Three Weeks Without a Bed

At the start of Day Twenty, page 187, Roger wakes up at his Aunt Betty’s house, lounging in luxurious sheets, where “no cops will be rooting me out here.” He ruminates how he made it almost three weeks without sleeping in a bed. After a split moment of self-congratulatory conceit, he thinks further and decides, “It’s pretentious to presume that going a couple of weeks without basic necessities is a long time.  People survive ordeals much more demanding than this journey. What am I boasting about? What right do I have to gloat?” How glad I am to have come to this realization. Yes, Roger can act like a pompous ass with his over-confident attitude, but not this time. He gets the perspective right. The rough style in which they were living was no big deal. “It was my CHOICE to live this way,” he thinks. “How dare that I think this is something special? I can hardly claim being thrust into dire hardship.  It ain’t this. No bed, so what?  Same as with not taking a shower.  Or not eating meals.  Or not wearing clean clothes.  What do I have to complain about?  Twenty days is nothing.  Go a year or more, Winans.  Then you’ll have something to write about.” That’s why you don’t see Roger Winans complaining much in this book. He understands that this 40-day cross-country junket is more or less an amusement park glee run (as he says himself on page 5) that he wanted very much to take. What was there to complain about? Nothing.