This week I’ve been relying heavily on Vicodin to help me sleep while trying to pass a kidney stone, which has resulted in some particularly lucid, albeit still pretty weird dreams…
The day started out in my office, which would’ve been fairly ordinary except that somehow I had an office much bigger than the cubicle that I actually have at work!
It was the size that’s usually reserved for directors and above. I didn’t have a door for some reason, but I had multiple desk areas and lots of room to spread out, to the extent that apparently I very much had because there were dirty clothes all over the floor.
As I was working to clean things up so the cleaning people at night could vacuum, a former co-worker with a fairly high-pitched voice was there chatting … I have no idea about what.
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I was a senior in high school, or possibly just graduated.
We were going to a party – hosted on a rooftop – and also strangely attending a wedding that one of our parents were hosting at their extremely elaborate home.
The first party was fairly uneventful, except that I noted finding it satisfying to actually be accepted by the popular kids by association with my friend who was more one of them than I was.
The wedding, on the other hand, was amazing namely for the cakes because instead of only having a single wedding cake, one of our other friends who ran a cake company brought her entire company to the wedding, with the couple getting to pick their favorite cake on the spot.
…and being our friend, we got to pick out some treats before even the wedding couple did…
The most notable was the frosting, which was just to die for, and I stalked the various dessert cases for several minutes as the crowds began to gather before finally making my selection(s)!
* * * * * * * * * *
This same weekend there was also a camping trip with the Boy Scouts that I was supposed to go on.
It was my first outing where I was old enough to go as an adult leader, so I wanted to go up after our parties even if it meant being a day late.
Hitching a ride with a semi-truck driver, we drove over a very questionable bridge into the UP that was honestly amazing that we even crossed, considering the end of the bridge had this disconnected incline where the driver almost had to jump the truck up a ramp and then wiggle the rest of the truck behind us across.
I had one or more of the boys with me, so when we reached this small town nearby to the actual campground, we stopped at this tourist shop where we had been told that they were doing customized t-shirts for everyone who attended.
…themed around The Simpsons???
Anyways, we stood in line with quite a few other kids who were also late, but when we finally got up to the front, the clerk just shrugged us away and said that they’d run out. This really bothered me because they knew in advance how many shirts to order and the mistake was clearly on their part, but he didn’t want to admit it. The best he offered was that we could come back in a week and he’d have some more, which was ridiculous because I explained that nobody was going to drive two hours out into the middle of nowhere to get a stupid t-shirt…
When we finally arrived at the campground, we ran into my Dad who told us about everything that the kids had been doing.
I mentioned that two friends of mine were there, and they’d been posting on social media that they’d been having a blast … and also noted that they both happened to be in the middle of transitioning – one from female to male, and the other the opposite.
His response bothered me, as he just chuckled, “I’d like to see the looks on the other boys’ faces when they find out…”
To which I quickly interjected, “…because you’d step in and remind them that they’re all Boy Scouts, right???”
When he didn’t respond, I just added, “That’s ok – that’s why I’m here now…” looking down at the Assistant Scoutmaster badge that I wore on my arm.
The rest of the trip was surprisingly uneventful. I met some of the staff members who were from Canada, and we talked politics and I asked in particular what they thought of our current events, and if they could help us out!
This made them laugh, and we all shared stories of earning our highest rank as youth and what it meant to be leading a new group of boys now.
At one point another leader from our troop showed up with even more late boys in tow, and it was surprising how true to character he was … always strict, yet he’d go well beyond the extra mile for any scout in need, even if it meant driving him two hours into the middle of nowhere on a Saturday night so that he could catch the last few hours of a group outing.