We can all be comforted by the thought that he’s not really gone, there’s a little Tuttle left in all of us. In fact, you might say that all of us together made up Tuttle.
– M*A*S*H
As a late bloomer and chronic overachiever, I’m forever racing to make up for lost time. So when my imaginary childhood friend didn’t show up until I left home for college, my subconscious decided I needed more than one.
The twins arrived early in my freshman year, popping onto my shoulders like all the classic Saturday morning cartoon characters I’d watched as a kid. To my left was a figure dressed in white wearing wings and a halo while on my right shoulder his alter ego sported a goatee, wore a red cape and carried a pitchfork. Ever since, the two have provided the running commentary to my life.
In the beginning, their remarks were confined to normal campus events. Was it wise to go out with friends the night before my Economics midterm? Did my roommate and I really need a pet rabbit for our dorm? And would a responsible adult skip class and go to the beach? But once I got a B+ on my Econ exam, adopted a black bunny we called Eclipse and returned from the road trip to South Padre, it became clear that the pair were doing more than just making observations.
After all, it was the little, red-robed dude’s idea to celebrate Pearl Harbor dressed in combat fatigues while ordering kamikazes at every bar on 6th Street. At the footbridge in front of my apartment, he made friends answer five (three, sir!) questions before crossing Monty Python’s Bridge of Death. He nicknamed a favorite perch above the overlook on Lake Austin after The Princess Bride’s Cliffs of Insanity and saved countless lives in an ongoing practical joke war by rearranging the furniture in an opponent’s apartment before stealing every lightbulb – even those inside the refrigerator and oven. Because in spite of his delayed appearance in my life, the guy with a goatee and pitchfork had a seasoned imagination and the resourcefulness that came with a certain age.
But the more his schemes succeeded, the bolder he became. Until I probably should have seen what was coming.
At the University of Salamanca in Spain, I awoke the first morning in my señora’s second floor apartment with a new, real-life roommate and two longstanding imaginary ones. But on the other side of the Atlantic, the twins’ imbalance intensified. As one of the duo struggled with jetlag, his sibling was already awake and pacing anxiously back and forth across my shoulder. “Oh good, you’re up,” the little red dude I’d come to call Tuttle started. It was a greeting he’d use often in the coming months and a sign that he’d hatched some new scheme about where we should go next.
On that first morning, Tuttle had done his homework. He prattled on about a trek through Andalucía to see Moorish architecture, a weekend in Madrid to visit world-class museums, an excursion to País Vasco for pintxos, relaxing on the beach along the Costa Blanca, and a jaunt to Barcelona for a stroll down La Rambla. But his wanderings (and mine, apparently) weren’t limited by borders. For our first foray he suggested a long weekend in Lisbon, and once I returned with my flesh-and-blood roomie, my imagined roommate set out to remove any obstacles he felt conflicted with his seemingly limitless travel plans.
During a meeting with my academic advisor, Tuttle played Cyrano to my Christian feeding me the words as I parroted his line that “travel was the real education and the best way to understand Spain, her people and their history.” While I knew my tiny friend to be an eloquent orator, I never expected his argument to land me an entire semester free from Friday classes. And building on his success, the caped crusader convinced my parents that an unlimited rail pass would improve my GPA and allow me to study Picasso’s Guernica up close, visit Don Quixote’s La Mancha, talk to pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago and experience the country’s oldest running of the bulls at Ciudad Rodrigo’s Carnaval del Toro.
Each Thursday after school, I boarded a train and set out from Salamanca only to return late Sunday. But every Monday I’d wake to find the little, red dude on my shoulder planning our next adventure. “Oh good, you’re up,” he’d say as he paced with his hands tucked behind his back and his brow still furrowed in thought. And thanks to Tuttle’s insatiable curiosity over many long weekends, we crisscrossed Spain and traveled to North Africa. Then during an extended spring break, we ventured to the edge of the Arctic Circle and explored life behind the Iron Curtain. Eventually, our wanderings reached a point where my parents felt compelled to intervene from seven thousand miles away. But their proposed visit was as much about a vacation as ensuring sure I got back on the plane home.
After graduation I fed my compulsion by going to work in the travel industry. And with the help of my imaginary friend, I learned to mask my addiction. No one in the office noticed my trembling, overcaffeinated hands on Monday mornings after I got off a redeye and drove straight to work. My bosses didn’t question the sales calls in New Orleans that led to weekends exploring the French Quarter or seminars in Santa Fe with time away to hit the slopes. A two-day conference in D.C. turned into four, the convention in London segued into a vacation in Italy, and despite the cancelled meeting in Chicago, I got on the flight anyway and spent a binge-worthy day exploring Ferris Bueller’s hometown. But I wasn’t the only one with a problem. The travel industry attracted people with addictions. Some to drugs and alcohol, others to sex. Me to travel.
A few years later when I met Robie I thought the constant urge to get on a plane might subside. But soon I heard my little friend’s unmistakable voice suggesting I take my husband on work trips to the Caribbean and surprise him with tickets to Napa for his birthday. And soon Tuttle was hounding us about seeing the Great Wall, Abu Simbel, Machu Picchu, the Great Barrier Reef, Auschwitz, Mount Fuji and elephants in Africa. By the time Robie and I discovered that our landlady in Florida had stopped paying the mortgage on our rental home, the little devil voiced his opinion once again. But what even Tuttle didn’t know was that the events leading to our setting sail foreshadowed the collapse of the housing market later that year. And while our decision to leave home was the best option in a difficult situation, it was the worst possible alternative for my travel addiction.
On the open waters of the Caribbean, there were always new ports on the horizon to keep the dopamine levels on a constant high. Because nothing, nothing compared to hauling up the anchor, pulling up the sails and arriving in a new harbor to see it glistening in the fading sunlight and know that in the morning we had another new place to explore. Yet once we pointed the bow of The Last Resort toward home, I knew I needed professional help.
To transition back to normal life, I checked into rehab. Confined to a desk surrounded by fake plants and ugly beige filing cabinets, I worked in an office where no natural light could penetrate. And in this waking nightmare that was my job, one colorless workday inescapably followed the next as time seemed to stand still. But when I peered more closely at the image in the mirror, I couldn’t help noticing the incontrovertible signs of time’s passing.
In rehab I no longer felt the little dude’s tiny feet pacing across my shoulder or heard him whisper in my ear about potential treks to Antarctica, Lhasa or possibly now even into space. Tuttle was still around, I knew, as much an undeniable part of me as my hand or big toe. But he’d buried himself someplace deep, hiding out in silence and biding his time. Then in the days following my epiphany in the Caribbean hotel shower, I awoke one morning and heard my friend’s faint voice with his old, devil-may-care whimsy say for the first time in ages, “Oh, good, you’re up.”
Sighing contentedly, I closed my eyes and nestled back against the warm pillow.
I’m up, I smiled. So, where are we off to now?
Loved it! you do have a way with words!
Thanks for sharing.