After the beach closed when the sun started to go down, we headed on over to a wings place. I thought we were gonna eat wings, which I wasn't opposed to, but apparently we were just there to take a picture on the dock. I definitely took Gera's phone and snapchatted our boss from work. We tried to get into a nature reserve, but it was locked, and my plan of just driving in and spending the night was vetoed because Taylor had to get home and feed her dogs. We decided to go to a little Taco & Ice Cream shack on the side of the road. They had these fire pits outside but ours was broken, so I just burned whatever paper was in my pockets. It turns out all I had were those 'do not consume' bags that you find inside new coats. I set them on fire. I think they must've been bad for the environment because Karma happened pretty soon after. I saw a 7-11 next door, so I walked through an empty parking lot, over a little wall, and into the 7-11 to buy two $5 scratch-off tickets, that won me zero dollars. I went to a sketchy bathroom that was only accessible from the shadowy back entrance and read some graffiti slandering Jeb Bush. I was scared of this sketchy bathroom, so I ran back to the little wall, climbed back over, started running, and immediately tripped in the dark parking lot. I looked like a rocking horse because I fell forward onto my hands, and used the momentum forward to get right back up and keep running toward my friends. They said they didn't see me fall but heard it. I was in a lot of pain and both knees and both palms were bleeding. I went up to the lady at the Taco & Ice Cream shack and said, "I got in a fist fight with the ground... And the ground won. Can I have some band-aids?" She was confused so I showed her my bloody palms and she gave me a few band aids.
The next stop on our list was supposed to be some Disney adventure nature trail thing that I'd never heard of, but Taylor's phobia of deer kept us from going there, so we went to the Grand Floridian instead. I'm not sure why we went exactly, but I do know that I spoke with an English accent and called Gera my 'man servant' several times, in order to fit in with the crowd. We couldn't decide where to eat, so we drove out to downtown Disney and busted a few moves in the crowd. I'll be honest: I whipped like 17 times and my friends cringed. We wound up at this restaurant called Portabellos that was Italian, expensive, and delicious. At this point, my left wrist was in real pain from my little fall. We walk in and there's a big bowl of toothpicks. "Do you think these are free?" I asked Gera. He said yeah, so I stuffed a couple in my pocket. We walked to the rear of the restaurant, where the bathrooms were, and I saw, on a table that was about to be bussed: two fresh, untouched cannolis. I went to the bathroom and Gera and I knew what had to happen. We walked out of the bathroom, Gera stood in front of me as I took one of my toothpicks, inserted it into the cannoli, palmed the cannoli, and walked out of the restaurant. I can't tell you whether or not I ate it, but I can tell you it tasted like pumpkin. We all sat at a table and I ordered the milk-braised pork shoulder. It was deliciously expensive. Gera told the waitress it was my birthday so they brought me out a chocolate cupcake, and in an effort to share it with my friends, I accidentally dropped a piece of chocolate on Gera's lap. בחושה עם שוקולד. Who cares, I already had eaten my desert. We left Portabellos, I did some mean whips in downtown Disney, and I went home.
The next week of school was lame. I tried to get my mom to take me to the doctor to get my wrist checked out, but she asked dad if they would just tell her it was a sprain, NOT THAT MY DAD IS A ORTHOPEDIC DOCTOR. I ended up just never seeing a doctor about it, but so life goes. The weekend, however, was once again wild. On Friday night, Jake Shepherd, who was still in town somehow, asked me to go swing dancing with him, Drew, and Ben Blakeley. I was worried about my wrist being still sprained, but it was actually fun and pretty easy. Jake Shep taught me a variety of moves, but then he went off and danced with a stranger and it was crazy good! Like the part of Swing Kids I was awake for in Miss Rushing's class. It was about 11 and Drew and Ben decided to go, so it was just Jake and I. Jake, who was running on three hours of sleep, said he should probably get home, but wouldn't mind some food first. I wasn't opposed to fast food, but it wouldn't be my first choice. I asked Siri what was open around me. "Hey Jake," I asked, already knowing the answer to my question, "do you want to go to a Sushi & Korean Barbeque restaurant that's open till 2 a.m.?" Jake did a 180, and we headed towards our mysterious restaurant destination. Both he and I thought it would be some hole-in-the-wall waffle house style place, but when we got there, our immediate thought was that this giant warehouse probably has people here who are gonna beat us up. We walk in and could not have been more confused and surprised. It was like a post-modern style of techno decor in an all-you-can-eat style sit down setting. If it sounds confusing, that's because it was. For $20 each, we each got unlimited meat, salad, and sushi rolls. In a Drake and Josh-esque scenario, we start off by accidentally getting way too much sushi. We look around for the meat but just find a salad bar. It turns out you order the meat. It took about 10 minutes to get to us, but the waiter brought out a plate of beef. Jake had been the one to ask for it, so I asked him if I could have some. He said yeah, so I took my chopsticks and popped some meat into my mouth. It was cold and wet, so I figured it was pickled, and I deftly used my chopsticks to remove the meat from my mouth and put it onto a plate to the side. Well hey howdy hey, it turns out the meat was RAW and the STOVE RIGHT BETWEEN US was used for COOKING the RAW MEAT. I was 85% sure I was going to die that night because I had swallowed some of the raw beef. By the time the plate of raw pork came out, I was a master chef, but neither Jake nor I were very much hungry anymore. It was at that time when we both noticed the part of the menu that said, "if more than a half pound of food is left on your plate, an extra $20 will be charged." It suddenly became a Man VS Food challenge as I worked on the meat and Jake worked on the Sushi. I started to doubt they actually had a scale back in the kitchen to weigh food on, so we stopped eating, paid the bills, and drove home listening to a little bit of Gwen Stefani.
A dream I had, relating to the mortality I felt after eating raw beef.
So the people who were there were vague, but I know James was there, my cousin Max, and possibly Julia, Jake, and Paul, and essentially what happens is James has a heart attack at some indistinguishable location, and we don't have a car, so I say to siri "What is the closest hospital" and she takes me to a children's hospital on the outskirts of New York City, but obviously they can't help James because it's a children's hospital, and all of a sudden James is lying on a gurney and I push him back to the main road, and that's when other people show up, and my cousin Max talks to me about ToK, and we get into New York City, and we find this nice restaurant and everyone abandons James to go eat, except me. I have no idea what to do because we have no idea if James it alive or dead at this point because no one did anything to try and save him so I'm waiting with a gurney on a street corner in New York City at night, when this lesbian turns to me and tells me that she helps out children, and has at least 10-15 children she helps out, and she gives me this little grenade, and I pull the pin, and somehow I know that this means an emergency vehicle is coming, but when it gets here, it's A. a giant black Hummer and B. driven by James Robinson (who is also still on the gurney). We get the gurney in the back row of seats, and then James gets off of the Gurney and sits in the front seat, so I have to sit in the cramped back seat with the gurney for the drive to the hospital, but by that time, James is already better.
The next day I had to mail back a suit I bought on Amazon during Cyber Monday because my debit card got maxed out trying to buy an XBox, so I had to return the suit to get back the money. It turns out that ordering suits off the internet but not checking your size first will lead to the suit not fitting you at all. I had been putting it off most of the day, but eventually, I had to go, so I looked up UPS drop off sites, and I got dressed in jeans, a jacket, and flip-flops, only because I thought it would be a short walk. Well, I was wrong. The drop box couldn't fit the size box I wanted to send, so I had to walk to the UPS store on Fairbanks while it was windy, and again, I was wearing flip-flops. The store was closed, so carrying my large box with me, I went to Starbucks to get a hot drink to reward myself for my dedication and bravery. Well, what I didn't expect was one of my kids from summer camp to say hi to me while I was dressed in the most ratchet manner conceivable, and not to mention, carrying a big box around. I headed back towards the drop box, but I first stopped into Peterbrooke to see my pal Caroline and steal samples of chocolate popcorn. Also, my feet were cold. The only reason I wasn't already home was that I remembered the pick up at the drop box being 6 pm so I went back and waited til 6. The only other thing I planned on doing that night was going out to the Cheesecake Factory with the same friends I went swing dancing with. While I was standing around for the UPS man, I got a call from Ben Blakeley saying that the Cheesecake Factory doesn't take reservations and that he can pick me up so we could put our names down. I told him to meet me at the drop box. It was nearing 6:05 when Ben found me, and it was at that moment, 15 minutes into waiting for the UPS guy in the cold, I realized pickup only happened on Monday through Friday. Great. Ben and I drove to the Cheesecake Factory, got in line for a table for four, and were handed a buzzer as we were told the wait would be 50 minutes. I asked how far we could go with the buzzer for it to still work, and the hostess said we'd have to stay in the building. That was going to be a problem because I needed A) real shoes and B) money from my parents. Ben and I hatched a genius plan. The plan required cunning, speed, and the baby changing station in the men's bathroom. We decided to plant the buzzer inside the compartment of napkins inside the baby changing station of the big stall in the men's restroom of the Cheesecake Factory. We made a mad dash to the car, trying to remain inconspicuous, and we got back to my house where I grabbed shoes and money, but we were held up by my mother's interrogation of Ben (she would say she was being friendly and be mad at me for implying she was anything less, but we were still trying to get back to the restaurant before the buzzer went off and surprised some poor guy popping a squat). We got back to the restaurant, I ran inside as Ben parked the car. Someone was inside the stall with the buzzer when I got there but at least it hadn't started to- BZZZDT. Excuses flew through my head, "must've misplaced that while I was changing my son!" Thankfully this guy was no Inspector Clouseau so he just walked out of the stall and I ducked in and grabbed it. Ben and I got seated and waited for Drew and Jake. Jake, Ben and I each got a steak as Drew looked on in horror. I think the moral of this story is to not judge others.
