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ciarawritesmarvel · 5 years

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the trouble with wanting [2] - steve rogers x reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: There might be swearing? I can’t be bothered to check tbh I need to get this out quick before I go out...

A/N: Chapter Two of mine and my love @spiderrpcrker‘s entry to Fic Wars, and awesome challenge by @revengingbarnes and @chillingbucky who are such lovely and wonderful people - I am so sorry to be so late for this! Tanya’s first chapter was quite something so I hope I don’t disappoint and also hope you’re all doing perfectly well <3

Chapter One // Series Masterlist

---

She had never missed a day of work before. Ever. In her life.

Sure, she’d been ill before, but then she’d taken whatever pills would get her through the day and soldiered on, bolstered by the joy she derived from her job in the first place. There had been funerals missed because work was just too important (nobody she was close to, of course) and weddings that she hadn’t been able to make the bachelorette party for on the Friday before and parties that she simply hadn’t been able to go to, all because work was everything and she wasn’t going to miss a single second of it.

They were going to be so mad at her now.

She’d put on her favourite dress, the one with the floral pattern and the flare at the waist, paired it with her favourite pumps, a pick me up that had proved helpful. As her heels clicked against the corridor floors, she smiled, enjoying the familiar sound. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard a voice that told her to get a life, but she ignored it. She had other peoples’ lives to worry about.

30 other people, in fact. And they were quite little, and rather dependent on her and she could not believe that she had left them to fend for themselves yesterday.

They would have had a supply teacher, but that was so not the point.

At just the thought of not having been there for them, it was as if her pace picked up of its own accord and she began speed walking through the halls, taking a right to cut through the sports’ hall, then a left into the corridor, a quick right-left until she came out into the playground and spied her little hut. Her own little paradise.

It was true that when she’d first been assigned the hut as her classroom, she had been more than just a bit pissed off. But a lick of paint bought with her own money here and displays that would rival even Sharon in the best classroom in the house and she was pretty proud of what she’d done with a less than ideal situation. Now, when classrooms were assigned, she would always ‘take one for the team’ and offer to take her little hut.

She practically skipped up the stairs and deftly unlocked the door, smiling in relief as she saw the classroom relatively unscathed after a day without her. Of course, there were a few things out of place that she quickly set right and then she began with her usual routine, writing the date on the board and the title for the morning’s lesson, setting out the materials on each desk, scarcely referring to her lesson plan as it was so carefully rooted in her brain already.

A glance at the clock. 8:58. She smiled. Wide.

Last few touches and she was ready, skipping back outside and onto the playground where she spotted most of her kids playing and waiting for the bell to ring. As soon as it did, she gave them a wave and they came rushing over to line up.

“Miss Y/L/N! You’re here!”

“We missed you so much!” “Where were you?”

“Maisie, don’t ask that!”

“Why not?”

“Just...cause!”

She shook her head fondly, promised she’d answer anything they had to ask a little later on and lead them all into the hut. Today was going to be a better day than yesterday, she was sure.

---

It was the afternoon. She’d managed to get the kids quiet by promising that she’d answer any and all questions in ‘storytime’ at the end of the day instead of a book, to which they all heartily agreed. Literacy had been a piece of cake, fractions a little more difficult and now they were just finishing off a timeline of the 1900s in groups. A normal day. The juxtaposition was still a little shocking.

“Okay guys, we ready for storytime...or question time, rather?”

A cheer rang out among them as they ran to sit on the carpet, crossing their legs with ease and leaning forward in eager anticipation. She tugged a chair over in front of them and grinned at them as she sat down.

“Miss?” Arthur had his hand up and she nodded at him, “Where were you yesterday?”

Somebody nudged him in an attempt to quiet him down, as some of the more mature students realised that perhaps that wasn’t the best question to ask but she said she would explain, promised even, so she had to follow through on that one.

“Well, the night before, I went on a date-”

A sudden ‘oooh’ overtook them and she laughed outright, tipping her head back a little.

“-but he didn’t show.”

The ‘ooh’s cut out as quickly as they appeared and were replaced by about 20 embarrassed faces and 10 who looked adorably angry.

“Anyway, I was in the bathroom when I began hearing some loud shouts and…” she trailed off, trying to word this right when Sarah gasped.

“You were in that restaurant? The one that was attacked?”

The other kids started gasping then, turning to each other in horror and she was quick to reassure them.

“Yes, I was Sarah. But I’m fine, as you can see,” she held her hands out calmly, “Mainly because...well because somebody saved my life.”

“WHO?” came lots of tiny voices, totally enraptured by her tale and she bit her lip.

“Captain America.”

Her voice came out hushed but the impact was loud. The children began talking over each other all at once, to the point where she couldn’t make out a word of what any of them were saying. She could see that all of them looked excited, but for some reason Sarah looked practically giddy and her and Maisie seemed to be shaking each other in happiness.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough, guys, that’s enough!”

It took them a few more moments but they soon quietened down.

“Any questions, I want hands up only,” she warned, only to see every single hand fly up in the air instantly. She sighed. Perhaps this hadn’t been her best idea ever.

---

30 minutes and seemingly hundreds of questions later, it was home time and for once, it didn’t feel it could come soon enough. Of course, not because of the kids, but because if she had to answer one more question on ‘what Captain America smelt like’ she might just lose her mind.

As she let the kids go one by one to their guardians, Sarah seemed to be hanging back to the end and she crouched down to her eye level when it was just her remaining.

“Everything okay, Sarah? Is your dad not here yet?”

She didn’t answer and instead, with a strength that surprised her, Sarah grabbed her hand and began pulling her along behind, giggling as she went. She staggered to a standing position and followed reluctantly, eyes narrowing.

“Sarah, could you tell me where we’re going please?”

“This is going to be so good!”

She was cackling and Y/N was beginning to feel very uneasy. She led her around the wall of the playground and just as she was about to pull out of Sarah’s grip and ask her what the hell was going on, there was a man in front of her that she had to rear back from not to bump into.

“Hey prin-” Steve stopped short as he pulled his baseball cap and sunglasses off to greet his daughter only to be met with another figure as well. When he recognised just exactly who this figure was, he balked, “YOU?!”

She blinked. Blinked again. Stared slack jawed between Sarah and Captain freaking America. When she’d sufficiently composed herself, she turned to Sarah with a kind smile.

“Sarah, sweetheart,” she said slowly and calmly, but with an edge of a wobble in her voice, “Is Captain America your father?”

“...yes, Miss Y/L/N,” she giggled uncontrollably, face contorting and Y/N pressed her lips together as she nodded solemnly.

“Of course,” she muttered under her breath and Capt- or Steve as she should really call him shook his head in disbelief.

“I knew your surname sounded familiar!” he said triumphantly, a hint of a smile playing on his lips and she rolled her eyes at herself.

“A kid called Sarah Rogers, and it never even crossed my mind...I’m thick,” she declared and Steve quickly looked horrified.

“Oh no, you’re not thick! I mean, who would think that?” he said and she shrugged, supposing he was right, “It’s nice to see you again, anyway, Miss Y/L/N, safe and sound.”

There was only a hint of a tease in his tone and she kind of liked it anyway. She decided to play along, if only a little.

“All thanks to you… Mr Rogers.”

They held eye contact for just a moment too long, before she came to her senses and returned her gaze to the ground, coughing slightly.

“Anyway,” she said pointedly, “I don’t want to keep you from getting this one home.”

She ruffled Sarah’s hair just a little and Sarah rolled her eyes, taking her dad’s hand and grinning up at him.

“Right,” he agreed, averting his own eyes to his daughter and returning her smile, “Ready to go, sport?”

She nodded excitedly and Steve turned back to Y/N. His smile stayed put.

“I’ll see you soon, Miss Y/L/N.”

She simply smiled shyly in response and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she gave Sarah one final wave and turned away, heading back through the playground and into the hut. She decided to take her marking home tonight. She needed to go home, right now.

“I love Miss Y/L/N! Don’t you, daddy?”

Steve swung their joined hands back and forth between them. He didn’t answer.

He didn’t even hear her speak.

#ficwars™2019 #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #captain america x reader #captain america #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers series #captain america imagine #captain america series #marvel #marvel series #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagine #the trouble with wanting

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ashleyspinelliburnbook · 4 years

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S1E5: King Gus/Big Brother Chad

Before starting this post, I wrote a light analysis of the opening sequence, and in it, I realized that probably most of my previously-held beliefs about Gus’ character come from that alone. He gets gum all over himself and falls into the ball bin, which is on wheels, so it goes flying. Which is just...so not his character at all, it turns out. I mean, he might not be all Army macho like his dad, but he’s not a dweeb, either.

Anyway, this first episode just serves to further prove me wrong, and I’m cool with that.

King Gus

You know how the first season of a network TV show usually sucks? Like, it gets by on what it can get by on — famous actors, okay writing, a fun premise, or...famous actors — but if the show gets picked up for more seasons, it becomes the season where you’ll be selling it to your friends as, “If you must watch the first season, take it with a grain of salt”?

Animated kids’ shows are not! like! that! Some of the things that this show has already gotten into are, like, season three minimum for a network adult show. You know, let the characters live their daily lives for a bit, then start throwing wrenches. But already, we’ve had “what if two characters kissed,” “what if one of the main characters joined the Ashleys,” “what if Miss Finster had a boyfriend,” and now we’re getting “what if one member of the gang became king?”

That’s right — Gus, meek, dweeby Gus, is king of the playground. Temporarily. Until King Bob returns from his tonsillectomy.

How? Well, King Bob doesn’t want someone stronger than him, or smarter than him — someone who the people might like more than him. He wants a regular guy, someone who’ll do what he’s told, who can think for himself. And, as luck would have it, there’s our boy Gus getting gum all over himself (literally, as it turns out) — right place, right time.

TJ and Spinelli are stoked that their friend is king, and they start brainstorming all the ways that they’ll finally have a say in the goings-on of the playground now (Spinelli, for example, expresses an interest in becoming “Lord Emperor of the West Playground”). Gus is less excited, likely because he didn’t ask for this, but TJ assures him they’ll be around to give him advice along the way. In the meantime, he’s just gotta be “kingy,” TJ says.

(Side note: Without all his stuff on, King Bob kinda looks like a turn-of-the-century football player. Tell me I’m wrong.)

So anyway, Gus is sworn in, and he’s immediately taken by the idea of all the snacks he can eat. King Bob’s henchmen bring him crackers and his preferred brand (and vintage!) of apple juice, more snack food, a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo, and...cookies. We’ll get to the cookies in a bit.

Meanwhile, things on the greater playground aren’t going so well. TJ and the gang want to go up to visit Gus, but they learn there’s increased bureaucratic nonsense they have to endure first — namely, a ton of paperwork that may or may not ever go through. (You know the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode where Amy is trying to submit paperwork for a block party request, and she does it all correctly, but she still somehow doesn’t have the right forms? It’s like that.)

Gus is then tasked with his first royal judgment: deciding which of two girls gets to keep a doll they’re fighting over. In true King Solomon style, he suggests cutting the doll in half. When one girl is fine with this and the other is visibly upset, Gus...gives it to the girl who’s fine with this. Oops.

“It’s the second-best decision you could have made!” his henchman says, and we continue.

Angered by not having the proper kind of cookies he desires, Gus imposes a cookie tax on the playground: every day, each student must bring him two cookies. He’s tasking the third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders with building a cookie mine in the meantime (as well as renaming kickball “Gusball” and mandating that each recess begin with the student body singing a song about...Gus).

It’s then that the gang say “to hell with bureaucracy” and just walk up the jungle gym to see King Gus, who’s happy to see them until they start questioning his motives. TJ, then Gretchen, then the rest of the school (more or less) get locked up — except for the poor kid who can’t pay the cookie tax, who’s sentenced to hard labor.

The kids stage a protest to usurp the throne of this cookie-centered dictatorship, but before it can escalate to riot levels (well, aside from the dodgeball-throwing and Spinelli getting a few good punches in), King Bob returns. There’s a smooth transition of power, and suddenly, Gus is no longer king.

“Uneasy is the head that wears the crown,” Mikey says, as the gang decides whether or not to be mad at not-king Gus. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Gretchen adds. And soon enough, they’re all friends again.

Spinelli does hear back about her application to be Lord Emperor of the West Playground, and I really want to know if that worked out and that she’s just, like, doing that from here on out. Maybe that’ll be my personal headcanon.

Takeaway:��Boy, oh, boy, do we keep getting these #deep Gus episodes or WHAT? When are we gonna get a good Gretchen episode?

Big Brother Chad

This isn’t the most important part, but after watching this episode, I have to ask: Does this type of stereotypical nerd exist...anywhere?

Not to spoil the episode’s first big twist right away, but here’s the scoop: Vince, who, um, plays sports(?), has a big brother named Chad. And Chad...is a geek.

See, Chad uses pocket protectors. His suspenders hike his pants up past his ankles, he wears glasses that are taped together, he’s in chess club, he has a pet turtle, he’s the scorekeeper on the baseball team, and his idea of a good time is going to Compu-Hut and watching the employees “unpack the latest mousepads.”

Your garden-variety ‘90s geek, basically. A person I have never seen before, and a person who may not have ever existed all at once like that.

But see, the real twist is unraveled throughout the episode. Vince is bragging to the gang that his big brother is going to pick him up from school that day, and word spreads around school fast. Everyone remembers Chad — who it looks like his about five years older than Vince — but they haven’t seen him in a long time. (How big is this town supposed to be? Anyway.)

The entire student body is waiting outside after school to get a glimpse of Chad, who arrives...on a bicycle he’s fashioned himself along with a sidecar, which he calls “the Chadmobile.”

“Why, he’s nothing but a nerd!” King Bob proclaims, and the students all leave disappointed.

To Gretchen, a self-proclaimed geek, it all makes sense. “What fifth-grader would want to hang out with kindergarteners?” she asks, referencing the gang’s earlier reminiscing about all the things Chad taught them when they first started school. The next day, though, Vince isn’t convinced, even as Gretchen doubles down with, “Take it from someone who knows.”

At dinner that night, it all starts to click, though, as Chad regales the table with tales of his “really neat” biology class and the aforementioned mousepads story. Vince has a breakdown, crying, “It’s true! It’s true!” and that’s when things start to get a little weird for me.

See, Chad hasn’t been hiding any of this. The sign on his bedroom door says “Chad’s room: Earthlings keep out!” He sleeps in a racecar bed, upon which he’s playing 3-D chess. And, well, his whole look.

“You’re a geek,” Vince tells his brother, thinking he’s telling Chad something he doesn’t already know.

“Yeah, so?” Chad replies.

Weirdly, the thing that sells it for Vince is that he always thought his brother was cool because he listened to CDs. But Chad explains they’re “geek CDs: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“Sorry, Vince, but I am what I am,” Chad says. “And the fact is, I’m a geek.” And then he logs into a chatroom he’s in with his friends.

Look, okay, part of it is weird that Vince didn’t notice that Chad was who he was sooner, especially when the stereotypes are in your face like that (and one of your best friends also fits those stereotypes to a T). But even if we haven’t all had the experience of checking in on a much older kid later in life, we’ve all grown up ourselves. In kindergarten, the fifth graders were impossibly tall, and therefore impossibly cool. In third grade, I knew someone who had a sister in high school. But as I reached those ages, I didn’t feel impossibly cool, or old, or anything. I knew myself a little better — I knew that I liked hanging out with the band kids, even though that wasn’t “cool” — but I wasn’t trying to be anything to younger kids. I was content having grown into myself (as much as any angsty high schooler can).

What really drives this point home is the end, where a bully that Vince got to stop bothering some younger kids earlier in the episode shows up with his big brother, who’s out to teach Vince a lesson. Chad shows up and threatens this kid...with not helping him with his math homework anymore, after which the other big kid immediately backs down.

“Just because I’m a geek doesn’t mean I’m not a cool geek,” Chad says. Because isn’t the real reward being confident in who you are — or, in this case, confident in who your older brother is?

Takeaway: What do we think of the name “Chad” these days? I think this was how I always pictured “Chad” as a kid, perhaps because of this episode and perhaps because I didn’t know any other Chads. Now, um, that name is seen...quite differently, isn’t it? I greatly prefer this Chad.

#recess

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wonderlandmind4 · 5 years

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Delicate Stages Drabbles 15

Feeling That You Get

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OFC

Summary: Drabbles following Delicate Stages. Looking into the life of Bucky and Ana.

Warnings: Language. Fluff. Implied smut.

Words: 4.7k

A/N: Finally! Sorry it took so long for this one, as it tends to set up the next drabbles to follow, which will be the endgame now (See what I did there :D )(Do not read unless you’ve read Delicate Stages first)

Five Months Later:

Bucky is doubled over laughing, has been laughing for the past five minutes and he swears he hasn’t cried from laughing in decades. Honestly, he is not shocked in the slightest with how this scenario turned out. The minute Bucky got a call from a blocked number he knew who it was. He was relieved. It had been six weeks since they got the news before Steve finally contacted him, but Ana, she was nothing but sass.

“Wow, glad to see that dinosaur knows how to use a phone!” She said loud enough for her voice to be heard.

Bucky leveled her with a look, but all she did was shrug.

“Six weeks, and you’ve had this annoyed and worried tick in your jaw, that no matter how hard I rode your face, it just wouldn’t go away.”

Bucky’s eye went wide with shock, followed by a loud cackle and Steve’s stammering response on the line. He caught his wife’s arm before she could walk away, pulled her in for a searing kiss and muttered against her lips:

“Maybe you gotta try one more time, darlin’, just to be sure.”

Steve hung up, only to call back two hours later.

Now, Bucky is getting the entertainment of his life. Both him and Ana were by the lake enjoying a nice lunch, when they were surprised by someone neither of them were expecting to see. That’s when Ana began throwing rocks made of dirt at him.

“Buck! Get your wife!” Steve shouts behind his makeshift shield, which happens to be an empty bucket of feed.

“He can’t help you, Rogers!” Ana yells, pelting clumps of clay at the man.

“Bucky!”

A bigger dirt clump explodes as it hits his shoulder, Steve’s left side of his face sprinkled with clay. Bucky tries to contain his laughter, tries to take deep breaths so he can speak. However, his wife’s aim has always been spot on and he won’t step in to stop her when she’s in a rage. A very entertaining, protective rage.

“Bet you’re regretting leaving your shield now, pal” Bucky quips, earning a glare from Steve.

“Say you’re sorry!” Ana demands, throwing the last rock.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Now will you stop? I’m getting dirt in my mouth!”

When Ana finally ceases her attack and Steve’s blue shirt is colored with orange-brown spots, they invite him into their hut. Bucky gave him a lecture that brought on a feeling of déjà vu, as if he was scolding his friend back in a Brooklyn alley once more. Steve had explained his side of what happened with the portal and the team breaking up. It’s not something either of them wanted to hear, but at least everyone who is on the run seems to be safe and well hidden. With the exception of Clint and Scott Lang, who both had families to think about and made a plea bargain instead.

Bucky feels a strange wave of emotions radiating from Ana as he sits next to her. Their arms are touching, skin to skin, and it feels like cold prickles seeping through his pores. He briefly wonders if this is what his wife feels all the time, and how second nature it is to her now. He stretches his pinkie finger over hers, offering her comfort.

“Vision went to meet up with Wanda?” Bucky doubles checks. He’d be concerned for the girl if she was hiding from the government alone. He knows exactly how that feels, and Wanda is still a kid to him; just 21.

“He took off in the middle of the night, so he wouldn’t be followed,” Steve confirms.

“So,” Ana finally speaks up since Steve started talking. “It’s just Rhodes then? Technically Peter, but since he’s underage and not an official Avenger, the Accords don’t apply to him. Nor do they actually know his identity.”

“Correct,” Steve answers solemnly. Bucky sees his eyes squint as he pauses. He meets his gaze fleetingly, both coming to the same conclusion. “Tony isn’t alone, Ana.”

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel like he is,” She mutters bitterly. “Pepper’s been out of town too.”

The sigh Steve exhales sounds heavy with remorse. However, Bucky knows him down to his core, and though his friend might be feeling guilty over the fact that his friendship with Tony is now strained, Steve still believes he did the right thing.

“I sent him a burner phone, in case he ever needs me,” Steve informs Ana. “I’ll always be there,” He pauses once more. “Just not where the government is involved.”

Bucky swipes his pinkie finger over his wife’s several times. He’s watching her carefully as silence stretches between the three of them. Finally, she nods in understanding, Steve sending her an appreciative smile. He kicks his foot out to nudge against her own, until she returns the teasing gesture. Bucky sags with relief. This entire Accords situation has not put Ana in a good mood during those first two months.

Numerous times she had snapped at Bucky or grumbled about how stupid heroes could be. He just took it, allowing her to lash out at him, until Ana caught herself. She told him he shouldn’t allow her to do that, that her anger and disappointment is misdirected, but it’s not an excuse. Bucky had told her he didn’t mind one bit, that he would rather have her lash out then bottle it up. Ana insisted that he stopped her the next time it happened, and when it did, he spoke up. He told her it wasn’t fair, and she agreed.

Since then, Ana hasn’t snapped at him once, and they have talked it through together. He helped her accept that what happened was the others decision, and the fallout was something they would have to handle. Ana wasn’t a part of it, so her strange guilt was moot. She had also accepted the Healers of Wakanda’s advice to begin mediating; Bucky thinks it helps better than anything. He also thinks the make-up sex has plenty to do with that too.

He blinks back to the present, pressing a quick kiss to her temple. She leans into him, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Steve’s expression soften into a smile.

“Maybe this is good in the long run,” Steve speaks up, his voice airy, light. Bucky narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Maybe it’ll give Tony and Pepper time to start a family.”

Ana perks up next to Bucky. “Maybe! I know Tony wants kids.”

Bucky narrows his eyes at his best friend. He has a feeling he knows where this is going. Steve’s eyes flash, a sign of mischief he has seen since he met the little skinny kid on the playground.

“You know,” He begins, “you seem to be glowing, Ana.”

Bucky shakes his head at the lame attempt, laughing under his breath. When he catches Ana’s gaze, she looks confused. Which last for three seconds before she looks back at Steve, then to him once more. Suddenly he sees it click in her beautiful brown eyes, rolling them towards Steve.

“Yeah,” She states. “It’s called being happily married…with a healthy dose of mind-blowing orgasms.”

Steve drops his blushing face into his hands. Bucky makes an indigent noise.

“Not what you were expecting? Because I’m not expecting,” Ana laughs brightly. “Although, we do have a lot of se-“

“Alright, Шалунья, enough out of you,” Bucky scolds playfully, wrapping his right arm around her shoulder to cover her mouth with his hand. She promptly licks his skin, as if it would bother him.

“I’m sorry I implied anything,” Steve mumbles behind his hands.

“Actually,” Ana’s word is muffled by his hand. Instead of removing it, she bites the fleshy part of his palm. Bucky inhales sharply, glaring at his wife as he lowers his hand. He swallows thickly. He’ll get her back for that.

“I think it’s to do with my abilities?” She questions at the end as Steve uncovers his face. “It’s been shimmering lately. Could be due these rings Shuri made. They help regulate the energy without the exhausting affects, and it’s always been tied with my emotions. So, the happier or angrier I am, it starts to glow.”

“She has been extremely happy, well and angry,” Bucky supplies. He feels Ana squeeze his hand, offering him an apologetic smile. He shakes his head, since all has been forgiven during those rough weeks.

“That’s interesting,” Steve muses.

Before either of them can say anything else, the little Kimoyo beads Shuri gave Ana as a necklace glows against her chest. Bucky carefully plucks it off the bead, holding it flat in his palm, a small holographic screen popping up. Shuri’s cheerful, youthful face takes up most of the frame, but she frowns when she sees Bucky instead of Ana.

“Nice to see you too, kid,” Bucky greets flatly.

“Stop stealing her beads,” She laughs, twisting as if she can see Ana. “I’m not summoning you on her bead, genius.”

Ana presses her cheek against his, leaning into him. “He’s just jealous he doesn’t get a personal one. Do you need me to come to the Lab?”

Shuri nods excitedly. “There was a breakthrough with the psychiatric healing devices!”

“On my way!” Ana grabs the bead from Bucky’s hand as the screen vanishes. “I’ll be back, you boys have fun! Stay out of trouble and don’t feed Rosa anymore treats, she’s had enough pears today!”

Then she’s taking off, waving her goodbye in the air. Bucky can’t help the fondness washing over him as she disappears over the hill.

“She’s still the same as ever,” Steve voices softly.

“Stubborn and fierce to the core,” He agrees. “I like her.”

“Good thing she’s your wife.”

Bucky wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulder, tighten his grip firmly. “Don’t you ever go that long without checking in again, you hear me Rogers?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, mom.”

An hour goes by, filled with Bucky putting Steve to work for a bit, then taking him around the village. He has visited before, but he never wondered outside of the palace or lab. He meets the village people and children, some of the other tribes, and takes him to the lake Bucky is fond of.

“This is where you purposed?” Steve questions, gazing out over the lake.

“Yup, and the spot you’re standing on is where I dropped the ring, twice. Because I was so damn nervous,” Bucky laughs at the memory.

“So,” He drawls out, “you haven’t discussed children yet?”

Bucky snorts, running his fingers through his hair. “She mentioned starting a family before we got married, but we haven’t really brought it up since.”

“Any particular reason?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The possibility of having kids with Ana makes Bucky’s heart sore. However, it also leaves a bitter taste of self-loathing in his mouth. Could he even be a good father? Would he be enough? He keeps those doubts and fears to himself for now.

“We’ve just been enjoying our time as husband and wife,” He finally answers. “It’s only been eight months. There’s no rush.”

He sees Steve nod from the corner of his eye. “How are those energy rings holding up for her? Do they make the connect you both have stronger?”

“No, I don’t think. That was all Ana herself when she connected our energies. It’s incredible, Stevie. I can feel her all the time, like her life energy is this infinite sunlight around me. It’s subtle, but powerful.”

A firm hand squeezes his shoulder, and when Bucky meets Steve’s eyes, he sees nothing but happiness there. Along with a teasing eyebrow wiggle, to which Bucky playfully nudges his friend off him.

“The rings are ingenious,” He continues. “Shuri, that girl’s mind is a masterpiece. She keeps improving my arm too, and the rings, and the technology she comes up with is-“ He breaks off shaking his head in wonderment. “This place is amazing.”

“Incredible,” Steve agrees. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Ya know, you can stay here if you need a home.”

“I know that option is always open, Buck. From you and the King, but my place is still out there in the world. There’s a lot of underground issues at hand.”

“Still picking fights with things bigger than you.”

“You know it, pal.”

“Still a scrappy little punk forever.”

Steve laughs brightly, wrapping his arm around Bucky’s neck in a headlock.

The trek from the lab to their hut by the lake is just over a mile on foot. Ana sometimes takes the long route to and from, enjoying the serene landscape and warm breeze. Sporadically, she will find a stray goat or pig that has wondered off and coaxes it to follow her back. Other times, she and Bucky take the small journey together, fingers laced.

As Ana makes her way over the final, small hill she spots her husband and Steve, each petting the goats. She hears Bucky introducing the newest additions that race around Steve’s legs, knocking into him here and there. She can’t help but chuckle at the scene when she reaches them, bending to pick up one of the kids that exhausted themselves.

“Having fun?” Ana teases, offering the sleepy goat to Steve. He fumbles briefly, until he gets his large arms securely around the young goat’s body.

“They’re very cute,” He states, cradling the animal. “Bit of a handful.”

“That they are. Hey Bucky,” She turns to address her spouse as he lays down a fresh bill of hay. “Shuri requests your presence. Said she just finished some improvements to the new arm she’s been working on.”

Bucky’s eyes light up, an excited smile on his lips. Walking up to Ana, he gently cups the back of her head, pressing a tender kiss above her eyebrow. In return, she rests her hands on his hips, eyes fluttering at the sensation of adoration washing over her spine.

“Did you peek?” He murmurs against her skin, his left hand drawing circles over the side of her stomach with is thumb.

“No, I know better.”

His huffing laugh warms her skin before he leans back. “Meet you guys back at the apartment?”

Ana nods, placing a quick peck to his mouth. Bucky’s fingers scratch the base of her skull three times, before he steps around her, biding Steve a quick wave as he heads off. Ana catches the Captain’s fond look, clearly having witness their moment. Naturally, she sticks her tongue out at him.

“You haven’t seen our place, have you? In the city.”

Steve carefully lowers the now sleeping goat on a thicker part of the grass. He brushes his hands against his jeans, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

“Come on then!”

They have been walking for a good twenty minutes, taking the scenic route as well, when Ana decides to bring up something that has been on her mind for the past few months. At first, it was just a fleeting thought, a quick feeling, something so minuscule, it didn’t need attention. As the days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, it has now gnawed at the back of her brain. Rather, it’s been pressing against her energy, making little ripples against the positive vibes in the air.

“Steve,” She speaks up casually, “Can I talk to you about something, uh, with me?”

The worried expression flits over his face fleeting. “Anything, Ana, you know that.”

She nods, fiddling with her wedding rings. “I’ve been…having this strange feeling. It never feels urgent, but it’s weird, almost like it’s scratching at something I don’t know is there.”

“With you two?”

“No, no, we’re fine. It feels more like, when you can sense a storm coming, the wind shifts a little, but it isn’t on a grand scale,” She pauses, trying to collect her thoughts. “I’m not explaining it right.”

Ana halts her steps, Steve following suit. “I got upset when I heard about what happened with you guys, so my energy was a little out of control. However, I’ve been doing a lot of mediation, and working with the healers here to connect my energy to an element that’s more grounding.”

“Grounding. As in the earth’s energy?” Steve inquires thoughtfully.

“In a way, the earth is a solid foundation, strong. It embodies energy of life all around in many forms. The healers allow me to visit one of the sacred places with them so I can mediate without interruption. It helps steady it, plus the rings regulate this ability more so. I’ve been doing it for over two months now, and I think maybe that’s why I can feel it?”

“Feel what, exactly?”

Waving her hands around her, she answers, “A strange, vitality, settling over the earth. Is that weird? It’s probably weird, since it’s never happened before. It’s not quite, ominous. The atmosphere here is mainly happy, positive vibes, and Bucky is-“ She breaks off, smiling softly at the mention of her husband. “He’s been great, and he feels great, and I can feel him, you know?”

“Yeah, he mentioned that. Says you feel like sunshine to him,” Steve smirks, but his eyes are soft, clearly happy for them both. “It’s cute. Romantic.”

“Well,” Ana rubs her warming cheek briefly. “It’s true. Anyway, because of all that this new feeling is foreign to me. It makes my empathy feel off at times.”

“Do you feel like it affects you in any way? Physically? Emotionally?”

“No, that’s the thing. If it’s a darker energy or feeling, it normally would affect me. This is just, there. It fades in and out, but it’s there.” She bites her lips nervously, rubbing her fingers over her collarbones. “What do you think?”

Steve doesn’t answer immediately. He’s pensive, blue eye appraising her. Ana fiddles with her rings again, waiting for a response and hoping she doesn’t sound crazy. She had an almost identically feeling way back at the compound when they still lived there. It kept building and building until it exploded into the fallout that ultimately led her and Bucky being separate for nearly a year. Before she can give her herself a panic attack, Steve finally speaks.

“You’ve been getting stronger over time,” He states, voice low as he thinks. “I think the more you were opening yourself up to Bucky at the time, the stronger you became. It wasn’t just him though, your abilities grew, what you did to Woods-“ He stops short, shaking his head. “We never truly trained with you or got see how far your abilities developed. Maybe now, with how your life is, a constant source of happiness, of peace, comfort, it’s a safe place to not hold back. You can use your powers without resistance.”

Taking her own time to process his words, Ana carefully twists the rings on her middle fingers. The thin sheen of the energy shield encases her body like another layer of skin. She holds her hands out in front of her, twisting around to see the shield shimmer. It even looks brighter, or maybe it’s just the sun reflecting off it.

“Do you and Shuri run tests with that?” Steve asks, leaning as close as he can without touching. “Because the last time I saw you use these, it wasn’t this visible. Although, it was through a video screen.”

“We run tests bi-weekly,” She informs him, twisting the rings off. “I don’t think much has changed though.”

“Does it feel like a threat?”

“N-“ She pauses. She doesn’t know why, but the word just died on her tongue. She shakes her head. “No. Not…yet. Do you think it could be? I can feel threats from a distance?”

Steve shrugs as he picks up her hand to examine the ring closer. “We can’t rule out any possibility, right? Wanda grew stronger the more she trained and experimented herself.”

“Yeah, but Steve, if I can actually feel threats at a great distance…that’s insane! I’m not that strong. That’s something else entirely. Right?”

“Anything is possible, Ana. You know that,” He says softly. Then he taps her wedding rings. “Have you talked to Bucky about this?”

Ana frowns. “No. I don’t want him worrying over something that could be, well, could be nothing. It didn’t feel pressing and honestly, I would forget until I felt it again.”

“This isn’t me teasing you again, but are you sure you’re not pregnant? Maybe that could throw it off as well?”

“I am one hundred percent sure, but that would be a good theory. The alchemy is off when I get sick too.”

“Were you sick recently?”

“No, just emotional with…” She trails off, shrugging.

“Yeah,” Steve drops her hand, crossing his arms and dropping his head. “I really am sorry, Ana. Going off the grid like that. It wasn’t fair to both of you. Either was lying to you.”

“Steve,” Ana places her hands on his solid biceps. “I shouldn’t have gotten as angry as I did. As long as you’re all safe.”

“We are. Now we are. There were some serious injuries-“

“Colonel Rhodes,” She nods solemnly.

“How is he?” The concern in Steve’s voice is thick.

“Tony made this walking contraption for him. After some intense therapy, he’s walking fairly well with it. He’s okay. He keeps telling Tony he didn’t blame anyone, but he stands by what he believes.”

“Sounds just like him.”

“Yeah, just like someone else I know,” She smiles pointedly at him.

Silence settles between them, with the colorful arrays of the setting sun on the horizon. Ana gets lost in her thoughts, as she assumes Steve does too, with the looming caress of that strange energy. She will talk it over with Bucky later, but for now, she just pushes it aside once more. She taps her friends’ elbow, jerking her head to the side.

“C’mon, it’s just another ten minutes from here.”

***

Weeks and months pass, and in between it, Ana visits New York and even California a few times. She keeps under the radar, especially when Bucky goes with her to see Pepper and Tony. The issues of the Accords and Avengers aren’t brought up, but she can tell it’s taken a bit of a toll on Tony.

Ana distracts him by showing off her rings, although she keeps the technology behind it a secret. Bucky distracts Tony with his vibranium arm as the genius himself marvels at the teenager’s piece. She takes great enjoyment when she watches Tony try to figure out the inner workings of the arm.

Ana and Bucky go from deeply in love newlyweds, to deeply in love established marriage as the year passes. The strange feeling of that particular energy still whispers up her spine once in a while, and when she did tell Bucky, he convinced her to report it to T’Challa and Shuri if it ever grew stronger. Reassured her that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, even if that means unknown, seemingly harmless negative energy. Both agree to monitor it, just in case, writing down when Ana feels it ad if Bucky can see a change in her.

She continues to work in the lab as Bucky works on the farm and helps the village people with manual labor tasks. Nothing grows or changes with the feeling, and they focus more on each other, their lives together, and the little stray Black-Footed cat that had wondered into their hut one night with an injured leg. The cat stuck around after they nursed back to health, seeming to enjoy chasing the goats around.

“How about Eliza?” Ana offers as the small cat pounces on the large goat.

“For a cat?”

“Hey, Ezra was named after a poet- “

“Ezra is a lazy domestic cat. Not a wild and free creature like this spitfire.”

“Fine. Then I’m naming her Cat like I mentioned the first time. That way, she technically has a name, but she technically doesn’t because is she actually a cat. A cat named Cat because she’s a cat.”

“You mind never ceases to amaze me,” Bucky mumbles, as he pulls her in by her waist.

“You love me for it,” Ana teases, brushing her nose against his.

“Every day for the rest of my life, Annie Doll.”

Then he kisses her with a searing passion, and they leave the cat name Cat to lay with the goats as the disappear inside the hut.

***

They visit again during the holidays, staying in a cabin Tony had bought recently and renovated in upstate New York. The surroundings were beautiful, frozen streams and frosted trees, glittering powered snow as flakes whirl through the freezing air.

It’s the first actual Christmas Ana and Bucky have together, and she knows, she feels, how much Bucky seems to dislike the winter. The cold. He’s had enough of it in his life. She makes it her mission to show him that the bitter cold and wet snow don’t always have to be negative or tied to Hydra memories.

She thinks she makes progress when she nails Bucky in the back with a perfectly made snowball. She hides behind a tree, barely has time to take a breath before her husband finds her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tumbling onto the snowy ground.

They laugh breathlessly, as she takes a handful of snow and smashes it against his head. Bucky retaliates by attacking her lips, the kiss passionate and heated enough to melt the flakes around them. Until he sneakily presses snow against her neck. Ana squeals from the ice, making him roll over. She stands up, then proceeds to ran away from him.

When Bucky catches her once more, his blue eyes reflect the glimmer of the snow crystals against the light. He looks happy, playful, any signs of lingering, horrible memories gone. And when they go inside to warm up and dry off, something shifts between them.

They snuggle up in front of the cozy, cackling fire in the living room, with thick fuzzy blankets and hot chocolate. There’s a tall Christmas tree in the corner, twinkling with different colored lights, the branches making the room smell of balsam. Pepper is in the kitchen, quietly making dinner as Tony pretends to help her. Ana is pressed against Bucky’s side, both watching the snow falling through the large windows. Then he speaks.

“This place is beautiful,” He says softly. “Would be a nice place to bring a family to for the holidays.”

Ana is glad she just finished taking another sip of her hot chocolate. She carefully places the mug down, tilting her head to see his eyes. He’s staring straight at the fireplace. She smiles, then kisses his scruffy jaw.

“A family, huh?” She confirms, her heart fluttering in her chest at the thought.

Bucky’s soft chuckle makes her heart flutter. “Yeah, whenever those two decide to have kids.” There’s a short pause. “Or us.”

“Is that your way of saying something, Winter Flurry?”

She feels his chest rise and fall with a slow breath. “Yes.”

“You want to start a family?” Ana questions seriously, sitting up a little straighter.

He slowly meets her eyes. “Someday. I think,” He exhales shakily, wringing his hands together. “I won’t lie, Annie. I have some self-doubts about it, fears, but,” he pauses to look at her. “We’ll do it together. Obviously.”

Ana laughs. “Obviously,” She takes his hands, lacing their fingers together. “One day. A family. You’ll be an amazing father, just so you know.”

Bucky softly kisses her nose as she scrunches it up.

“I’m good with just you right now though,” She whispers when he pulls back.

“Me too, love.”

She closes the space between them, pressing her lips to her husband’s warm, slightly chapped ones. She feels every ounce of his excitement and fear, but overall, love. They both know they just want to spend time being married, there is no rush for them to have children, and they’re willing to wait for it. For now, they snuggle closer together, listening to the cackling fire, the soft voices in the kitchen and the snowfall outside.

********************************************************************

Tags: @thecreatiivecorner @kat-lives @stressedasalways @watchoutforfrostbite @justreadingfics @keldachick

Drabbles: Fourteen Drabbles: Sixteen

#delicate stages drabbles #bucky barnes x ofc #bucky barnes x original female character

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mintchocolateships · 5 years

Note

The ship meme for u and Muriel?

!!! I love my forest man

General:

How long will they last? - I won’t stop loving this man until I die.

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - It only took a few days, surprisingly. We didn’t necessarily say that it was love for a while after the relationship began, though.

How was their first kiss? - Rushed. It was a heat of the moment thing, and I was the one who initiated it. He didn’t even have a chance to kiss me back before I pulled away. I didn’t want him to be too embarrassed.

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Muriel did! He didn’t even have a ring at the time, but it was still very sweet.

Who is the best man/men? - Asra, obviously. he also officiates the wedding.

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? - Nadia!

Who did the most planning? - I did, along with Nadi and Asra. It was a very small wedding in the woods, so there wasn’t much planning to do, but we still wanted the place to look nice for the special day.

Who stressed the most? - Muriel, he wasn’t nervous about the wedding itself, but more of the fact that he was actually going to be married. For the longest time, he didn’t think it would ever happen to him, and he’s still shocked that it is.

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - Muriel didn’t want Julian invited, but I convinced him to let him come.

Sex: oof

Who is on top? - Him.

Who is the one to instigate things? - Me.

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - Yes? Sometimes? Usually one or two for each.

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - Either one or two! If it was two, it would be twins. No matter what, they would be an accident though lol oops.

How many children will they adopt? - None.

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - I do, he honestly has no idea how, but he tries.

Who is the stricter parent? - Him, he’s really protective of his babies.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - He does.

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - Me.

Who is the more loved parent? - Muri is, because he’s so big and strong. He becomes their playground :3

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? I do, he would rather die.

Who cried the most at graduation? - I wanna say neither of us would, but maybe him.

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - Him.

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - I do. He knows the basics, but he insists that I make it better.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - Me. Muri grew up as an orphan, he didn’t exactly get to be picky with his food.

Who does the grocery shopping? - I go shopping, but he collects some food from the forest.

How often do they bake desserts? - Not often, but I like to buy him sweets from the bakery sometimes.

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - Meat.

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - Muriel does. It’s not the most extravagant, but he tries!

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - Me, even though he would instantly reject it.

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - Also me.

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - He does. The hut really only has one room, so there’s not much to be done.

Who is really against chores? - Me.

Who cleans up after the pets? - Him, only because Inanna likes him more.

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Me.

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - He does, but not because of neatness? Just because people are coming over in general.

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Neither of us lol.

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - I do, muriel apparently only showers when it rains, but he takes quick baths in the lake.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - Him!

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - Never? He doesn’t have decorations, or a holiday spirit most of the time.

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - Me.

Who plays the most pranks? - I do.

#THIS TOOK ME LIKE 20 MINUTES BUT I LOVED IT SM #I LOVE MURI #f/o: muriel

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12138771 · 3 years

Text

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davessecretary · 3 years

Text

So there was a once-internet-famous bunch of stories by one davesecretary, but the site went away, and I had to dig into the Internet Archive to find them. Originally there were more on other sites, and there were copies around, but they all disappeared, and this is all I could recover.

EVERY GODDAMNED CHRISTMAS MY DAD AND MY UNCLE RON GET INTO IMPORTANT ARGUMENTS ABOUT POLITICS AND THE BEST AIRPORTS IN ZURICH AND WHICH PRESIDENTS ARE ASSHOLES IN PERSON AND THAT SORT OF THING. MY OTHER UNCLE D. IS KIND OF THE BLACK SHEEP IN THE FAMILY AND WE DON'T PAY MUCH ATTENTION TO HIM.

ANYWAY THIS ONE CHRISTMAS MY DAD & RON ARE REALLY GOING AT IT, SOMETHING ABOUT AFRICA, WHEN UNCLE D. WALKS INTO THE MIDDLE OF THINGS GINGERLY CARRYING THIS TAPE LIKE IT WAS A DYING CHILD AND LOOKS COYLY AT MY DAD AND RON AND SAYS "SO, I BET YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT SONG IS THIS!!"

AND MY DAD AND RON COULDN'T CARE LESS AND SOMEONE SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT HOW THERE'S NO TIME BUT UNCLE D. IS ALREADY BREAKING THE TAPE DECK AND JAMMING IN HIS PRECIOUS TAPE. HE FLASHES US A SLY LOOK AND SAYS "I BET NOBODY HERE WILL GET THIS" AND PRESSES PLAY

IT'S FUCKING 'HEY JUDE'. 19 PEOPLE IN THE LIVING ROOM ALL SAY 'IT'S HEY JUDE' AT THE SAME TIME AND LOOK AGGRAVATED.

UNCLE D. LOOKS AT US ALL IMPISHLY AND SAYS 'NO'.

I'M PASTING THIS FROM THE SMALL TALK THREAD BECAUSE IT SHOULD GO HERE:

ALSO A PRETTY SWEET STORY AT SCHOOL INVOLVING THE WORD 'CARROT'

WE'RE LEARNING ABOUT WEBER AND MY RUSSIAN TEACHER HAS AN ACCENT AS THICK AS MY CLASSMATES AND IS GOING ON ABOUT HOW SCIENCE CAN ACTUALLY PROVE SOMETHING WHEREAS ENGLISH OR ARCHITECTURE CANNOT.

SOME INBRED URCHIN IN THE FRONT ROW SLAMS HIS BIG HAMMY FIST ON THE DESK AND DEMANDS CLARITY.

MY RUSSIAN TEACHER GIVES HIM A STERN LOOK AND SAYS "SCIENCE CAN PROVE ZINGS ZEE GREEN GROZER CANNOT!"

IDIOT BRIGADE IN THE FRONT STILL DOESN'T GET IT. "GREEN GROZAY?"

"GREEN GROZER! GREEN GROZER!" MY TEACHER EXCLAIMS EXCITEDLY

"GREEN GROZAY? WHAT'S GREEN GROZAY?!"

"GREEN GROZER! GREEN GROZER!! HE SELLS THE GREEN GROZERIES!!" TEACHER RETORTS

"OH!!" A SMALL LIGHT GOES ON SOMEWHERE WITHIN THAT MISERABLE CAITIFF. "THE GREEN GROWER!" HE SMILES BROADLY.

THEN, THEN, AS IF THAT WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, SOME WRETCH OF A GIRL DOWN THE ROW JUMPS UP FROM HER SEAT LIKE SHE WAS BITTEN AND SAYS IN THIS POSITIVELY AGHAST VOICE "BUT CARROTS ARE RED!!!"

SO THIS ONE TIME I'M OUT IN MY NEIGHBOR'S DRIVEWAY WITH MY BEST FRIEND KYLE AND HE'S TEACHING ME HOW TO RAISE A PUCK. WE'RE USING A REAL PUCK AND HE'S STANDING ABOUT 15 FEET DOWN FROM ME. I KEEP HITTING THE PUCK AS HARD AS I CAN BUT I CAN'T RAISE IT. KYLE IS JUST STANDING THERE ACTING ALL SUPERIOR AND GIVING ME INANE ADVICE AND PASSING THE PUCK BACK TO ME EACH TIME IT SLIDES OVER TO HIM.

ANYWAY I REMEMBER I GOT ALL FRUSTRATED AND DECIDED THAT THIS WOULD BE IT - I WAS GOING TO RAISE THAT FUCKING PUCK. SO I WIND BACK AND TAKE MAYBE THE HARDEST SLAPSHOT OF MY LIFE. THE PUCK RAISES MAGICALLY. UP UNTIL THIS VERY SECOND NEITHER KYLE OR I REALIZE THAT IF I EVER DID GET THE PUCK IN THE AIR, KYLE WOULD BE IN SOME TROUBLE.

TIME PRETTY MUCH SLOWED DOWN FOR ME. THE PUCK IS A GOOD TWO FEET IN THE AIR AND IS MAKING A BEE LINE FOR KYLE'S DICK. I REMEMBER SEEING KYLE'S EYES OPEN UP VERY WIDE, AND I SEEM TO RECALL MYSELF SHOUTING OUT SOME OBVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT HOW HE NEEDS TO STEP ASIDE RIGHT NOW.

KYLE ISN'T VERY BRIGHT, AND IS NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO MY INSTRUCTIONS. I CAN SEE THE GEARS TURNING IN HIS LITTLE BRAIN, AS HE TRIES TO COME UP WITH SOME SORT OF SOLUTION TO THE IMMINENT DANGER HE IS IN. "STEP ASIDE, KYLE, STEP ASIDE!!" I AM YELLING EARNESTLY.

KYLE EYES THE PUCK ONE LAST TIME AS IT FLIES A BILLION MILES AN HOUR TOWARDS HIS BALLS, AND AT THE LAST MINUTE DROPS TO HIS KNEES AND TAKES THE FUCKING THING IN THE FOREHEAD. KNOCKS HIM RIGHT THE FUCK OUT.

SO I'M ON THE BUS FOR SOME GODDAMNED REASON AND I AM LISTENING CAREFULLY TO THE CONVERSATION IN FRONT OF ME, HELD BETWEEN THIS BLOWSY SULKY GIRL WHO IS CLEARLY DOMINATING THE SITUATION AND HER 'BOYFRIEND', A SCRAWNY LOOKING MESS NEAR TEARS. THE FOLLOWING IS ALMOST VERBATIM.

SCRAWNY MESS: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'VE CHEATED ON ME?!

BLOWSY GIRL: I CHEATED ON YOU.

SCRAWNY MESS: (SNIFFLING MISERABLY) BUT.. BUT.. YOU CHEATED ON ME?

BLOWSY GIRL: (ALMOST INDIGNANTLY) YES.

SCRAWNY MESS: (TEARS FORMING) FOR HOW LONG?

BLOWSY GIRL: (WITH A HINT OF SATISFACTION) ABOUT A YEAR.

SCRAWNY MESS: (TEARS WELLING UP) OHHHHH NOOOO.

SCRAWNY MESS PAUSES TO REFLECT. THE BOY IS A VERITABLE DISTILLERY AT THIS POINT AND YOU CAN JUST TELL SOME SORT OF ULTIMATUM IS COMING. HE MASTERS HIS EMOTIONS AND BECOMES VERY STILL. I AM EXPECTING HIM TO GET ALL KUNG FU ON THIS GIRL. INSTEAD HE TURNS TO HER, WIPES THE TEARS FROM HIS EYES AND SAYS "STRIKE ONE, NANCY... STRIKE ONE."

I ALSO POSTED THIS IN THE SMALL TALK THREAD BUT IT SHOULD GO HERE:

SO IT'S CHRISTMAS AND MY FAMILY IS PLAYING 'SCATTERGORIES' AND EVERYONE IS DRUNK, ESPECIALLY MY STEP-UNCLE RICK. HE'S JUST RAVING DRUNK. IT'S CRAZY. SOMEONE ROLLS THE LETTER 'F' AND WE ALL SPEND 2 MINUTES TRYING TO FILL OUT THE BLANKS. THE TIMER DINGS AND WE GO AROUND TELLING EACH OTHER OUR ANSWERS.

THE FIRST CATEGORY IS 'VEGETABLE'. WE ALL GO AROUND AND WE GET TO DRUNK STEP-UNCLE RICK WHO LOOKS AT US ALL SMUGLY, DIGS UP THIS WIDE GRIN, AND THEN SAYS "FUCKING CARROTS!! BAHABDIUAGHF(*PA#HIOH BHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" AND LAUGHS LIKE A GODDAMNED DEMON KING FOR NEARLY A FULL MINUTE. ONCE HE'S SETTLED DOWN WE MOVE ON. THE NEXT CATEGORY IS 'THINGS YOU FIND ON THE BEACH' OR SOMETHING, AND WHEN WE GET TO RICK AGAIN WE ARE GIVEN THIS CONSPIRATORIAL WINK AND NOD, AND THEN HE SCREAMS OUT "FUCKING TOWELS, MAN!!! BBAHAHAHAHHAHA UAHDIUAHIUHAIUH AHAHAHAHAHA" AND AGAIN WE ARE UNNERVED BY HIS CRAZED LUNATIC LAUGHTER.

THIS GOES ON FOR SEVERAL ROUNDS! IT GETS TIRED REALLY QUICKLY! FINALLY, AROUND ROUND 7 OR 8 WE GET TO THE CATEGORY 'OCCUPATION'. WE GO AROUND AND GIVE EACH OTHER LOOKS OF DREAD AS DRUNK RICK'S TURN APPROACHES. FINALLY IT'S HIS TURN. WE BRACE OURSELVES FOR THE INEVITABLE 'FUCKING DOCTOR, MAN!!' OR 'FUCKING BUS DRIVER SHIT YEAH!!'. THE TENSION IS TERRIFIC. DRUNK STEP-UNCLE RICK CLEARS HIS THROAT, SHOOTS US A MANIACLE LOOK, AND THEN SAYS QUIETLY AND CALMY 'forensic scientist' AND THEN GIVES A CALM NOD TO THE PERSON ON HIS LEFT.

HE THEN GETS UP, WALKS INTO THE KITCHEN, AND FALLS DOWN ALL THE STAIRS INTO THE BASEMENT AND PASSES OUT.

SO WE'RE IN KANSAS CITY ON TOUR AND I CALL MY MOM AND I'M LIKE "MOM I'M IN WICHITA, THIS IS WHERE YOU GREW UP!!" AND MY MOM'S LIKE "YEAH IT'S NICE ISN'T IT? TALK TO THE PEOPLE, THEY'RE REALLY FRIENDLY!"

SO THEN I GO TO THE DOLLAR STORE TO SEE IF I CAN SCORE SOME FOOD BECAUSE I'M ON TOUR AND THEREFORE POOR AS ALL HELL AND I WITNESS THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION BETWEEN THIS LARGE, LAZY MAN OPERATING THE CASH REGISTER, AND THIS SHRIVELLED, WITHERED HUSK OF AN WOMAN, WHO IS SCREECHING AT EVERYONE WITHIN EARSHOT. SHE TURNS THE BRUNT OF HER FORCE ONTO THE IMMOVABLE LAZY MAN.

"I WANT TO BUY THREE CANS OF THIS TOMATO SAUCE BUT THERE'S ONLY ONE HERE. CHECK IN THE BACK!"

THE IMMOBILE MAN LOOKS UTTERLY BORED. "I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY IN THE BACK."

THE SHRILL OCTOGENARIAN DOESN'T SKIP A BEAT: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "THINK". GO CHECK! GO CHECK!"

THE LAZY LARGE MAN CASTS HER A GLANCE OF SLIGHT REPROVE: "I AIN'T CHECKIN'."

THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR OUR ANTAGONIST, OR POSSIBLY PROTAGONIST. SHE CLEARS HER THROAT AND SHRIEKS LIKE A BANSHEE: "WHAT IF I WANTED TO BUY A HUNDRED CANS!!!!!!!1"

THE LARGE MAN LOOKS AT THE WOMAN DISDAINFULLY AND SAYS WITH THE FIRST HINT OF A SOUTHERN ACCENT "WELL AH KNOW WE DON'T GOT A HUNDRED CANS IN THE BACK!"

SO JENN AND I ARE DRIVING THROUGH MICHIGAN WHICH IS KIND OF A DREARY STATE AND WE STOP IN SOME SMALL VILLAGE OR POSSIBLY BOOM TOWN WHO KNOWS AND LOOK FOR FOOD. THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I'M GOING TO FIND ANYTHING VEGAN SO I THROW IN THE TOWEL AND GET PREPARED TO EAT A SWEET GLASS OF WATER AND MAYBE A SALAD IF I'M LUCKY. WE GO TO THE NEAREST PLACE, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE THIS COMPLETELY RAMSHACKLED HUT. THERE IS THICK BLACK SMOKE POURING OUT OF A HOLE IN THE CORRUGATED IRON ROOF AND SWEARS COMING FROM INSIDE. A LARGE SIGN ADVERTISING A 60 OUNCE STEAK IS PEELING FROM ABOVE THE DOOR. THERE IS SOME SORT OF GREASE POOLING NEAR MY FEET. THIS IS GOING TO BE AN ADVENTURE!

SO JENN AND I WALK IN AND IT'S WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. WHAT I ASSUME TO BE A CONVICTED FELON IS STANDING BEHIND THE BAR, YELLING OBSCENITIES AT THE COOK IN THE BACK, AN EQUALLY REPREHENSIBLE OAF WHOSE OUTRAGEOUSLY LONG MULLET IS SWEEPING OVER ALL THE FOOD.

I STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND TRY MY HAND AT CONVERSATION. "DO YOU HAVE A MENU?"

"NO MENU."

I SWING AGAIN "OKAY, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING THAT ISN'T MEAT?"

THIS TIME THE COOK IN THE BACK TURNS A BEERY EYE ON ME. "WHAT DOES THAT KID WANT?"

"HE WANTS TO KNOW IF WE HAVE ANYTHING THAT ISN'T MEAT"

THE COOK TURNS TO ME "YEAH OF COURSE! WE HAVE FAUX-TURKEY AND MOCK CHICKEN, AND WE ALSO HAVE TOFU SCRAMBLER!"

THIS KNOCKS ME FOR A LOOP. TURNS OUT THIS PLACE HAS A TON OF VEGAN SHIT. JENN & I ORDER A BUNCH OF FOOD TO GO. AS I WALK OUT OF THE BUILDING THE COOK SHOUTS OUT AFTER ME "DON'T FORGET YOU CAN ORDER FROM US ONLINE!!!"

SO I'M HANGING OUT IN THE BASEMENT READING AND MY DAD COMES DOWNSTAIRS AND HE LOOKS AT ME AND HE SAYS "DANGER POINT!! YOU LEFT THE OVEN ON!" AND I'M ALL LIKE "DANGER POINT?"

RIGHT SO IT'S KINDERGARTEN AND IT'S SPRING AND EVERYTHING IS THAWING AND MUDDY. AND ALL THE KIDS HAVE THOSE RUBBER BOOTS THAT GO UP TO OUR WAISTS. THE THING TO DO IN THE MORNING BEFORE CLASS STARTS IS TO FIND A BUDDY, GO FIND A NICE SOFT MUDDY SPOT IN THE PLAYGROUND SOMEWHERE, FACE YOUR FRIEND AND START SQUISHING YOUR WAY DOWN IN THE MUD UNTIL IT'S ALMOST UP TO YOUR WAIST.

WE DID THIS BECAUSE IT WAS FUN. SO KYLE AND I ARE FACING EACH OTHER AND BOGGING OUR WAY DOWN IN THIS MUD PUDDLE. WE GET IT ALMOST TO THE POINT WHERE THE MUD WILL START TO SEEP INTO OUR RUBBER BOOTS. I LOOK AT KYLE AND SAY "HEY KYLE, CAN YOU DO THIS?!" AND I TAKE MY FOOT OUT OF THE BOOT, WIGGLE MY LITTLE SOCKED TOES IN THE SPRING AIR FOR A FEW SECONDS, AND PUT MY LEG BACK IN MY BOOT, WHICH IS FIRMLY LODGED IN MUD.

"YES I CAN!!" KYLE SHOUTS BACK AT ME DESPITE ME BEING ONLY A FOOT AWAY FROM HIM. KYLE TAKES HIS FOOT OUT OF HIS BOOT AND IMMEDIATLY FALLS BACKWARDS INTO THE MUD. BECAUSE ONE LEG IS STILL IN THE BOOT HE IS KIND OF PINNED. THE SUCTION FROM THE MUD IS TOO MUCH FOR HIM TO SIT UP, AND HE CAN'T TURN OVER BECAUSE HIS LEG IS STUCK IN THE BOOT.

THE BELL RINGS AND I LEAVE HIM THERE FOR SOME REASON. IT'S MONDAY MORNING SO WE HAVE ASSEMBLY. THE WHOLE SCHOOL SITS IN THE GYM AND WE SING 'OH CANADA'. OUR PRINCIPAL, WHOSE NAME IS HONEST TO GOD 'MRS. HEGGINBOTTOM' SAYS 'GOOD MORNING STUDENTS' AND THEN WE ALL SAY 'GOOD MORNING MRS. HEGGINBOTTOMBOTTOMBOTTOMBOTTOM' BECAUSE NOBODY CAN GET IT IN SYNC AND SOME KIDS SAY IT FASTER THAN OTHERS.

THEN OUR PRINCIPAL IS ABOUT TO GET INTO THE ANNOUNCEMENTS WHEN THE BIG DOUBLE DOORS IN THE BACK OF THE GYM ARE THROWN OPEN AND SMACK AGAINST THE WALLS WITH A GIANT BANG. ENTER MRS. VAIL, SHORT, BUTCHY VICE PRINCIPAL WITH BICEPS LIKE NOTHING YOU'VE EVER SEEN. SHE'S HOLDING KYLE, WHO APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN DRESSED FROM THE LOST AND FOUND. THERE ARE TEARS JUST STREAMING DOWN HIS FACE. WE ALL STARE AT KYLE AND MRS. VAIL LETS HIM GO. HE RUNS TOWARDS ME, SLIPS ON THE GROUND BECAUSE HE'S IN SOCKS FOR SOME REASON, PICKS HIMSELF UP, AND SITS DOWN NEXT TO ME. TOTALLY INCONSOLABLE FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. WHEN WE GET HOME HE FINALLY OPENS UP TO ME AND TELLS ME THAT MRS. VAIL PICKED HIM UP OUT OF THE MUD LIKE A DYING SOLDIER AND WASTED NO TIME IN STRIPPING HIM NAKED AND DRESSING HIM UP IN SHORT-SHORTS AND A STRAWBERRY-SHORTCAKE TSHIRT EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS A NINJA TURTLE TSHIRT RIGHT THERE.

SO ALSO IN KINDERGARTEN I APPARENTLY THOUGHT THAT THE KIDS IN MY CLASS DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT COUGARS FOR SOME REASON, BECAUSE I DEFINITELY MADE A SWEET COUGAR QUIZ WHICH I INSISTED ON GIVING OUT TO THE CLASS THE NEXT DAY.

WHAT COLOR IS THE COUGAR? GOLD? NO! BROWN? NO! RED? NO! THE ANSWER IS TAWNY.

THE FIRST TIME MY DAD TOOK ME AND MY SISTER CAMPING I WAS ABOUT 8 OR 9. I REMEMBER WE PARKED THE CAR, I JUMPED OUT AND IMMEDIATELY STEPPED ON A NAIL. WE HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL AND THEN WE WENT HOME BECAUSE I HAD TO GET A TETANUS SHOT OR SOME KIND OF SHOT. IT'S ALL KIND OF HAZY.

THE SECOND TIME MY DAD TOOK ME AND MY SISTER CAMPING WAS A MONTH LATER, IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY. WE PARKED THE CAR, AND MY SISTER JUMPED OUT AND IMMEDIATELY TRIED TO LIFT UP SOME SORT OF BOULDER THAT WAS ON A HILL. I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHY SHE DID THIS. ANYWAY SHE ENDED UP BREAKING HER FINGER. WE HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, AND THEN WE HAD TO GO HOME BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO BE WITH MOM IN HER HOUR OF NEED.

AT THE END OF SUMMER, MY DAD, OUT OF COMPLETE DESPERATION TO GO CAMPING WITH THE KIDS, TOOK US OUT AGAIN. I REMEMBER HE SEEMED A BIT FIDGETY THE WHOLE WAY THERE, AND I REMEMBER HE WOULDN'T LET US OUT OF THE CAR UNTIL HE HAD SCOUTED AROUND A LITTLE BIT.

WHEN I GOT OUT OF THE CAR MY DAD WAS BUSY TAKING THE BUNGEE CORDS OFF THE ROOF. WE HAD ABOUT A BILLION THINGS UP ON THE CAR WHICH MY DAD HAD SECURED WITH AN UNNECESSARY AMOUNT OF BUNGEE CORDS. ANYWAY FOR SOME REASON I UNHOOKED ONE OF THE BUNGEE CORDS ON MY SIDE OF THE CAR. IT WHIZZED OVER THE CAR ROOF LIKE A METEOR AND CUT MY DAD DEEPLY IN HIS EYEBROW. WE HAD TO DRIVE TO THE HOSPITAL, THIS TIME WITH BLOOD STREAMING DOWN MY DAD'S FACE AND ME AND MY SISTER IN TEARS.

ALSO ONCE AT THE COTTAGE MY DAD AND UNCLE RON ARE NOW ARGUING OVER WHO HAS THE NICEST WATCH. RON IS GOING ON ABOUT HIS IS ATOMIC OR SOMETHING AND MY DAD IS TALKING ABOUT HOW HIS IS POWERED BY WRIST MOVEMENTS AND THEY ARE BOTH MAKING EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS THAT I CAN NEITHER VERIFY NOR DISREGARD. WE ARE ALL WALKING DOWN TO THE BEACH TO GO SWIMMING. AS WE APPROACH THE SHORELINE UNCLE RON CAREFULLY REMOVES HIS WATCH, WRAPS IT IN A CHAMOIS HE MUST HAVE HAD HIDDEN IN HIS BATHING SUIT, AND PLACES IT DAINTILY IN THE CENTER OF A FOLDING CHAIR.

"CAN'T TAKE IT IN THE WATER, EH?!" MY DAD SHOUTS OUT TRIUMPHANTLY AND UNCLE RON GLOWERS. "MY WATCH ISN'T JUST WATER-RESISTANT, IT'S WATER-PROOF!! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT!" MY DAD SUDDENLY TURNS THE BAND OVER AND SCRUTINIZES THE BACK OF PLATE. "YEP!!!" HE CONTINUES GLEEFULLY "SAYS IT RIGHT HERE - WATERPROOF UP TO 14 WHOLE ATMOSPHERES. WHAT A WATCH!"

RON SILENTLY WADES OUT INTO THE LAKE. MY DAD SPLASHES IN LIKE HE WAS DROPPED OUT OF A PLANE AND SWIMS PAST UNCLE RON, SHOUTING ALL THE WHILE. "14 ATMOSPHERES! THAT'S PRETTY DEEP!! CAN'T DO THAT WITH YOUR WATCH, CAN YOU!" HE SCORES HIS POINT AND TAKES IT FURTHER WITH A LITTLE DIVE UNDER THE WATER. HE SURFACES EXUBERANTLY. "YES, SEE - STILL TICKING!" HE PUTS THE WATCH TO HIS EAR AND SMILES BLISSFULLY ALTHOUGH I'M CONVINCED HE CAN'T HEAR A THING AMID ALL THE SPLASHING HE'S DOING. "YES, THIS IS A FINE PIECE OF CRAFTSMANSHIP. I BET I COULD GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE WITH THIS THING!". HE TAKES AN EXAGGERATED DEEP BREATH AND DISAPPEARS INTO THE MURKY DEPTHS OF THE LAKE.

UNCLE RON AND I WAIT. RON LOOKS AS THOUGH THE LAKE IS FULL OF VINEGAR AND HE JUST SWALLOWED A LOT OF IT. ABOUT A MINUTE LATER MY DAD'S HEAD POPS UP A GOOD 50 FEET AWAY FROM. HE'S STILL SHOUTING HAPPILY UNTIL HE LIFTS UP HIS HAND - THE WATCH ISN'T THERE ANYMORE. HE'S SOMEHOW MANAGED TO LOSE IT WHILE SWIMMING AS FAST AS HE COULD UNDER WATER.

A THIN SMILE BEGINS TO CREEP ACROSS UNCLE RON'S FACE AND WITHIN MINUTES HE IS JUST BEAMING. HE STILL REFERS TO THAT TIME AS ONE OF THE BEST SWIMS HE'S EVER TAKEN IN THE LAKE.

SO THIS KID NAMED DAX USE TO ALWAYS HANG OUT WITH US IN HIGHSCHOOL BUT NEVER EVER EVER SPOKE UNLESS HE WAS ASKED TO ANSWER A QUESTION, AND EVEN THEN THAT WAS A RARE OCCURANCE BECAUSE THE TEACHERS ALL KNEW HE DIDN'T LIKE TO TALK.

ANYWAY ONE DAY WE WERE ALL HANGING OUTSIDE AT LUNCH AND I HAPPENED TO MENTION THAT OUR PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHER MR. BLORN SPENT THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED HOUR TALKING ABOUT HOW ROBERTA BONDAR WAS THE FIRST WOMAN ON THE MOON.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" MY FRIEND JASON INTERRUPTS, "EARLIER TODAY BLORN TOLD OUR CLASS THAT ROBERTA BONDAR HATED THE MOON AND ONLY WANTED TO BE THE FIRST WOMAN IN SPACE!"

"GOD DAMMIT!" I REPLIED! "I WONDER WHAT THE HELL HE'S TELLING HIS CLASS RIGHT NOW!"

AT THIS POINT DAX CLEARED HIS THROAT AND WE ALL WENT SILENT. "I BET I KNOW WHAT HE'S TELLING THE CLASS RIGHT NOW" HE SAID IN HIS CREAKY VOICE. WE WERE ABSOLUTELY FLABBERGASTED. THIS WAS A RARE MOMENT INDEED. DAX HIKED UP HIS PANTS, PUT A LEG UP ON THE PICNIC TABLE AND PICKED UP A LONG BRANCH WHICH I IMAGINE WAS SUPPOSE TO BE THE YARDSTICK BLORN CARRIED WITH HIM AT ALL TIMES. THE IMPRESSION WAS LACKING, BUT WE DIDN'T MIND - DAX WAS ABOUT TO SPEAK.

"YOU KNOW WHAT HE'S TELLING THE CLASS RIGHT NOW ABOUT ROBERTA BONDAR?" HE LOOKED AT US IMPRESSIVELY. WE ALL NODDED SILENTLY. DAX MADE AN OBSCENE THRUSTING MOTION WITH HIS PELVIS AND ATTEMPTED A POOR MIMICRY OF MR. BLORN'S SANDY VOICE: "YEAH I FUCKED HER, BOYS. I FUCKED HER REAL GOOOOOOOOD."

ODDEST THING EVER.

MY CHEMISTRY TEACHER MR. RESTIVE DIDN'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT CHEMISTRY. HE WOULD STAND IN FRONT OF THE CLASS WITH THE OVERHEAD PROJECTOR AIMED AGAINST THE FAR WALL, OPENED TEXTBOOK ON THE DESK NEXT TO IT, AND WOULD JUST COPY STUFF STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TEXTBOOK. WE WERE THEN SUPPOSE TO COPY IT OFF THE OVERHEAD. I REMEMBER THIS ONE AFTERNOON HE GOT ALL INTO HIS SUBJECT AND STOPPED WRITING ON THE OVERHEAD AND HIS BROW FURROWED AND HE WENT SILENT FOR ABOUT 10 MINUTES AND THEN SMILED SUDDENLY AND WAS ALL LIKE "HMM. HMM.. HEY, THIS IS KIND OF NEAT!!" AND WE WERE ALL LIKE "JESUS CHRIST" AND MR. RESTIVE IS JUST GLOWING AND HE LOOKS UP AND SAYS 'TURN TO PAGE 72'.

SO WE ALL TURN TO PAGE 72 AND IT'S JUST A BIG BLACK AND WHITE PICTURE OF THESE TWO GERIATRICS SMILING AT EACH OTHER AT DISNEY WORLD OR SOME SHIT.

THERE WAS THIS KID IN OUR HIGHSCHOOL WHO ALWAYS HAD POO OR SOMETHING IN HIS NOSE AND WE USE TO JUST CALL HIM 'TOODLES' AND ONE DAY HIS DAD SCREECHED INTO THE SCHOOL PARKING LOT AT ABOUT 90MPH AND LEAPT OUT OF THE CAR AND BOUNDED UP THE LANE INTO THE SCHOOL CARRYING THIS GIANT POT. TOODLES WAS HANGING AROUND BY HIMSELF SMELLING LIKE POO LIKE HE ALWAYS DID AND NEXT THING YOU KNOW HIS DAD IS JUST SCREAMING AT HIM ABOUT HOW HE BURNT SOME RICE IN THE POT LAST NIGHT. AND THEN HE TURNS TO THE CROWD OF CURIOUS STUDENTS STANDING IN A BIT OF A SEMI-CIRCLE, AND HE SHOWS US THE POT WHICH HAS BITS OF BURNT RICE STUCK TO THE BOTTOM AND HE YELLS OUT "THIS!! THIS IS A FIRE!!"

SO IN CUBS OUR CAMP 'LEADERS' ALL HAD THESE RIDICULOUS FAKE NAMES THAT WHERE TAKEN FROM THE JUNGLE BOOK AND WE WERE SUPPOSE TO ADDRESS THEM AS SUCH. NONE OF THE KIDS WHERE VERY HAPPY WITH THIS, AND EVEN AT AN EARLY AGE WE ALL REALIZED OUR CAMP WAS BEING RUN BY A BUNCH OF NERDY TRY-HARDS WHO SEEMED TO HAVE A THING IF YOUNG BOYS CALLED THEM 'AKELA' OR 'BALOO'.

ANYWAY SO WE HAD TO DO THIS WINTER CAMP ENDURANCE EMBARASSMENT. IT BOILED DOWN TO SPENDING A FRIGID NIGHT IN A GODDAMNED BARN IN JANUARY. IT WAS AWFUL. I REMEMBER THERE WAS THIS FAT KID NAMED MARK WHO SPENT THE ENTIRE NIGHT MAKING ALL THESE LITTLE LABOROUS NOISES AND GENERALLY SOUNDING FOR ALL THE WORLD LIKE A BEACHED WHALE. I ALSO REMEMBER AT ABOUT 2 IN THE MORNING (BECAUSE IT WAS TOO COLD TO SLEEP), SOMEONE TOLD MARK THAT THERE WERE 'CORN CHIPS' HIDDEN IN THE HAY SOMEWHERE, AND THEN MARK WENT VERY STILL FOR A WHILE AND THEN 15 MINUTES LATER WE HEARD HIM MUNCHING. SINCE THERE WERE NO 'CORN CHIPS' WE ASSUMED HE WAS ACTUALLY EATING HAY.

SO ANYWAY THE LAST DAY OF THIS WINTER CAMP ABORTION WE WAKE UP TO FIND OUT THE CAMP LEADERS HAVE DECIDED TO TEACH US HOW TO USE A COMPASS. WE ARE TIRED, BROKEN MEN AT THIS POINT AND IN NO MOOD FOR THESE SHENANINGANS. AKELA OR AKIRA OR WHATEVER IS THRUSTING THESE PIECES OF PAPER WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL THE KIDS. THERE HAVE GOT TO BE ABOUT 400 DIRECTIONS ON THIS PAPER, ALL SAYING THINGS LIKE "GO 55 DEGREES NWN FOR 400 PACES UNTIL YOU SEE A TREE SHAPED LIKE A VULVA".

WE ALL GROAN AND THAT FRUIT "BALOO" EXPLAINS TO US THAT THERE'S A BIG SURPRISE WAITING FOR US AT THE END OF OUR "COMPASS QUEST". MORE GROANING. "BALOO" GIVES US THIS WINNING SMILE AND CRIES OUT "IT'S CHOCOLATE!!!!!"

NOW AT THIS POINT WE ARE DEFINITELY IN A BIG SNOWY FIELD IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE AND TO OUR RIGHT IN THE FAR DISTANCE YOU CAN SEE THE WOODS, AND EVERYWHERE ELSE IT'S JUST HORIZON. THERE IS ONE LONELY LITTLE SHED STICKING OUT OF THE GROUND LIKE A BROKEN TOOTH A MILE AWAY.

THEN ADRIAN SAYS "IS THE CHOCOLATE IN THAT SHED?" AND "BALOO" SAYS "WHAT?" AND THEN I REMEMBER WE ALL STARTED RUNNING TO THE SHED DESPITE THE CRIES AND PLEAS FROM THE COUNSELORS AND SURE ENOUGH THERE'S A BUNCH OF GODDAMNED CHOCOLATE EASTER BUNNIES FROM WHO KNOWS WHAT YEAR STACKED UP IN THE SHED. IT WAS AWESOME. WE DIDN'T HAVE TO DO THE COMPASS QUEST.

OH AND VERY QUICKLY

I WAS PLAYING MONOPOLY WITH KYLE ONCE, AND THIS KID SERIOUSLY CAN'T GET ANYTHING STRAIGHT AND DEFINITELY IS NO GOOD AT ANY BOARD GAME AND WHENEVER WE PLAYED MONOPOLY HE WAS USUALLY BUST BY THE THIRD OR FOURTH TIME HE WENT AROUND 'GO'.

ANYWAY THIS ONE TIME HE WENT OUT EXCEPTIONALLY EARLY, EVEN FOR HIM, AND HE THREW HIS LITTLE METAL IRON PIECE ACROSS THE ROOM IN ANGER AND YELLED OUT "I HATE BEING BANK-ROBBED!!!"

SO I WAS AT THE VIDEO STORE A FEW MONTHS AGO AND THIS GUY AND THIS GIRL WERE LOOKING AT THE NEW RELEASES AND THE GUY SAID "HAVE YOU SEEN AVIATOR? AND THE GIRL SAID "AVIAWHAT?"

ALRIGHT SO TODAY THERE'S GOING TO BE A FEW STORIES FROM DAYTONA BEACH. SIX YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN, MY FRIEND MATT AND I PRETTY MUCH STOLE 30K FROM OUR SCHOOL. SOME OF THE MONEY WENT TO FUND AN OUTDOOR KEG-PARTY WEEKEND THING IN MONTREAL, BUT A LOT OF IT WAS FUNNELED INTO A TRIP TO DAYTONA FOR US AND ABOUT 50 OF OUR FRIENDS. WE RENTED OUT WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE MOST DERELICT SHANTY-MOTEL ON THE ATLANTIC STRIP, AND HAD ONE OF THE BEST TIMES OF OUR LIVES.

ALRIGHT SO WE'VE SURVIVED A 22-HOUR BUSRIDE FROM OTTAWA TO FLORIDA THAT INVOLVED CARL THE WEINER-BOY COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERYTHING, CHRIS BITCHING ABOUT EVERYONE NEEDING TO USE THE BATHROOM IN THE BACK, AND JASON BREAKING HIS BRAND NEW PORTABLE DVD-PLAYER, ONE OF THE FIRST MODELS EVER MADE.

WE GET TO DAYTONA AS THE SUN RISES. WE PARK IN FRONT OF THE SEEDIEST ESTABLISHMENT I HAVE EVER LAID EYES ON, AND ARE IMMEDIATELY GREETED BY A WIZENED OLD LADY WHO IS DISTRIBUTING TOWELS AND ROOM KEYS LIKE RATIONS AMONG THE TROOPS. SHE CLAIMS HER NAME IS 'ESMERELDA' BUT SHE LOOKS LIKE A JANE TO ME. SHE QUICKLY LAUNCHES INTO A FASCINATING TIRADE ABOUT HOW IF ANY OF THE FACILITIES IN THE MOTEL DON'T WORK, IT IS BECAUSE WE HAVE ALREADY BROKEN THEM.

I, OF COURSE, AM ALREADY RUNNING TOWARDS THE BEACH. I JUMP IN THE WATER AND SWIM OUT ABOUT 50 FEET AT WHICH POINT I AM STUNG BY A JELLYFISH AND GO INTO ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK. JASON, ALWAYS A BRO, JUMPS IN THE WATER AND HELPS ME GET OUT. WITH MY ARM OVER HIS SHOULDER I STAGGER TO THE FRONT DESK WHERE ESMERLDA IS NOW EXCITEDLY GOING OVER THE LIST-OF-THINGS-THAT-WILL-LOSE-US-OUR-DEPOSITS. I TELL HER SHE NEEDS TO CALL AN AMBULANCE AND SHE GIVES ME A SOUR LOOK. "WHAT ABOUT A CAB?" SHE SAYS?

"I DON'T REALLY HAVE TIME FOR A CAB, I'M DYING" I REPLY SHORTLY.

ESMERELDA BEGINS TO HAGGLE. "LOOK, WHY DON'T WE CALL A CAB FIRST, AND THEN IF IT GETS REALLY BAD WE'LL CALL AN AMBULANCE" SHE SAYS DOUBTFULLY. CLEARLY SHE DOESN'T WANT AN AMBULANCE PARKED IN FRONT OF HER RAT-INFESTED MOTEL.

JASON RUNS INSIDE THE MOTEL AND CALLS AN AMBULANCE WHILE ESMERELDA AND I CONTINUE TO ARGUE OVER THE RELATIVE MERITS OF AMBULANCE VS CAB. FORTUNATELY THERE'S ONE NEARBY AND THEY STOP BY THE MOTEL AND PUT ME ON THE STRETCHER AND TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL. JASON JUMPS IN THE BACK WITH ME.

AT THE HOSPITAL I GO THROUGH THE USUAL - ADRENALINE, NOREPIPINEPHRINE, AND A TON OF BENADRYL DUMPED DIRECTLY INTO THE IV. AS YOU ALL KNOW, BENADRYL MAKES YOU VERY SLEEPY, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE A HUGE DOSE PUMPED INTO YOU INTRAVENOUSLY. WITHIN ABOUT 20 MINUTES I AM SO SLEEPY I CAN BARELY STAND UP, YET AM BEING VERY STUBBORN ABOUT GOING BACK TO THE BEACH. AN HOUR LATER I AM IN THE CLEAR AND RELEASED, DESPITE THE NURSE THINKING I SHOULD STAY OVERNIGHT.

JASON AND I MAKE SOME EDUCATED GUESSES AND FIND A BUS THAT WILL GET US BACK NEAR OUR HOTEL. I CAN BARELY STAND ON THE BUS. I'M STILL IN A WET BATHING SUIT AND TSHIRT AND THAT NOSE-PLUG THING THAT DELIVERS OXYGEN IS DANGLING OUT OF MY POCKET AND I'M TOTTERING ALL OVER THE PLACE. THE BUS STOPS AND OUR MOTEL IS IN SIGHT. THE DOORS IN THE BACK OPEN UP AND I FALL OUT OF THE BUS AND LAND RIGHT ON MY FACE. GASH OPEN MY HEAD AND FALL ASLEEP AT THE SAME TIME. JASON WAKES ME UP, HE LOOKS REALLY CONCERNED.

WE SLOWLY MAKE OUR WAY BACK TO THE MOTEL WITH BLOOD POURING DOWN MY FACE AND BYSTANDERS STARING AT US. WE GET INTO OUR HOTEL ROOM AND I FALL ASLEEP FOR ABOUT 20 HOURS. SO MUCH FOR DAY 1 AT DAYTONA.

WHEN I WAKE UP I IMMEDIATELY FEEL LIKE GOING SWIMMING. I OPEN THE DOOR AND WALK OUTSIDE AND MAKE MY WAY DOWN TO THE BEACH. 20 FEET LATER I SUDDENLY GET VERY TIRED AGAIN, AND SPOT A HOT-TUB FULL OF ELDERY PEOPLE OVER THE FENCE BEHIND THE HUGE HOLIDAY INN THAT'S RIGHT NEXT TO US. I DECIDE THAT'S MUCH CLOSER AND CLIMB THE FENCE AND START WALKING TOWARDS ALL THESE OLD PEOPLE.

THIS HOT TUB MUST HAVE ABOUT TWO DOZEN OCTOGENARIANS CRAMMED IN THERE LIKE SARDINES, AND THEY ARE ALL STARING AT ME. OF COURSE I HAVE A TON OF DRIED BLOOD ON MY FACE BUT I DON'T REMEMBER THAT, AND I MUST LOOK LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A HORROR MOVIE AS I WOBBLED TOWARDS THEM. A FEW REALLY OLD WOMEN WITH LOOKS OF ABSOLUTE TERROR ON THEIR FACES PUSH AWAY FROM ME AS I EASE MYSELF INTO THE HOTTUB.

I'M STILL IN MY BATHING SUIT SO THINGS ARE LOOKING GOOD, BUT WHEN I TAKE MY TSHIRT OFF LIFE STARTS TO GET INTERESTING. I'M TOTALLY COVERED IN THOSE LITTLE ELECTRODE-MONITOR THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE LITTLE METAL NIPPLES. THEY'RE STUCK ALL OVER MY BODY FROM WHEN I WAS HAVING MY VITAL SIGNS OBSERVED. I DON'T REALIZE THIS. PRETTY SOON THE BUBBLING WATER WORKS ITS MAGIC AND MY GERIATRIC AUDIENCE WATCHES IN AMAZEMENT AND DISGUST AS SEVERAL OF THESE LITTLE THINGS LOOSEN FROM MY BODY AND START FLOATING AROUND THE HOTTUB. EVERYONE'S AVOIDING ME BUT NOBODY'S GETTING OUT. I JUST SIT THERE BLISSFULLY, MY FACE CAKED IN BLOOD AND DIRT AND A LITTLE SPHERE OF ELECTRODE-MONITORS BOBBING AROUND ME LIKE LITTLE SILVER WATER-LILLIES.

FINALLY THIS ONE OLD MAN ACROSS ME STARTS SHOOTING THESE BALEFUL LOOKS AT HIS COMPATRIOTS, AND THEN ADDRESSES ME DIRECTLY: "SON, YOUR HOO-HAS ARE FLOATIN' AROUND THE POO'"

DAY THREE AT DAYTONA: MARK, JASON, CHRIS AND I ARE SITTING AROUND COMFORTABLY IN OUR HOTEL ROOM. THE DAY BEFORE JASON HAD BOUGHT A STUFFED CRAB FROM THE GROCERY STORE AND 'ACCIDENTLY' LEFT IT IN THE MICROWAVE FOR ALMOST HALF AN HOUR. THE RESULTING SMELL WAS SO BAD AND SO PERMANENT THAT WE WERE MOVED TO ANOTHER ROOM. THIS WAS JUST FINE AND DANDY, AS OUR OLD ROOM HAD A MALFUNCTIONING TOILET.

SO WE'RE SITTING AROUND DRINKING WHEN CARL THE WIENER-BOY BURSTS IN AND TELLS US OUR HOTEL IS BEING RAIDED BY THE POLICE. YOU NEED TO MEET CARL TO UNDERSTAND HIM. HE IS CONSTANTLY HIGH-STRUNG AND EVEN THE MOST PERFUNCTORY ACTION IS THE BIGGEST DEAL TO HIM.

JASON BELCHES PEACEABLY. "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT NOW, CARL"

CARL IS LOOKING AROUND HIM WILDLY. "THE COPS! THE COPS ARE HERE AND THEY'RE BREAKING INTO EVERYONE'S ROOM AND LOOKING FOR ALCOHOL AND ARRESTING ANYONE WHO ISN'T 21!!!"

MARK LOOKS AROUND HIM AT THE IMPRESSIVE ARRAY OF LIQUOR WE'VE GOT WITH US. WE PROBABLY HAVE THE MOST ALCOHOL OUT OF EVERYONE IN THE MOTEL. HE LOOKS AT ME INQUISITIVELY. "CARL, GO HOME" HE SAYS.

IT'S TOO LATE - CARL'S ALREADY JUMPED OVER ONE OF THE BEDS AND IS RUNNING TOWARDS SEVERAL BOTTLES OF HARD LIQUOR ON THE MANTLE. HE GRABS A 60 OF RUM AND ONE OF WHISKY AND RUNS INTO THE BATHROOM.

THIS SHIT DEFINITELY DOESN'T FLY IN OUR PARTICULAR MOTEL ROOM. I TELL JASON TO START PUTTING THE ALCOHOL INTO EMPTY COKE BOTTLES AND LARGE CUPS FOR NOW, AND FOLLOW MARK INTO THE BATHROOM, WHERE CARL HAS BEGUN TO POUR WHISKEY DOWN THE BATHTUB. MARK SLAPS CARL IN THE FACE, HARD.

"CARL YOU LITTLE WEINER, GET OUT OF HERE!" MARK BELLOWS.

CARL LOOKS AT MARK, THEN AT ME, AND MAKES SOME SORT OF FEEBLE REMONSTRATION ABOUT HOW WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE ALCOHOL. MARK REMAINS UNMOVED AND WE ESCORT CARL OUT.

WHEN I OPEN THE FRONT DOOR (WE'RE ON THE THIRD FLOOR), I NOTICED AN UNUSUAL AMOUNT OF MY FRIENDS MILLING ABOUT ON THE BALCONY BELOW US LOOKING UNCOMFORTABLE, AND SEE SEVERAL POLICE OFFICERS DOING A BIT OF A METHODICAL SEARCH. CARL'S LITTLE SPASM ISN'T ENTIRELY FABRICATED, IT SEEMS.

WE EMPTY THE LAST OF OUR ALCOHOL INTO TWO LITER BOTTLES AND ABOUT A DOZEN PLASTIC CUPS, AND THROW THE BOTTLES OUT THE BACK WINDOW ONTO THE BEACH. A MINUTE LATER THERE'S A KNOCK ON OUR DOOR AND COPS COME INTO OUR ROOM. THEY'RE VERY FRIENDLY AND POLITE, AND SAY THERE HAVE BEEN COMPLAINTS OF UNDERAGE DRINKING AND THEY KNOW IT'S SPRING BREAK BUT THEY NEED TO DO THEIR JOBS. THEY DON'T LOOK VERY HARD, AND LEAVE QUICKLY.

THIS CALLS FOR A CELEBRATION. MARK, JASON, CHRIS AND I ALL GRAB A RANDOM CUP EACH AND START DOING SHOTS.

OF COURSE JASON, IN HIS UNENDING HASTE, JUST HAD TO EMPTY A BOTTLE OF RUBBING ALCOHOL CHRIS'S MOM PACKED IN HIS KNAPSACK INTO A CUP, AND OF COURSE I JUST HAD TO CHOOSE THAT PARTICULAR CUP FOR MY CELEBRATION. SINCE I'M ALREADY DRUNK I CAN'T REALLY TASTE THE DIFFERENCE, BUT TEN MINUTES LATER I KNOW SOMETHING'S WRONG. I GO DOWNSTAIRS WITH JASON, WHERE I PLAN TO SIT IN THE LOBBY UNTIL THINGS EITHER GET BETTER OR I NEED ANOTHER AMBULANCE. I DON'T REALLY MAKE IT THAT FAR - ON THE FIRST FLOOR I KIND OF FALL OVER AND CAN'T STAND UP ANYMORE. I REMEMBER BEING REALLY DIZZY. ANOTHER MINUTE AND I'M PASSED OUT FACE DOWN.

NOW FOR SOME WEIRD REASON THIS ONE KID I DON'T REALLY KNOW THAT WELL SUDDENLY COMES INTO THE PICTURE (WORD TRAVELS FAST IN THE MOTEL WHEN THERE'S TROUBLE AND THERE'S ALREADY ABOUT 30 KIDS STANDING AROUND ME). ANYWAY THIS KID, ROBBIE, APPARENTLY SHOUTS OUT SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF "I'VE WATCHED A VIDEO ON SAFETY" AND LEAPS INTO THE FRAY. FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD HE LOOKS ME UP AND DOWN AND ISSUS HIS EXPERT OPINION THAT I NEED TO BE ON MY SIDE. HE THEN GRABS ME BY THE BACK OF MY HEAD AND PULLS MY HEAD UP. UNFORTUNATELY I'M SOAKING WET, IN SOME SORT OF WEIRD COLD-SWEAT, AND ROBBIE'S EXPERT GRIP FAILS HIM. MY HEAD CRASHES BACK DOWN AND I RIP MY HEAD OPEN AGAIN ON THE HALL FLOOR. AMBULANCE COMES, JASON ONCE AGAIN HOPS IN THE BACK. WHEN I RETURN LATER THAT NIGHT ESMERELDA GIVES ME A WITHERING LOOK.

MAN SO IN GRADE 1 I HAD MY FIRST 'CRUSH' ON THIS GIRL NAMED PAMELA WHO WAS THE FASTEST KID IN SCHOOL. SHE WAS IN MY GYM CLASS AND WE USE TO START OFF GYM WITH OUR IDIOT TEACHER MR. BILEN PUTTING IN SOME 80S JAM IN THE TAPEDECK AND THEN WE'D ALL RUN LAPS TO 'GET OUT OF MY DREAMS, GET INTO MY CAR!!' OR SOMETHING. ANYWAY PAMELA WOULD ALWAYS LAP THE REST OF THE CLASS WITHIN MINUTES. FUCK SHE WAS FAST.

ANYWAY ONE DAY AT LUNCH IN THE PLAYGROUND I DON'T REALLY REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED BUT I DID SOMETHING SUPER NICE FOR HER OR I HELPED HER UP WHEN SHE FELL OR SOMETHING, BUT ANYWAY SHE DECIDED TO 'REWARD' ME BY TELLING ME ON MONDAY WE COULD HOLD HANDS WHILE WE RAN LAPS AROUND THE GYM. IT WAS LIKE TUESDAY AT THIS POINT.

SO EVERY DAY THAT WEEK AFTER SCHOOL I WOULD GO HOME AND RUN LAPS AROUND MY HOUSE, TRYING TO GET FASTER. I WAS SO WORRIED THAT SHE WOULD BE DRAGGING ME BEHIND HER IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE CLASS AT GYM. I THINK ACTUALLY DID GET FASTER, BUT I WAS STILL WORRIED. SUNDAY NIGHT FOUND ME IN MY ROOM CRYING BECAUSE I STILL DIDN'T THINK I WAS FAST ENOUGH AND WAS SERIOUSLY TERRIFIED AND DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL.

NEXT DAY AT GYM PAMELA SINGLES ME OUT RIGHT AWAY AND TELLS ME TO HOLD HER HAND. WE'RE ALL STANDING AROUND AT THIS POINT AND MR. BILEN PUTS IN THE FLAVOR OF THE WEEK AND WE ALL START RUNNING. INSTANTLY I FEEL MYSELF GETTING YANKED FORWARD BY PAMELA WHO IS MOVING LIKE A GODDAMNED BULLET AND SHE KEEPS YELLING 'FASTER!! FASTER!!' AND SHE'S STRINGING ME ALL AROUND THE GODDAMNED GYM AND IT'S JUST LIKE MY NIGHTMARES.

ANYWAY EVERYTIME SHE KEEPS YELLING 'FASTER!!' I ACTUALLY MAKE AN EFFORT TO SOMEHOW RUN 'HARDER' AND IT'S TOTALLY WORKING. BY LIKE THE 8TH OR 9TH TIME SHE'S YELLED OUT 'FASTER!!' I'M ACTUALLY KEEPING UP WITH HER AND I FEEL LIKE GODDAMNED HERME HIMSELF AND THEN SHE YELLS OUT 'FASTER!!' AND I ACTUALLY START BEATING HER. AND THEN SHE YELLS OUT 'OKAY THAT'S TOO FAST!' AND I REMEMBER THE WHOLE CLASS IS JUST STARING AT ME IN TOTAL DISBELIEF AND EVEN MR. BILEN SEEMS TO HAVE LOST SOME OF HIS COLOR AND FOR THE REST OF ELEMENTARY I WAS THE FASTEST KID IN SCHOOL.

ALRIGHT SO I SHOWED PROMISE IN PRESCHOOL AND WAS CHOSEN FOR THIS SPECIAL 'EARLY START' PROGRAM WITH 3 OTHER LOSERS IN MY PROVINCE AND WE SPENT THE MAJORITY OF OUR KINDERGARTEN YEAR IN A MUSEUM. KIND OF SWEET, BUT I DIDN'T LEARN MUCH AND WHEN I WENT TO A REGULAR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN GRADE ONE I WAS THROWN INTO THESE SPECIAL 'ENRICHMENT' CLASSES BECAUSE OF IT. ENRICHMENT SUCKED. IT WAS DONE OVER HALF OF OUR LUNCH AND THE 'BRIGHT' KIDS FROM GRADES 1-6 WOULD GET TOGETHER AND WE'D BE GIVEN THESE RIDICULOUS PROJECTS.

ANYWAY I REMEMBER THIS ONE YEAR THE PROJECT FOR THE ENRICHMENT KIDS IN GRADES 1-3 WAS TO DO SOME LOSER PRESENTATION OF 'THE LOON' OR SOMETHING, WHICH WAS THIS TOTALLY RANDOM INDIAN/NATIVE AMERICAN NARRATIVE THAT INVOLVED THINGS LIKE TREE SPIRITS AND MENORRAHS AND THINGS OF THAT NATURE.

0 notes

leader-chan · 6 years

Text

11 Qs Tag

I was tagged by @straykeeds @mininspirit & @gurureum ;; im so sorry for taking a century and a half to answer but life and exams got in the way

under a read more cos this will be a long post

@straykeeds

1. What is your favourite food?

im in love with canned pineapple :) dont sue me

2. Who is your favourite non-kpop artiste?

like an ult? nirvana. but im also soft for blackbear and green day

3. Do you sleep with the air-conditioner or fan turned on?

neither. im forever cold

4. What is your native language?

not English lmao

5. What is your favourite sport?

favourite what

6. What phone are you using?

A Samsung ;; i adore this phone

7. Do you prefer transparent-glass windows or darkened-windows at home?

i like the sun thanks. transparent

8. Do you prefer grassy areas or snowy areas? grassy ;; im a big sucker for forests and stuff like that. i like nature

9. What’s your favourite animal? pandassss. but also dogs cats and horses and dolphins and-

10. What is your favourite book? my what :) i’ll pick a standalone, so this is excluding series ( harry potter, tmi hg ect) and pick Carry On plz read it if you haven’t already

11. Do you prefer to keep your nails long or short? usually long, but recently it’s been short cos it makes playing the guitar easier @mininspirit

1. Stray Kids bias?

The one and only Bang Chan

2. What’s the last song you listened to?

Listening to music rn and Jungkook’s cover of Paper Hearts is on !!

3. How did you get into kpop?

lmao buckle up

okay so my friend was into Big Bang and Shinee back in the day and showed me their songs and I was like ehh, not my thing. Fast forward like 2 years and my child self somehow came upon SNSD’s I got a boy and I was like... nice. So I listened to that somewhat and didn’t look into it further. Then sometime later I saw youtubers react / teens react ( i cant even remember now ) to kpop and among that was exo’s monster and I was like... nice. so i went to listen to that and same thing that happened with snsd happened to exo. and then i saw exo sexo vines and thats how i decided to stan exo :) then i found bts and stanned them and it was while i was watching a bts mv that i seen stray kids in the suggested list thing.

and thats how i got into kpop

4. Favorite non-kpop artist?

like an ult? nirvana. but im also soft for blackbear and green day

5. If you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life, what would it be?

oh thats a Q.

probs Lay’s Lose Control. Its p short but i love all the songs on it so

6. What’s your favourite quote of a song?

Agust D ft Suran - ‘’ Your beginnings will be humble, so prosperous will your future be ‘’ it hits home.

7. Who’s your ultimate bias?

Zhang Yixing aka Lay aka China Sheep {{ follow me @xingtrash

8. What’s your favourite 3RACHA song?

I’m a good old stan of Runner’s High tbh

9. What’s the worst and best thing about being into Kpop?

best thing - how happy other people’s happiness makes me

worst thing - how time consuming it is and the language barrier :)) i need go back to learning some basic korean

10. Fav song in unit mission (School life, Glow, 4419)?

I acc really liked glow

11. Ice first or drink first?

define drink ice

@gurureum

1. Day or night?

As in right now or which one I prefer ? Night to both

2. Can you play any instruments?

Guitar badly

3. Do you have siblings? Pets?

3 siblings; 2 sisters & one brother. 1 dog, 1 rabbit tho the rabbit is my sisters

4. Cereal or milk first?

c e r e a l is the only ethical option

5. If you could live in any time period, when would you live?

um the past doesn’t look too great with you know.. women’s rights, slavery and all of that. the near future doesn’t look too great either so maybe like... the far far future where space travel is a daily thing and a part of our norm routine

6. What’s your favorite childhood memory?

when all of the kids from the neighborhood got together to make huts and battled against a rival playground because they took our sea-saw we won and took it back

7. What is favorite 3racha song?

Runner’s High ;; idk why

8. What did you believe in as a child but not anymore (not Santa)

wym not Santa this disrespekt

um. that adults were always right. lmao boy was I wrong

9. Would you be your own friend?

maybe if i stopped being so dramatic all the time, but i think my loyalty makes up for it tbH

10. What do you like about yourself?

tbh the thing i like the most about myself is also the thing i think is my biggest flaw; how much I care for those that are important to me

11. How’s life?

eh. it could be better tbh

woA thank you so much for the tags ;; i really appreciate them and answering Qs is always fun !! i know that a majority of this community already done this tag so plz feel free to ignore this if you’re tired of answering these questions ahah tagging;; @purecerealkids @busan-daegu-hiphoplover @busanschubs @straykidshizzle @3rachaa @threerachas @ultimate-noona @mmfd

my qs;;

What drew you to your Stray Kid’s bias?

What are you most proud of?

What are the top 3 things you want to do before you die?

Favourite movie?

What made you decide to stick around in Kpop and stan more than 1 group/person?

Which song stuck with you the most?

Why is your ult bias your ult bias?

Which fandom are you most proud of being a part of? Doesn’t have to be Kpop

Your top 5 songs?

Rain or Snow?

If Stray Kids could go on a variety show right now, which one would you want them to go on?

#lmao my questions are so lame im sorry #11 questions tag #11 questions #11 qs #tagged #tag

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tedfashionski · 4 years

Text

Reality Patch

(3393 - long read, messy, technically ‘unfinished’ whatever that means)

There was a little bubble of interest in the Miu Miu pre-fall collection in the twitterverse a few weeks (months? years?) back – it seemed torn out of time. Made in the winter, shown to press in January? Viral in the early summer? To be bought..… sometime? Part of the issue is the term ‘pre-fall’. Pretty certain that’s summer. This collection feels like it doesn’t exist. I guess if I ever went shopping, it would make more sense? But as a broke hut-dwelling internet denizen, I’m lost. It’s this money-spinning side to fashion commerce that’s the ‘real’ collection, but it’s named after a non-existent season. The pre-fall/resort problem lies in that it’s the collection that gets the least press, because not normally presented in a show, but also functions more solidly as merchandise. Certain agitators want to eliminate these non-events, and revert to twice-yearly seasons. It’s a fucking mess. What even is this? The fashion calender is broken and illogical. I’m going to write here about the Marni AW 20 ‘Alice in Wonderland’ collection alongside Moocher’s pre-fall thing, because I’ve got queries about patchwork and they play well together.

I have …complicated… feelings about the patchwork. We’re probably going to see more and more of it and I’m not sure we’re asking the right questions of it. How do we avoid it becoming just ‘aesthetic’ (in pop speak = empty), rather than a manner of process that informs continual work going forward and results in an un-replicable feeling, a new angle on reality (an….. aesthetic). How to stop it becoming something we all get bored of? Because, the only guarantee in fashion is boredom.

Patchwork collage

Miu was a solid offering – it maintains a certain quality, obvs – and is good in its own way according to its own logic as Miuccia’s offerings usually are. A vision of commerce, yes, but also a kaleidoscopic frozen moment of girlhood that wants to aid us in our navigation from then to there, the ‘there’ being an upcoming un-season (A/W/S/S?) and maybe a sense of maturity. Now, there’s no point in me complaining about low quality info from the establishment on their dealings then failing to engage thoroughly with work when it is delivered in detail on multiple fronts (written aspect, full campaign, video that I can’t find anymore but remember seeing unless it was a hallucination, and look book – many angles).

Embellished bodices/check check/white fuzzy tights/nice shiny heels/19th c take on afghan jacket very good/prairie psycho/much boring merch – (awkward stances suggest candid, ambivalent)

Miu look book Collage

Our press release ponders:

‘When was the last occasion you lived in an enclosed world, where time stretched out, seemingly endlessly, in front of you? When was the last time your interior world felt as important as the exterior one, where you were free to imagine and to contemplate who you might actually want to be? Chances are it was when you were a teenager, with all of the triumphs and trepidations that entailed, particularly if you were a teenage girl.’

Well, it sure sounds like it sucks to be a real adult who gave up on their dreams. When was the last time I felt free in my internal playground? Every day of my life, bitches. I’m your anomaly, Prada copy-writer. But, point taken. Work sucks when you’re doing it for other people, and we’ve all had times when you feel caught and pinched and empty in our creative attempts. And now, we’ve all been grounded by our stupid parents for the last few months. Stuck in our rooms. Some by choice, some not. And if we’re allowed out right now, the second spike is coming and we’re all depressed about the limits we have to live under in order to reduce advancing death.

‘A dream-like, interior world is conjured through Douglas Irvine’s photography to match the external, magical manifestation on display in the clothing. A blur of florals and glittering visual embellishment, diaphanous drape and ecstatic movement belie the strict foundations for both the images and garments.’

campaign collage

So far, so wordy and detailed. A world is glimpsed. One with blurs but strict foundations. A real world made hazy. We have classic codes walking in a trepidatious vein. Miu Miu girl is testing out the limits of her horizons, playing with her identity through her clothes and thinking to herself, how much do I want to give away? What will I keep? But the text continues:

‘Wearing a clothing collection that splices the utilitarian with the formal, the everyday with the extravagant, delicate artisanal embellishment is contrasted with and applied to a notion of the sturdily homespun. Here, nineteenth century literary heroines, both fictional and actual, are channelled, the sources of teenage-girl bedroom revolutions in both style and substance, yet worn by a new generation of everyday heroines with all of their contrasting clothing choices.’

We lose track here. Not sure this collection actually feels ‘artisanal’ or ‘sturdily homespun’. there’s the late 20-teens pop refrain of dark psychedelia’s fixation on moth-eaten fin de siècle grandness, the upending of 19th C avant-garde in the counter-culture’s looping democratisation. We have an eclecticism, a thriftiness, a carelessness with the past symptomatic of isolated children playing with a mish-mash of pieces born of hemmed-in theatrics.

3 MIU PICS

MORE – CAMPAIGN/POSES/FACES/DESCRIBE CLOTHES – here comes what night?. Colour, focus. Don’t really like the clothes, wouldn’t wear any of this tbh.

CAMPAIGN PICS coll

As for Marni’s Alice in Wonderland, I have languishing notes which seem as old and tired as the idea of 2019. I was practising twitter threadiness, and got as far as notes on Milan before the covid freeze set in my mind. I like mixed responses, it’s the only thing that feels fair, but with those Milan collections I couldn’t achieve any sort of resolution or clear point. I didn’t know how I felt anymore. I’m unresolved in how I feel about criticism. It should be functional, but not necessarily constructive, if I feel the need to tear something down, as a critic that is within my job description. I’ll write a proper bit on the perils of fashion criticism from a distance, but in short I feel that it’s unfair to criticise a designer’s work from afar, especially negatively, but that until the fashion community realises the value of a public culture of critique (criticism being the only process by which you can hope to form an art system), real critics engaged with honestly parsing the strengths and weaknesses of fashion practice in service of public health will have to criticise from afar. This will impact the quality of the work, but it is hoped the audience can accept the pinch of salt required of virtual critique of a virtual fashion experience. The subject of the criticism here isn’t the clothes. I’m not asking questions of fit, of quality, I’m asking whether this is good fashion communication, as a time-dependent media phenomenon. And, yes, I know I’m late on this one. Temporal fashion stress must take a rain check at present.

Marni –

“collaged from the beginning to the end—from macro to micro to fractal. It’s about putting together remnants.”

cut velvet woven by hand in a factory in Venice on looms that were originally designed by Leonardo da Vinci—a vanishing, time-consuming craft that Risso understandably wants to “protect and exalt.”

“Are we in a psychedelic world and we need to be more grounded, or are we in a caged world and we need to be freed by psychedelia?”

THREE MARNI

risso Quotes:

“Finding beauty in the leftovers,”

“There’s a beauty in the past. I was kind of upset lately, thinking about people on their phones -- what about these objects that take hours to make, like these Venetian tapestries?”. mosaic of the remnants.

new, conceptual territory,

remnants of the previous collections

“It’s a celebration of DIY, Alice in Wonderland, and it’s about her spirit, her searching and questioning,”

the Cheshire Cat’s “We’re all mad here” mantra, as he talked about mandalas and allowing time for ideas to grow.

“Her spirit is within each creature, always wondering and questioning,”

“Making this collection has been the strangest mystery,” he confided. “It’s almost as if it regenerated itself – recreated itself – like an insatiable mosaic.”

THREE MARNI

At their best they’re the insatiable fractal mosaic he speaks of – something that situates you betwixt density and freedom. Was patchy – moments of clarity, moments of aimlesslness.. Appreciate the fashion-as-curious-adventure methodology. Ties and openness and rotation were true to Marni.. Materials – twisted tradition meeting rational plain cottons hit the mark. Gold rings, like they’ve melted through from another dimension. They were scattered over the body, but I was left wanting to know more of this motif – what if it become structural, like a portal to another plane? Patchwork that doesn’t feel done in good faith. Like a trick. None of these shapes are done in the spirit of patchwork, like the wrong kind of luxury. Too much care is given to appearing careless, but a reach for dizzying angles in effect sidelines affect – it feels tidily resolved, and then mussed around at the end. I’m probably wrong on many fronts about the reality of their process. But what I’m feeling right now is that if all you’re aiming for is the ‘look’ of patched pieces rather that the ‘ethic’ or process of thrift, then you’ll just get trapped in an endless empty labyrinth of false choices. It’s not about the look, it’s about shiftinG your total parameters of design decision making going forward. Additive.

I’m still figuring out how I feel about this. Both these collections suffer from a neat, pat resolution of the question of the deadstock aesthetic that avoids the hard work of engaging with the limitations of that mode of work. Where is the tension? Where is the sacrifice? The loss of freedom in thrift must be acknowledged. If you’re telling me a story about a lost girl in a crazy world that makes no sense, why do her questions of her physical environment feel so impersonal? Many designers are going to turn to patchworking, out of both necessity and fashion gameplaying. Each designer is going have to work their way to an individual conversation with the difficult questions of recycling while avoiding the traps of the easy way out. Both teams failed at this test, in these collections. Sustainability isn’t easy, or anywhere close to being properly engaged with by our establishment figures. (Viktor & Rolf are a good example of recycling feeling right and thought about and cared for).

Viktor&Rolf samples

I’m reading Lolita at the moment. (CAN YOU TELL?) I’m not a good reader. (CAN YOU TELL?) A.D.D., I guess. I get bored and drift off to fantasyland. But here’s a stab at some fancypants analysis: The far-off subject, Lolita herself, is overlooked by the narrator’s masturbatory myopia. Her exploration of her own girlhood/womanhood is reduced and flattened by her abuser who needs her to be something else, something thing-y. A two-dimensional being. The tension between predation and autonomy, her wounded rebellion and navigation of self are so distant in the book you can’t help but want to reach out to her, through her abuser’s hideous twisted lens. Humbert’s POV colours everything, Lolita isn’t permitted her own take, everything she does is ridiculous and gazed down upon, he feels he’s permitted to just take her, to prioritise his own long-abated lust without thought of the consequences to her sense of self.

This vibe I’m analysing here, the bruised and fuzzy self-discovery of Miu Miu and the lost-play of Marni, kind of feels like it hasn’t really shrugged off the top-down, hidden, extractive gaze of the cornered, self-pitying male power player. Maybe the viewer is Humbert. Maybe I’m Humbert. Maybe you’re Lolita. Maybe vice versa. But he’s there, in the corner, or taking the picture. Someone’s always taking it in, and jealously building a crypto-fantasy version of the girl, even as our self-birthing adolescent is feeling towards a way to fight it off.

campaign

Spring 2020 was a fucking twisted, disorienting, stretched moment. Tough times for fashion practitioners, not just in terms of lost profits or mob moralising (pppeoppllle arree dyyinnnngggg howww daree you talkkkk aboutttt fashioonnnn) but in the nuts and bolts of fashion practice – if the role of the fashion designer is to collaborate with their wearers in plotting a path to the future, when a world-re-orienting catastrophe occurs, it rapidly recontextualises their attempts at constructing a scaffold around the unknown. The idea that the future can be planned for and known through schedules and aesthetic anticipation gets rumbled. The foundation of that building site got a bit cracked during this Spring’s quake. Mapped onto ongoing structural issues in, what I guess in this analogy is a renovation of our historic temporal orientation casino, basically fashion collapsed in its usual confidence along with the economy (economics being fashion with numbers and no fun so it’s respectably masc. vom). Who knows who’s going to go out of business. There may not be a Miu Miu or a Marni or whoever in the future. Names we take for granted are just going to die. That’s a loss for the art aspect. Cus these guys are creative, mad geniuses who deserve a healthy context for their vision. (OTOH: die, fashion industry, die! I dance in the glow of the flames of your destruction with gleeee). These two collections actually speak to me across the span of the last six months, which takes some doing. They succeeded in the criteria that we should actually apply to fashion practice: satnav for the social soul. As sense of protection from the twists of time. A hand to hold. Someone to talk to. And time is super twisty rn. Good job holding on as we fall through the looking glass, random Italians! Now, to work.

COLLAGE

Colours – piecework – slippery glistening rainbow lensflares – Marni, FR places himself as an agent of chaos, someone with a hidden explanation refusing to submit to logic and set ways, a spanner in the works of Alice’s complacency.

Patchwork, rhizomatic? (????, what is that. Idk, just sounds funnnn), no beginning and end, things relating to one another in disjointed, flexible ways. FR gives is little hints at the instability that patching offers, the early looks in Miu are far too comfortable. In the cut, sheets are formed out of set shapes – traditional, in the spirit of that half-remembered literary heroine – but neat, very very neat. Happy patchwork . Not patchwork that’ll prompt you to any alternative engagement with your world. FR is poking holes, even burning them out with molten gold, playing with the limits of ‘traditional’ or easily molded pieces. There’s skirts that feature block pieces - an armhole, a curve that any dressmaker will recognise, but set elsewhere, surrounded by other pieces so that the shaping becomes as redundant as Alice’s desperate attempts to right her upside down world. That ordered, shaping impulse is pawed at in the Marni work, but indulged in by Miu Miu. Our Miu Miu heroine feels more like an only slightly misunderstood brat, but Marni’s Alice is strung out and barely even human anymore. I’m disappointed in both approaches, but Marni, as the radically abstract collection that’s pushing concept on us, is the one that actually fails in its aims. Mrs Prada & Co are aware of the limits of commercial offerings. They’re happy to speak when permitted, in the lulls between commerce. It’s pragmatic and unadventurous, romantic within set bounds. It’s a walk in the park, where Marni is a clumsy trip through an open manhole cover.

COLLAGE

I said at the beginning of this that if we’re only going to see more patchwork as a process we actually have to grapple with it, and there’s a risk at this point in fashion that the fashion people (c’est moi aussi, mfs) are going to go ‘oh, been there, done that, on to the next thing’ without ever actually engaging with it as a means of creating fashion. What does (BRANDNAME) recycling look like, what makes it (BRANDNAME) in a way that become part of a lexicon long term rather than another sticky-plaster? Patchworking is many things, but what are its fundamentals? It’s a way of forming textile surfaces that accepts that which is available. It’s humble and more concerned with ethics than end result. The small squares/triangles in traditional American quilting are ways to systematically optimise waste pieces and merge them with other pieces. This in its own turn creates more micro-waste, perhaps to be used as stuffing, but forcing scraps into legible grids is very strict and imperial, the grid being an easy way of organising a surface from above. Grids and precise geometries are more like things overlaid, not bubbling up from beneath. They’re simple and readily comprehensible. There’s other forms of merging irregular pieces: think of rag-rug like textiles, crocheting with strips, or applique. Certain aesthetic choices can be made when you’re actually working with the idea of recycling waste material, rather than looking for an end-result before you even started. A cut piece has an end but with patchwork it can become endless. There’s kind of something anti-hierarchical about it. Waste pieces formed out of negative space can relate to each other not in the sense of ‘this looks pretty’ but more in the sense of ‘spontaneity rules’.

I’m realllly self-consciousness about existing in the purgatory between between fashion and theory. Theory thinking of itself as ‘too serious’ for fashion and fashion of itself ‘too fun’ for complex discussion (sidebar: can we stop talking about showstudio as if it is in any way innovative? I can’t watch those videos. I have classic fashion goldfishitis. Where is my colour and jazziness and silly nonsense. Why tf do fashion people think ‘oh, critique! must be unfashion. Must sit in room being boring with no cuts or editing. Here, watch a fucking zoom call, fuck your need for beauty.’ The motherfuckers are working against us. Hate, Hate, Hate, you fucking jerks). So, my difficulty lies in how to dodge the hierarchical perception of theorising, people assuming you’re talking down rather than across, when they’re often dyslexic or disinterested in this kind of stuff because they’ve been taught to think it’s ‘beyond’ them or it’s just some bullshit they’ve found boring/embarrassing/trauamatizing. There’s nothing wrong with finding something boring when it’s engaging in elitist and hierarchical perceptions of ‘intellctualismsm’ or ‘quality’. There’s so much work to do, so much rubble to excavate. I’m not writing about Deleuze & Guattari’s analyses of patchwork for a reason here: I haven’t read them. I attempted A Thousand Plateaus in undergrad, gave up, and since then have really struggled with this feeling of being caught between modes of being - visual/verbal/temporal. Fashion zonked, theory enraged. I have a deep respect for the communicative power of dress and fashion media, paired with immense frustration at the slight engagement with complexity in the culture. Theorizing can be colourful, can be fun, can be bright. Fashion doesn’t need to abandon these wonderful things in order to have some self-respect. In fact, its self-respect will only be assured when it learns to push forward towards aggravating, complex dialectics in its own styles of discourse that fashion people actually want to engage with. I expect at some point within the next decade I’ll find a way to develop my self-confidence in reading beyond wikipedia and want to return properly to the topic of quilting and patchwork in relation to rhizomes and abstract post-structural philosophy, but I’m not there yet. Maybe there’s nothing there in D&G, just hot air, or maybe fashion isn’t worthy of theorising. Both suck in various ways. I’m not confident enough in the theory realm to interact with any self-assurance in a way that computes in both worlds. I’m only just learning to piece myself back together after trying to work within fashion’s established methods and failing. I’m here slowly feeling my way towards engaging properly as a dedicated reader and a dedicated fashion practitioner. But the responsibility to push forward and make fashion practice sufficiently rigorous, self-reflexive, critical and engaged with other fields while playing to its own strengths as discipline that actually brings something to the table, without the solidarity of peers engaged in the same questions, it gets a bit disorienting sometimes.

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peixegaruda · 4 years

Text

Chapter 10: Kickball

After our class exited the cafeteria, we gathered in front of one of the closed doors to the fancy rooms for a special announcement from Mr. Pony.

“Hut-tention!” said Mr. Pony. “This is a special announcement.” Clearly, this was a special announcement. “Today, rather than going to the normal playground, we’ll be going to the field near the Big Toy to play a team sport.”

The girl with blonde hair and nice teeth raised her hand eagerly. “What’s the Big Toy?”

“That’s a very good question,” replied Mr. Pony, “but what I’d prefer to call to attention to what I think is the larger issue here – the team sport we will be playing. How many of you have heard of kickball?”

Jenny snickered. Everyone else had already raised their hands. The smell of gasoline filled the air, mingling with the smell of food from the nearby cafeteria to create an unholy aroma. I had a sneaking suspicion that one of the first graders – no, one of the fourth graders, would be fascinated by that aroma.

“That’s great!” exclaimed Mr. Pony, putting their hands on their stomach, “It means I don’t have to explain the rules, which means that you lot have more time to plaaaaay!” they turned slightly to the side and raised their arm closest to us. “Now, Jordan and everyone else, follow me to the field. Of dreams.”

In my normal spot in line between Kiki and Jacques, I trod down the staircase, out of the cafeteria, and to the left along a cracked concrete path. Led by none other than the one and only Mr. Pony, we marched past the building where the primary school was and the pond filled with Canadian Geese on the other side.

After the primary school building ended, there was another shady looking building on our right. We eventually reached the end of that, and on the other side of us was a larger, more majestic playground with complex structures, a large field, tennis courts, a basket ball court, and even a pagoda with some picnic benches underneath it.

Mr. Pony made a heel-face turn and caused everyone behind them to stop. “Ladies, gentlemen, and others: This is the Big Toy!” The line kind of dissolved into a pack, despite Randy’s best efforts, as everyone in the class stared on in wonder.

“Impressive,” commented Jacques from behind me. “I should remember this to make a map of it later.”

“Eh, it’s okay,” added Skylar from my right, checking out her nails somewhat distractedly. “I’ve seen bigger.”

“Come on guys!’ said the blonde girl with nice teeth. “Let’s get to the field! I wanna play kickball!” All of us followed her to the field rapidly, except for Rachel, who was content to sit on one of the benches once again. However, upon reaching the field, the smell of gasoline became ridiculously overpowering. Everyone turned to peer anxiously at an obviously agitated Kyle, who was standing with his overall-clad knees knocking together, back bent, and stubby arms scratching his mousy brown hair frantically, shedding dandruff everywhere.

“G-gow! Th-this field...” he muttered, “it makes me MAD!”

Mr. Pony moved stealthily, like a ninja, behind Kyle, ready to calm him down before his temper tantrum got too far out of hand. “Is everything all right, Kyle?”

Kyle glowered at Mr. Pony. “No, can’t you see?” he answered annoyedly. “The grass in this field is way too long! It needs to be mowed at once!”

“I see,” answered Mr. Pony, but it was clear to everyone that they didn’t actually see at all.

“Gow! Get me a lawnmower right now! I’m going to mow the field!” demanded Kyle, his stress level and ire rising.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” replied Mr. Pony, trying to tread carefully with their answer. “But I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. That is the job of the school groundskeepers, and you wouldn’t want to do someone else’s job, would you?”

Kyle was beside himself with fury. The smell of gasoline was so absurdly powerful that myself and many other students were covering our noses. We also began hearing the rumble of an engine in the distance.

“G-g-gow! Those stupid groundskeepers aren’t doing there job then!” he screamed.

Mr. Pony replied sheepishly, which was a little strange considering they were named after a horse. “Um, Kyle, that’s the wrong ‘their’. Remember the three theres from earlier today?”

Kyle shut his eyes so tightly that crows feet appeared on the sides, unhinged his jaw, balled up his little fists, and released a noise that sounded like a mix of a guttural, voice-cracking scream and a lawnmower starting up towards the heavens. It was a terrifying site to behold.

“Holy crap,” murmured Owen from somewhere in the class group. “Is he about to go Super Saiyan?”

“You… don’t… get… it...” he continued through a red, veiny face and gritted teeth. “This… isn’t… just… a… gow. This… is…” he started shaking violently and rapidly as if he had been electrocuted.

“...Sparta,” I heard Owen whisper.

“A GIGAGIGAGOW!!!” He then collapsed on the ground, silent and still. I had the feeling that if any of us dared to peer into his eyes, we would only see swirlies, like the dolphin from Pterodactyl Chronicles, instead.

The blonde girl with nice teeth was the first to break the silence. “Whoa. Did he… have a c-jah?”

Mr. Pony inspected Kyle nervously. “Listen kiddoes, your buddy Kyle here will be fine, he’s just a bit tuckered out is all. I’m gonna take him to the office. Play nice while I’m gone, m’kay?”

“Yes, Mr. Garrison,” replied Owen eagerly, his eyes sparkling. “Okay guys, let’s pick teams!”

“Hold it!” cut in Randy. “There’s no way I’m letting a troublemaker like you take charge. Now, before we pick teams, we will need another team capitan.”

“Who decided that you were team capitan in the first place?” asked Jenny, glaring at Randy.

Randy looked back at her with his long eyelashes. “I’m Mr. Pony’s assistant,” he retorted. “So it only makes sense that I would become the leader in their absence.”

“That sounds like a lie to me,” shot back Jenny.

“I don’t think it’s a lie,” inputted Owen, putting his finger to his mouth mischievously. “And I know at least one other person that agrees with me. Right, Jacquesypoo?”

All eyes turned to Jacques. “Randy is indeed telling the truth,” he said without blinking. That’s right, I remembered. If that had been a lie, Jacques would have gone “BAAAAH!” like he always does.

“Wow,” commented Jeremy. “To think that one of us was the teacher’s pet.”

“But, how will we choose the other capitan?” inquired Julia, adjusting her glasses.

I had an idea. “Why not Jordan?” I asked, nudging him forward a little.

“M-me?” he asked, readjusting his spectacles.

“That’s a great idea!” said Owen, his eyes sparkling and his fist clenched in front of him eagerly. “Romeo here’s the line leader, so he’s got plenty of leadership experience. Riiiight, Jor-bah?”

“Wait,” said Kiki, rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized orange coat. “I’m confused. Is his name Jordan, Romeo, or Jor-bah.”

“I… guess,” Jordan agreed, reluctantly accepting a leadership position.

“Well then,” rebutted Randy, eager to regain control of the situation. “We have our two capitans. Now we just need to decide who picks first.”

“We could use Maddie’s Lucky Penny,” offered Jordan, returning my glance. Randy nodded in agreement and I procured the Lucky Penny

“This time, I’m going tails,” declared Jordan. I flipped the penny. It landed on heads, much to Jordan’s dismay.

“Hah!” exclaimed Randy. “In that case, I pick… Jacques.” Jacques quietly strode over to stand beside Randy.

“Uh…” continued Jordan. “I’ll go with...”

“Come on, Jor-bah!” insisted Owen. “We all know you want to pick Maddie!” This was getting a bit ridiculous. No way Jordan actually had feelings for me.

“Sta-ahp,” whined Jordan. “And no, I’m going to pick, uh, Jeremy.”

“Whoo,” whistled Owen as Jeremy sauntered over to Jordan confidently.

Randy looked like he was running some quick calcs in his head. “William,” he mentioned curtly.

“Uh… Eli.”

“Jenny.”

“Kathleen.”

“Kristy.”

“Uh… Julia.”

“Skylar.”

“Kiki.” Jordan was beginning to sweat nervously, like Chuck. The only two people remaining were me and Owen, so I could understand why the pressure was getting to him.

Unfortunately, because of his hesitation, the choice was no longer his to make.

“Maddie,” said Randy with finality. I strode over to stand with the rest of his team as Owen likewise went to Jordan’s team.

“Okay,” said Randy. “Since I picked first, your team gets to kick first, Jordan.”

As I took my ‘poji-chin’ in left field, the first person to kick was Owen, by his own popular request. Randy rolled the ball towards him, raising his rear leg like a ballerina as he released the ball. Owen did nothing but grin determinedly. Annoyed, Randy repeated this three more times, each time raising his rear leg higher as he released the ball, but to no avail. He had no use. For the truth. And now’s the time for him to lose. Owen was allowed to walk to first base, which was guarded by William.

“That was so cheat!” said Randy, angry that he had been finessed by Owen. Owen only giggled and placed his hands behind his head.

Next up was Jordan, whose first kick missed the ball entirely. He landed the second kick, but William was able to pick up the ball and return to first base before Jordan got there. Jordan… was out.

Third was Jeremy, who kicked the ball over third base where Kristy was standing. His unblinking eyes ablaze, Jacques dashed after the ball, picking it up and hurling it to Kristy. It bounced once and she caught it, returning to third base before Owen could make it there. Owen… was also out.

“Hah!” smirked Randy. “That’s what you get for pulling such a cheat move!” Meanwhile, Jeremy was on second base.

The fourth kicker was the blonde girl with nice teeth, who Jordan had called Kathleen earlier. Using my amazing powers of deduction, I was able to surmise that that was probably her name. Kathleen had tied her hair back in a ponytail to kick the ball, and after Randy rolled it, her foot connected squarely with it as if it were a solar plexus. You could almost hear the DeVoit kickball going ‘oof’, as if it were a Roblox character being forced to drink a protein shake, as it careened through the air, even past Skylar in the center of the outfield.

“Noooo!” yelled Randy as Kathleen and Jeremy returned home, tying up the score at 2-2. He looked angry as Skylar tossed the ball back to him, but my mama says that sometimes when people look angry, they’re not actually angry, just determined. So, filled with determination, Randy rolled the ball at Eli, arching up his rear leg like an elegant ballerina once again. That’s Italian for “Lil’ baller”. I wondered if that was Randy’s rapper name, until William’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Come on, Maddie!” I saw everyone in the field running towards home base while the kickers fanned out to take their place. Kristy was passing the ball to Jordan, who seemed to be taking the role of pitcher, similarly to Randy. I wasn’t so disappointed that she had caught the ball as I was that I had missed just how it had happened – I was the type of person who understood things best by watching them play out. I ran back to home base, and being the last person to arrive I was naturally in the back of the line. The first person to kick for our team was none other than Randy. Jordan rolled the DeVoit ball a little unsurely, and Randy missed his first kick!

“Do-over!” he cried, but in his throaty voice, it sounded a bit like “joo-over!”

Jenny, the person right behind him, rolled the ball back to Jordan.

“Roll it right this time!” ordered Randy. Jordan put a little more force into his roll this time, and Randy took a running start-o at the ball. As he raised his hind leg like a Lil’ baller once again, preparing for the kick, time seemed to slow down… it slowed down until it became slower and slower… until it stopped completely and ground to a complete hault.

#abstract art #fanfiction #devoit #kickball #kingdom keepers #kindergarten keepers

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ayeletinthemountains · 4 years

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2019 in Mountains

I’m hopping on the bandwagon and reflecting on a year in review. I don’t make time to write trip reports much these days (I fell off the bandwagon on our van trip, when we were constantly doing cool trips and I just couldn’t keep up [poor me]), so seeing my friend Nikhil write a post summing up his outdoor exploits for the year seemed like a great idea.

Skiing

Since learning to ski in the 2016-17 season, each year has gotten more fun. Typically in winter I focus on the Ogul peak list (a list of peaks in Tahoe, so pretty accessible since most of the roads are plowed; I’m at 35/63 currently), but I’ve learned that seeking summits often doesn’t make for the best skiing. One thing I love about lists though is that it takes me to new places I’d never go otherwise. Some highlights:

Mount Elwell: I wrote a full trip report on this here. This was one of my favorite new areas I got to see. It’s about an hour north of Tahoe, so sees far less visitors, which is always a treat. We saw no one else our whole day in the backcountry, and the views from the summit were spectacular. Plus, we learned about the Plumas Ski Club’s longboard races and checked em out! So much fun. Track

Mount Mildred: Also wrote a trip report on this one here. This peak is behind Alpine Meadows ski resort (where I had a pass this year). It was a pretty long day in terms of mileage for me on skis, so I love seeing the progress I’m making in that regard. Track.

Pyramid/Jacks Desolation Traverse: In late April, given that the big snow year still left good coverage, I did a traverse from Pyramid Peak to Jacks Peak in Desolation Wilderness with friends AJ, Jamie, and Chris. AJ wrote about it here. This was also a long and challenging day for me, being the weakest downhill skier in the group. I didn’t ski the tippy-top of Pyramid (too spooky), but I did manage to ski a bit further down. This day really showed me how great spring skiing can be (and it lends better to summits). Track.

Mount St Helens: Since my older sister Dafna had skied Mount St Helens in the past, I’d had it on my radar and been excited to ski it once I was ready, and this was the year. The skiing is really moderate, the crater is beyond cool, and we made it a family affair! My sisters Ephrat (at 3 months pregnant!) and Dafna joined, along with their partners, Luca and Gil (a first real summit for him! Hiking up on snowshoes, snowboarding down). Mount St Helens is an awesome summit for the hiker/mountaineer learning to ski. I’d happily repeat it someday. Track.

Resort skiing: In 2019 I had the Ikon Pass, which meant mainly skiing Squaw/Alpine. It was my first time skiing at either, and it was a lot of fun, but the traffic was a total nightmare. I had many days where I struggled, sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic not moving at all, feeling so trapped and frustrated that we live so far from the mountains. This year I’m back on Epic, and I’m hoping it will be less miserable. Leo and I also took advantage of some of the other resorts on the pass, making trips to Revelstoke, Lake Louise, Banff Sunshine (all in Canada), Alta, and Snowbird.

Rogers Pass: My first (and only) day backcountry skiing in Canada, at such an amazing location. I survived the cold! Track.

I was sick for a good month in winter, which really put my year off to a rocky start and felt like it brought down my fitness a lot. I thought I was getting better and pushed myself really hard for a few days in the backcountry (climbing Anderson Peak with my friend Brice, track), but then I found myself sick again for another two weeks (making me nervous I might not be healthy enough for our Canada trip). I relearned the importance of rest and taking care of yourself.

Ice Climbing

New skill for 2019! Well, technically it started in December 2018 with a trip to the Bozeman Ice Fest, which was an amazing way to learn the basics of the sport. Leo and I both liked it so much that we did three more days of it in Canmore, even hiring a guide to take us up Louise Falls (a 3 pitch climb). Originally I thought I should just know the utmost basics of the sport, but now I find I actually enjoy it and would love to do more of it. I think I could potentially even… lead someday? Which is something I feel pretty defeated about doing in rock climbing. It’s interesting to think about why this doesn’t scare me when rock climbing does. I think it is because in rock climbing I get nervous moving for holds I can barely reach, as opposed to in ice climbing, you can make a hold almost anywhere you like. Leading is still a long ways off for me, of course, but it’s cool to think this might be possible in the future.

Mountaineering/Alpine Climbing

Mount Rainier: After learning the aforementioned basics of ice climbing, we put them to the test on Rainier. Leo and I had attempted Rainier in 2017 with our friend Ryan, but turned back at 13k ft due to bad conditions. This time, Leo, Nikhil, and I climbed the Kautz Glacier route in mid-June. We did a one night trip, camping at 12k feet, right below the Kautz ice section, carrying our gear over the following day and descending the DC. A lot of thoughts on this trip: The most challenging thing for me probably were the stats combined with carrying a very heavy pack. Heavy packs are definitely my biggest weakness and something I’d like to train this year. Our group members and I still all have a lot to learn in terms of glacier navigation and travel. Rainier is a big mountain, and definitely a step above most California summits. I definitely wouldn’t be comfortable climbing it in adverse conditions (California fair-weather climber here!), and it shows the edges of where I can develop more skills to increase my safety margin. The mountain also really showed me why it is such a great training ground for future expeditions. It was a tough trip, but I’d like to back again for more routes. (Plus, we didn’t make it to the high point of the crater! Gotta go back). I felt pretty wrecked for over a week after this trip, really surprised at the recovery time I needed. Track 1, 2.

Arete des Cosmiques: Leo and I made our first trip to Chamonix this year, and it truly is a dream playground. We were lucky to overlap with our friend Chelsea and Michael by coincidence, so we all warmed up by climbing the world-famous Arete des Cosmiques together. We had great weather and it was just all around fun. Track.

Pyramide du Tacul: Also in Chamonix. This was just a good, fun climb in a spectacular setting. Alpine starts in Chamonix are beyond gorgeous. Track 1, 2.

Aiguille de la Republique: This is called the pointiest, most exposed summit in Chamonix! With a description like that, how could we not check it out? To tackle this, Leo and I spent two nights in the Refuge des Envers, which is a decent hike. We got to walk on our first dry glacier, which was beyond cool. The peak itself was pretty challenging, and we technically bailed about 50 feet below the summit, but I was proud of the effort. There was a little bit of everything: glacier approach, spicy scrambling, glorious hand jams, great exposure. It was a long and challenging day, but a good way to push myself. Track 1, 2.

Me touching the point of the Aiguille de la Republique in the first picture, the day before we hiked in.

Mont Blanc: Our last outing in Chamonix was Mont Blanc. After trying and failing many times to get spaces at the Gouter Hut, we had given up on climbing it. A record heat wave for our whole visit had made climbing Mont Blanc via the other main route, Trois Monts (three mountain route), too dangerous, due to a lot of steep snow and passing below seracs. However, at the end of our trip the heat wave passed and we had a great day for a summit. We climbed the Trois Monts route from the Cosmiques Hut (an amazing place to stay! At 11k ft on a glacier with warm food and excellent wifi). It was quite crowded (in my opinion), but the sunrise and views were spectacular. And a new elevation PR for both Leo and me! It was a really special way to close out the trip. Track.

Sierra

So many great adventures in the “backyard” this summer, despite my fitness limiting me. After losing a bunch of fitness at the start of the year, I had another setback by developing some pain in my left knee (patellofemoral pain syndrome). This meant I took nearly 6 months off from running, one of my main ways to keep in shape. I also limited my mountain excursions, usually only doing one day of long hiking/scrambling per weekend, to not push my knee too much. Some Sierra highlights:

Morgan N & Stanford linkup: This really is a lovely day in the Sierra. The mileage is a bit long, but it really doesn’t feel very sloggy at all. The terrain is quite solid 90% of the time, and you get to descend the “greatest sand slope in the Sierra”, coming down from Stanford. Did this peak with new friends Sarah, Peter (who are both also SPS-ers :D), Rob, and Alexandra, and it was a blast. Track.

Banner Peak: A fun one! Took advantage again of the good snow year to climb the snow route up the Ritter-Banner saddle. Got to do this with Leo, which was his first time in Ansel Adams Wilderness. Excited to finish off the pair, since I’d climbed Ritter a number of years ago. Now it won’t feel as incomplete when I look at the Mammoth skyline. Hoping to go back for Clyde Minaret this year with Leo via the climbing route. Track.

Williamson & Tyndall: An overnight with Emily and a new friend, Alex. We hiked in day 1, climbed both peaks day 2, and hiked out day 3 before having some BBQ at the US’s best restaurant in Big Pine. I found both peaks to be really fun (and incredibly popular! Was shocked by the number of people we saw). Aside from sleeping a bit cold at night in my bivy sack, this was mostly a Type 1 fun trip with fun humans, bring my CA 14er count to 13. Shepherds Pass was not as bad as I expected, I’m very happy to say (since, well, I’m going to have to hike it many more times). Track 1, 2, 3.

Labor Day peak extravaganza: Inspired by this Bob Burd trip report, Leo and I planned an excellent “compromise” trip, which was maybe my favorite trip of the summer. We planned to tackle some peaks in the high country of Sequoia/Kings Canyon (SEKI), but chose to enter from the East side, unlike Bob, due to fear of our inability to get permits for Labor Day Weekend (our East side TH had 20 or 30 walk up permits available — the West side had 6 [shared with the very popular Rae Lakes trailhead]). Leo and I hiked in Friday evening, hiking 9 miles to camp near Charlotte Lake. The next morning, we rose early to head over to Charlotte Dome. We climbed the 50 Classic Route on the dome, seeing only one other party (in perfect weather on a 3 day weekend??), climbing it quickly enough to unlock the rest of the trip. We had set a time for ourselves, that if we didn’t summit by a certain time, the rest of the trip wasn’t in the cards. Leo did a great job leading on probably too skinny of a rope and with too little gear… but you make gear tradeoffs when you’re carrying it 40+ miles in a weekend. From Charlotte Dome we hiked up a pretty awful slope to the Gardiner summit ridge. We dropped our packs and did the fun 4th class ridge to the true summit. We then reversed our steps back to our packs, and hurried down the other side of the peak, making camp in the dark. The next day was another hard one. We left camp as is, and hiked over to Clarence King, a peak with one of the more challenging summit blocks in the Sierra. We climbed another miserable loose slope, and found ourselves at the summit block. Leo, again, led it in good style. My height made it really hard for me to pull the very exposed move on to the summit block, and I nearly gave up. But, Leo found a way to safely belay me with the rope running over the summit block itself as an “anchor”, and I managed to summit! From there we hiked back over near camp, and I managed to pull together the energy to summit our fourth and final summit of the trip, Mount Cotter. This was a really fun class 2 scramble, that I was really thankful I found the energy for, since it’s ~30 mi round trip from the trailhead. We made it back to camp right before dark, and slept like rocks. The next day was a looong hike out ending in a downpour/thunder storm, before driving the long way back home. This trip felt like such an amazing way to really get out there in the Sierra and explore some epic spots, covering a lot of ground and carrying as little gear as possible. I’d love to do more overnights entering Friday evening after work this year. Track 1, 2, 3, 4.

Middle Palisade: A really fun day with Emily. This type of day is pretty much my favorite way to spend a day in the mountains – moving quickly over interesting terrain in a gorgeous setting. I’d been nervous that this would just be a total slog, but it was far from it. Very little of the terrain sucked, the scrambling was fun, and of course the views were great. I’m really excited to come back for the other peaks in the area now. Brought my CA 14er count to 14/15! Track.

Mount Hooper: Holy smokes the western Sierra is also awesome. I had only ever been to this area when I hiked through it on the JMT. I’d never driven the crazy Kaiser Pass road out into the west side. Leo and I had an excellent “compromise” weekend hiking Mount Hooper, visiting Mono Hot Springs, and doing some climbing on Tollhouse Rock. Again, new places that my list took me that ended up being really special. Really excited to go back. Track.

East Buttress of Middle Cathedral: My fifty classic for the year! But really, at least once a year I need to go to Yosemite Valley and climb something fun with Leo. It’s a good way to make me appreciate rock climbing and spend time doing something Leo loves. Plus, well, Yosemite has some pretty good climbs I guess. 😜 This was a really fun one with excellent climbing on it, and with only 3 parties on it on a gorgeous weekend day! One of them including Hans Florine, who was very nice. 😄 Rock climbing isn’t so bad sometimes.

Desert

Not too much time in the desert this year, unfortunately, aside from a JTree trip over Memorial Day Weekend, and a week in Sedona over Thanksgiving (though it rained/snowed half the time). Sedona is another awesome playground that I’m surprised doesn’t see more climbers. The towers are endless and stunning. I love the crazy features that form there. Given the poor weather, we didn’t get to do too much, but our climbs of The Fin as a group of 5 (track), and of Queen Victoria with Daiyi (track) both stand out as really fun outings.

Personal mountain philosophy

To the outside, it probably seems like I go on endless trips effortlessly, but that’s definitely not the case. I have an amazing partner, but our outdoor interests don’t fully line up, and that caused me a lot of frustrations in 2018. I hadn’t done a great job of fostering outdoor friendships, so it put a lot of pressure on my relationship with Leo, feeling like he was my only partner and we had to spend every weekend together. In winter, it’s great, since we both love to ski (though Leo is a much stronger skier than me, so I sometimes hold him back), but in summer it was a problem. Leo’s favorite activity is climbing, and climbing hard. When we climb together, it really limits the grades and objectives he can go after. On top of that, I don’t have nearly as much of an interest in hard climbs, and am all about long scrambles. We also both have a lot of our own mountain goals, and we weren’t able to accomplish them by spending most weekends together.

This summer, I made a concerted effort instead to spend less time with Leo and develop friendships with others. It was scary to put myself out there, reaching out to folks on social media or asking other friends to introduce me, but it definitely paid off in the end. I added some people I really clicked with to my network, and got to have some really great days with them in the mountains. I still enjoy solo days in the mountains as well, but I see a lot of value in seeking out others to share those experiences with whenever possible. I think it’s still good for me to do at least one solo trip a summer, but, generally, spending all those hours driving and hiking alone is something I want to avoid when possible. On top of having more friends I’ve connected with, I also enjoy the weekends I do spend with Leo more now, not feeling the stress that “oh no, this weekend I’m not accomplishing my goal again”. It also made me appreciate when we reconnect at the end of the weekend, swapping stories of how our trips went and cheering each other on. I feel more balanced and fulfilled, and I want to keep chasing that.

Also one weekend we took an offer from a photographer to do a free “elopement” photo shoot, to help build her portfolio. Cue me having to explain to everyone that we are not engaged or married, we just did a fun, different thing in the mountains for once.

Things I am excited about in 2020:

Making more mountain friends, spending more time with my current ones.

I just left my job, and won’t be starting my new one till the end of March! I’m spending a few weeks in Ecuador starting in late January, aiming to climb some of the high volcanoes there. I see this as great training for future expeditions like Denali. Hoping for good weather!

For the aforementioned trip, I’ve been training quite hard for the first time in my life. I am nervous, since my knee really prevented me from keeping up my fitness in 2019, and I’m not fully back from that yet. I am doing one of the pre-made training plans from Uphill Athlete, and it’s been the first time I’ve had a focused training plan. I am impressed with just how much cardio I can squeeze into one week :-P I’m excited to keep it up this year, and hopefully have a very strong summer season.

Getting better at skiing. And a hut trip to ski in the Selkirk mountains in Canada in March at the Bill Putnam hut, before starting my new job.

Spending some days at the Sierra Challenge. I’ve never participated before, but it’s about time I make the time to check it out!

Clyde Minaret via the 5.8 50 Classic.

Lone Pine Peak via the North Ridge.

Split Mountain! Ideally via the St Jean Couloir, but if not, then via the summer route. This would be my last California 14er :)

Boundary Peak (the highest peak in Nevada, on the border between California and Nevada (you see what they did there?). I drove past it last week and am now enamored with it.

Reaching 100 peaks on the SPS list (currently at 85/100).

A potential Orizaba trip over the winter holidays!

….maybe a big wall with Leo.

Something else you want to climb together??

#2019

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petalouda85 · 7 years

Text

Koi No Yokan, Chapter 6

How I found the time to finish this, I have no idea. School is busy and it’s draining a lot out of me but I’m doing okay for the most part. Fanfiction is keeping me relatively sane.

I hope you guys like it and sorry for keeping you waiting.

You can also read this on AO3

When he was born, he was cursed. Doomed to die at 18 unless he joined the Dark Side. Snoke is confident but there remains one threat, it coming in the form of a prediction made by one of the Jedi Masters: Ben would meet his true love on his tenth birthday and this elusive individual would be the only one that could awaken Ben from his eternal sleep

He had been digging his fingers into his palms for the majority of the trip. Even as Alderaan came into his vision, he didn’t stop, still not believing that this was truly happening. He was going home.

Leaving the Temple was odd and, to a certain degree, difficult. He had been there every day for the past six years. Though it had felt like a prison at times, he still had an attachment to it, odd as that seemed. He figured it was because he had left Rey behind there. They hadn’t been apart for a single day since the moment they had arrived. They had done everything together. Training, meditating, studying. Everything. She was his best friend.

He felt strange when the word friend crossed his mind but he didn’t dwell on it as they entered the atmosphere and headed for the surface of Alderaan. Looking out a porthole, he could see the capital. He spotted a few new buildings here and there but nothing had really changed to him. The palace was still where it had always been, the parliament building was as tall and as magnificent as ever and the memorial to Old Alderaan and the countless lives lost in its destruction still shone in the sun.

When his gaze fell back onto the palace, he began feeling nervous. Nervous because he had no idea if his family would be there to greet him. He hadn’t spoken to either of his parents in six years. He knew his mother traveled back and forth between Alderaan and Hosian Prime and his father was normally off to a desolate spot of the galaxy doing whatever it was he did but it was all secondhand information he had gotten from his uncle or from random news stories. He had no idea if either of them had gotten word that he was coming home.

He stepped away from the porthole and went to the bridge where the pilot and his co-pilot were slowly descending towards the landing pad.

“You nervous?” The pilot, who had introduced himself as Poe, asked. He chuckled when Ben nodded. “Well, don’t be.” He nodded towards the landing pad before Ben could ask why, though any words that would’ve been said were lost when Ben saw who was waiting on the pad.

The landing process was now much too slow as the teen anxiously waited for the door to open. He was nearly bouncing from the anticipation.

Finally, after an eternity, the door opened to the outside world. The durasteel had barely touched the ground when Ben jumped out and ran into the waiting arms of his mother. The embrace was tight, Ben certain he heard a sniff from her but he didn’t bother pointing it out. He doubted she would even care if anyone same her weep tears of joy at this moment.

They eventually did stop the embrace, Leia reaching up to cup his face, wiping away tears he hadn’t realized he had shed.

“Look at you.” She whispered, the tears in her eyes and her beaming smile more than enough to convey all her happiness. “You’re so much taller.” He was. When he left six years ago, he didn’t even reach her shoulder. Now, he was tall enough that he had to bend down to hug her properly.

“And you haven’t changed a bit.” Ben responded with a smile just as bright as hers.

“I missed you so much.” Leia whispered when they embraced once more.

“I missed you too, mama. Is dad here?”

“No but he’s on his way. He was so excited to hear you were coming home.” Leia explained, releasing the embrace to lead him away from the launch pad; there was so much to talk about and that wasn’t the place to do it. They headed towards the garden, arm-in-arm.

“It’ll be good to see him.” Ben responded with a smile. “Now, what has happened here? Tell me everything.”

“Everything?” Leia laughed. “Still as curious as ever.” She fell silent for a moment, thinking back on six years’ worth of memory to find the most significant ones. “It hasn’t been that different since you left. The city has grown and there have been some changes in staff here but nothing that would really interest you.”

“Changes in staff? Who’s gone?” Ben inquired, the images of the three red haired brothers being abused by the Overseer in the garden appearing in his mind for no reason he could explain.

“An Overseer in the garden.” Leia answered, Ben feeling an odd sense of relief in response. “A few years ago it was brought to my attention that he was abusing some boys that worked in the garden so I had him replaced with someone more level-headed.”

“And were they?”

“They were but as a precaution, I had the boys moved to work in the palace itself. They alternate between helping in the kitchen and helping with cleaning.”

Ben nodded but decided against asking more about the boys; he could always try to find them later.

“What about the galaxy? There’s always something happening there.”

“True.” Leia sighed. She went on to briefly explain general issues and a more pressing one in the form of a resurgent of an Imperialistic movement in the Unknown Regions. “But instead of focusing on the remaining threat of the Empire, the Senate is intent on harassing Ge.”

"Ge?" Ben was shocked to hear that news. He didn't know much about Ge or politics in general but he knew that Ge was a peaceful planet that preferred to be left alone. "I thought there was an agreement the Senate would stop demanding things from them."

"Under the last king. But now that Paro is Queen, the Senate is intent on trying again. Paro is more open to outsiders than her father was but several Senators are taking it too far in demands. Those idiots should know better than to harass a teenager." She took a breath, noting Ben's concerned face. "The Chancellor and I have been trying to diffuse the tension between the Senate and Ge but we haven't had much success so far."

"Remind me to never pursue politics."

"If you're ever going to rule Alderaan, you'll have to deal with some of that stuff eventually. But enough about politics. I have some much needed bonding time with my son to attend to. Tell me about the Temple." She said, smiling up at him.

Ben gladly told her all about the Temple, giving every detail in regards to the building itself and his training. They talked extensively about Luke and Rey, the teen noting his mother sudden increased interest in his friend. He paid it no mind though and made sure to answer her questions as detailed as possible, it all steering away from Rey eventually.

He wasn't sure how long it was but after a time, their conversation was abruptly stopped when a servant came to inform Leia that the Chancellor wanted to talk to her. With promises to return as soon as possible, Leia left, leaving Ben alone in the garden. He remained seated in his current spot for a few minutes before he got up and began to wander.

Of all the things in the palace, the garden had been the place he had missed the most. It had been his refuge and his playground when he was younger. But it was also a place tainted by the last memory of it, which could still send a chill down his spine. The voice had been so cold but so tempting. It had whispered confirmation of his worst fears and increased the want of his deepest desires. He still didn't know who hat voice belonged to but he was grateful he hadn't heard it since that day.

A cat meowed near him. As if he were reliving the past, he turned and saw a tabby cat, this one an older version of the kitten he saw 6 years ago. The animal looked up at him for a moment but then trotted to him, rubbing her head against his legs.

"Hi, little lady." He cooed, leaning down to stroke her head. "You've gotten bigger." The cat purred against his hand, happy with the sweet words he was whispering. "There was a boy with you last time. Armitage, I think his name was. Is he around here somewhere?" The cat meowed as if in response and soon turned, her direction towards the palace. Curious, the teen followed the cat, going towards lower levels of the palace he had never explored before. A left, a right, down some stairs and then down a long hallway.

Eventually, he was led to a door, it open only slightest but enough for light to peek through. Carefully, Ben opened the door.

It was an average room, artificial light giving him a clearer view of what was within. Three beds, a table with two short benches, a large storage closet and a small stove. It looked comfortable and livable enough, not at all what the hut in the garden had been, if he remembered it correctly. Those memories weren't pondered about long as the cat had jumped up onto the table and went to the one seated on one of the benches, working on what seemed to be a sewing project.

"Yet again, my cat causes a meeting between us." The teenager said, only glancing over at Ben and focusing on his needlework.

"Destiny cat." Ben joked, uncertain what he should say. To his relief, Armitage laughed.

"I heard you were coming back from the Temple." The redhead said after a moment of awkward silence had passed, "How long has it been? Six years?"

"Six." Ben confirmed, sitting down on the vacant bench. Another silence followed, it more awkward than before. Conversation didn’t come easily; they were friends in a sense but at the same time, strangers. Armitage continued to work on his project, only glancing up at Ben once or twice.

"I may as well say something before this becomes any more awkward than it is." He said suddenly, dropping his needlework when Millicent adamantly began to prevent him from working on it.

"Say what?" Ben responded, reaching over the table to scratch the cat behind her ear, occasionally stealing a glance at Armitage.

"I'm not sure. It's not easy to have conversations with someone you barely know; I remember that our first and last conversation ended with me saying something along the lines of never being able to talk to you again. And yet, here we are: a conversation, albeit a slightly awkward one."

"Six years ago, you probably would've told me to go away."

"True but six years ago, I cared about getting into trouble."

"And now?"

"Now I don't care. Being punished for speaking to someone of a higher rank would be something the Empire would do."

“You say that as if you’ve experienced it.”

“Saw it and experienced it.” Armitage said slowly, his hand unconsciously grasping the fabric of his left sleeve.

“How are your brothers?” Ben asked.

“They’re fine.” Armitage answered, turning his attention back to his sewing project. “My younger brother is definitely glad to be away from that stupid Overseer.” He looked up. “By the way, thank you for the items you gave; they were badly needed.”

“How… How did you know that was me?” Ben stuttered out.

“I have my ways. You’re not that difficult to figure out, Ben Solo.”

“Really?” Ben smirked, noting a small smile present on Armitage’s face.

“Really. Example: you’ve been unable to keep your eyes off of me since you’ve come in ergo, you think that I’m the cutest damn thing you’ve ever seen.” He immediately began laughing as Ben’s face turned a bright red.

“Well, you’re not… I mean… I-“Ben stumbled. He had not anticipated a response like that. He had anticipated something along the lines of personality or future goals, not thoughts of someone being cute. He was completely unaccustomed to anything in regards to romance so he was unable to find a coherent response that didn’t make him sound like an absolute idiot. “You’re definitely not bad looking.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Any observations that aren’t as embarrassing?”

“You are uncertain about what you want in your future.” Armitage posited.

“Good guess but an easy one considering my family.”

“Senator, Jedi, King. All are much more promising than anything in my future.”

“Well, now you’re making me sound more glamorous than I actually am.” The two boys glanced at each other before bursting out in laughter at Ben’s comment. Just like that, their conversation continued, Ben learning new things about Armitage when he attempted his game on himself. Granted, he didn’t get as many correct as Armitage had on him but the redhead was at least generous enough to provide Ben with more correct answers. However, any guesses that alluded towards Armitage’s past were only answered with a yes or no; it obviously wasn’t something Armitage wanted to talk about.

Eventually, the time crept closer to dinner and Ben had to leave, both to join his mother and to let Armitage get back to work. As he left the room and made his way back to more familiar hallways, Ben felt happy and an odd sense of calm he hadn’t felt in a long time.

As he still had some time before dinner was ready, he went back to his old room. It was as if he had never left; even old toys were still placed in the storage chest at the foot of his massive bed. He rummaged through it before he found one of his favorite toys: a miniature Millennium Falcon. He had spent hours with that toy, holding it high up and making engine noises while his father had chased after him with a TIE fighter, switching between engine noises and blaster noises; Ben smiled at the memory.

Toy in hand, he crashed down on his bed, suddenly feeling exhausted. He shut his eyes, knowing there would be no harm in a small nap.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was. He had never been here before: a long hallway, triangular in shape with a light flickering at the other end. Curious, he took a step towards it when he heard a voice call his name.

“Ben?” It was Rey’s voice.

“Rey?” Ben called out in response, running towards where he thought the sound had come from. Suddenly, there was an explosion behind him, making him stumble. When he looked up, he was somewhere else, his back towards a massive building.

“Ben!” She was running towards him, away from the building, dragging Obi-Wan with her, when the building exploded into a ball of fire, it throwing Ben back.

“Rey!” Ben screamed but she was gone, his environment now a black room. He thought he was alone at first but he soon discovered three other people where in there with him: Armitage and his brothers, all of them much younger. A door opened and several, heavily tattooed men came in. Bill immediately jumped up and stood in front of his brothers to protect them. It was a feeble attempt as the men grabbed him as though he was as light as a feather. Before they left, they grabbed Bren and Armitage as well. The three were lead to another room where a woman was waiting, her face scarred and arms covered in tattoos. She said something that Ben couldn’t hear but as Bill began to resist and scream, it was obvious it couldn’t be good. But his screams were quickly cut off when the woman lifted a blaster and shot him point blank on his throat. How he was still alive and breathing by the time he hit the floor was a mystery but Ben’s attention was diverted when the woman pointed towards Bren. Armitage tried to protect his brother but he was powerless against the adults.

This time, Ben could hear the woman’s words.

“Imperialist scum.” She sneered as Bren was put in front of her. She grabbed his head tightly and Bren began to scream in agony while Armitage begged incoherent words.

Tears of fear in his eyes, Ben turned away from the grisly scene when he saw spurts of blood falling on the floor where Bren stood. He tried to breathe evenly as the noise faded into the background and, once he dared to look, Armitage and his brothers were gone.

Once more, he was in a dark room but this one looked like a meeting room of some sort, a long walkway in the middle leading towards a podium. At the podium stood someone, their back turned to him.

“I’ve been expecting you.” A voice boomed through the room.

“Who are you?” Ben asked, fighting to keep his voice from shaking; he knew that voice.

“I’m the one who can help you.” The voice said, the figure on the podium turning to show his familiar disfigured face.

“I don’t need your help.”

“That’s what you think but you do. I’ve seen what you can do.” The creature whispered, walking from the podium towards the teen. “I’ve seen your power. Raw, untamed. You could be so much more than a mere Jedi. The Chosen One, like your grandfather."

"My grandfather?" The creature nodded.

"He was the greatest Force Wielder the galaxy had seen in millennia. But his potential only came to fruition when he left the Jedi Order that was restricting him." He was now standing by the boy, slowly grabbing his shoulder with thin, bony hands. "Why can't you see, Ben?" He whispered into Ben's ear. "Your Masters are hindering you, not letting you reach your true potential. They fear you and are unwilling to teach you."

"They're not scared of me." Ben said with a tone of surety, almost slapping the creature's hands off of him. "They can't be." The creature smiled at him and opened his palm. In it appeared an orb, it bearing the image of Ben from a recent meditation session with his uncle. The image began to move, showing the pavement near him crack under the force of his concentration. But what Ben focused on was the face of his uncle in the image. To his horror, the man's face flashed with fear when the pavement split.

"Even your precious friend fears you." The image changed, morphing to an image of Rey sparring with him.

"Rey?" Ben whispered as the image began to move, starting the spar. Ben could see himself lose control, it leading to him disarming Rey. When the lightsaber fell from her hand and the threat of being hurt drew nigh, Rey's expression became one of terror. "No..."

"I don't fear you, Ben." The creature cooed, the orb disappearing as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind the teen's ear. "I can see how special you are. Join me and I can complete your training. Only I can help you become who you were truly meant to be." He extended a wrinkled hand towards the teen expectantly.

"No." Ben said softly, his confident tone gone.

"No?"

"I-I don't believe you."

"So you want more proof?" The creature lifted his hand and Ben felt his throat slowly closing in on itself. "Six years you languished in that Temple. Not a single word from your mother or your father. You were alone. They could've visited you. Both of them. Your mother: a queen and a senator, travelling frequently between your home world and the dredges of the Republic. If she truly loved you, cared for you, she would've made some small attempt to see you. But she did nothing." The grip on Ben's throat became tighter. "Your father. A low thief and smuggler. He had enough time to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other and yet he couldn't even spare a moment for you. They don't care for you. You were a mistake."

"No." Ben thought, tears flowing from his eyes while his blood boiled with anger. He didn't want to believe this creature but he spoke truth; his parents never had tried to come visit him. Never.

"Yes. I can feel your anger. Embrace it, let it fuel your power. Show me. Show me your power!"

"NO!" Ben screamed, the grip on his throat disappearing as his power blew the creature away. The teen woke with a gasp, several items that had been floating around him crashing to the floor. He felt around his throat as he took ragged breaths but thankfully, he felt no pressure of any sort, natural or Force related. He then began to cry, hugging his knees to his chest, the fear from the nightmare still clawing at him.

This nightmare had been the worst one yet.

----

“Ben, are you okay? You’re really quiet.” Ben snapped out of his trance when his father asked the question. Han had popped up shortly before dinner had started but Ben had barely said anything to him and had barely touched his food while his parents had small talk about Han’s most recent escapade to another system. The words of the creature about his parents were still fresh in his mind and the more he had thought about them, the more he realized how true they were.

“Why didn’t you guys ever come visit me?” It became deadly silent in an instant. “Did you even try?” Too angry at this point, Ben stood up and left the room before either of his parents could stop him, let alone formulate a response. The teen went straight to his room, slamming the door behind him and crashed on the bed. He wanted to scream, smash something against the wall, lash out with his lightsaber, do something to deal with this anger.

“Yes, Ben. Feel your anger.”

“Go away.” He mumbled, tears threatening to spill once more. “GO AWAY!”

“Ben!” He heard his father call in the distance but none of it registered until he felt a hand on his shoulder. The touch made Ben flinch.

“Ben, what’s wrong?”

“They don’t care.”

“Shut up.” Ben whispered, tears now flowing free from his eyes.

“Ben, what is going on?” Leia asked, having seated herself next to Han, carrying the same concerned expression.

“I… don’t know.” Ben forced out, the words soft and rough. “I don’t know.”

“If this is about us not visiting,” Han began, his voice vacant of his usual snark, “we wanted to. We really did but we were told not to do it. I still tried but they stopped me from landing.”

“What?” When both adults nodded, Ben sobbed. Whether it was from relief or anger or both, he didn’t know. He was quickly enveloped in his parent’s embrace, crying into Han’s shoulder.

“It’s okay.” Leia cooed, gently rubbing his back and placing a kiss on her son’s temple, her heart breaking to see him in such distress. “It’s okay.” For an unknown period of time, the three of them just sat there, holding each other tightly with the youngest hoping that his parents would never let go or leave him.

“Ben?”

“Hm?”

“I have a proposal for you.” The embrace was broken so Ben could face his mother.

“What is it?”

“I have to go back to Hosian Prime soon. Why don’t you come with me?”

“But my training…” Ben wanted to go, more than anything, but his rational side knew he couldn’t just abandon his training just like that.

“We’ll take care of it.” Han assured.

That was more than enough for Ben to eagerly agree to Leia’s offer.

#kylux #huxlo #ben solo #armitage hux #leia organa #han solo #star wars #sleeping beauty au #koi no yokan #my writing

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reekierevelator · 5 years

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The Summer of Eavesdropping

A short story by Brian Bourner

They crouched in the small seven by five foot airless and musty boxroom which adjoined the living-room in this one bedroom plus boxroom tenement flat. Some dim light percolated through from the living-room, via the only window, which was closed and located high up on the dividing wall. They couldn’t help making tiny rustling noises as they squirmed, cupping their ears to the wall, desperately trying to hear the muffled voices of conversation on the other side of the divide.

‘Did you hear that?’ Tony whispered incredulously. ‘They’re going to attack us.’

‘Shhh,’ muttered Gerry, his finger across his lips.

It wasn’t really eavesdropping; it was war and, as they say, all’s fair in love and war.

They could have been soldiers hidden in haylofts behind enemy lines. Or they might have been spies in a café cellar, their secret hiding place, tapping out Morse code messages to be deciphered by British Intelligence.

But that was last year’s game. Playing secret agents and re-enacting old wars was very out of fashion this summer, largely because up until the end of term even little seven year olds had been playing at soldiers, their armies fighting from one end of the playground to the other. And they were already taking tactics just the way we had: outflanking, surprise attacks from the rear, and so on.

It’s funny how some kids grow in spurts. In this last year of Primary School Gavin Jordan had gone from being slightly bigger than usual to being a veritable man mountain. Of course, he looked that way partly because he’d been held back and had to repeat two years. So, as well as being the biggest, he was also the oldest boy at Laverock Primary School. And since he’d always been loud and bullying by nature it wasn’t a surprise that he took full advantage of his stature, a veritable playground despot, forcing other kids to kowtow to him.

This was particularly annoying for Tony, since Gavin’s parents had developed some kind of grudge against his own parents. He couldn’t really understand what it was all about, something to do with whether you liked some bloke called Wilson or some woman called Thatcher. But this visceral antipathy had readily filtered down to Gavin. He classified Tony as amongst his deadliest of enemies.

During schooldays, obeisance to Gavin involved involuntary donations of chocolate, sweets, and freedom to ride your bicycle when he felt like it. Sophisticated veiled threats were not Gavin’s forte. It was more a case of waving a fist in your face. With this raw power Gavin decided that when the summer holidays finally arrived all the kids in his street would be playing with him and be part of his gang.

This really irritated Tony, not only because he had to work so hard to keep out of Gavin’s way, but also because he, and his pal Gerry, had always been the initiators of whatever new games and fads took root amongst the local kids. Tony and Gerry were the acknowledged leaders of most group activities that filled the empty days of the long school summer holidays. Bored kids usually joined whatever gang Tony and Gerry had organised and followed whatever ideas and notions they implanted, however bizarre.

There had been very wet days with the water-pistols gang, and painful days with the spud-gun gang. There was the penknife gang, when everyone had to have a little penknife and went around carving initials into trees and so on. There was the time they’d spent all summer in the woods making bows and arrows and firing lengths of cane at each other. There had even been the detectives’ gang when carrying a magnifying glass had been de rigueur.

And last summer Tony’s dad, an electrician and shop steward, had dumped left-over rolls of thin plastic coated wire, plastics of different colours, in the rubbish bin at home. Of course, intrigued, Tony had retrieved them. He’d seen enough sword-fighting in films featuring Romans, Pirates, and Zorro for it to trigger a connection with his mum’s sewing basket, with its scissors and big jar of pins.

It wasn’t long before he’d worked out how to remove the actual wire and cut short lengths of these cables. Then he either stuck pins through the hollow sheathing instead, or else he used the pins to pierce through pieces of the coloured cables.

He ended up with miniature swords. Some had standard hilts and some had curved cutlass type handles. All types of swords, colours of swords, crossed swords – they all became little gang badges whose meanings Gerry, who was always full of ideas, worked hard at inventing that summer. By the time school was due to start again every kid for miles around was wearing pin sword combinations on their clothes and proudly telling each other what they supposedly signified. Some even started doing swops. They were more popular than a sleeve full of Cub badges.

Indeed, as gang leader, Tony had ended up with the title Field Marshal Stevens, a row of ten crossed swords, very fancy and colourful, decorating his jacket lapel to prove it. It was all wonderful and exciting. At least that was until his little brother Dougie, only four at the time, started leaving sword pins all over the house. When his mum accidentally pricked her finger for the umpteenth time picking up Tony’s jacket from the floor she declared she’d had enough of it. Against Tony’s howls of protestation she made him pick up every last sword pin in the house and then dishonourably discharged him from his own army, removing every last sword pin from his jacket. Tony was devastated by his instant demobilization.

To avoid the utter humiliation of being reduced to the ranks Tony felt obliged to invent a story. He told the gang that a miniature Highland sword dancer had come in the night, danced a sword dance across all his crossed swords, and been so impressed with them that he’d insisted on taking them all away with him to admire at home. It’s possible one or two of the youngest members of the gang, still in P2 or P3, even believed him.

But on this latest school summer holiday, nine year old Tony’s antennae had picked up vague trends, winds of change in the world of pop music. It gave him the impetus to form a new gang. It would, of course, have the usual bizarre range of membership rules and initiation ceremonies. But this time it would be different because each member of the gang would be allocated a nom de guerre, a soubriquet formed after the fashion of members of punk rock bands.

‘Eh, right,’ Gerry had said, scratching his head, ‘mental, great idea,’ as Tony revealed his latest notion.

‘Yes, and I’ve thought of a name for myself,’ Tony hurried on enthusiastically. ‘My secret new name, to be known of course only to gang members, will be Stinky.’

Gerry grimaced. ‘It doesn’t really sound too powerful Tony, not really awe-inspiring.’ But Gerry’s big brother had started buying records and it was true that, as far as he could understand it, unfortunate self-denigrating names were part and parcel of the punk ethos.

‘Are we going to go around spitting on people?’ he asked.’

Tony hadn’t heard of that aspect of the culture. ‘What’s spitting got to do with it? My new name rhymes with my surname, see, Stinky Stevens.’ Tony grinned like he’d been offered free ice-cream. He loved ice-cream.

‘Right, Stinky Stevens it is then.’ Gerry, who generally had the best ideas, was then off and running. ‘Let’s call ourselves Stinky Stevens and the Sudden Smells.’

‘Perfect,’ agreed Tony immediately.

‘And my name will be Drain Brain.’

Tony had to think about that for a minute, working out the play on words, remembering his dad talking about some kind of brain drain, before eventually nodding acquiescence.

That long summer holiday other kids were, as usual, looking for something to occupy themselves. They were intrigued with this weird idea of a sort of band where no-one had to learn to play an instrument. Gradually, one by one, they were enlisted into the new gang.

Tony and Gerry took each new prospective member to their gang hut. It was actually the flat roof of a small single storey factory. It was reached by shinning up a drainpipe, walking along the top of a six foot high wall, and clambering up over an area of slated roof, tilted at an acute angle to the horizontal, which surrounded the actual flat roof.

Being brave enough to actually reach the gang hut was the first membership test. After that Ton and Gerry gave each potential recruit further tests - answering questions on the twelve times table, spelling big words like ‘pterodactyl’ (which they’d only recently learned themselves) and, for a geography test, having to describe the best route between school and home that was guaranteed to avoid bumping into Gavin. Then finally they had to put two fingers in their ear and repeat ‘Sudden Smells forever’ three times. Tony had decided this would be the new salute. Their short punk song, well war-cry really, would be ‘Smelly, smelly, sudden smelly’, repeated as often as required, for up to a maximum of two minutes.

After the initiation ceremony Gerry allocated a special secret gang names to each new member so that, in no time at all, the Sudden Smells expanded into a big punk band comprising Arty Farty (fat Arthur Smedley), King Pong (little Denis King), Pun Gent (Graham Gentleman), Mal O’Dorous (Malcolm Docherty), Sue Age (Mal’s sister Susan Docherty), Wattie Niff (Jimmy Watt), Hon King (Wattie’s sister Honey Watt), the chubby twins who were made to share a single joint name, Rot ‘n’ Egg (Reginald and Edward Edgeworth, sons of the corner grocer) and, lastly, Stellar Whiff (pretty Stella Griffin).

Needless to say, no-one actually failed the initiation tests, even if they got most of the answers wrong; not even wee Graham who couldn’t get one answer right and had never even heard the word ‘pungent’ before.

While the boys were keen to flaunt their new names the girls, always more grown-up and socially aware, were strangely much less enthusiastic. Still, they felt honoured enough at having been allowed to join the gang at all. So they didn’t complain too much, generally forgetting all about it and flouncing off to play amongst themselves. Tony was never quite sure what the girls did play at now they were apparently too mature to play at houses with their dolls.

And, of course, though Tony and Gerry managed to steer well clear of Gavin, all the palaver about a rival new gang, which used idiotic names and involved Tony, his sworn enemy, didn’t pass him by. He immediately felt the need to establish his rival organisation on a similar footing in order to put the new punk gang in its place. He began to coerce a range of kids into joining with him rather than with Stinky Stevens and hit on the theme of cowboys. He didn’t know much about cowboys but he’d seen westerns and in one he’d been struck by a man called Red calling another man Yellow. He decided that the interesting thing about his gang would be that all the members would have the names of colours. And, of course, being cowboys there would definitely be no girls allowed. Only sissies played with girls and cowboys weren’t sissies.

For an initiation ceremony Gavin made each new recruit sign a piece of paper on which he had scrawled the words ‘On my honour I promise to God and the Queen that I will be loyal to my great leader, Red.’

His first member was Johnny Nisbet, known only for having a big head, his dad’s regular joke being that he’d love to see it full of beer. Johnny lived next door to Gavin, existing in constant fear of him. But venturing out one day Johnny was quickly enlisted and forced to sign the paper as Yellow Nisbet. Johnny breathed a sigh of relief when Gavin allowed red ink to be used instead of blood. Ginger-headed Billy Thompson was the next forced to join. He received a gratuitous thump on the head for suggesting that he, rather than Gavin, should maybe be called ‘Red’. In no uncertain terms Gavin impressed on him that he was going to be called Blue.

Of course, as an autocratic type, Gavin attracted a few of the usual power-worshipping sycophants, the weak characterless characters whose route to authority was only ever via the vicarious exercise of a despot’s power. Two of these monochrome fellow-travellers were Charlie Blackley and Gordon Whitehouse, tall gaunt-looking kids with narrow eyes. With a sudden flash of inspiration Gavin re-christened them Black and White.

And there were others, like Tommy Green, who actually seemed keen on joining. But Tommy tried to change his mind when Gavin told him to sign his new name as Green Green. Tommy’s teacher always referred to him as Green anyway and he felt that being in Gavin’s gang was only going to remind him of the classroom, where ‘Green!’ was usually followed by ‘Stand outside the door!’ At that point he suggested resigning, but Gavin rather forcefully reminded him that resignation wasn’t an option by whacking his head with a heavy hand. Then Gavin pointed out that he was writing the gang rules and that these rules were entirely about attacking Tony’s useless punk gang.

Next, Gavin set his merciless recruiter’s eyes on little Denis King, not realising that Denis had already been netted by Stinky Stevens and the Sudden Smells, having being re-named King Pong in the process. But Denis knew there was nothing he could do about it when Gavin kicked his shin, twisted his ear, put the red pen in his hand, and told him, as if he didn’t already know from the bruises, that henceforth he was to be Purple.

But the big question then confronting Gavin was exactly how to deploy his magnificent new gang so as to achieve its aim of destroying Tony’s punk gang. He had to organise something really nasty for them, some purpose his own gang could work towards. But what? Imagination and strategy weren’t Gavin’s strongest points. He decided his gang would have to come up with the ideas.

And so Gavin called a gang meeting and informed Denis that it would be held in his house the following afternoon when his mum was out working. Gavin knew Denis lived alone with his mum in their top floor flat and that his mum would be out working all day. In the school holidays that meant Denis looked after himself. His mum laid out a cold lunch for him and otherwise he was left to his own devices. Like the other kids he wore his house key on a string round his neck so he could come and go as he wanted and it made it unlikely that he would lock himself out.

‘Bring me a plan to destroy Tony’s gang,’ Gavin demanded, adding ‘and if you don’t I’ll batter you instead.’

When Denis sneaked out and turned up at Tony’s gang hut the following morning, looking white-faced and utterly miserable, he blurted out ‘Gavin’s made me join his gang. They’re all calling themselves colours like a rainbow, and unless Gavin gets to beat up Stinky and the Sudden Smells he’s going to beat me up instead.’

Tony could only sympathise, but when Gerry arrived, and King Pong re-told his tale of woe, the Drain Brain’s face immediately brightened.

‘Listen boys, here’s what we’ll do…’

And that was when Gerry convinced Denis to let them overhear what Gavin’s gang were planning.

Like many tenement flats, the main door of Denis’s led on to a lobby, a short corridor with each room lying to one side of it, living room at the front and bedroom at the back, and squeezed in between a small boxroom. Tony and Gerry arrived early and stealthily at Denis’s flat, and that was how they ended up hiding in the dusty boxroom behind a closed door. As he didn’t have any brothers or sisters the airless boxroom in Denis’s house was used as a storeroom. It was full of old cardboard boxes, newspapers, paint pots, paint brushes, an ironing board, a small child’s tricycle, and old tools. In the middle of all this stood an open set of step ladders. So Tony and Gerry settled down, huddling down cramped on the floor, pressing their ears against the dividing wall.

It was a warm summer’s day but Denis was so nervous his teeth were chattering and, nearly terrified, he wondered how Gerry had ever managed to convince him this plan would work.

Half an hour later Denis was managing to appear no worse than his usual fearful self as the doorbell rang and he allowed Gavin the Red to march in, closely followed soon after by the rest of his crew. After Gavin had found and eaten the chocolate pudding Denis’s mum had left him as a treat for his lunch, he launched straight into the purpose of the meeting.

‘Right, you, Black, what’s your idea for attacking Tony’s punk mob?

‘Eh, well, we could all dress up like it was Halloween. They’d all be scared and run away like a lot of sissies.’

‘That’s crap; never work,’ shouted Gavin as he whacked Charlie’s head.

‘You, White, what’s your plan?’

‘Well, we could all get sticks and then sometime when they’re all together we could surround them and hit them till they all surrender and agree to join our gang.’

‘Hmm, better,’ said Gavin, ‘but we might have to wait a long time. How would we know when they’re all together? How would we know that Stevens is with them?

Gordon hung his head, but at least it escaped a blow.

Green! Blue! Yellow! Purple! – Come on, speak up let’s hear your suggestions.’

Tommy Green put his idea that ‘Maybe we could organise something ourselves that would draw them all to one place and then when they’re all there we could surround them like Apaches attacking the circled waggons.’ Tommy made an Apache whooping noise waving his hand over his mouth.’

Gavin scrunched up his face. ‘We’re the cowboys, you idiot!’

But as Gavin raised his hand Billy ‘Blue’ distracted him, adding ‘We could get them all together if we set up a stand offering free juice and ice-cream in the playpark.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Purple. ‘We could put secret notes through their doors about free ice-cream and they’d all be out like a flash looking for it.’

Gavin’s arm was back by his side as he tried to engage his brain. He spotted a flaw in the plan. ‘Where would we get all this ice-cream and juice from? It’s the holidays isn’t it? They’re impe… impec… impetunias [it was a word he’d heard his dad use many times].’ The gang looked at him with blank expressions. ‘You morons, they’re all too hard-up aren’t they? We can’t even grab any dinner money off them, the kind of money we’d need to to buy the stuff in the first place!’

Gavin’s narrowing eyes rested on the last member of his gang, Yellow. Johnny Nisbet was to be the final victim of his inquisition.

‘Come on Yellow, there must be some activity going on inside that giant stupid dome of yours!’

Being his closest neighbour, and therefore someone who generally tried to stay indoors, hermit-like, when he knew Gavin was at large, Johnny suddenly had an idea.

‘Tony’s supposed to look after his wee brother when Wee Dougie’s allowed out to play. We could grab Dougie and hide him. Tony would have to come looking for him. Then one of us could tell Tony where to find him.’

‘Tell him where to find him? What’s the use of that? – Idiot!’ Johnny ducked as Gavin retracted his arm ready to strike, but still managed to quickly gabble ‘See when Tony comes to try and find the wee man our gang grab him and beat him up.’

Gavin let his arm fall to his side again and nodded thoughtfully.

‘Yes, that’s it. We lure Tony into an ambush. Capture him. Beat him up. Give him a proper doing. Teach him who’s boss.’ Gavin was almost licking his lips at the prospect. ‘That would be good. That would work. Teach him a lesson. Show him who’s the real gang leader round here.’

A broad malicious grin spread all over Gavin’s face. ‘Yes, that’s my best idea yet.’

In the boxroom Tony and Gerry were listening so intently to the gang’s conversation that when Tony heard them plan to abduct his little brother his body jerked, his stiffened-up leg moved involuntarily and he fell over.

‘What was that?’ shouted Gavin, his eyes darting around the living-room.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

While Tony and Gerry’s heads jerked around desperately looking for an escape route from the boxroom, Denis was slowly stepping backwards towards the living-room door, terror etched on his small white face.

‘Where are you going? What’s the matter with you?’

Gavin’s voice was loud, harsh, and suspicious.

Without thinking, Denis, almost fainting with fear, blurted ‘Mice! We’ve got mice.’

Screwing up his face Gavin came towards Denis, slowly and purposefully. While Yellow, Blue and Green held back, Black and White grinned, expecting to see Gavin make an example of little Purple.

‘Nobody in our gang is scared of a wee mouse,’ Gavin insisted, as he prodded Denis’s chest with a rigid index finger. As Gavin bunched his fingers into a fist a quailing Denis flinched, but Gavin merely tapped the terrorised boy playfully on the chin.

‘Right, aye, sure, that’s right, - not scared of mice, not in our gang,’ echoed Denis’s trembling voice.

In the boxroom Gerry had spotted a wooden hatch in the ceiling above the top step of the ladders. He was already silently climbing. On the top step he reached his hand up to the hatch and found it slid open easily to reveal access to the tenement loft space. Holding the edges of the ceiling entrance with both hands he hauled himself up, Tony following closely behind. The attic was cold and empty, smelling faintly damp and structured to the shape of the sloping roof. There was about four feet clearance in the central area but from there the roof sloped downwards until it met the walls at the eves. Once both Gerry and Tony were up and balancing on joists they slid the hatch cover back into place.

Grabbing Denis by the ear, Gavin opened the living-room door and pushed him out, round the lobby and, opening the door, shoved him into the boxroom.

Denis’s eyes boggled at seeing no-one there.

The other boys had followed Gavin, and stood behind him as he stared at the junk and listened carefully. But the only slight scratching noise he heard came from the ceiling overhead.

Then Tony’s foot slipped off the joist and there was a thump as it landed heavily on the ceiling plaster, though fortunately not quite heavily enough to actually tear a hole in it.

‘Big mice.’ Gavin sounded anxious.

‘Could be rats, big rats – or maybe bats,’ Denis improvised nervously.

The other members of the gang exchanged worried glances, decidedly uncomfortable. But Gavin noticed the roof hatch. ‘See that - You better get up there and investigate Denis.’

Seeing there was no alternative Denis cautiously ascended the ladder. At the top he stopped and looked down.

‘Go on then, what are you waiting for?’ Gavin snarled.

The other boys backed away.

Denis, stretched up an arm as far as possible. He was barely able to reach the hatch and slide it aside. There was a collective intake of breath from the other boys, fearing a big brown rat might jump down on top of them. But there was no rat, and even Gavin could see there was no chance of little Denis hauling himself up into the loft space. Denis quickly came back down the steps.

‘Get up there and see what’s happening,’ Gavin commanded, jerking his head towards the tall boys, Black and White. Charlie and Gordon nervously began the ascent. Both had a fear of heights, but their fear of having to confess their vertigo to Gavin and the rest of the gang proved even greater.

Tony and Gerry meantime moved as far away from the hatch as they could, crouching and crawling into the furthest away spaces. They found themselves underneath the small glass skylight giving easy access to the roof itself. As they heard Gavin commanding people up to the loft they decided there was no option. They pushed open the skylight and clambered onto the roof. It felt like climbing up to their gang-hut, at least until Tony found himself sitting, knees bent, looking around at the great glass cupola bulging upwards to one side of them, covering the central stairwell. The sky seemed suddenly vast and the chimney pots much bigger than he had ever imagined. Looking down he saw people moving around like tiny insects on the ground far below.

Gerry closed the skylight and they were left sitting together on the roof slates, open to the elements.

Like Tony, Gerry stared down, transfixed by the miniaturised street below. He shuffled his feet for a better look and the slate under his right shoe dislodged. And as it slid down the roof Gerry felt himself slowly follow it. Terror-struck, he stretched his arm backwards screaming ‘Tony!’

Tony reached an arm down just in time to wrap his hand around Gerry’s wrist. There was a muted crash as the slate slid down the shallow-pitched roof and lodged in the guttering, precariously balanced, a danger to the street below.

They lay there, Gerry lying prone against the slates, ashen-faced and quivering, Tony kept a tight grip on his wrist for what seemed an eternity. The sunlight on Gerry’s face gradually revived him until he finally found the courage to press the rubber soles of his shoes back against the slates again. Then, like a sclerotic crab, he moved himself slowly backwards, one limb at a time, up to the skylight beside Tony.

Black and White, creeping gingerly around the loft space, stopped when they thought they thought they heard something. It sounded like ‘Tony’, followed by a little bang. Speaking loudly to reassure themselves, Black said ‘Must be getting windy outside, making funny noises,’ and White likewise excused his unwillingness to contemplate opening the skylight on to the high roof by adding ‘Yes, could be the sounds like kids shouting down there in the street.’

At the skylight Gerry and Tony listened as the sound of Black and White’s muffled voices escaped through the tenement eves.

‘No, there’s nothing up here Gavin. Can’t see any mice…’

‘…or rats…’

‘…or bats.’

‘Just a lot of dust and dirt…’

‘…noises from the street…’

‘…and a funny smell.’

Stinky Stevens tensed. But the loud voices of Gavin’s men lessened as drew away from the skylight.

‘Oh, and here’s an old measuring tape and some lengths of wood for making stuff.’

Down below, Denis remembered how his mum had once had a man round who had talked like a machine, all about converting loft space into an extra room. He’d spent some time banging around in the boxroom. Of course, nothing had come of it. Something about not being able to help the cost of building materials.

‘That’s useless. Ok you two, come on down!’

Tony and Gerry heard Gavin’s yell quite clearly through the eaves, and listened to Black and White shouting to each other as they shuffled across the loft beams, making their way back to the hatch and quickly exiting. Then there was silence. The hatch had been closed over again.

Tony stretched over and tried to lift the skylight. But the skylight fitted flush and neat into framework and he couldn’t budge it. ‘Oh no, It must be designed only to be pushed open from underneath. We’re stuck, trapped here, hundreds of feet up and there’s no way down.’

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

But Drain Brain had recovered sufficiently from the shock of nearly falling off the roof that his mind was again in full working order.

‘Don’t panic Tony. Squirm about and you’ll end up sliding off the roof like I nearly did. Remember, people get out through the skylight so they surely have to be able to get back in again.’

Looking closely, Gerry identified marks left where a little handle had once been attached to the wooden frame surrounding the glass. The weather had rusted the screws and at some point it had broken off and disappeared. It certainly wasn’t there any more.

But Gerry had an impromptu solution. He reached his hand down into his pocket and pulled out a small penknife with a red plastic handle.

Tony was amazed. ‘Grief, you’ve still got it? The penknife gang was years ago.’

‘It still comes in useful sometimes.’

Gerry slipped the blade between the roof and the skylight’s wooden frame. He levered the skylight open just enough to get his fingertips on to the edge of the skylight’s frame and pull it open.

‘Well done, Gerry, that’s brilliant.’

Avoiding looking down at the street far below they manoeuvred themselves carefully and slipped back in through the skylight. In no time had made their way back down through the loft and back into the boxroom.

The boxroom door was open and the flat was silent.

‘They’ve gone to grab Dougie haven’t they?’ Stinky Stevie had tears in his eyes as he looked for hope in the Brain Drain’s frowning face. ‘How can we save him from these desperadoes?’

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

‘Where would Dougie be just now?’ was Gerry’s first question.

Tony wiped his sleeve across his eyes and said ‘He should be at the playground at the end of the street. He can go there without crossing the road. He knows he’s not allowed to cross the road by himself.’

‘And if the Rainbow gang got hold of him, where would they take him?’

‘Who knows? But remember, we heard them saying it’s me they’re really after. If I go looking for Dougie they’ll actually want me to find him. One of that will just tell me where to look.’

‘Ok, so you go to the playground first. If Dougie’s not there, you ask if anyone knows where he’s gone. Denis might know but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to get away from the Rainbow Gang. So you just start looking for Dougie and wait for one of that lot to point you in the direction of wherever they’re going to ambush you.’

Tony was dubious. ‘And meantime - you’ll get the Sudden Smells together, tell them what’s happening Gerry?’

‘That’s right. And if you can’t get a message to me to tell me about the ambush I’ll follow you discreetly at a distance.’

‘Like the detective gang?’

‘I’ve still got my magnifying glass.’

‘What if all their gang’s there waiting? It’ll be us against them. And Gavin’s twice our size.’

‘Let me worry about that Tony. I’ve got an idea.’

And with that they let themselves out of Denis’s flat, shutting the front door behind them. They took care not to be seen, leaving the tenement close separately. Tony walked quickly down the street, the way he did when his mum had sent him on an urgent errand, like when milk or bread had run out unexpectedly.

Gerry kept to the street’s shadows and eventually made his way up the drainpipe, along the wall, and up over the slates until he reached the Sudden Smells’ gang hut, where he knew he’d find at least a few of their members. A few minutes later he was off again.

At the playground Tony scanned the children. In the sunshine three little boys and two girls were rampaging around the swings, chutes, and roundabout while two mothers sat on the bare metal bench chatting together as they knitted.

‘Dougie!’ Tony called, though it was obvious he wasn’t there.

The children momentarily stopped playing to stare at him and resumed when one of the mothers said ‘Douglas was here earlier. He went off with some friends, older boys, big enough to keep an eye on him.’

So Tony followed the agreed protocol, turned back into the street, ostentatiously looking to his left and right, even screwing up his eyes and using his hand as a sunshade to stare purposefully up to the far end of the street. Charlie Blackley and Gordon Whitehouse seemed to emerge from nowhere to walk either side of him. Actually they’d been monitoring the playground, lying behind the low perimeter wall.

Charlie spoke first. ‘You’re that Tony Stevens aren’t you?’

And Gordon asked ‘You the leader of this new gang then?’

‘That’s it,’ agreed Tony, puffing his chest out.

‘Stinky Stevens, isn’t it?’

Tony was a little aggrieved that his secret name was clearly public knowledge, but happily conceded ‘Yes, we’re Stinky Stevens and the Sudden Smells.’

Charlie and Gordon burst out laughing, hopping around and holding their fingers to their noses.

‘Sudden Smells eh? The way you’re searching around it looks like you’ve lost something. Has something run away from all the stink?’

‘I’m looking after my wee brother Dougie, but I can’t find him.’

‘Dougie, eh? Would that be wee boy wearing red dungarees…’

‘…and a green pullover?’

‘Exactly. That’s him. Have you seen him?’

Charlie pointed across the road. Tony followed his finger to a battered pair of tall wooden entrance gates, supposedly barring the entrance to an access tunnel that passed through the bottom of the street’s tenements. It was common to find such access portals to small-scale workshops and factories lying behind tenements. In this particular case Tony knew it led to a dusty area at the back where there was a shabby old house, there even before the tenements were built, and having a small group of outbuildings in front, a hut, a shed and a lock-up. The two halves of the six foot high gates were held together by a loosely fixed chain leaving a small gap in the middle. The old bearded man who lived in the old house was seldom seen except when he or his stick-thin mournful-looking wife emerged to castigate children found trespassing on their territory. The boys knew them as ‘The Deadly Dunsires’. Tony’s mum had specifically forbidden him from ever going there.

‘He went that way Stinky.’ There was a sly grin on Charlie’s face.

Tony sighed and turned to cross the cobbled road while Charlie and Gordon ran off into a nearby close, smirking like they’d pulled off a fantastic practical joke.

From a tenement close further up the street Gerry was in position and watched as Tony trudged off across the road, like a condemned going to the scaffold. Tony stopped in front of the gates of The Deadly Dunsires place.

Standing close beside Gerry in the close, Sue Age pointed out ‘That makes sense. You know those old Dunsires are Gavin’s grandparents, his mum’s mum and dad.’ How did girls know these things? Gerry was constantly amazed at girls’ knowledge of peoples’ relationships.

The loose chain joining the two halves of the battered wooden gates left enough of a gap for a child to squeeze through. Tony paused only briefly before doing so. Once inside he stuck close to the tunnel’s wall to avoid being seen. Reaching the end of the short tunnel he ducked to the ground and surveyed the courtyard situation.

The ramshackle old house, its paint silently peeling, stood grim and eerie. Walls either side separated the courtyard from tenement backgreens. A big padlock ensured the lock-up, which was nearest the house, could not be entered. The shed, which was closest to Tony, was in a sad state of disrepair, its roof having collapsed and one side leant dangerously inwards. If Dougie was going to be here, Tony concluded he had to be in the small hut standing on a bare patch of dusty ground between the lock-up and the shed. He listened intently and thought he could hear the muffled sounds of voices. Suddenly there was a louder movement coming from the entrance gates behind him.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

For a moment he envisaged the Deadly Dunsires returning from a shopping expedition and attacking him with full cans of soup, beating him up with a bag of potatoes. But the gates weren’t opening. Squinting back down the entrance tunnel he saw the gleaming eyes and maniacal faces of Charlie and Gordon, who had climbed through the gap and were coming towards him with sticks in their hands.

‘Gotcha now, Smelly Tony’, roared the deadly duo.

This clearly provided some kind of clarion call because as he turned to run away the hut door in front of Tony was thrown open and the near giant that was Gavin charged out, his eyes bulging, arms flailing like a demented boxer, and wailing ‘Now men - attack, attack - pulverise him!’ And then came the rest of the Rainbow gang, trooping behind him, spilling out of the hut a little more sheepishly.

Wee Dougie was there too. He was smiling. He wasn’t hurt. He had no idea what was going on except that he had been lucky enough for some of the bigger boys to want to include him in their game. Tony was surrounded. Things didn’t look good.

A high-pitched voice rang out across the courtyard.

‘Come on Dougie, time to go home!’

Everyone stopped and stood stock still. They could only watch as three girls, Susan, Honey, and Stella, jumped through the gap in the front gates and ran forward to make a fuss of Wee Dougie, totally ignoring all the other boys. They took the little chap by the hand as they led him away, and out through the gap at the entrance gates. The last to disappear, Stella, winked at Tony as she left.

But as soon as Sue Age, Hon King, and Stellar Whiff were gone Gavin yelled ‘We’ve got him now!’ and the Rainbow Gang was quickly closing in again on Tony.

Suddenly, the war cry “Smelly, smelly, sudden smelly” rent the air and other Sudden Smells - Arty Farty, Pun Gent, and Rot and Egg – were pouring through the entrance gates carrying water pistols and other weapons. In an instant they had grabbed Charlie and Gordon, disarmed them, and stuffed something down their shirts. The smell was instantly overpowering – stink bombs.

Gavin’s advance was repulsed too, stopped dead in its tracks as a stream of water hit him squarely in the back of the head. The water pistol gang lived again. Drain Brain had gained access to the backgreen next door, attached to the close which included the home of the Watt family. And, along with Wattie Niff and Mal O’Dorous, Drain Brain had scaled the dividing wall between it and the courtyard. It was the old attack from the rear tactic of their soldiering years.

And Tony could see it wasn’t just plain water the gang was firing, it was coloured stuff. Drain Brain had found a use for the blocks of colour from the watercolour set he’d been given for his birthday and never used. And he had clearly worked out who to direct the gang’s super-soaker firepower at. As the pistols squirted, Gavin found himself attacked from behind as well as in front and was soon drenched in watery red paint. As he stopped to examine the damage a couple of accurately delivered ripe red tomatoes burst on his forehead. Reg and Eddie - Rot and Egg – jumped for joy at finally being able to make proper use of stuff from their dad’s shop. But Gavin himself was near to tears. The red skins of squashed tomatoes slid in their juice down his face. He stared in despair at his clothes, wringing wet in red paint.

‘Well, you wanted to be Red and you really are Red now,’ jeered Gerry.

As Rot and Egg raised hands re-filled with tomatoes and rotten eggs Tommy Green, Johnny ‘Yellow’ Nisbet, and Billy ‘Blue Thompson instantly reached for the sky, holding up both hands in surrender, the way they’d learned to do the year of the wartime commandos gang. And, though the Sudden Smells complained heartily, Tony ordered them not to loose off their water-paint pistols and other weapons at the surrendering enemy. After they’d agreed to join the Sudden Smells Gerry allowed the three vanquished enemies to run away down the tunnel and quickly out through the gap in the entrance gates.

Charlie and Gordon struggled out after them, discharging an atrocious stink seemingly indicative of serious toileting mishaps.

The Sudden Smells even permitted Gavin to scramble out behind the malodourous duo, soaked in red dripping paint, and utterly humiliated. Tony called after him ‘You better leave us alone in future Gavin. We outnumber you. You can’t beat us when we’re all together. Pick on any one of us and it will be all of us that come to get you!’

Having taken Wee Dougie home the girls re-joined the victors, and Tony and Gerry led all the Sudden Smells in joyful shouts of ‘Sudden Smells forever’, making a noise which echoed loudly in the tunnel. In celebration they fired their water pistols in the air, staining the tunnel roof red.

Only then did a final small figure emerge, cautious and forlorn, from the hut. It was Purple, Denis.

Stinky Stevens rummaged in the top pocket of his jacket and found the best of his pin sword creations, with lots of coloured bits, the only one which he’d managed to secrete and retain following the debacle of his military discharge and ritual stripping off of his badges. He presented it to Denis, commending him to the gathering as ‘the great King Pong, surely the most expert double agent the spies gang ever produced’. Denis nodded in acknowledgment of the Sudden Smells’ rousing applause and quietly muttered ‘Hmm, nifty’.

It was only as the whoops and clapping died away that Drain Brain spotted that the door of the ramshackle house had opened and saw the Deadly Dunsires charging towards them armed with belts and brooms.

Not wishing their parents to know they had trespassed into forbidden Deadly Dunsires territory the Sudden Smells instinctively and unanimously decided that before they were recognised by the Dunsires discretion would undoubtedly be the better part of valour. They scampered as fast as possible towards the gates and their route back out to the street. As a rear guard action Drain Brain released one last stink bomb, the shock of which held the elderly couple at bay, coughing and spluttering, until all the children had managed to escape.

As they jogged homeward together, Gerry shouted ‘The Sudden Smells were epic today Tony, but next summer, how about we try some of the girls’ ideas?’

‘What ideas?’

‘Well Sue’s keen on a scrap-swapping book club gang. Honey thinks we could have a painting and making things gang. We could all work together sewing patches of material together and so on. And Stella wants the gang-hut to be a hospital instead of a spaceship. She wants the gang to play doctors and nurses.’

‘How does that work?’ asked Tony, nonplussed.

#Reekie Revelator #edinburgh #1970s #children #scotland #short story

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id-antonettereyes · 5 years

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Greater Heights: Climbing Mount Kinabalu, The Roof of Malay Archipelago

Standing at Low’s Peak, Mount Kinabalu (Gunung Kinabalu), the most dramatic feature in Sabah and the tallest peak between the Himalayas & New Guinea.

Traveling to Borneo for a month obviously gave me the idea of climbing Mt. Kinabalu but due to logistical hindrances, I wasn’t sure that it would be possible. But as I saw the mountain from the plane, I was like, “I want to be there, I need to be there.”

Judging from the photos I saw online, it seems like Mt. Kinabalu would be a different experience for me compared to other mountains I’ve climbed before. Also, I haven’t had any experience being in an altitude more than 3,000 meters.

When I did my research, I found out that Sabah Parks only issue 185 climb permits per day so one has to book early to avoid disappointment. I’m glad that even with my late inquiry, at June 1, I was able to get a slot from River Junkie, a local travel agency who efficiently made all the arrangements for the entire Gunung Kinabalu trip.

DAY 1

River Junkie’s van picked me up at Jesselton Residences at 6:45AM, we started the two-hour ride going to Kinabalu National Park.

After checking our passports, completing registration, and picking up our packed lunch, we had a short ride to Timpohon Gate which is the starting and ending points for all climbers at 1,866masl. We started the 6-kilometer initial trek at 9:30 AM.

The trail is well defined and maintained and the assault consists of endless rough, uneven, staircase climbing.

At Layang Layang Shelter (at 2,702masl), many hikers will notice the effects of the decreased air pressure. Rapid heart rate and shortness of breath are signs of trekking in thin air.

Some of the hikers who accompanied me decided to go down due to altitude sickness before reaching the base camp.

After six-kilometer assault through lowland rain forest to montane forest, and then cloud forest, I reached the Panalaban Base Kamp at 2:40PM in a sub-alpine meadow terrain.

There are several dormitory buildings in the area with hot showers, toilets, cooked food and basic sharing rooms with bunk beds.

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I stayed at Pendant Hut where Via Ferrata climbers have their seminar; while the others from our tour group stayed in Laban Rata.

Knowing that we were expected to get up by 2AM, I tried my best to sleep right after the dinner but because of altitude insomnia, I was still up at 12:30AM and gave up on any idea of getting a good night’s sleep.

DAY 2

For the second part of this climb, we started our hike to summit at 2:45AM. It was raining as we started up endless flights of steps with some ladders and ropes. The organizers told us that we’d hike for an hour and attain a higher elevation to see if the rain might clear. They told us that if the rain continued, they would require us to turn back because attempting the summit in a storm was not safe. Needless to say, we were quite anxious about the possibility of continuing rain, as there was no possibility of refund of the tour fees even if we had to turn back because of weather.

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Above Laban Rata the vegetation disappears. The next stage of the climb is an open trail over a massive bare granite slab. Fortunately the rain stopped and was replaced by dense fog. As we ascended the granite, it became very cold with a strong wind on our way up to the summit. The fog obstructed visibility even with my head torch on.

The final ascent was 100 meters of scrambling over loose rocks and large boulders before reaching Low's Peak.

At 4:45am, after the 8.5 kilometre (5.25 miles) trek to the top, I was finally at the majestic 4,095m (13,435 feet above sea level) summit of Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain between the Himalayas and New Guinea. Unfortunately, it was still night!

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I reached the summit an hour earlier than the recommended time because of my fast pace.

As a result, I waited shivering in the cold for the sunrise. I only had a few moments to savor the sunrise on the summit since I had to arrive at the Low’s Peak Circuit’s meeting point before 6:30AM.

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The stunning scenery along the summit trail from Low’s Peak.

Through the Mountain Torq organization, I got to experience the world’s highest via ferrata at 3,776 meters above sea level.

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“Via ferrata” is a term little known outside of the European Alps. It means “iron path” in Italian and describes an engineered route of steel cables and iron rungs and sometimes ladders and bridges that provide access to dangerous routes with increased safety. I started the LPC at 6:45AM and finished the 1.1kilometer via ferrata LPC route in two hours, at 8:50AM.

The end-point of Low’s Peak Circuit is Walk the Torq, so technically, I experienced both trail of via ferrata! To me, it was a vertical playground. The experience of crossing the mountain via ferrata will definitely provide memories for years to come.

I don’t have a great fear of heights so I found the LPC to be exciting. Others might experience it as nerve-wrecking or frightening as the steel cable crosses sheer cliffs with thousand meter plunges to the valley below.

After traverse-descent from the summit via ferrata, II still had 700 meters to go before reaching the Pendant Hunt to get my well-deserved breakfast.

I checked-out at Pendant Hut at 11:00 AM and reached Timpohon Gate at 1:30. That concludes my Mt. Kinabalu journey! I will post a separate blog about Via Ferrata Low’s Peak Circuit soon.

The entire trip, from 6-km steep assault from Timpohon Gate to sumptuous dinner and cozy accommodation at Panalaban Base Camp, reaching Low’s Peak and the descent from the summit is simply breathtaking. The barren rock formations on a clear day above the clouds is magical. Defying gravity Via Ferrata Low’s Peak Circuit is indeed the highlight! and I’m glad I did it. Maraming salamat, Gunung Kinabalu!

#hiking #mountains #mountain #mountkinabalu #viaferrata #adventure #mountaineer #mountaineering

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floresgavriil-blog · 5 years

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Singapore today is known as one of the best cities in the world to stopover en route to wherever you are going on your journey. Singapore Changi Airport is one of the world’s busiest airports, and the largest in Southeast Asia, as well as being rated the best airport in the world seven times in a row. With all the accolades it’s only a matter of time until you head over to the region and find yourself on a Singapore stopover and need some things to do.

Stopovers for some can be boring if you find yourself stuck on the floor of a terminal trying to connect to WiFi or craving a hot shower and a meal. Stopping over in Singapore has never looked so good especially when there are exceptions to Visa’s required to enter the country.

For most nationalities, all you need to enter is a passport with six or more months remaining, money that will last your stay, and a confirmed ticket to your next destination.

Singapore layovers for up to 30 days are Visa-free but be sure to check with your government website prior to entering Singapore as passports from country to country have different rules and regulations.

Things to do on a 24 hour Singapore Stopover

1. Eat Chilli Crab

Singapore’s famous chilli crab

If you only have 24 hours in Singapore you need to at least try the food! Without a doubt, Singaporean is my favorite food while traveling in Asia. There are a lot of meals to choose from but one stands out from the rest and that’s Singapore Chilli Crab.

Eating a crab can be one of the messiest things you can do food related so be prepared to make a mess. However the dribbling tomato, chilli and basil sauce down your shirt is so worth it.

Singapore Chilli Crab in most places is very expensive but for a cheaper meal of the exact same quality, head to Chinatown where most restaurants and vendors will serve you up a freshly cooked crab for around 20 Singapore Dollars (SGD or S$). Expect to pay S$100 plus in Boat Quay or downtown Singapore.

2. Explore Chinatown

After finishing a delicious chilli crab, keep exploring Chinatown as there are plenty of things to do in Singapore here. The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple tops the list and hence the name, this temple is said to hold one of the Buddha’s teeth in this massive, architectural masterpiece rising to five stories high.

Chinatown also has the cheapest food and drink anywhere in Singapore so if you are keen on local cuisine, Chinatown is your best bet.

Pretty much every street within Chinatown has some sort of restaurant, cafe or street vendor selling delicious local cuisines such as chilli crab, papaya salads, or Singapore’s famous runny egg and toast.

Getting to know Singapore’s past can be done by visiting Chinatown. Baba House is a museum in Singapore and shows just what the life of the Peranakan culture used to be and what it is still like.

The Peranakan people are descendants or were related to families with an immigrant who then went on to marry a local Malayan. The Peranakan culture is unique as the local Malaya women would create a whole new set of traditions.

3. Walk around Mount Faber Park & Southern Ridges

Exploring a jungle in Singapore’s city center

Mount Faber Park & Southern Ridges would have to be one of the most chilled out places in Singapore. It has the most beautiful natural corridors complete with tropical rainforests, monkeys and exceptional views of Sentosa Island and the distant Singapore skyline.

The whole Southern Ridges area from Mount Faber Park to Kent Ridge Park are not often busy places so expect to have the gardens to yourself. My favorite thing to do is find a giant fan-palm to sit under and chill out Singapore style.

Singapore is known for some very unique bridges including that of Henderson Waves, a bridge-shaped into a wooden wave which connects Mount Faber Park to neighboring Telok Blangah Hill Park.

Before development and the tourism boom began in Singapore, places like Kent Ridge and Mount Faber were culturally rich with kampong (traditional houses) and a life relatively untouched until the turning of the tide.

4. Cycle Pulau Ubin Island

Plenty of bikes to choose from on Pulau Ubin Island

Pulau Ubin Island is my number one must do while in Singapore. Singapore isn’t a big country but getting to Pulau Ubin can be a bit of a mission especially if you are based in the downtown Quays area.

I chose to take the bus all the way across Singapore and alight at Changi Village (not Changi Airport) the bus/ train section takes around one hour.

From Changi Village, you’ll need to walk to the coast and through an undercover food market which is ideal to fuel up on food before boarding a bum-boat to Pulau Ubin Island at Changi Point Terminal.

A ticket one-way costs under S$3 which can be bought when on the boat or at the boat dock. The boat ride takes around 10 to 15 minutes each way and is quite scenic as Pulau Ubin Island sits in the Strait of Johor.

Pulau Ubin Island is a step back in time and reflects what Singapore used to look like, long before industrial development. Today, Pulau Ubin might seem a bit ‘touristy’ with bike hire stalls flocking the main street but there is more to the island that definitely needs to be put on your list of things to do in Singapore.

Hiring a bicycle on Pulau Ubin Island

To best see the island you’ll need to hire a bicycle which will cost anywhere between S$10 and S$20. Don’t be coaxed into paying more as a large proportion of the bicycles breaks cease to work. I was told that it’s best to ride anti-clockwise around the island.

As you cycle from one end of the island to the other, there are remnants of old Singapore with kampongs scattered around. A kampong is a hut generally built on stilts to avoid water rising in the monsoon season and allow air to ventilate the hut when humidity skyrockets.

Along with the kampongs, the island is known for its variety of wildlife especially monkeys and exotic bird species fluttering throughout the thick rainforest.

How Singapore used to be.

At the eastern end of the island, the Chek Jawa Wetlands is worth paying a visit for bird sightings and one of the highest points on the island for rather good views of Pulau Ubin Island.

Getting back to the mainland of Singapore is easy; just return your bike where you hired it from and head for the one and only dock adjacent to the main street to board a bum-boat.

5. Explore Gardens by the Bay at Night

One of the very best things you can do on a Singapore stopover is visit Gardens By the Bay. Most cities at night are spectacular if you know where to go, and Singapore is no different. Many people are mesmerized by bright lights and tall buildings, but in Singapore, it’s also easy to be impressed by the Gardens by the Bay.

Gardens by the Bay are a year-round destination and the top thing to see and photograph in Singapore. They are accessible during the day, but nighttime is when they really come alive.

The architects of Gardens by the Bay named a series of skeleton looking trees called ‘SuperTrees.’ Each unique tree is sculpted from metal and covered from roots to the canopy with lights that change color every few minutes.

To get exceptional views of the SuperTrees, there are a few spots to check out such as the Singapore Flyer, an extremely large Ferris wheel. The Singapore Flyer goes so high those not only are the SuperTrees down below easy to see, lights from Indonesia and Malaysia become visible which is seriously mind-blowing!

6. Take in the Views from Marina Bay Sands

Marina Bay Sands is one of, if not the most architecturally stunning and weird hotels on earth.

Marina Bay Sands has to be seen to be believed and it’s not hard to see in Singapore. From the ground, take a walk from Fullerton Road past the iconic Merlion along the edges Marina Bay.

The best time to do so is during the night as the hotel shows off an incredible display of dazzling lights and lasers along with water fountains that appear miraculously out of Marina Bay in a breathtaking display of choreography.

At the top of Marina Bay Sands, there is an infinity pool that gives the impression of being one with the city skyline but don’t look down, it’s seriously high up.

The only way you can access the infinity pool is by being a guest of the hotel. If you are not one of the lucky bunch that gets to stay at the Marina Bay Sands there is another section which you can access, delivering views of Marina Bay, The Singapore Flyer, SuperTrees and the Singapore skyline. The best time to go onto the viewing deck is at night.

Inside the Cloud Forest

7. Chill out in Sentosa

Henderson Waves bridge

Sentosa Island is very much unlike the rest of Singapore and the complete opposite of Pulau Ubin Island. Sentosa is designed to be a little piece of paradise amongst the vibrant city of Singapore, a place close to downtown that is accessible for locals and international visitors.

Sentosa Island is the tourism hotspot in Singapore with everything from a world-class golf course, Universal Studios, tropically styled beach to massive shopping centers.

Sentosa Island is more of a playground for fine dining, drinking, and just having a whole lot of fun and there is something for everyone.

It may be hard to find a piece of the old Singapore on the island but a few remaining locations will ensure you don’t become completely overwhelmed by towering roller coasters and wave pools.

The Malaysian Street Food Hawker Centre will give you traditional Singaporean dishes as well as a mix of Malaysian goodness.

If Sentosa becomes a bit much, take the cable car to Mount Faber Park on a scenic 10 to 15-minute ride. One way costs under S$10 Singapore dollars.

8. Little India and Kampong Glam

Singapore’s SuperTrees were made to signify the multicultural nation that the country holds so dearly and Little India is a reflection of just how everyone gets along with one another despite cultural differences.

As the name suggests, Little India is one of Singapore’s most colorful suburbs for all things food, people and culture along with a series of vibrantly painted houses. Little India is a piece of traditional India tucked away from the futuristic feels of Singapore.

It’s here that you can expect the people, food, and culture of this place to thrive and be everything India is with marigold’s sold in excessive amounts to fragrant wafts from nearby wholesale markets.

The Tekka Centre Wet Market is where you will find a constant bartering and trading of fresh goods, spices and things you would ever imagine. Tekka Centre is certain to be a rush and you won’t necessarily find a cooked meal here instead walk or cycle to Dunlop Street for a guaranteed meal full of chilies and spice!

Kampong Glam is a hotspot for multiculturalism where everything seems to be happening right before your eyes. Kampong Glam is a short but humid walk across Rochor Canal and you hit Kampong Glam once you see the magnificent Sultan Mosque, dating back to the early 1900s.

Before you leave Kampong Glam, Kuan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple is a must see where pilgrims of Hindu faith ascend to be shrouded by the intense aromatic smells of incense all while aiming to get a rub of the bronzed Buddha’s belly.

9. Explore Boat Quay and Clarke Quay

Singapore has three quay spots to visit along the Singapore River with Boat Quay and Clarke Quay being the two must-sees. Boat Quay is the closest to Marina Bay with Clarke Quay a few minutes’ walk west of Boat Quay.

During my stay in Singapore, I chose to stay in Boat Quay given its close vicinity to pretty much everything in Singapore and it was a good choice. At Boat Quay, you’ll find many riverside restaurants, ferry terminals, and bars where the beer and Singapore Sling’s are anything but cheap.

From Boat Quay, everything is walking distance or if you prefer to catch a train, head to Clarke Quay Metro for access to Sentosa Island, Changi Island or Marina Bay.

Clarke Quay is a bit outdated with its 80’s style hotels and outdoor spaces but Clarke Quay is all about food and nightlife. Clarke Quay is a great place to relax but the nights often get busy so look at heading to Chinatown for a chance at getting a seat for dinner and drinks.

10. Fort Canning Park

Fort Canning Park and Raffles Terrace

Within walking distance from Clarke and Boat Quay’s, Fort Canning Park is a tropical haven for everything natural so expect to find ancient trees, giant fan-palms and vines reaching to the sky.

Fort Canning Park has a darker side despite its sheer beauty. During World War II, Singapore was seen as a strategic place to obtain and the defense of Singapore was crucial. Scattered throughout the park are cannons and other weapons used during these dark days.

Getting around Fort Canning Park is simple, with a few concrete paths zig-zagging throughout the lush space. At the northern end of the park is Singapore’s National Museum.

11. Visit the Asian Civilisation Museum

If you are near Clarke or Boat Quay, cross one of the bridges over the Singapore River to the Asian Civilisation Museum for insight not only into Singapore’s heritage, the museum offers vast collections of Asian artifacts from present times to thousands of years ago.

12. Explore Changi

Getting to Pulau Ubin is easy from Changi Village

Not all Singapore stopovers are lengthy so why not go for something super close to the international airport? Changi or Changi Village is an industrial suburb of Singapore which hugs a section of coast along the Strait of Johor.

Changi Village is nothing like downtown Singapore. Instead, you will find easier access to Pulau Ubin Island and a food center or “hawker” which serves some top quality Hainanese duck and rice.

Right near Changi International is the Changi Prison Museum and Chapel dedicated to telling the story of those fighting during WWII and how the prisoners of war survived the hardship.

13. Venture Around Changi Airport

Not all stopovers in Singapore are lengthy and many times you may not be able to leave the airport. The good news is that Singapore Changi International Airport happens to be the best airport in the world so don’t worry, you will get a taste of Singapore without ever having left the terminal!

Changi International is ridiculously big so the chances of seeing everything will be near impossible. A recent new addition to the airport’s interior includes a waterfall that cascades from the roof while lush gardens reach high to the ceiling of the glass roof.

Over the past couple of years, I have ventured to quite a few international airports and not being able to leave them and experience what lay outside of its doors really gets me down. To get over this I allocate S$20 of cash into the local currency so I can spend it on the food of the local cuisine. This way I will be able to get a taste of what the country would be like and gives me the motivation to start planning future trips to that destination. See more long haul flight tips here!

14. Enjoy Singapore’s Best Eats

Secretly, I am a big foodie and sampling local cuisines (in large proportions) is my hidden talent. Singaporean food tops the list for me anywhere in Asia despite it being one of the most expensive countries to get a meal. Howver a meal in Singapore can be as expensive or cheap as you want it to be. It’s definitely possible to spend less than S$5 if you know the right spot.

The most expensive places to get a meal in Singapore are downtown Singapore, Sentosa Island, Mount Faber, Clarke and Boat Quays and Marina Bay Sands so expect to pay over S$20 for a starter meal and upwards of S$30 for a main course.

Chinatown, Little India, Changi Village, Pulau Ubin Island and Kampong Glam are your best bets for street food like Hainanese duck and chilli crab.

You have probably heard of the famous Singapore Sling, a cocktail invented at the Raffles Hotel. The Singapore Sling is a mix of liqueurs and spirits that taste a bit like cough medicine; unfortunately you won’t find many places that sell this cocktail cheaply apart from corner stores.

Anywhere in Singapore, expect to pay S$20 or more for the Singapore Sling otherwise a corner store is more reasonably priced at S$7 (it comes in a bottle).

Scattered throughout Singapore are places called ‘Hawker centers’ that are renowned for serving top quality street food for a very cheap price. That’s where the above two photos were taken.

Food ranges from Indian, Malaysian, and Singaporean to Thai, generally open all day long. The best Hawker Centers are located in Changi Village near the ferry terminal and at the entrance to Sentosa Island near the cable cars.

15. Relax at Telunas Resort

Telunas Private Resort isn’t really an option for those with only 24 hours in Singapore, but rather for those on a long layover in Singapore. Natasha and Cameron had a six-day layover in Singapore and chose to spend for of those at Telunas, an exclusive beach resort that is a two-hour boat ride away from Singapore – technically in Indonesia.

Telunas is a true island eco getaway where those can come and relax away from the city staying in beautiful overwater bungalows. At Telunas Private Island there is no WiFi anywhere on the property and no 3G signal. So come with a good book in hand and get ready to relax! It’s hard to paint the true picture in just this paragraph, so you can read the full review and see the video here!

Timing your Singapore stopover

With Singapore being a small country with efficient modes of transport you’ll be able to get from the airport to Marina Bay in 20 to 30 minutes via taxi. Uber and taxis are an affordable way to get around, but the metro and buses are also fantastic.

Here are my personal things to do in Singapore recommendations if you have 24 hours or less.

Three full hours in Singapore city (six hours of layover time):

Marina Bay Sands

Chinatown

Tooth Relic Temple

Six full hours in Singapore (nine hours of layover time):

Marina Bay Sands

Gardens By the Bay

Chinatown

Little India

10 full hours in Singapore (12 hours of layover time):

Pulau Ubin Island

Changi Village

Mount Faber Park

Boat Quay

Gardens By the Bay

24 hours in Singapore

You could viably fit everything on this list in if you hustle your way around the city and try to fit as much in as you can, but that can be exhausting, so consider what interests you the most before doing that. We find that hitting less places for a longer amount of time keeps us happier than running ourselves ragged around a destination.

When is the Best time to Travel to Singapore?

Singapore’s has two kinds of weather; very humid or monsoonal rains.

Mornings in Singapore are the best before the sun rises and the humidity skyrockets. Any time after that, air conditioning will be your best friend. If you’re ever feeling hot just duck into one of the many shopping malls.

Anywhere from midday onwards, storms form and bring torrential rain to the city and generally will cool everything right down. One minute it can be clear blue sky, the heavens will have opened.

Luggage Storage for your Singapore layover

It is possible to leave your luggage in storage while you go enjoy the city. this is much more enjoyable than lugging it around with you if you don’t have a hotel for the night.

All terminals in Singapore Changi airport have baggage storage 24 hours a day. Prices range from S$5-S$20, see all the details here.

Getting Around Singapore on your layover

Getting into the city is very straightforward once exiting Changi International.

Taxis are frequently available 24 hours of the day outside of the international terminal so getting a ride is always simple task. Expect to pay upwards of S$20 to Clarke or Boat Quay.

Trains frequently depart the international terminal and head everywhere around Singapore. Trains are much cheaper than taxis and are clean, safe, and efficient. Look for signs leading to METRO.

Once you are out of the airport, getting around is very easy with bicycles readily available but expect to be lathered in sweat after a ride, humidity often soars above 80% all day, every day.

METRO stations are everywhere in Singapore meaning you can get wherever you need without spending too much money. If you plan on using buses and trains, purchase an EZ link card which will enable you to use the card on both buses and trains with ease.

THANKS FOR READING!

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About the Author

Calumn Hockey

G’day! My name is Calumn Hockey and I am a keen adventurer, traveler, and photographer from Bowraville, Australia. I have a huge passion for the mountains of the Himalaya in Nepal to the Southern Alps of New Zealand while being one who loves to become immersed in local culture. Over the past few years, I have been fortunate enough to travel to some pretty epic locations such as Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Nepal, and South East Asia. I might not have a high tally of countries under my belt but there is nothing better than exploring somewhere you love in depth and becoming connected with the sights and sounds. Keen to follow my adventures? Follow me on @CalumnHockey

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