The Day I Jumped Out of a Plane *or* The Day I Really Got to Know Gravity on a Personal Level *or* My Extreme Encounter with Physics

My spectacular day of high-flying adventure began just like any other, except that I had to get up unbearably early and then drive to Durham to pick up a friend of mine. So it began in a very unique manner. (I apologize; sometimes those clichés don’t work out as well as you want them too.)  I waited outside my friend Sheena’s house in Durham for 10 minutes longer than I expected to, and then decided to give up on her.  She wasn’t answering her phone and I had no idea which house was hers.  Her loss.  Then I began the drive back to Raleigh, eagerly racking my brain for as many Japanese and/or women jokes as could be made to apply.  (Which are her ethnicity and gender respectively.)

I arrived at my Cousin Meredith’s house and proceeded to awkwardly putter around her yard, uncertain that it was in fact her house, and discomforted by the unfamiliar old people on the lawn.  It was her birthday, and we were going to go jump out of a plane to celebrate, which sounds a little unorthodox now that I think about it that way.   I uncomfortably walked back and forth to my car a couple of times, anxiously debating with myself about just sitting in the car and texting Meredith, but that seemed silly so I slowly made my way up to the house.  I wanted to make contact with someone in the family I knew before I became acquainted with the strangers on the grass, so I continued to walk back and forth glancing around and working my way up to the door, like a hiker working his way up through switchback after switchback, keeping an eye out for bears and anxiously waiting to get to the top of the mountain so he’ll stop feeling so uncomfortable and finally get a pee break.

Right before I arrived at the door, my cousin and her entire family burst out onto the front porch at once.  I breathed a sigh of relief and struggled to quickly rebuild my composure with whatever dignity I had left over and disguise the awkward impression the day had left on me thus far.  I discovered that the unfamiliar people on the lawn were relatives who were here to celebrate Meredith’s birthday by watching her fall out of the sky.  Also unorthodox, and almost a little morbid.  Fortunately they hadn’t taken much notice of me and my awkward advances on the street and towards the house, and if they had they were willing to forget about them. 

By then it was time to go, so we loaded into several cars.  I was riding with Meredith, my other cousins Kevin and Christopher, and Meredith’s friend Zach.  After some miscommunication about transportation and a subsequent brief detour chasing Zach to Wendy’s, we were ready to get on the road to Louisburg.  We mostly slept, listened to weird music, and talked about flipping out of planes. 

We arrived at Triangle Skydiving, excitedly apprehensive about the day to come.  The energy level stayed high after our arrival, as we jumped feet first into preparation for our bigger jump.  This is sarcastic but I didn’t manage to communicate that very well.  We eagerly and enthusiastically received our piles of paperwork and listened attentively as they told us to sign everything that looked like a line.  While we were filling every available blank space on these pages with our signatures, the staff played an instructional video for us.  The video consisted of a timid-looking man sitting behind a desk and talking at us.  He wore a suit and sported an impressive and unnaturally homeless-looking scraggly beard.  He told us that we were to jump out of an airplane, that jumping out of airplanes is fun, and that jumping out of moving aerial vehicles 2.5 miles above the Earth’s surface comes with a few risks. 

Once we had completed this unusual orientation, we were allowed to go sit and wait.  We did a little sunbathing, watched people fall out of the sky, went to Bojangles, discussed the various Asian countries Zach has trips planned to, ate Bojangles, discussed the philosophical value of Forrest Gump, examined Kevin’s critique of aphoristic analogies regarding life and sometimes chocolate, watched more people fall out of the sky, drank Mountain Dew, threw a Frisbee around, and evaluated Christopher’s unusual hair style.  When it was finally time for us to strap up and file into a plane, however, a cloud suddenly appeared above our heads and our flight was postponed, because apparently they prefer to be able to see the ground when they’re falling towards it at speeds upwards of 130 mph.

We didn’t know when they’d let us go, but we were next, so they went ahead and got us suited up.  We each met the professional who was going to be tied uncomfortably close to us for the jump, and it almost felt like we were kids from troubled homes being paired up with big street-wise adults who were to be role models for us, but I think that was because of my particular instructor/parachute-puller/professional skydiver/designated keep-Michael-alive-er.  I hope that made sense. 

Deep breath.  Now come up with a title for the person who jumps with you.  Got it Michael? Good.

My survival assistant was a huge, intimidating, very nice man named David.  It was a weird way to meet someone though, because you’re constantly thinking: “THIS MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY LIFE.”  So to drown out the voice in my head I had to shout my way through our get-to-know-you conversation, which by the way, was awkwardly carried on while he guided me through all the numerous switches, latches, locks, Velcro straps, flaps, bells, and whistles that were built to keep me attached to him and him attached to a bag and the bag attached to a parachute.  It was a lot.  Then he told me everything I needed to know about how to jump out of a plane and how to fall and how to pilot the parachute.  Then he told me I could unclench my teeth and relax, because it was fine if I didn’t remember all of it. 

Then it started raining, which is also frowned upon when you’re jumping out of a plane it seems.  So we hung out in the crowded hangar and ate cold Bojangles while we waited.

About an hour later, the rain rain went away, probably to come again another day, and the beautiful bright sun returned. (Did you know Breaking Benjamin have a song called Rain inspired by nursery rhymes?  That’s ridiculous.)

Once the weather had cleared, we were called back to meet up with our survival assistants again.  They tightened about 20 different straps I didn’t know we had, went back over how we’re actually supposed to jump, and then brought us to the plane.   We had to duck down and file in, sitting in awkward rows on two benches that led up to the door.    There were about 8-10 pairs and then a few people just sitting by the door.  These few kept making crazy eyes at David and I, so I was unsure of their sanity.  Once plenty of inside jokes and taunts had been tossed around, the plane started moving.  There were 5 of our group actually jumping: Meredith, Kevin, Zach, Meredith’s dad Dave, and me.  Zach didn’t have a survival assistant though, because apparently jumping out of a plane is routine for him.  The rest of us came up with some kind of order of who would go when, and then we were allowed to sit there for the rest of the flight.

Now it takes a little while to climb all the way up to 13,500 feet, especially in a small plane like that, so we had quite some time to contemplate our existence and just how freakin’ high up in the air we were.  And I spent quite some time doing just that.  I hadn’t felt nervous all day until then.  I looked out the window: “OMG WE’RE SO HIGH, HOW HIGH ARE WE? *glance at height-ometer thing on wrist* hey David, my thingy-macalit-altitude-describer is broken, it says we’re only 1,500 feet up.  Oh that’s right? Hm. Oh no I’m fine, but if you smell anything funny now or while we’re jumping, it’s probably just the birds.”

That said, I didn’t really get too nervous about the actual jump.  Obviously I’d never jumped out of a plane before, so I couldn’t even imagine the actual jumping we were about to do.  Without knowing how to imagine it, I couldn’t very well freak out about it.  The only part I was nervous about was the sliding towards the front of the plane, positioning myself at the door with one foot halfway over the edge, and rolling out.  That I could imagine very well, and so I freaked out about it, but only in my head.  I put on a very calm face for David and my fellow jumpers.  Most of what was happening at this point was adrenaline.  Neither fight nor flight seemed like a good idea, so my survival instinct just hid in the corner of my brain and whimpered.  Maybe it surrendered to my superior thrill-seeking instinct?  Interesting.  So the freaking-out anxiety transmuted itself into anxious excitement.

Around 6,000 feet the crazy people at the front pulled open the shockingly simple, flimsy door, and jumped out with creepy grins on their faces.   I looked around anxiously to find out if they were supposed to do that.  Either that was planned and expected, or everyone else was accustomed to their unpredictable insanity.

Then finally the time came.  We had arrived at our stop, at 13,500 feet, and now it was time for us to depart.  The entire day of waiting had built up to this.  We had spent so long on the ground and now so long just sitting in the plane and watching other people jump, that the idea that I was actually going to edge up to the front and jump off with David on my back (which, literally speaking, is a physical impossibility) was simply implausible.  I watched Zach and the pairs in front of us jump. 

 I didn’t feel like I was about to jump out of a plane.  Although I don’t know what that feels like so it’s hard to tell.  Then Meredith jumped.  Whoa Meredith just jumped out of a plane.  Then I was being told it was my turn.  This was already so surreal that I didn’t really feel present or conscious.  David and I got up and awkwardly waddle-edged our way to the front of the plane like two penguins conjoined at the back and belly respectively, making their way out of a crowded cavern with a low ceiling so they can jump out of a moving plane at 2.5 miles above the ground.  (I must’ve fallen off the metaphor train.)

We got to the front, and David again walked me through the instructions.  Unfortunately I don’t remember all of them now because I wasn’t there at the time. We positioned our feet – I took a quick glance over the edge – and I leaned back.  Then we leaned forward and rolled out of the plane heads first in one fluid motion. 

Suddenly, unexpectedly, we’re falling. I am lying face down, looking at the Earth.  I concentrate on breathing for a moment.  I lift my legs up. It’s cold out here.  I lift my head up and look at the horizon.  I try to understand what exactly it is that I’m doing right now.  I look at the clouds.  I hear other people screaming.  I scream because I remember that’s probably what I’m supposed to do.  I hear David’s voice in my ear but it’s so far away.  He’s trying some of those turns and spins he talked about earlier.  I don’t remember what to do.  I try to move my hands around and imitate him.  We spin.  I scream again so he knows I’m having fun and not unconscious.  He asks me how high we are.  I look at my altimeter and tell him about 7000 feet.  He probably doesn’t hear me.  He has his own.  I have no idea how long we’ve been falling.  Twenty minutes and twenty seconds are equally plausible.  Neither is probably correct. I spend some more time looking at the horizon.  I try to find some birds.

Something with a ton of force pulls hard and fast on my stomach, and I am no longer horizontal.  I am standing straight up.  There is a parachute floating above my head.  It is effectively holding me up by my crotch.  I am not comfortable.  I stand on David’s feet and he adjusts the ties.  I look around at the sky again, trying to imagine what floating down through it with a parachute must feel like.  I see other people falling too.  Then David and I do spins and fast turns in the parachute.  It’s fun.  We get close to the ground and we pull hard on the parachute rope-tie-handle-things.  Suddenly we slow down a heck of a lot. 

We land.  He unlatch-tie-velcros me.  I’m not thinking very clearly.  I walk back to the rest of the family celebrating Meredith’s birthday.  I have to concentrate to find a way around a small muddy spot.  When I get there they ask how it was.  I stutter some kind of short, lame response.  They understand.  Other people get there.  We take pictures.  I take off my gear.  David grades my jump.  I do well.  Meredith schedules another jump.  I sit idly waiting, a little dazed, probably still shaking. 

We load into the car.  I sit in the back with my eyes closed for 45 minutes patiently waiting for sleep, but it does not come.  Then I start texting people.  Before long we are back in Raleigh.

I probably spent about 60 seconds in freefall, reaching a maximum speed of about 138 mph.  Then I spent around 5 or 6 minutes floating down in a parachute.  Altogether I spent about 3.5 hours in a heightened surreal dream state of maximum adrenaline.

One of those dots is me.

My First Two Weeks Extracted From the Routines of Everyday Civilized and Modern Living

Now I'm spending most of the summer away from civilization, so I'm a little behind on the things I need to talk about.  Bear with me.

The two weeks from the 28th of May to the 11th of June were very eventful ones indeed.  I began and completed my training as a camp counselor, became intimately acquainted with the scent of rotting cabbage mingling with the odor of profusive sweat, and rolled out of a plane 13,500 feet above the Earth’s surface.  Guess which one I want to talk about first?  That’s right: it’s the cabbage.

Now the cabbage wasn’t exactly part of our training, as surprising as that might be.  It was more of a break, as weird as that sounds.  What we did is called “gleaning”, which is a new term for me, so I’m going to arrogantly assume it is for you as well.  It means that a farmer permits you to drive onto his land, pick nearly over-ripe cabbage, throw said cabbage all over the place, sing loud obnoxious camp songs, and somehow eventually get the cabbage onto a truck. 

The other remarkable part of this adventure was the ride there and back.  There are about 30 of us, and we had to get up frighteningly early to go all the way to Youngsville for this cabbage encounter.  We were split among 5 mini-vans, and there was a walkie talkie in each car.  Our cars also have code names, so the drive was epic.  My car was code-named "Holy Grail" and we followed closely behind "Donald". (Not all code-names are created equal.)  It was like a very car chase-heavy super spy movie, kind of like The Italian Job, except with more vegetables.  And no gold.  And all the guns and bombs were replaced by goofy ridiculous songs that involve lots of random dancing.  And instead of weaving through congested inner-city traffic in mini-coopers, we drove in an organized line of mini-vans in primary colors, patiently keeping at or around the speed limit for the majority of the ride.  But that’s just nitpicking; the vegetables were the real distinguishing characteristic. 

The rest of training was also awesome.  You could make a movie about the epic and feel-good way the 30 of us came together as a happy community.  You would also want to include all of the many hiccups and tragic setbacks and dramatic confrontations that slowed us down but inevitably couldn’t prevent us from bonding as a strong family, and instead only served to create an even more beautiful culmination of our friendships into secure communal ties.  (If only every conflict in the world was followed with a huge group hug between all those involved, I am convinced that there would be no ill will.  It helps if at least one of the people in the circle is soaking wet and or teary.  They should probably be at the center of the hug for maximum effect.)  I don’t think it has the potential to make a very successful movie – or even a  very good one – but I am still fairly sure that it *could* be made into a movie.  Like for real.

Training also helped to dispel some of the misconceptions I had about camp life.  I was under the delusion that somehow camp counselors had lots of spare time to write music, draft a couple novels, study Paradise Lost, sketch flowers, fill notebooks with poetic musings and wistful lyrics about birds, and finger-paint, but it turns out that this is a falsehood.  I am tempted to curse Henry David Thoreau and joke about how Walden gave me the wrong idea about living in a cabin surrounded by nature, buttttt I am not familiar with Thoreau’s work, so that would be false and unfair to Thoreau's legacy.  I have only myself to blame. 

It turns out that camp counselors have very little spare time.  That doesn’t mean that their time isn’t filled with awesome goofiness and fun kids and music and ridiculous skits and laughter, but it does mean there is not a wealth of alone time with which to contemplate life, the universe and everything. (new idea: try to sneak in as many Douglas Adams’ book titles in one post as possible) In fact, you are tempted to use all of the spare time that *could* be used to broaden your literary horizons to just hang out with your fellow counselors or simply prepare for campers/SLEEP.  That’s the other thing: when you get to your spare time, you’re usually far too exhausted to read more than a couple lines of Georges Bataille’s fascinating if a little dense and obviously insane metaphysical rambling on the subject of religious theory before you lapse into a deep and restful slumber, riddled with surreal hallucination/dreams about being turned into a goat and sacrificed to temporarily free your owners from the world of the discontinuous and allow them into the world of spirits. (Much like coffee and Taco Bell, Bataille is not recommended when you are preparing for bed.)  So much of your energy is expended during the busy day that at the end of the night you are drowsy, lazy, delusional, and mostly harmless. (Abort. It seems Douglas Adams wrote an inordinate amount of books.)

Another revelation I had during training was that all the counselors here are awesome.  Like fantastic.  And hilarious.  Every day is filled with laughter and really weird but insightful humor.  Everyone has their own unique talents and quirks, and I look forward to a lot of time on the weekend relaxing and hanging out with them.  Here’s a couple of the things I’m especially looking forward to:

• Late night talks about morality and evil in the world, because those are fun.
• Back massages,  because they’re awesome.
• Jamming with the Agape band, because-there-are-so-many-people-with-so-many-instruments-and-I-love-it-asjdlkjfkdl;
• Forming a step team, because it seems like a fun thing to do.

Oh right, I should probably talk about rolling out of a plane...   Next time!

News Flash: It Turns out I've Been Defying Grammar Conventions Since the Third Grade. (I've been ahead of my time for yeeaaars!) (That's why I'm outside the box now; I misplaced it when I was nine.)

So it’s a little weird to be writing two blog entries in one week, especially when the first one was a monstrous three-post-in-one literary creation of epic proportions, but a lot of stuff has been happening, and there are extenuating circumstances which behoove me to write more.  These will be explained shortly. 

First of all, I’m going skydiving in two days.  Saturday.  In two days. On Saturday.  I will jump out of a plane.  A plane.  On Saturday.  In the sky.  Jumping.  My mind is wheeling so fast that these are the longest sentences I can manage.  I don’t know if wheeling is a word that fits there like I want it to, but I’m going to assume it is.  Oh, the sentences are back! 

I will definitely be writing about that actual experience eventually, but I might not get to it immediately, as I’m going to camp on Sunday.  I am working as a counselor in an awesome camp in the woods.   I will be cut off from cell phone towers, Facebook, and blogging.  I might end up starting a primitive version of the blog on a random bulletin board if I can find one.   I don’t know how I’ll survive if I can’t do that.

Because I’m about to spend most of the summer away from home, I figured I should do a little bit of organizational work at home.  As I lived away from home for the entire year already, my room has slowly accumulated everything of mine from around the rest of the house.  Then it was twisted to appear clean by stuffing all the stuff into different cabinets and corners.  It has become a pile of junk, souvenirs, personal keepsakes, and hidden important papers, all with a thin veneer of hygienic livability stretched over it and tucked in around the edges.

So my time has been devoted to cleaning and organizing.  Which means that my time has been devoted to laying around and doing very little except for stressing about cleaning and organizing. Wiiiiith occasional sporadic bursts of productivity.  Which in retrospect is essentially how my life was this last year, although with different stresses (Dang it why won’t MS Word just accept that I’m going to start sentences with ‘which’? Stop complaining, it makes you look silly Microsoft.  Like when you try to correct foreign leaders’ names. {“’Angela Merckel’? Are you sure you don’t mean ‘Merced’?” “’Pratibha Devisingh Patil’? We’re pretty sure you mean ‘pretibial devising patio’} Microsoft, Merced is clearly less of a name than Merckel, and what’s more, I’m never taking you anywhere.  You would be nothing but embarrassing in sophisticated social situations.)End parenthesis? I think? The main skill I'm practicing in my writing this blog is knowing when to cut off and end my rambling side-thoughts

So I’ve spent quite a large amount of time digging through old papers and books in my room in the last week.  I found plenty of creepy books I didn’t know existed, probably left by my brothers in the room before me, and I found a couple of acoustic guitars I forgot I had, but the most interesting things I found were relics from my past.  I found two “notebooks” of mine from third grade, and they have a good bit of analyzable material in there.  (Wow, analyzable does not look like it should be a word; it’s spelled so weeeeeird.  This carries a different meaning than “weird”)

The first “notebook” is much less of an actual “notebook” than the second one.  It’s actually a small autograph book from Walt Disney World.  There are pictures of all the famous characters on the front, and it has an abundance of pages for autographs.  I started out rather excited.  Maybe I’d find friends’ names from 3^rd grade! That’d be interesting!  Or maybe… *gasp* maybe I’ll find autographs from Mickey Mouse or Goofy!  The truth was much cuter, depressing, and a little creepy.  In that order.  The first two pages start off great.  The first is signed by my mom, and is just a cute and motherly praise of my virtues.  The second one was filled out by my dad.  Just as cute and fatherly.  This is what he said: “I hope this book helps keep memories of good times and people you meet fresh throughout your life.”  Perfectly cool right?  After this is where it gets ironic. 

The rest of the book is blank.  Apparently my brothers couldn’t even be bothered to sign it.  I guess it was during the summer, so it’s not like I could’ve just brought it to school, as weird as that would be.  I don’t know if it’s more ironic or depressing that the rest is empty.  It kind of makes it a monument to parental love and eternal optimism.  “I’m sure you’ll find someone to sign your book son, just persevere! Maybe try that guy in a Pluto suit over there!  Oh look, Bryan’s out of the bathroom, go try him!”

That wasn’t the worst part though.  The rest of the book was not *totally* empty.  At the very back of the book, when it’s not actually a real page anymore, I found more writing. My reaction: There’s hope! I managed to find someone to sign my book besides my ol’ mum and paw!  Oh wait, it’s just a creepy little schizophrenic note of encouragement.

I signed my own autograph book apparently.  I even wrote in cursive:

ThankS    PS  Youre the best!   I love you to!  Love, Michael Dickson     

Of course the last exclamation point is huge and cartoony.

So take what you will from that.  I wonder how I felt about that at the time though…  I’m sure I probably forgot about the autograph book not long after I got it, but why did I feel inspired to sign it myself?  Was that after I failed to get anyone to sign it?  Or did I do that immediately?  I guess I’ll never know.  Or alternately I'll explore that memory more with a doctor when I have my next anxious-psycho-lonely-breakdown. 

The second notebook was actually a notebook.  It’s much more conventional in other ways too actually, as it was just a notebook for me to do school assignments in.  Sadly those journals never get really filled up with writing like they should.  That’s especially unfortunate because it leaves less for me to get a kick out of now.  Also I don’t know if we were required to draw as well, but 3rd grade Michael took that initiative regardless.  Here’s a selected few of the “journal entries” and their titles.

10-23-00 My seven favorite ice cream flavors

1)Mint and Chip

2) Vanilla

3) chocoalate peanut butter

4) coffee

5) rainbow sherbet

6) chocolate fudge brownie

7) oranbubble gum bubble gum

[I was still picky in third grade, which explains the “Vanilla” choice, but if 3rd grade Michael was anything like college Michael then all I did was pick my favorite ice cream and then rack my brain to somehow come up with six other ice cream flavors (I don’t work well under pressure)].

1-162-01

(Dates are confusing when it’s all numbers.  I never know what order to put them in, you know dd-mm-yy or mm-dd-yy or yy-mm-dd or md-mpg-yt)  ( There is no actual title for this one, but it’s short so I’m just going to give it to you)

I would give away my LEGO gungan sub because I built it and it took awhile.  I really like it.  I think they would like it too.  

(Then there’s some cute squiggles and doodles which I assume construct a cohesive illustration of a LEGO gungan sub. )

(who is "they", and why are we giving them our stuff?)

(Is it weird that small funny looking LEGO aliens are more nostalgic for me than fishing and Santa Claus?)

1-18-0[lowercase o with a 1 in it; it looks like an apple]

If I could desighn a school cafetaeria it would look about how it was now, though I would have the TV on with Toonami showing and I would serve mashed potatoes, potatoes, hot dogs cheese and bread sticks.  It would also have pizza with sauce and some with no sause.  I would have computers with all games for people that were done.  there were food fights daily.  it would also have red curtains I would have McFlurrys and milkshakes.

 (It should also be noted that the final random nonsensical run-on sentence fragment was being written awkwardly around the side of a huge, very detailed but yet very crude drawing and “milkshakes” is written at a 70 degree angle away from the horizontal lines on the page.  I hope that means what I want it to mean. I don’t speak math.)

 (I'm glad to see that 3rd grade Michael also had problems with randomly switching tenses.  At least it is not a new thing.)

(The drawing shows all the pizza, computers, and a bunch of tables, but there's only one person in the entire cafetaeria[sic].  He’s sitting at a random table alone and yelling “Food Fight” in a horribly oblong shaped word bubble.)

1-[odd combination of 2 and 9]9-01   If we had no lightbulbs….

(It seems I always started writing the date before I actually knew what it was)

I would have several candles of my own to use, and every night we would light a fire.  We would use candles for supperr and everything during the night. 

(Very good Michael, that is a reasonable assumption to make.  If we had no lightbulbs we would use other sources of light.  Thanks for the insight.  This factoid will prove invaluable for college Michael)

2-26-01

My flower is called a la cocoa its stem and leaves are made of cocoa.  it smells like coffee.  its petals taste like Earl Grey hot tea with half and half and sugar in it.  The middle tastes like ginger ale.  it is endangered because its been eaten a lot

 

(I’m proud of myself.  I obviously knew what I liked.  But ginger ale? No idea where that came from.)  

(There’s also a picture beneath it which appears to be a flower with a lot of lines coming off of it.)

4-2-01 citys

1.Orlando,Florida

2.Garner, North Carolina

3.greensborough

4.San Francisco, California

5.Austin, texas

(There’s a couple of odd things going on here.  First off, what am I ranking?  Is this random assortment of cities the first ones that popped  into my head when I thought "cities"?  Three big cities and two random small ones in North Carolina.  It amuses me that greensborough[sic] is neither capitalized nor spelled correctly.)

I don’t know about you, but this has been incredibly insightful for me.  I wonder if I can detect the beginnings of my current writing style in these old manuscripts…   It’s definitely cool to see how far I’ve come.  If I had my way, however, this notebook would’ve been filled to the brim with every single thing I wrote as a kid so that I’d be able to look back at it now.  it would also have red curtains I would have McFlurrys and milkshakes.

If I find a good scanner sometime soon, I promise I will scan these pages in and put them up here.  Believe you me, my drawings are fantastic.  

I figure reminding you constantly that I *don't* have illustrations is basically equivalent to *actually having* illustrations.

Small Children: Adventures in Restraint and Youthful Distortions of Reality. [Warning: This is one of those stories I would normally split into two parts but that's silly so this is long.]

So I was relaxing at home last week, not being very productive – not unlike the week before – or this week for that matter – and I got an email from a pastor at my church.  Apparently they didn’t have anyone signed up to take care of kids in the nursery during church on the upcoming Sunday, and they needed to find a few people.  For some reason she had decided that college kids would be the best for the job.  Contrary to what you’d expect, she does seem to know college students rather well, as she made sure to mention the possibility of financial compensation in the email. 

I jumped at this opportunity for two reasons.  First of all I need money.  I haven’t started working yet, but I’ve been acting like I have a job for the last 3 months, in that I’ve been spending an insupportable amount of money on random unnecessary things.  Like a boss.  The second reason is that kids are fun to work with, and the other person asked to help in the nursery was a good friend of mine.   So that’s technically three reasons. Oh well.

So I arrived at church that morning at about 7:45.  This was incredibly difficult in itself, but I’ll go into that later/soon.  The nursery needed to be manned (or womaned) for four hours from 8-12.  The other helper Jessi and I decided to split the time.  I would do the first hour and a half, she would do the second, and then we would both help during the last hour.   At this point I wasn’t worried at all.  Playing with kids for an hour and a half? I was born for this job.  That might be a pun.  Or a statement about my character and/or maturity level.

 But then as I was about to head off to the nursery, Jessi asked me one solitary question, and it brought me screaming back to Earth in a tragic free-fall of emotion.  “You know how to change diapers, right?”  I suddenly realized that this job could end up being more than “trains, trucks, and dollies”.   She gave me an admirably brief and thorough tutorial in diaper-changing, but I was too busy having horrifying visions of pushy, distressingly loud, soiled children, running around the nursery, creating a cloud of stink and describing their accidents in graphic detail.  I figured I would have three options if a situation like that arose: 1) Ignore it.  It didn’t happen.  Act like the claims of soiled pants are all lies.  Spray the child with febreze if the other kids start crying.  2) Try to potty-train them, that’s got to be easier than changing a diaper, right?  3) I guess I could attempt to change a diaper/demand Jessi leave the church service and come help me.

With my confidence shattered and my nerves feeling twisted, I smiled and said goodbye to Jessi, working my way to the nursery.  At this point I should probably describe my condition.  I had had only 4 or 5 hours of sleep, and I am not the kind of person who can survive on limited sleep.  I had gotten up, gotten dressed, put in contacts, made coffee, and come straight to church, so I was appropriately disheveled.  I was wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt, my hair was a little out of control, and I was gripping my coffee mug like I was stuck on a desolate planet full of vicious bear-like green aliens and the coffee was the precious space-ship fuel that I was courageously carrying across the planet through terrible jungles and rushing red rivers, fighting to get back to my ship and escape the planet and the furious alligator-bear-rock-monster that was stalking-chasing-rolling after me.

So there I am, panicked, unwashed, and exhausted, sitting in a rocking-chair in the nursery, when the first family finally arrives.  For a while I thought that I wouldn’t have any kids to take care of during that service, but I’d decided to wait for a while just in case. 

—Now to protect these kids’ identities, I’m not going to use their real names.  Every child who appears in this post will be given a cool Scandinavian name to replace his or her own.— 

The first child was Ulrik, a blonde, smart, car-loving kid of about….4?  I’m really bad at children’s ages.  He could talk plenty?  I’m sure I seemed a little sketchy and unfamiliar to the parents when they were dropping him off, so I felt it was my duty to make them feel comfortable with leaving their son under my control.  It didn’t help that there was no sign-up sheet for them to fill out as they dropped him off, although there usually is apparently.  Despite this sketchiness, the parents decided to trust me, and thus Ulrik was left to hang out with me.  This may’ve been because it’s extremely awkward to try to drop your child off and then back out of it, so they based their choice on Ulrik’s willingness to play with me.  

For the next hour or so we embarked on a voyage of awesomeness through the nursery room, finding everything fun, playing with it for a moment, and then leaving it on the floor.  We pieced together an alphabet Winnie the Pooh puzzle, but we just built a long line across the room with it and didn’t actually fill it in with the letters.  We filled a barn playset with a huge variety of plastic foods, and we drove trucks and cars over every inch of the floor.  We also moved a large bookstand away from the window so that we could watch and listen to cars pass by.  Ulrik was one of those kids who doesn’t *finish* playing with anything.  He’d do half a puzzle with me, go push a car halfway around a track, and then listen to me read half a story before he moved on to something else.  Cleaning up was something we did not do. 

So for that first hour, the nursery was a paradise of childish fun.   All things must come to an end, however, and this one came sliding to a frustratingly selfish end once the second child of the morning arrived.  This was Torvald, who was an innocent, brown-haired child of 2 or so? Maybe?  He could walk and everything plenty but he was not as much of a big boy as Ulrik, and he may’ve been able to talk a little, but he didn’t really.  Torvald was not the problem though.  He was the opposite of demanding actually; Torvald just wanted something to play with.  Anything.  He didn’t seem to have a favorite toy, he just wanted something.  Sadly, Ulrik was not okay with this.  He wanted everything, which meant nothing for Torvald.  Ulrik had already established a playtime dynamic that he was not willing to adjust, not even a bit, for Torvald. Torvald tried out a random ‘Q’ in a ‘T’ spot in the Winnie the Pooh puzzle, and Ulrik freaked out.  Torvald took a random strawberry out of the plastic barn, and Ulrik freaked out.  Torvald pressed the ‘light up and make noise’ button on the fire truck, and Ulrik FREAKED OUT.  I think I was doing an admirable job of containing Ulrik’s freak-outs and talking him down from the ledge, (disclaimer: ledge=figurative) but he was *not okay* with his fire truck being pushed by another kid.  He ended up taking the truck apart, and then stuffing every part of it into the play-oven where presumably Torvald would not find it because he hadn’t developed the idea of object permanence yet.  Which is silly because I’m fairly sure that Torvald was more than a year-old – Ulrik’s knowledge of basic theories in Developmental Psychology was surprisingly lacking.  I know it’s bad to start sentences with prepositions like that but I don’t care. 

It seemed like a constant struggle to let Torvald have fun.  I felt like he was a sim that had very few opportuntities to fill up his fun bar, so he could only sporadically watch TV or play chess for a few minutes at a time (remember minutes=seconds in sim world).  I was desperately trying to fill up his fun bar, giving him a few sim-minutes with each toy while I held off Ulrik for a bit.  Fortunately the rest of Torvald’s satisfaction bars must’ve been filled up rather well, because remarkably he did not seem overly upset by Ulrik’s continuous attempts to take toys from him.  Torvald must have brothers.  Ulrik clearly did not.

Luckily, Ulrik’s parents were only there for the first service, while Torvald’s were there for Sunday school, which means that their time-slots only overlapped by about 20 minutes.  When Ulrik’s parents arrived, we were playing with a big slide structure thing, about 1.5 feet tall.  There was a spot on top to drop a ball in, and then it went around a long slide until it came out one of four random exits at the bottom.  There were four balls, and Ulrik wanted them all, but just for holding.  Ulrik would block the ball entrance on top with one of his, and I’d push his in, and quickly tell Torvald to drop his in.  Then Ulrik would try his hardest to grab both of the balls as they came out of one of four exits at the bottom.  I would race to get one of those back to Torvald, and then the process would repeat. 

Then Ulrik’s parents tried to teach him a lesson about sharing and cleaning up after oneself – I tried to explain that the failure to clean up was probably mostly my fault.  Jessi also arrived at this point, and it made me feel good to see that Torvald was going to get a quality playtime experience after all.  Seeing that everything was under control, I left to go to Golden Corral for a nice brunch with friends.   

Golden Corral was not very exciting though, and it is not the point of this story.  Although they did have a chocolate fountain (FOR BRUNCH??) which blew my mind.  I dipped every single piece of pineapple they had into it, and then I ate it. (The pineapple, not the chocolate fountain itself).

I arrived back at about 11:10, and I came in to join Jessi in the nursery.  At this point there were three new kids there, all there for the duration of the third service.  Jessi quickly gave me the lowdown on their names and archetypes.  First of all there was Astrid, “the talkative one”.  Then there was Ivar, “the quiet one”, and finally there was Bjorn, “the crazy one”.  The way she said it however, was not like “Ohhhh there’s Bjorn, he’s so wacky.”  It came off more like “That one is Bjorn.  I am scared of him.”

When I first came in, both Astrid and Ivar were playing with the infamous Winnie the Pooh alphabet puzzle, although they appeared to be much better at it than Torvald and much more focused on it than Ulrik.  Bjorn was pushing a big toy truck full of plastic blocks around, and dumping it on the floor.  Then he would giggle, pile it back in the truck, and look for a new place to dump.  This was a little eerie but  basically harmless, except that I had to steer him away from dumping the blocks all over the puzzle in front of Astrid.  More importantly, however, I constantly had to steer him away from just dumping the blocks all over Astrid. 

Eventually Bjorn abandoned the truck for a bit and began to run around the room squealing maniacally.  He would just run until he found a wall or other large obstacle.  His wacky and chaotic curly blonde hair added to the effect.  I don’t think the obstacles pleased him though, because he found that he had to slow down or he would hurt himself.  This led to him returning to the truck unfortunately.  He began to push it wildly all over the room, yelling and plowing into things at top speed.  I don’t think he broke anything in the room, but not for lack of trying.  He mercilessly smashed into cabinets and walls repeatedly.  What I was more worried about, however, was that Astrid or Ivar would accidentally step into Bjorn’s path.  Or more realistically, Bjorn’s path would happen to be straight through where Astrid or Ivar already were.

In the course of that hour, all three of the kids took turns on a big toy vacuum, which gave me a fascinating glimpse into their character, and possibly their parent’s housecleaning habits.  Ivar did not seem interested at all in “tidying up” and so only spent a short time on the vacuum.   Bjorn spent a little longer with it, but eventually he decided that the truck was marginally more satisfying to smash into things.  Astrid spent the most time with the vacuum, and her parents had obviously made neatness very important in her household.  She seemed perfectly satisfied to vacuum idly around the room, but I wanted to make it a little more fun, so I retrieved what was essentially a vacuum, except that instead of having a vacuum at the bottom, it had a duck with moving legs.  So not like a vacuum at all.  I rolled the duck around the room, but inevitably he would run into the fake suction of the fake vacuum, causing him to jump around and quack wildly.  She thought this was hilarious, but unfortunately so did Bjorn.  He began to target the duck with his rampaging truck of chaos, which meant that the vacuum was also in his path.  I had to work incredibly hard to keep him from running over all four of us.

It was also during this long period of smashing the truck into walls that I got to know Ivar a little better.  He eventually began to come out of his shell and talk a little bit more, probably after he realized he was not in immediate danger from Bjorn.  At one point a big sports car was driving by outside, and we all heard it because Ulrik had left the window open earlier.  Without a moment’s hesitation, Ivar jumped to his feet and rushed to the window, repeatedly shouting “WHAT THE HECK!”  He was obviously very excited about this happening.  Bjorn also ran to the window, but for some reason he was more interested in closing the window to the car noises outside.  Surprisingly out of character for Bjorn.  

Another unexpectedly interesting event was when Jessi took a huge “Richard Scarry’s Rainy Day Book” out of the corner.  At least that’s what I think it was.  Upon opening it, Ivar shrieked with glee, pleasantly shocked that Richard Scarry had thought to include trains in his book.  This shrieking and unceasing gushing about trains went on for a while.  When he was distracted we managed to turn the page, which is where we saw a picture of a small pond.  Astrid did not seem especially enthusiastic about the pond, but that didn’t stop her from laying down, using the entire book like a bed, and slurping from the small drawing of a pond.  She seemed relaxed and calm, almost disinterested, but she continued to lick this illustration, sprawled as she was across Richard Scarry’s masterpiece.  This only became a problem when Ivar remembered the book and realized that nothing made him happier than pointing at a picture of a fox in a train and asking me deep questions about the fox and the caboose.  If there was a dramatic climax to our  time in the nursery, this was it.  Bjorn was squealing and running and crashing into various objects around the room, Astrid was stretched across the book and eating the pond, and Ivar was yelling about trains and desperately trying to lift the page directly under Astrid. 

This might've been it.

Luckily their parents arrived soon after this, and all the kids were satisfied and happy with their time in the nursery.  There were no injuries, little to no visible damage to toys or cabinets, and my heart grew three sizes.  I learned a little bit about myself, and even more about the nature of reality and youth.  The kids taught me not to shy away from the tough questions, like “Why is there a fox in the train? Is he the engineer? Why does he have a hat?”

Sorry this thing is so long.  If it makes you feel any better I can still split it in half.

Disclaimer: The kids were never in any danger of anything, including stagnation in horrible dirty diaperness or death by truck.  If it sounds like they were, I was exaggerating.  I promise.

Summertime Has Hit Me Like a Huge Sack of Soft, Cushy Bricks. Also, I love Carolina.

Well the school year is officially over.  Excuse me my brain is taking a moment to wrap itself around that. (And incorporate it as a part of itself?  It sounds like my brain is a grossly gelatinous sludge monster which is viciously consuming everything around it.  I wonder if that’s really that far from the truth. [“grossly gelatinous?”])

                    

My last exam was last Friday, and the last week has been a whirlwind of crazy, wacky, uncomfortable “not-being-at-UNC-anymore-ness”.  It feels like an eternity since I said goodbye to friends that were going away for the summer, which is weird.  To be fair, that’s probably because it’s been a fairly eventful week.

Friday and Saturday were devoted to spending time with family and friends that I hadn’t seen in a while.  Sunday morning, however, we went to the Commencement ceremony at UNC for a close family friend-pseudo-family member, which basically caused a humongous chain reaction of internal freak-outs, culminating in my repeated singing of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind” for 3 consecutive hours after we left Kenan Stadium.  This is that story.

 It will become evident, if it has not already, that this particular literary cliché is not used correctly here; I will not be properly arranging this narrative into the form of a story.  Probably.  I beg your forgiveness.  Especially if I end up actually doing that, for I might have just wasted your time.   I’ll let you be the judge.  Of whatever this is.  

I hope I used *that* literary cliché correctly… 

I’m also pretty sure I just ran circles around myself logically, although all I accomplished in doing so was strangling myself with the various figurative threads of thought and tripping over my untied shoelaces.

BACK TO THE STORY! ( AKA: VAGUELY NARRATIVE EXPLANATION OF AN EVENT!)

So I get to UNC early that morning, dressed in my best Carolina gear.  I lead the way into the stadium, as I am deservedly recognized as the most familiar with the campus out of my entire family of people who have not attended UNC.   

1^st Freak-out: My future

Once we’re in our seats, I begin to look through the program for the ceremony, which unsurprisingly, sets me off – anytime people discuss majors or I see the word “adviser” my eyes dilate and I begin to fidget like a dope-fiend.  Well here’s huge lists of people and the majors they somehow decided on.  If they can do it so can I, right?  My mind races as I begin to think about life and careers and the English language and journalism and the entertainment industry and South American culture and their traditions of religion and music.  Then I see the graduate students lists.

I spend an eternity poring over their thesis titles.  Getting a doctorate of philosophy begins to sound very appealing.  But in what?  Crap.  They probably don’t let you waffle around for a while.  I thank Jesus for the American Undergraduate system.  Then my family starts brainstorming funny titles for theses.  I participate but I am deadly serious.  My little brother is not amused by my interest in the aesthetic approach to truth-making.  I think he expected a joke.  I continue to agonize, anxiously brainstorming career ideas and potential graduate schools.   I wonder if I’d be willing to teach.  Probably not.

2^nd Freak-out: My future at UNC

The ceremony starts, and suddenly the graduating class starts filing in.  Thousands of Carolina blue-clad students begin to pour out of the top of the stadium, filling in an entire four huge sections of bleachers.  I realize that in three years, that will be me walking down those bleachers.  That will be me waving to my parents, and then holding up the upside-down first “M” for the “I <3 U MOM” signs.  That will be me cheering at every opportunity as the class president gives us the sports highlights from the last four years.  That will be me tossing a beach ball into the air and throwing blow-up dolls onto my fellow students.  That will be me turning my tassel and stealing my mom’s Mother’s Day thunder.

3^rd Freak-out: UNC

Already off my guard, unstable and sensitive as I am at the moment, I am blown away by the school spirit emanating from the graduates.  I’m caught up in the majesty of everything around me, as the foggy sky slowly fades to reveal a brilliant Carolina blue heaven, perfectly timed with the reveling of the students at the very end of their undergraduate journey.  I am so choked up that I have a difficult time singing my normal harmonies as the Clef Hangers sing “Carolina in My Mind”.  I squeak a little bit and end up going back to the melody, but I compensate by making it a very strong and pronounced version of the melody line.  Then the band begins to play the alma mater and I immediately wrap my arms around my 15 year-old brother and my dad.  I’m inspired by the great mass of swaying bodies that is the graduating students, and I sing as loudly as possible.  I love Carolina.

We had to sit and wait in the bleachers and then slowly work our way to the car for a long time afterward, but I didn’t care.  I was enthusiastically singing, humming, and falsettoing all the Carolina songs I could find in my brain.  It only mattered a little bit to me that our service at Red Robin was definitely sub-par; the euphoria only really began to fade after we got home much later that afternoon.  Then I put some music on, crawled into a really awkward position on the couch, and fell asleep for several hours.  Did I mention that I was running on less than four hours of sleep when I went to Commencement?  That might have been important.

Oh yeah, the commencement speaker's speech was really good too.   He talked about biodiversity. Good stuff.

Lessons from a year of university life (Some things they may or may not talk about at orientation)

Being almost done with my first year of college at UNC-Chapel Hill, I figured I should attempt to summarize and pool everything I've learned about life there.  That way I'll have this to look back on if I magically forget everything over the summer and come back clueless  (Although that newfound sense of wonder would help me stomach the dining hall food for the first couple of months, might be a good coping strategy).  Now keep in mind that I have done no planning in advance or preemptive thinking about these lessons, so I'm just going to spit out whatever comes to mind and hope I can arrange it into something insightful (This technique of mine should be very familiar to you by now).

Some of this will probably  be applicable to college life in general, while some might be adapted to UNC in particular -- we'll see.  I'm not even going to attempt to organize the information, but hopefully my train of thought will be visible in the associations I make.

1)   There are lots of books in libraries.  You would think this is obvious, but here's a second piece of insight:

2)   Books can be useful, and people write books on many different subjects.  Libraries are also nice places to work, because there's a lot of knowledge around you.  This facilitates knowledgeability (I refuse to hyphenate -- that would be surrendering to pressure and compromising my principles) 

3)   Bathroom stalls are like Youtube: the people who comment are the worst kinds of people who thrive on anonymity and hate.  Library walls, however, are like makeshift bulletin boards for all kinds of intelligent discourse and politically correct but metaphysically insightful complaints about life. And ex-girlfriends.

4) The nicer mens' bathrooms in the dining hall and the bottom of the library use only steaming hot water for their sinks.  They needlessly sacrifice the health of your skin and the lives of every single bacteria on your hands in order to cause you serious discomfort, punishing you for attempting to maintain hygiene.


5) No matter how many different names they use on different days, the dining hall only has one "asian" flavored sauce.  It is not unlikely that it is made up of random sauces collected daily from the Chick-Fil-A downstairs.  This is because the Sushinara next to it doesn't leave its sauce out in the open.

6)  If you're scavenging (scrounging?) for food in the dining hall, and someone says, "[insert food name here]? Well there's no way to screw *that* up, it's gotta be at least alright," Avoid it at all costs.

7) If it sounds too fancy to be regularly served in a dining hall, then it probably is.  Don't eat it.

8) Unless your room is or is near where you spend almost all of your time, you are not going to be there very often.  That sounded less obvious in my head.  This means that you are never going to eat the snacks or leftover food in your room.  You're also never going to get around to making all that coffee you have supplies for, especially because you're trying to wean yourself off of caffeine. Instead you're going to spend *all* of your money buying assorted snacks and coffee drinks every time you smell it or pass by a store.  You're also never going to wean yourself off of caffeine.  Sorry.

9) If you're walking to class and you see people standing in open areas holding clipboards, there are a few options to consider.  You can: A) Take the passive aggressive route and take the long way around them; B) Cover your eyes and ears, scream, and charge by or at them;or C) As a diversion, throw some change, food, or interesting pamphlets that expose the corrupt hypocrisy of the beef industry on the ground in front of them, then run quickly around them. (pretending to talk on the phone is a nice addition if you don't feel safe with any of these techniques alone).  I guess D would be actually taking a few minutes to listen to their proposal and carefully consider their ideas.  I advise against it.




Nine "lessons" is probably good for now, right?  If I find out I've learned anything else I'll be sure to pass it on.

RETURN TO UNC! (Because my blog has been in Germany for the last month)

It pains me to say it, but I have to move on from talking about Germany.  Luckily, I’ve been at UNC since then, which, while it is not Germany, is far from the least interesting place in the world.  It’s actually pretty crazy-awesome-fantastic, if you haven't caught on yet. (Aka: crAZAwesomtastic. There are 5 more ways to pronounce this than you have thought of thus far) 

So now I need to think about what has happened in my last month of college since I got back from Germany.  Hm.  Well I haven’t seen any drunken parades or played on any impressionist jungle gyms or raided any medieval castles.  That much is certain.  Depressingly certain. 

Okay Michael, focus on the good times, THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.  UNC has been really absolutely incredibly beautiful.  Like a lot.  I participated in Holi (Moli), which is…(deep breath) a spring religious  Hindu festival celebrated primarily in India Nepal Sri Lanka and countries with large Indic diaspora populations by people throwing colored powder and colored water at each other in order to celebrate life and give tribute to Vishnu to whom is ascribed six important qualities by the Hindu religion including opulence, energy, strength, vigor, and splendor.  Omniscience is not really relevant to the celebration.

Translated into American college student: “We runz every which way wheres and throw paint ats each other 'til we'z is all good n’ mussied up.” (My Hindu-American College Student dictionary is slightly outdated.)

(That joke was the product of minutes of elaborate deliberation.  I don’t think it shows so I figured I’d let you know.  Only the best.  When that is not an option I usually shoot for the most unusual.)

The best part of this was that I got to walk around for hours afterward and answer to questions from curious and confused Franklin Street people, saying: “Paint? What paint?  .... My face?  …. I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about and I think I’m going to go back to my table now; your probing questions about my appearance are making me feel somewhat uncomfortable.” *Powerwalks back to table and speaks in hushed tones while making quick and obviously creeped out glances back at the cute and bewildered old couple and their 5-year-old granddaughter*   

I also enjoyed getting an awesomely tie-died shirt.

The worst part about this was leaving a cloud of paint dust wherever I went, ruining my shower, and having to throw away those socks.  I also had visible paint in my right ear for at least 2 days afterward.

Apparently that’s a very important annual event at Carolina.  Another thing I did was attend Relay For Life, which was a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, which is like a less tiring, less quirky, less insane, and entirely more mainstream version of Dance Marathon.  (I am becoming a conoeisur of fundraisers.) (I wonder how bad I can misspell cannneisusur and still make it recognizable…)

My hair is red. His is green. striped.

Relay For Life was really cool and definitely worthwhile.  The weather got bad (And the bands got worse) but people stayed and camped out inside the Field House and it was just a beautiful thing.  (What was not exactly beautiful per-say was the creepy synth beats with what sounded like a Russian opera singer on stage weaving her voodoo gypsy magic on the crowd.  -- actually that’s probably what caused the bad weather.)  (I realize the historical inaccurate improbabilities of that first thing I said.) 

(Okay to be fair the bands were at their worst when the weather was good at the beginning; it was more of a negative correlation.)  

(My statement about the Siberian voodoo sorcerer and her Celtic gypsy magic calling a vicious storm to rain lightning on the soccer field still stands.) 

(I sincerely apologize if that joke is a "you-had-to-be-there".  I tried my best.)

(Here's a consolation: If there is one thing that I've learned at UNC, it is how much I love bagels.  Bagels bagels bagels. Bagels bagels bagels bagels.)

(I'm not sure how that's consoling.)

(Maybe if I'm lucky it'll be entertaining to all those people that weren't very entertained by my description of the romani witch singer.)

(Or maybe this waffling about it will do the trick.)

(Or that.)

(Haha "Waffling")

(I should go.)