Hitting the Road to Lighten Your Load

Let us pause to consider, even if we don’t fully understand, the behavior of Ty Watkins, the 34-year-old South County high school teacher who, instead of making his appointed rounds last Friday morning, headed for the Strip in Las Vegas.

His wife eventually reported him missing. Watkins had been found asleep in his car outside the Rio hotel and casino. He was registered at the nearby Luxor Las Vegas under his own name. After withdrawing cash at a Rancho Santa Margarita ATM, Watkins apparently left Orange County of his own accord.

That’s the last I want to say about Mr. Watkins, because I don’t know the details of his life, other than that he is married with an infant child. But deep down, can’t we all relate to someone who says they’re going to work but then hits the open road?

I’m raising my hand. How about you?

I’d love to leave work tonight and start driving and not come back until I’m good and ready. Off the top of my head, I’d estimate four to six months. I know this would not play well with my bosses. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have the guts to cast my fate to the wind.

Yearning to Be Free

The notion of leaving it all behind taps something within the human spirit, so much so that it could be considered one of the thematic elements in American literature. From Huck Finn to Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” the lure to leave lies somewhere in the recesses of our minds. Yes, we normally repress or resist the impulse, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

“There’s a long tradition of trying to put that together as a cultural theme,” says UC Irvine English professor John Carlos Rowe. In Leslie Fiedler’s 1960 book “Love and Death in the American Novel,” the author argued “that many American novels are structured around the male experience, which is actually regressive to childhood,” Rowe says. “Kind of a Huck Finn symptom. What that often includes is the desire to escape from adult entanglements -- family, job, everything else. Lighting out is one of the impulses.”

Of course, if there’s perceived danger or mystery involved, the story gets better. Rowe cites the disappearance in 1914 of writer Ambrose Bierce, who went to Mexico and never returned. “No one knows what happened to him,” Rowe says. “What probably happened was that he ran into foul play. But that’s been legendized as the writer, the artistic man, vanishing without a trace.”

I must admit, that has some appeal. There’s very little danger or mystery in the 6.5 miles I drive to work every day and certainly no one refers to me as interesting, so vanishing would no doubt spice up my life.

In Case of Emergency ...

Santa Ana psychologist Ira Gorman knows of what I speak. In a way, he says, social conventions such as vacations, sabbaticals and early retirement address a need to get out from under. Even sleep allows us to escape reality.

“People, whether they generate their own stress or it’s external, want to escape it,” Gorman says. “They do that in a variety of ways. They can do it with a bottle, with bowling, going to the movies, or by taking off.”

Aha, so it isn’t foreign to our makeup to want to hit the road.

“People have that fantasy,” Gorman says, “but there’s a stronger need for family. Otherwise, people wouldn’t keep hooking up with each other.”

Social responsibility. It has thwarted many a good vanishing act.

I’m neither courageous nor desperate enough to disappear. But just to shake things up, I’m thinking seriously of taking another route to work next week.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].