones or the cholesterol plaqued heart failed you, and to whatever physical limitation you are bound in this later part of life, you just want to travel, to all those exotic places; you took trips and cruises far and near, just to keep yourself busy and the travel agencies wealthy.

You become the accidental traveller.

When travelled by air, as a young man, you always asked for a window seat, to be able to look out of the window, even if you could only see the white clouds. When you were married and have family of your own, you always ended with the middle seat, with wife on one side and kids on the other. But when the kids all grown up, you remained in the middle seat. Who wanted a stranger to sit between you, husband and wife. As you grew older, you tried to claim the aisle seat, more convenient to get up quickly for the washroom. But nowadays, you ended with two aisle seats, across from each other, as wife favours the aisle seat too.

Travel by car is another story. When kids were small. Before each trip, you always asked, “have everyone gone to the bathroom”? And during the summer holidays while on the road, you frequently heard, “dad, I have to go”, and you constantly looked out for an exit with a restaurant or gas station. But now it is wife who reminded you, “did you go to the bathroom”, before any trip. Otherwise you will ended up stopping on the side of the highway, for a quick relief.

So you become the accidental traveller, or is it the accident-prone traveller?

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