shitty day

I was at summer camp with a bunch of people from high school, and it was the last night. I came back from a hike in the woods to discover that the camp owner had left early, giving this creepy guy from my math class a ride back into town. I guess he just got sick of running his camp. The thing is, the camp was the scariest place any of us had ever been. Think Jason scary, or any other horror movie about scary shit happening in the woods. Just about everyone else was taking their chances and hiking out, hoping to get home before dark. Three kids had elected to stay, and I'd been nominated as their chaperone. Great.

So we barricaded ourselves in the camp owner's office, climbed into our sleeping bags, and prepared for a long, sleepless night.

The long, sleepless night dragged on and on, so we started poking around, only to discover old newspaper clippings from the seventies about how the camp owner had gone crazy one night and murdered an entire set of campers with a machine gun. The articles did not specify where he obtained said machine gun, or why he was allowed to continue running his camp after the incident.

"We have to notify the authorities!" I said.

Everyone else disagreed. "If we tell on him, we won't get to camp here next summer," they argued.

"Suit yourself," I said. "I'm out of here." Displaying horrible leadership skills, I abandoned the kids, walked out into the woods, and somehow found my way back to town just in time to run a half marathon. They gave us a free bus ride back to the start line, but I had to hide under a blanket because the camp owner was on the bus, posing as a doctor for the race. They would bring injured people on the bus, and he would immediately determine that amputation was the only option. His saw blades glinted in the sun, and his eyes grew large like a rabid loris' as blood splattered on his new white doctor coat. So I got off the bus.

The full marathon was starting just as I arrived. A cop stopped me from running right in front of the starting line to find my parents. As the marathon runners streamed out of the gate, I noticed my mother near the back. She started running, at a pace way too fast to sustain for the full 26.2 miles. She ran about a hundred yards, then disappeared into an open sewer grate, Wile E. Coyote style. She wasn't moving when they pulled her out. I screamed and screamed and fought to make my way across through the marathon runners, who were not making it easy for me. Everything went dark before I could get close. It was a shitty day all around.

meta

I found a tunnel that led into my dreams. It was out in the woods, but not too hard to find. So I took a bunch of my friends, and we wandered around. My dreams sometimes looked like a city with a confusing public transportation system, but other parts of them just looked like a mall. They were mostly under construction. I assumed I'd be able to fly and do whatever I wanted to, but every time I tried just left me lying flat on my face.

The bus to the exit only ran twice a day, so I had to make sure we left in time to catch it. I didn't want people running around in my dreams at all hours. I found some people, but John Kim was missing. We sent out search parties, checked out all the stores and alleyways, but he was nowhere to be found. We stopped in a coffee store to regroup, and decided to leave without him.

At the bus stop, I turned on my iPod. It was playing Crash and Burn by Radiohead. This seemed somehow wrong. So I tried scrolling back to the menu, where things really started to fall apart. Some of the songs didn't even have names, and the ones that were there didn't make any sense. It dawned on me that being inside my dream was itself a dream. I tried the flying thing again, but just fell...and fell and fell, into my parents' family room as it looked in 1989. But this time I knew for sure the whole tunnel into my dream thing had been a dream, and this was, too. So I started flying around for a while until I got bored. I don't care what you say, flying around your parents' family room is never very exciting.

downpour

I arrived in Costa Rica, which is kind of like Disneyland, and also kind of like an airport. There were turnstiles at the entrance, and then a kind of waiting area. The American tourists had a special area on one side with leather chairs and their own bartender. I stuck with the locals on the other end, waiting for a bus up to the top of the large hill that was visible from one end of the waiting area.

My bus driver was pretty cool. But when we got up to the top of the hill, he dared me to ride a skateboard all the way down on the main road, which ended on a dock and would send me straight out to sea. To be honest, I was scared shitless, but I said, "Sure, whatever."

Luckily, it started to rain just as I was about to take the plunge. The whole hillside went dark like it was moved inside a barn. Everyone in the town was sitting outside with their families at backyard picnic tables when the storm started, and they continued on with sharing their meals and company like nothing was happening, even though they were getting soaked. I waited out the deluge, dreading the aftermath.

musical journalism bus

The musical journalism bus is a moving city landmark. Kids line up outside the bus depot all day, practicing their saxophones and violins and various percussion instruments, just hoping for a chance to take a ride. I was showing some friends around the city, and they all wanted to get on. Unfortunately, none of us had any musical skills. I considered auditioning with my singing, but everyone in the group quickly vetoed that idea.

Somehow we all managed to sneak onto the bus without having our credentials checked, but some jerky kid with a flute ratted us out. As the bus pulled out onto the street, the door flew open and we were pushed to the front, where a militant looking woman started to pull us off the moving bus.

"I'm not jumping off a moving bus!" I said.

"Yes you are," she said, giving me a final push. I exaggerated my recent ankle injury as I hopped down, hoping to make her feel bad. People who kick other people off moving buses are among my top ten least favorite kinds of people.

It turns out one of our friends had been holding out on us. In fact, he was kind of a scratch clarinet player. We caught up with him a few hours later when the bus dropped him off near one of the bridges. He showed us all of the pamphlets he'd received. We oohed and aahed over all the insider information on interview techniques and fact checking. "If I had known if was a stupid journalism seminar," he said, "I would have gotten off with the rest of you."