Ed wanted to tell them about the jungle. And the series of bad decisions that had led him there. His insomnia urged an orderliness, the only protection from the deep purple protracted hours of the early morning; he had made a Power Point presentation outlining his experience. He gave each decision a number, not a bullet point, because each bad decision was reliant on the preceding mistake; not one was independent from another.
- I quit my job teaching trigonometry at Lincoln High. Just couldn’t get out of bed anymore. Thought I might have a go at blogging, which is harder than it sounds.
- I took the craigslist ad at face value: $25 an hour to teach English in Ecuador, if I paid an initial $400 for a two week training session. I sent the $400 and booked my flight.
- I did not leave Ecuador when I discovered I’d been fleeced. The address I’d been given was for a brothel in Tena, not an English school, but when I saw the mountains, purple and solid, and the children, burnt and skinny, I did not feel sorry for myself. I drank limonada.
- I decided to stay in Tena on vacation. My hotel was cheap and food was inexpensive. And Maria, the girl with the cleft palate, told me I should not miss the opportunity to see the jungle.
- I signed up for a guided tour. An hour into the jungle, our guide disappeared and we were surrounded by men with guns. They pushed us five turistas together, and yelled in Spanish. We walked.
- I ran away. One gorilla marched close to me, his gun bumping my elbow, and I could see the bad decisions that had scarred his face, left him with one ear and one nostril. We had both careened through life until we met here in this jungle, waiting for that final decision that would kill us both. The gorilla marched forward, keeping time with the beat that he believed was our destiny. I fell behind and ran until I was back on a plane, flying over the jungle, inflated by the hum of the jet engine.
(Here Ed used a bullet point: this was when he took control of his life. Each moment would now be independent, solely reliant on Ed’s good judgement, not a series of incidents that stacked up, ready to fall like dominoes.)
Ed put his hand in his pocket and fingered the USB drive that held his presentation. Maybe, after dessert, he would suggest to the party that they take a look. Maybe they could learn something. But he suspected this was another bad decision. His friends’ polished cheeks matched the Pinot Noir that leapt from their glasses. “I know a bad decision when I see one,” Ed thought, and he kept the USB drive in his pocket.
