Tourists and Climbers

Since the girls are out of town, Mrs. At Home and I had a fabulous dinner, just getting to talk.  Nothing earth shattering.  We've made no life-changing decisions or anything like that, but it was wonderful just to get to talk for awhile.

I don't recall what brought the conversation up, but we were both just marveling at how people brag about some of their feats when it's just daily activity for others.  Yes, I know we all need to have goals, and nobody is the best at everything, and exceedingly few, even, is the very best at any one thing.  But there are some extraordinary feats that people do that they have to qualify in order to somehow shoehorn themselves into the category of the elite.

Now, I don't want to take anything away from people who have summited Mt. Everest.  However, it seems that there are many, many records for people who summit Everest, and those who don't read much about it, or haven't seen enough IMAX films on it or just don't know much about Everest think that people who make the news in their amazing feats on Everest are somehow unique in doing so.

For example, Fox News had a story about a man who has made it to the summit 10 times.  I couldn't do it - that's absolutely astounding.  And he's broken a record by doing so.  He became the first non-Nepalese to summit Mt. Everest.  This guy has made it 10 times and is now a record-holder, but they have to put him in a category of "non-experts to do an expert thing."  Many people brag of their exploits of prowess, but they have to put themselves in a new category in order for it to make any sense.

To put this in perspective, the Sherpa are an ethnic group that are centered around the Himalayas in Nepal, and a "sherpa" might or might not be a Sherpa, but is a "tour guide" who gets you up to the summit of Everest.  Appa is a sherpa who has summited Everest 18 times, and there's another who's made it 15 times, and many others who've made it more than the 10 times that's so jaw-dropping.  Even more astounding is that Appa is a guide, and in Everest parlance, that means he carries your junk up the mountain so you don't have to.  It's a remarkable feat even to make it to Base Camp of Everest, but it seems that nobody ever remembers that it was the sherpas who carried all the junk there.  I'm sure that many other sherpas could summit Everest many, many times, but either become bored with it or realize there's more money to be made at the bottom of the mountain - more trips with more stuff, whereas at the top, you don't have to carry as much stuff, and they shove you out of the picture when they make it so that everybody thinks you're a hot shot and made it all by yourself.

Here are some other records of note we should begin tracking:

• All the passengers of the Concorde could be "first 10,000 non-pilots to break the sound barrier" (I don't know how many people ever flew on the Concorde, and I'm sure there were other non-pilots before the Concorde, but I digress).
• In the first season of inter-league play, we heard tons of firsts, like "first out in inter-league play", "first home run in inter-league play", and "first full count with runners in scoring position on a Tuesday in inter-league play".
• First non-astronaut in space.

It also occurs to me that we as consumers just love this stuff.  This is why Circus of the Stars (first non-trapeze artist to do a successful exchange) and American Idol (first non-video-friendly person to get a recording contract) and Survivor (first American-born CPA to survive on an island with a complete television crew where we had to kick all the natives off) are so popular.