Gardenhoser

Baseball

There are many memories from my childhood that I value; the delicious smell that permeated from the kitchen when my mom made chex mix, the tree house in my back yard my dad built that set the scene for countless hours of pretend, my bright red bunk bed the filled my room, and too many others to list.
But one that is particularly meaningful to me now for whatever reason is the hours spend playing baseball with my buddy Eric. Why this memory is meaningful at this time I’m not exactly sure. It might be the changing leaves, the carefree nature that floats lazily around on the cool autumn breeze, or it might just be one of those things.
Eric was my best friend. His dad was in the air force and was conveniently stationed at Barksdale my third grade year. So his family moved in with his grandparents who lived two houses down from me. I can still remember driving home from school past his house and my mom telling me I should go make friends with Eric and his brother.
Unfortunately for me I was too shy to go play with them so it took a couple of weeks before fate brought us together. After that it would have taken a lot more to separate us. We spent every afternoon playing together, whether it was soccer, football, baseball, or DZ, a game we made up that is a story in its own.
So baseball…I don’t know how we got away with it. My neighborhood was far from spacious. Houses lined the sides of the street and driveways separated the front yards. Eric and I, his big brother Brian would occasionally accompany us, would get two gloves, a regular baseball, and my little aluminum bat and would go to the big pecan tree in my front yard. Then one would take batter and the other would run to the big oak tree in my neighbors yard.
This is where things got interesting. The selected batter would throw the ball up and attempt to hit the baseball to Saturn, completely disregarding any house windows or cars that lined the street. Usually the ball would fall fairly short of Saturn, and travel the 50 yards or so to the big oak tree where the chosen outfielder would be waiting.
Sometimes the ball would bounce off the tree, sometimes it would land with a loud thud on the roof of either my house or my neighbor’s, sometimes it would soar through the tree into the next neighbor’s yard, and sometimes it would just somehow avoid the bat and land on the ground.
We never once broke a window. Looking back I have trouble believing this. According to Murphy and his laws, two kids hitting a baseball around glass of any type should mean broken glass ten times out of ten. On the rare occasion that we would play while my neighbor’s car was parked in the front yard, we would sometimes send a screamer right into the side of the car, but would always miss the windows.
I can still remember some catches worthy of ESPN’s top ten, one in particular was a diving catch made by Eric right into a trash can full of leaves I had spent the morning raking up. Due to incredibleness of the catch, I didn’t mid picking up the leaves again after it fell over. Thinking back I should have written a letter to the trash can company complaining that their trash can couldn’t withstand a kid landing in it.
It might have just been us two, and it might have been dangerous, but it sure was fun. And the memories I have from it are priceless.

A New President

Recently our nation elected a new president, as I'm sure everybody knows. Besides the fact that it's all over the news and the topic of many conversations, the reason I'm thinking about this is because I saw a man wearing a Barack Obama shirt. It has Barack's face on it and I'm pretty sure he was giving a thumbs up or something equally inspiring. It also had the words "change" and "hope" all over it. As an uninformed citizen I wanted to approach this man and as unaggressively as I could, ask him how the topic of his shirt plans to change our nation. Unfortunately I don't believe this person could tell me, and I also firmly believe that he would get angry at me. I am not a racist person, but I firmly believe that race had a big factor in who peole voted for, especially for the uninformed. This applies to white and black people. I know a lot of people around here are worried about what will happen in the future but I'm suprisingly not. But I tend not to worry about things. I don't know where all of that came from or why it came out, but I hope the best for our nation.

Oh No! It's the cops

There was something there that shouldn’t have been. Through the bordering-on-ridiculously loud chords and notes ripped apart by distortion, the clash of wood on thin metal cymbals and various other too-loud sounds produced by the drum set, and the gentle “puuvvhhfff” of the base something was cutting through that didn’t fit. It was a chore getting the band to quit playing, complete silence was avoided as much as possible for some inexplicable reason, but once the “music” stopped the oddity rang loud and clear.
It sounded a lot like an angry goose. “What is that?” I asked as I walked towards the window. Before I could finagle myself to the window between the amplifiers, cords, and cases to look outside and find the answer to my question, the cyclical flash of blue and red filled the curtains. “Guys it’s the freaking police.” I said disappointedly as my heart began to race. To understand my reaction, you must understand that I was probably the most timid kid that ever lived. I avoided trouble as much as possible by being as good and well mannered as I could. This has gotten better through out the years but I still hadn’t had an encounter like this with the strong arm of the law before.
Of course I was elected to go outside…I mean why wouldn’t I be elected, I was the only one not holding anything so it’s perfectly natural that I charge bravely into the unknown? As my heart tried unsuccessfully to leap out of my chest, I slowly opened the door and fearlessly(and by fearlessly I mean not fearlessly at all) stepped into the cool night air. I was immediately blinded by the 10 billion watt power of a Q-beam, and was forced to shield my eyes before they melted. As I tried to avoid the gigantic glowing green monster consuming my vision I desperately followed the voice of the officer and stumbled over to the car. Why was he still shining his freaking light in my eyes you’re probably wondering(I was wondering the same thing)?
“Come here boy.” He said, country just dripping off his tongue. “Yes sir.” I said politely, my strategy was this…be polite and he’ll go away with out shooting me. “I’ve been out here for 20 minutes honking my horn waiting for y’all to come out. I’ve had neighbors calling in for hours complaining about all the racket y’all are making, and if I have to come out here again I’m going to arrest all of y’all and take y’all down to the station. Understand?” First let’s address the problems with his story…
For starters we had just started the song literally a minute before we stopped so there is no way he was there for 20 minutes, second if he was there I think an exposed, angry-goose horn is louder and more annoying than music muted by thick wooden walls of the cabin we practiced in. And third, why didn’t he lug his lumbering mass out of his car and knock on the door? I mean…who just sits outside and honks for 20 minutes straight? Lastly…how was he going to arrest all 6 of us and take us to the station in one car? He’d have to make at least two trips, and like we would really just sit there waiting for him to come back.

This Life I've Lived

On Tuesday, September 2, 2008, I officially became a responsible adult. Responsible is the key word in that sentence because before that day, I wasn’t 21. The way I see it is at 18, one becomes an “adult” but can still plead youth as an excuse to doing irresponsible things. But 21…holy cow!
It seems like so long ago, a lifetime one might say, that I was pulled into this world. On Wednesday, September 2, 1987, I officially became David Allen Awalt I have stayed that way for 21 years now. Due to the fact that my parents lived and worked in Shreveport, that’s where I grew up and lived until I went to college an hour east at Louisiana Tech in the small city of Ruston. College for me, as I’m sure it is for most people, was and still is a major turning point.
The decision to attend Louisiana Tech was an easy one to make. Most of my friends from high school were going there and the application wasn’t long or too difficult. Being from a relatively humble background, an affordable school that was willing to pay the majority of costs was a necessity. Another force pulling me to Tech was the fact that the remaining members of the rock band I was in were also going. So Tech was the easy choice, and I firmly believe the right one.
So sometime around my 18th birthday, Tech is on the quarter system so it usually starts around early September, I anxiously carried my backpack toting self around campus and officially began my college career as a mechanical engineering major. This major decision was made out of ignorance. To my naïve mind engineering was a job based solely on designing cool things. Imagine my rude awakening when my classes included calculus, statics, and strength of materials. None of seemed to fit the mold of exciting designs and fun group projects.
It took me a year and a quarter before I decided that I just couldn’t force myself any farther into it, and after a long and fairly complex process, I chose to follow once again what came easy to me, writing. I happily began my journalistic training my junior year of college. Soon I realized how wonderful it was to have a major that I actually enjoyed going to the classes of.
My introduction to journalism came in the form of a weekly article written by Dave Barry that my mother showed me in high school. I quickly became an avid reader and bought a few of his books. Completely intrigued by his wit and how easily his sarcasm read, I quickly decided I wanted to be a humor columnist. I was fully unaware of what that looked like or how I would get there, but just as every child naively aspires to be a fireman or astronaut, I just knew I wanted to be a humor columnist.
During my second quarter of being a journalism major I took a literary journalism class and decided that’s what I wanted to do. We studied Hunter S. Thompson and Truman Capote among many others. While I still dream of writing a book or even a story that takes that type of interviewing and writing, Ted Conover’s book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, opened my eyes to the commitment this will require.
Herein lies a problem though. My entire life I have been what some people may call…a little lazy. How I got this way I’m not sure. Neither of my parents are happy if they aren’t busy. I, on the other hand, am perfectly content just lazing around all day. I say all of this to convey my outlook on school. Throughout my entire scholastic career I have just sort of winged it. This especially holds true for classes I have no interest in, i.e. French, geography, and any other class I consider poorly taught. Throughout high school and even college, all this meant were decent grades, A’s and B’s, and a frustrated mother.
Not only can I reasonably diagnose myself with laziness, I can also claim procrastination as one of my many faults. There’s nothing harder than making myself do something early and on the best of days I can think of a myriad of reasons to do something else instead of what needs to be done. Even with writing this autobiography. It should be fairly easy because it’s about my life and I’m the only one who’s lived it so who could tell anyone about my own life better than me? But it’s taken me weeks to write it. And by confessing that one might expect something of literary masterpiece standards, but alas, “working” on it for weeks doesn’t exactly mean I’ve worked on it for weeks. Just that I started it a while ago and sporadically worked on it since then.
But all this has a point and that point is I am changing my ways, at least in my journalism pursuit. One of my favorite parts about newspaper journalism is the fact that I can’t procrastinate. If I wait too long to write the article after my interviews are done, my notes don’t make as much sense, and I can’t wait until the last minute or I’ll be screwed. But like I said, that’s just one of my favorite parts. A couple of the others are just talking to people about something I don’t know a lot about and being able to learn from them. Just recently I found out my university has a bowling team. I found this out because I had to write an article about them. And I learned a lot about collegiate bowling in the 30 minutes it took me interview the coach and two bowlers.
Another fascinating part of newspaper journalism is the opportunity to put my writings in front of a large audience. Every writer wants their writings published and read, and the bigger the audience the better. The thought of having people appreciate my work and hopefully enjoy it gives me one of those coveted warm, fuzzy feelings.
But aside from those feelings, and my fascination with newspaper journalism, I have one more bit of autobiographical information to share. During my junior year of high school, my buddy and I started a band. I guess we were trying to be a screamo band at the time, but that is irrelevant because we were horrible. I know this because we recorded a few songs, which I still have, and listening to them makes me cringe. But we thought we were good and played a few events throughout the rest of our high school careers. Unfortunately we could never find a drummer that would stick around or was good enough. We all went to Tech with aspirations to take the music scene by storm because everybody knows drummers are a dime a dozen in college.
Turns out they aren’t, so our bass player picked up the drums and we got a new bass player. I played the guitar and screamed and my buddy played the guitar and sang. We were a little better than horrible but still not good. Soon we got restless and decided we wanted a real drummer. So we picked up another guy and moved to purely vocals and our drummer moved to guitar. So the five of us hit it hard as Rhythm Abstract, a melodic, hardcore band. We practiced a lot in this creepy, old cabin and thought we were hot stuff. Soon we added another vocalist who was supposed to sing but never did. This turned out to be a terrible decision but that is perfectly ok.
During the peak of our existence, we toured the south for 2 weeks and played cornerstone festival in Bushnell, IL. We played in south Louisiana, Texas, Okalahoma, Missouri, and Tennessee. It was a life changing summer. Minus the fact that I hated everyone in the band after those two weeks, we’re still great friends to this day, I look back fondly to those times. It was an adventure, pure and simple. Since then I’ve loved music and have considered partnering my journalistic ambitions with that somehow. But that’s another story.
I’m not sure how to conclude this. I guess my hopes for the future wouldn’t be a bad place. Well after I graduate I hope to go to graduate school at the University of Texas, Austin. I would like to move there and start my career there. I know I don’t want to live in Louisiana at the moment. I’m a little afraid of the future, but who isn’t. But I am willing to take some risks, because what would life be like without risks?
I hope this wasn’t boring and miserable and I hope more than just what I said was telling about me. But this, in that proverbial nutshell, is the

A Selfish Day

Does anyone else ever have those days that seem to take up not only the amount of time it has been allotted, but also the next two days allowance of time? You know, the days that seem to go on and on and so much seems to happen that not only can you not remember what you ate for breakfast* (which in reality, isn’t that abnormal) but you can’t really remember that you ate breakfast, or lunch for that matter. In fact, when experiencing one of these days, many common traditions such as breakfast and dinner are just theories and legends that seem to have become mysterious occurrences that can almost be considered alien. Of course you did eat breakfast and lunch and they were probably moderately to decently enjoyable.
But how does this day, who I guess is a bully in the world of days that takes the other day’s proverbial lunch money* (lunch money = time, kind of a stretch but acceptable nonetheless), find a way to sneak all of this extra time in and make us believe that our minds are only playing tricks on us because it isn’t possible that one day took the time of three, “I mean the clock ticked just as fast as it did yesterday right?” Well I have a theory behind this supernatural occurrence and its going to be a little out there, but be patient and open-minded and hopefully I can go in enough circles to sound intelligent to make you believe I have a well-supported idea.
So here it goes, a jump into the proverbial rabbit hole* (the word proverbial is probably one of my favorite words so I’ll reasonably use it a lot). So when reflecting on the day, I realized that yes, there was definitely more time in that day than most days normally possess. And how this can happen can best be related to watching a movie in fast forward. The spectator of this movie knows that the movie is moving faster than normal but the characters in the movie have no idea. As far as they’re concerned, time is moving the same speed as normal and nothing is out of the ordinary. It would be like watching all three Lord of the Rings movies in fast forward, which would probably be smarter than watching them at normal speed. This way you have shoved what should have taken about 9 hours into the span of about 3, while the characters of these movies have lived 9 hours, you have only lived three.
…TBC

French class and lions

So I officially don't like the way my French class is taught. I don't agree with an academic class focusing on French slang and testing on it. But I don't make the decisions, I'm just forced to follow them. And along with trying to pass this class, and applying for grad school, and finishing my internship application, and being a habitual procrastinator, the sermon series at the church I attend has been challenging me to chase this metaphorical lion. What this to me personally is too telling to write on this so we'll just leave it at the metaphorical level. But let's be honest, that level is much more exciting.

Shakespear class is horrible

I wake up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning around 7:30 and carry my tired a__ to Shakespeare class. I sleepily ride my bike from my apartment to the nearly-empty bike rack in front of Toliver, which will later become a cluster of bikes, making it nearly impossible to finagle anything out. Once my bike is securely locked to the pre-cluster, I thirstily stumble tiredly to the GTM where I will spend the next hour and 20 minutes in complete misery. I am forced to sit and listen to Dr. Jungman talk about the history of the times Shakespeare's play are in. Due to the fact that I don't like history and that it's 8 in the morning, I loathe it. I wish we'd learn more aobut Shakespeare and his plays, instead of all of this history. But enough complaining. It was a beautiful morning and I'm glad I got to experience it.

Realizations Made

Today I realized I'm about to graduate. One would think a college senior would have realized that graduation was looming rather pointedly before now, but I have chosen to ignore that. I have been living blissfully unaware that the real world is approaching fast. Now that I have realized this, a dilemma has come up. Grad school immediately after graduation or after a couple of years of working. So today I am freaking about about applying for internships for this summer and potentially applying for grad schools. Oh boy!

Oh the Humanity

I walked out of my apartment to a typical Friday morning and immediately began sweating. With my head shaking in what can almost be defined as disgust, I began to unlock my bike from the railing. The familiar clicks and clinkings filled the quiet air as I complained to myself about being tired and already hot and at the same time trying to remember my French words for the vocabulary test I hadn't really studied for. Today began the same as every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning had so far, little did I know that I would have the chance to save a life.
As I kept my routine going of riding out of my apartment complex and onto California, I began my trek the 1/2 mile to the bike rack where I secure my bike every morning. My tires began their usual hum as I gradually got up to cruising speed. My mind wandered, still half asleep so it took me a while for it to wrap itself around what the scene I was about to witness.
"What the..." I said to myself before the rude awakening hit me like that proverbial ton of bricks. A movement in the middle of the road had caught my eye. The cutest, most innocent, little black kitten I had ever seen had just been thrown into the air by some blend of rubber and asphalt. We made eye contact as I rode by and its mouth opened in a cry that was covered up by the roar of engines all around his small, frail body. As I looked around to see if anybody was chasing the little kitten or was planning on helping them, my eyes landed on another forsaken kitten. I will probably never forget this little bundle of innocence as it pushed itself towards the safety of the sidewalk on its back legs while its mangled front limbs and head dragged across the pavement. I feel like I could see the pain and absolute bewilderment that were on each kitten's face.
But the worst part of the situation is that I did nothing. I rode by slowly and immediately came up with a myriad of excuses why I should do nothing. The most prominent being that I am allergic to cats, they were already too hurt to survive, and I can't run in front of the now fast approaching truck. I looked over my shoulder at this angel of death as it flew towards the kittens, who both lay in its path. My head turned away right before the menacing, black tires whired over their soft, and small bodies.
Why didn't I do anything? What kind of person just lets kittens die like that? I can tell myself that I didn't have time to get there before that truck hit them, and while that is definitely true, I still feel like I should have tried to stop the truck. I feel as it I just failed a character test. I am no hero. The worst part is I can still see those kittens and hear the sounds of traffic all around. I can smell the warming pavement and can feel the wind on my face as a cruised by.
What a way to start a Friday right?

Gazoontite!
There’s sex in the air, and it really blows.
That’s right…it’s officially springtime, the time of life, of love, of rejuvenation, the time when everything seems to be reproducing…especially the plants. And the evidence of this is carried on the wings of the wind in the form of pollen, that goldish-yellow dust that floats lazily along until inhaled. Upon inhalation this sexual powder can successfully wreak havoc on an unsuspecting person, turning them into a sniffing, dripping, and miserable wretch.
So thanks to airborne plant sperm, the beautiful colors of spring are seen through watery and swollen eyes. The melodious sounds of birds singing and the breeze rustling the freshly budded leaves and flowers are interrupted by loud sneezes and sniffing. And the general good feeling that comes with perfect weather is lost in the depths of the misery those of us allergic to pollen are hurled into.
Isn’t it appropriate how much the word pollen looks like swollen?
For the past 20 years, or at least as many of those as I can remember, misery and springtime go together like spick and span. It just doesn’t sound as catchy.
This year has been no exception. I can walk outside to the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen and be perfectly fine for about 5 minutes. Then that bane of my existence attempts to fertilize my nose, which results in a myriad of ill effects to over take my head and face.
First I sneeze, then I usually sneeze again, and soon sneezes are erupting from my face like lava from an angry volcano. At some point during this process, my nose attempts to flood this foreign and apparently life-threatening substance out. So I begin sniffing through my nose, which means more pollen enters my system and I succeed in grossing-out anyone within hearing range, but I keep the flood of mucus at bay and save my appearance.
Shortly after I get the sniffles, my tear ducts get inflamed and begin oozing…yes oozing. My eyes attempt to swell themselves shut and begin to itch for some reason that I’m sure can be reasonably explained scientifically, but is completely unknown to me. So I rub my eyes to wipe away the ooze they keep secreting, as well as to scratch the insatiable itch. To an outsider it probably looks as if I’ve spent the past 3 months crying.
The icing on the proverbial cake is the pounding headache that flares up from all the sneezing and sniffing. It feels a little like I imagine it would feel to have Hulk Hogan squeeze my head.
Even if you don’t know who Hulk Hogan is, just imagine what a guy with that name would look like and it’ll probably be close enough.
I think over these 20 years I have become a fairly good sneezer. Considering in my relatively short lifetime I have probably done this close to 3 gazillion times, I’d say I’ve had plenty of practice. But sometimes I screw up, and it’s usually at the most inconvenient times, i.e. the middle of class, during a sermon at church, while I’m sleeping.
If you have never undergone the experience I’m about to describe, then I’m sure you’ve seen someone that has, you might have even laughed at that unfortunate person. Maybe next time it won’t seem so funny.
So I’m sitting in class, probably not wanting to be there and unable to stop my mind from wandering around. The weather is incredible and to be inside seems like an insult to nature as a whole. My teacher is lecturing on deaf ears and is probably just as unhappy as his or her students, but will never admit it. And then I feel it hit me like a freight train…that deep tingle in my nose that warns me that I have to sneeze.
No big deal right? Most of the time it isn’t, my sneeze usually rings out in the mostly silent room and “bless you”’s will follow. But every once in a while it is a big deal. Instead of just simply sneezing, my body forcefully expels the irritant and gallons of mucus through my nose into my cupped hands.
Now I have two choices. I can awkwardly get up, interrupt class, and stumble to the bathroom with my hands and face covered in snot. Or I can listen to my boyish instincts and wipe my hands on my pants, creating snot marks on them for the rest of the day and maybe even the week if it’s my last pair of clean pants. Neither option is a good one because both are humiliating.
The people around me know what just happened and are probably sufficiently grossed out…and rightfully so. I even get grossed out and I created the mess.
Next time you’re around some unfortunate person, who this happens to, try not to laugh.
So if you haven’t had the good fortune to ever have your allergies act up, or fall into the depths of misery that allergies can open up for you, then try not to get too jealous of those of us who have and will the rest of our lives. It’s not as fun as I make it out to be.
And for those of you that have this so-called good fortune…God bless you!

A Memorable Journey Down Tornado Alley

We were forced to go to Oklahoma for our next show; I say forced because I am convinced that Oklahoma is the worst state out of all the United States. It is closely followed by Alabama and Mississippi, which only rank lower than Louisiana because I am from Louisiana and have an inexplicable affection for it. But that’s irrelevant to the story.
I think we left Austin at 9ish to make the miserable trek through boring Texas and into gross Oklahoma. The journey through boring Texas was uneventful, and…well…boring. The weather, annoyingly overcast and just generally depressing, reflected my mood well. I found myself leaving one of my favorite cities in America to go to one of my least favorite, but it’s the price you pay for being a rock star…or at least it’s the price you pay for partaking, occasionally, in a quasi-rock star lifestyle. I say only quasi-rock star lifestyle because we avoided sex and drugs, and only got in the occasional fight. But that wasn’t important at the time because Oklahoma grew closer by the mile.
The decision to stop for gas, an executive decision made by my about-to-explode-from-being-full-of-pee bladder, and the car’s empty tank, was a wise one. So we found a suitable gas station, one with the cheapest gas*(Cheapest being completely relative because a steak dinner at a five star restaurant cost about the same as a gallon of gas, therefore cheapest refers to that same meal with a water instead of a coke.)* and a lot of stupid stuff to look at while the 20+-gallon tank of our tour bus*(Our tour bus was a 2004 Tahoe with leather seats, a Bose sound system, and the very back seat taken out in a not-so-genius idea to make a bed like thing in the back. The only problem with the idea was we’re a bunch of guys who like to throw food and spill stuff on each other while driving. So it was gross and cramped and smelled like sweaty balls and BO.)* filled up. During our rush to the bathroom we didn’t bother to notice the change in the weather, which would come back to haunt us in about…10 minutes.
But we did notice the gust of wind that helped us to open the door. I say gust because I don’t think weatherologists*(I made this word up)* haven’t invented a proper word to describe this blast of moving air. As I began opening the door this example of pure brutality saw an opportunity for embarrassment and leapt at the door, throwing its hellish entirety into the glass of the door that consequently acted as a wind catcher. The handle of the door left my hand as the entire door was flung off its hinges and into a parked 18 wheeler causing a small mushroom cloud to erupt and envelope all surrounding 18 wheelers and people. Actually that didn’t happen. But I digress.
Thankfully for everyone else, what really happened was the door slammed against the glass floor-to-ceiling window next to it; the handle luckily connected with the metal support beam and didn’t break any glass (kudos to the architect). Luckily I had enough grace and poise to be thrown into the window with the door. That stupid gust of wind blew me into the stupid door that had been blown into the stupid window. Of course my band mates initiated their laugh-without-holding-back-at-what-just-happened and everyone in the station just had to see who the idiot was that let go of the door. They didn’t understand…that was no mere gust of wind; it was a windblast from Hell.
So after I finally got myself through the doorway and fought to get the door closed behind me; I practically ran to the bathroom. After relieving myself I went to wash my hands, like I always do. Normally this wouldn’t be exciting enough to write about, which is why I didn’t expect anything exciting to happen. But alas, the sink faucets turned out to be power washer nozzles and sprayed water out at ungodly speeds, tearing the first three layers of skin from your hands with any soap and other germs picked up during the pee process.
After warning everyone in the bathroom about the sinks I left and went shopping for healthy sustenance, which usually came in the form of chips, candy, and a bottle of water. I and some other band members brought our chosen items to the cashier, and received the cashier’s friendly smile and greeting. As he rang up my items he said six words that I will forever remember, “Hope you boys aren’t going north.”
“Actually we are.” I replied naively, “Why shouldn’t we?” Man, I was an idiot and the look from the cashier told me so. He slowly pointed in a northern direction. As our eyes followed his point, I realized that I was indeed an idiot; something had happened, and night consumed the North. It was black and menacing. After we had ceased gawking in disbelief at the spectacle of nature we had just seen, the ever-so-informative cashier showed us the weather. “Holy shit,” a nameless member of the band said.*(His name rhymes with Goster and is also a type of beer.)* That about summed it up. Our route was covered by a death pattern of all different shades of green. “That stretch of road is called tornado alley,” the cashier said authoritatively. “And that is a storm, and this is the middle of tornado season.” Once again I think weatherologists need to come up with a better word for terms like “storm.”
So we all prepared to return to the bus, which was full of petroleum and ready to get us where we needed to go. As soon as we opened the door, I repeat, as soon as we opened the door, it started to rain. Actually it didn’t start to rain. More like a torrential downpour*(Kudos to the weatherologist who came up with the phrase torrential downpour, but keep working on the other things.)* hit and began vengefully dumping tons and tons of water per second on our unprepared heads. It was death in the form of falling water, enough water to make you wet just by looking at it. And the worst part was the gap between the covered fill-up area and the store part. Water was streaming from the sky and onto the ground, threatening anyone to do anything stupid.
We ran back to the car and leapt in, with our adrenaline pumping and our minds excited about the dangerosity*(I also made this word up.)* of the journey ahead. As we pulled out from the cover and into the torrential downpour, we stared down tornado alley and welcomed the adventure with open arms. That’s what it’s all about. Six boys pumped full of their own adrenaline, ready to experience the world. We were high on excitement and the possibility that we might experience the world in its entirety, or at least make it through Okalahoma with our dignity.

Description Assignment

Person – She has an odd sense of humor, but it works. It’s a witty, sarcastic, and sometimes borderline self-degrading sense of humor, but it works. She is a scene girl who actually succeeded in being different. She’s edgy. And she comes across as real. It’s easy to believe that what you see is really who she is. She acts like Pam from the office, which is never a bad thing. She’s Cassie.

Object – It’s rather melancholy. Its purplish skin is deeply rutted and marred, yet surprisingly smooth in some places. A simple flick produces a hollow thud. If it could weep in despair, I believe it would do almost constantly. Aren’t you glad you aren’t a potato?

Place – It was an unfortunate day in the quad. The students desperate enough to trek across the wet ground kept their heads bowed under hoods or umbrellas, trying to ignore to smothering blanket of gray above their heads, the unexplainably cold wind, and the incessant drizzle bearing down on them. It was inconvenient and depressing, causing most people to decide if they really needed to go to class, or if they could afford to skip. It was the perfect day to take a nap.