{"id":78,"date":"2017-03-23T01:58:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T01:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2018-05-09T00:04:42","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T00:04:42","slug":"the-smooch-seen-round-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/23\/the-smooch-seen-round-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SMOOCH KNOWN ‘ROUND THE WORLD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next up\u00a0on my trip was\u00a0San Diego, California and this was the\u00a0first destination to which I had never been.\u00a0(I’m embarrassed to say the city\u00a0would probably remain unseen had not some longtime friends moved there a year ago)\u00a0When I planned out\u00a0my journey I knew I would go\u00a0places I’d\u00a0never been before and may never be able\u00a0to go\u00a0again, but I decided to make a rule for\u00a0myself: I would put people before places. Yes, I was going to specific destinations to see and experience\u00a0them, but I would\u00a0also be there to visit family and loved ones and friends I simply hadn’t\u00a0met yet. So I gave myself permission to prioritize\u00a0hanging out with people over\u00a0making sure I did\u00a0the top ten “Things to Do” on\u00a0TripAdvisor.<\/p>\n

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“Unconditional Surrender”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which brings me to my\u00a0friends in San Diego – Escondido to be exact. They were friends\u00a0I’d known for over 16 years but hadn’t seen in over four\u00a0so it goes without saying that to me they\u00a0were the #1\u00a0attraction. And we\u00a0spent all but one afternoon on my stay\u00a0catching up, reminiscing about old times, and, to my horror, hearing myself say things to their daughters that\u00a0only old people say. Like, “Wow, have you grown up!” or\u00a0“I remember visiting you when you were still in the hospital!”. \u00a0Those things just kept coming out of my mouth\u00a0and the\u00a0kids\u00a0would smile graciously but I swear I could\u00a0hear their internal eye roll. The coup de grace was when\u00a0I said to their eldest, “Did you know you crawled like a butt dragging\u00a0crab your first year?” after which I immediately wanted\u00a0to say\u00a0, “Just shoot me now” but then I would not just seem old but unstable.<\/p>\n

On Friday afternoon, while the kids were in school, my friends and I and their dog Liberty drove down to San Diego. To be honest, I expected\u00a0San Diego to feel a lot like Los Angeles\u00a0only\u00a0more conservative and with warships, but the feel was very\u00a0different. It was cooler in temperature being on the water, quite\u00a0clean and modern and even with the high rises there was so much space! (coming from\u00a0a city with no\u00a0space, I suspect I will feel like this a lot) So they drove me all around the downtown\u00a0neighborhoods, the barrios and the up and coming ones, and they talked about all the amazing things in San Diego I would not\u00a0have time to do. My only request was to see the statue of\u00a0the iconic\u00a0kiss between the sailor and nurse. My friends were sure\u00a0it was located behind the large hotels on the waterfront and we couldn’t get to it when we accidentally happened upon it as we were\u00a0headed home (did I mention my friends had lived there for an entire\u00a0year\u00a0and<\/em> the husband was former military?)<\/p>\n

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August 14, 1945<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The statue was much larger\u00a0than I thought. I learned the actual kiss\u00a0took place in New York City’s Time Square on V-J Day and that it was totally spontaneous between two strangers. \u00a0While we were there a few couples would mirror the smooch pose in front for pictures and there were a few\u00a0kids who kept climbing around the feet. As we turned to go\u00a0we\u00a0were met by this smiling, barrel-chested Chinese man who didn’t speak a word\u00a0of English. He vigorously motioned and pointed with us which\u00a0I finally understood to mean he wanted\u00a0a picture with my friend (who had their dog on leash)\u00a0in front of the statue.\u00a0It seemed like an odd request but then my friend was blonde and beautiful, I would guess lots of people would want\u00a0a picture\u00a0with her.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0photogenic pooch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My\u00a0friend\u00a0was game to be in the photo so\u00a0I took the guys’ phone and tried my best with\u00a0the glaring sun on the camera screen to frame them with\u00a0the statue just right. When I handed the camera back and he checked the photo he\u00a0was quite unhappy.\u00a0More motioning and pointing ensued and I realized that what he wanted most of all was the dog<\/em> in the photo. Now true their dog Liberty is adorable, but with the language barrier it was impossible to know the reason why (but we had fun speculating later) Several photo attempts\u00a0later he still wasn’t happy so I just\u00a0forgot the statue behind them and focused on\u00a0him with the dog and the blonde and all was well. Each to his own, right?<\/p>\n

Departure day came and with it an unspoken sadness not knowing when we’d see each other next. They made me an egg sandwich for the road, I said something cretinous\u00a0to the kids like, “Don’t grow up too fast!” and we promised\u00a0not to let four years go by again before the next time. While\u00a0I pulled out of San Diego with a long\u00a0list of things I didn’t<\/em>\u00a0do I drove away with no regrets. I was full of the love and joy that comes with\u00a0rekindling a great\u00a0friendship\u00a0and that is\u00a0by far the best “Thing to Do” in\u00a0any destination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next up\u00a0on my trip was\u00a0San Diego, California and this was the\u00a0first destination to which I had never been.\u00a0(I’m embarrassed to say the city\u00a0would probably remain unseen had not some longtime friends moved there a year ago)\u00a0When I planned out\u00a0my journey I knew I would go\u00a0places I’d\u00a0never been before and may never be able\u00a0to go\u00a0again, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-golden-state","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/FullSizeRender-11-e1492717482908.jpg?fit=2446%2C1516&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8xsVh-1g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}