The tale of a perfectly wasted Sunday
I wish I was a morning person. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I AM a morning person, I just hate waking up. The unstrained silence of the first few hours after the sun rises fit in perfectly with my view of how the world should exist. I used to work Security in college, midnight to 8 a.m. I was okay with the difficult hours, because I got to see the sun rise without having to rise myself. People watching is gratifying in the morning; you get to see people as they really are, before we don the masks that accumulating daylight hours force on us. We're vulnerable and completely ourselves.
That said, I woke up at the crack of noon today. I had risen at 9:30 to take my morning leak and didn't even have to trudge to the bathroom. My eyes were fully open under their own free will; they did not need their usual coercing or prying. "I'm awake," they seemed to say. I was being argumentative this morning, however, and insisted that we go back to sleep. My eyes demanded that we read for a bit. I acquiesced, but then laid down the smack two pages after my marked place in "Kavalier and Clay". Score one for the home team!
I awoke again at noon to my stepdad knocking on my door, informing me that I had an incoming phone call. I was dressed in my black sweats and my white "We don't drink as much as we think we do" t-shirt, so it appeared that I had been up since I had evacuated my bladder earlier that morning. A clever ruse, I must say.
It was my best high-school friend Nels, calling me on his way to work to relieve the boredom of his commute. We chatted for 15 or so minutes, filling each other in on the adventures (or lack thereof) that we had had in the past week. He and I share the idea that if something bad happens to us, it'll at least make a good story. Here's an example:
It was the first camping trip in the Spring of my, let's say, Freshman year in High School. He is a year younger than me. We and a couple of friends were breaking free from our parental bonds and relishing in the fact that we were at last deemed old enough to go camping by ourselves. This may seem like a young age, or it might not, but you have to remember that we were all born and raised in Northern Minnesota. Camping was second nature to us.
Anyway, that night Nels decided to fry up some potatoes. He has always had an interest in cooking, and is now a professional chef at Bucco di Beppo in the Twin Cities, Le Courdon Bleu certified. He's good at what he does. This, however, was before his skill had caught up with his passion. He filled his pan with oil and set it on the grill over the fire to heat while he cut and seasoned the potatoes. I was keeping an eye on the oil. It intrigued me the way the flame began to dance over surface, like it was performing it's own unchoreographed version of Swan Lake for my viewing pleasure. I pointed this out to Nels, and he agreed that it was, indeed, awesome and we leaned our heads in for a closer look. We lost interest after about a minute and pulled back. In that instant, the pan erupted into a tower of flames that was, I kid you not, 6 feet high. He and I stood there, dumbstruck by the apparently benign hand that had pulled us away at the exact right moment. Someone came running in from the neighboring campsite and threw the lid on the pan, stifling the oil fire in the recommended fashion. He was vaguely familiar as the older brother of one of my younger brother's friends, and his quick thinking that night saved the outspread branches of the towering pines. After the ordeal, I looked at Nels and said "Well, now we have a story about that." I knew he was thinking the same thing.
Anyway, he called to inform me that he and his fiance had gotten a new puppy. They had recently put their 7 yr. old golden retriever, Remington (Remy for short), to sleep. He had sever hip displacia (sp?) and was growing steadily more beligerent toward strangers. The new pup was a black lab named Winchester (Winnie for short), in remembrance of the beloved Remington. He proudly told me that, even though the pup was only 8 weeks old, they had already fairly housebroken her. He related that when Winnie had to pee, she would run (plop, considering her size) down the stairs and bark at the door. He wondered who was really being trained, the dog or himself, when he related how just that morning, as he was sitting at his computer, the dog ran hurriedly down the stairs. He ingnored it. Winnie came back up the stairs, barked, and barrelled again down the stairs. Still, he ingored the plea. Winnie came trumping back up the stairs and promptly began peeing on the carpet. "Well," she seemed to say, "I warned you twice."
After hanging up with Nels, I read "Kavalier and Clay" for a bit, ate a few cookies, and played Tiger Woods Golf. I know, exciting you thinkg, but I live in a town with a population of 623, and this is what I do.