CityView Magazine

14 | July/August • 2014 By Mary Zahran on second thought ed next to the biggest motorcycle I had ever seen. We were just about to fall asleep when I jokingly asked Laura what we would do if this gigantic contraption fell on us. As the words came out of my mouth, the train suddenly rounded a sharp curve, sending the motorcycle—you guessed it—toppling over on us. Laura managed to crawl out from under the motorcycle, but I was still trapped underneath it. Although I was laughing hys- terically at my predicament, I began to have difficulty breath- ing because of the weight of the vehicle lying on top of me. What happened next amazes me to this very day. Laura reached down, lied the motorcycle, and placed it in its origi- nal upright position. e whole scene played out in slow mo- tion, just like an action sequence in a blockbuster movie. When I had caught my breath and we had both calmed down, we tried to move the motorcycle. It wouldn't budge. We could not accomplish together what Laura had accom- plished singlehandedly. At that moment, I became a firm be- liever in the power of adrenaline. We arrived in Edinburgh the next morning and remained at the station to catch a connection further north. Aer eat- ing breakfast, we fell asleep on two benches by the platform where we would board our train. I was sleeping soundly when I heard a man calling my name in a loud and excited voice. Forcing myself to wake up, I looked at the bench directly across from me to see a man with wild, black hair and dark, blazing eyes staring straight at me. "Mary," he shrieked, "Do you know where your luggage is?" Addressing me by my name, he kept asking me if I knew where my luggage was. At first I thought I was dreaming, but M ark Twain once famously declared that youth is wasted on the young. While he may have been right, I can assure you that calamity and indiscretion are two things not wasted on the young. I learned that lesson in the summer of 1975. I had just completed a six-week philosophy course at Ox- ford as part of a summer abroad with some classmates from North Carolina State University. Our professor looked as though he had just stepped out of the Victorian era, with his Oscar Wilde haircut and his neatly tied purple ascot. He wore an expression of perpetual bewilderment, prob- ably caused by having to teach a class full of overconfident, undereducated college students more interested in going to the nearest pub than in discussing Socrates and Plato. An ardent fan of Lewis Carroll, he would pepper us with outra- geous questions to shi our sluggish intellects into high gear. "How do you know you are not going to live forever?" He once posed this question to me when I referred to my mortali- ty. As I responded with a blank stare, he looked directly at me with his piercing brown eyes and said, "You haven't died yet, have you? Maybe you are immortal." Again, I had no answer. at particular discussion set the tone for the remainder of the summer. If I had only known what mishaps my friend Laura and I would survive as we traveled through Scotland, I probably would have agreed with my philosophy professor that perhaps I was immortal aer all. Our adventures began on an overnight train ride to Scot- land. Laura and I somehow ended up in the baggage car, seat- Running Through SCotland

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