I've traveled ... some. No backpacking through the Andes, no throat-singing on the steppes, no sailing the Caribbean - just a bit of Mexico, a touch of Canada, a summer in Paris when I was in college. But the point is I've done it - just not a lot of it.

But when I have, I've noticed something odd about my foreign tourist self that's very different than my USA residential self. Same guy, inside and outside, even though the money in my pockets was a bunch of different colors and the street signs made no sense.

Sure I like to be part of the crowd, among my own people - whether they know what to do with a throw pillow, sling Jamaican blend all day, dance the night away, keep an eye on the latest fashions, or can tell you what Celine Dion is up to - but take me away, plop me down where they spit before shaking hands, put cloves of garlic under their armpits, talk like they're clearing out a ton of phlegm, boil everything they eat (and a lot of things they don't), or shriek like warbling banshees when they're happy (and even when they aren't) and I change.

What happens is I suddenly want to hock a loogie before 'putting it there,' stick an elephant's head in my pits, gargle my words, put everything in a stewpot, or trill at the slightest provocation. Anything, you see, to fit in; to not be the tourist sticking out like a sore ... well, whatever they stick out like there. I want to blend. I need to blend. Blending becomes a very good thing to do.

So it isn't hard to imagine what it might be like to travel a bit further than the Rio Grande, Quebec, or to get a shot in front of the Eiffel Tower. Stranger in a Strange Land, right? Where did I hear that? Anyway, there you are, away from home, friends, the usual and comforting anything. So what if you have ... weird hands, tentacles, bug eyes, slimy organs, strange heads, and all that kind of sci-fi stuff? Wouldn't you want to be anything but a tourist with a camera around your eight-foot neck, sandals on your blue feet, zinc oxide on your elephant nose?

Of course you would. You wouldn't want to stand out - especially if you've seen flicks like Independence Day and Aliens. E.T. might have had a nice visit if he looked like one of us, right?

But cruising the mean streets of Mexico City, I might have wanted to vanish into the brown-skinned crowd. Meandering the avenues of Toronto, I definitely would have been happier knowing when to say - or not say - "eh." Skipping down the boulevards of the City of Lights I absolutely wanted to understand why Jerry Lewis wasn't known as a complete and total asshole. But wanting to and being able to were at least a thousand miles apart. Sure, I could have practiced my Spanish, tried to love syrup, and puzzled out the genius in The Lady's Man, but I'd never be able to really blend in. I'd be the gringo who ordered cerveso rather than cerveza and got a bowl of baby shoes instead of a beer; the tourist from down south who cheered for this guy rather than that guy and got a fist to the face instead of a clap on the back; the Ugly American who ordered French Fries instead of ... whatever they call them.

So what would I do? What would a spaceman do? The same, I bet. He'd look around at what everyone else was doing, and try to do what they were doing, look the way they looked, smell the way they smelled, and sound like their voices. He couldn't make up a new person; he'd just copy what everyone else was. I couldn't do it well, but I bet someone who could go from Mars to here could.