Sep 01 1991
Improving My Average
The prop plane labored up the Andes’ blue and white spine, at the mercy of blasts and vacuums. My scrambled eggs jittered in their dish, like the coarse yellow foam that storms leave on a beach. I had no intention of eating them: I was counting cities on my fingers, dividing in my head. After calculating backwards twice, I’d just gotten it straight. Being twelve years old, having lived in eight places, I’d inhabited each location of my childhood for on and four-eighths years, eighteen months, too long.