#dont bait the bear

Ice cream cake is very important. It brings people together. Unless you are lactose intolerant. Or you have a gluten problem. But everyone else. Sorry.

When I came to college, I spent the better part of my time at The Wardrobe’s dorm on the sixth floor of the Tower. There were a number of people associated with this story, a lot of participants, but i won’t mention anyone by name. What you are about to hear is both the best and worst of the people I have come to love very dearly, I would say, because of this moment.

We had been in college for maybe two months or so when The Wardrobe’s mom called in an ice cream cake order to the Moscow Baskin and Robbins. We went together to pick it up and when we returned she walked through the hall inviting all of our new friends to partake. 

There was great joy.

She set the immaculate vanilla on chocolate masterpiece just a few paces away from her dorm room door and stood, feed spread shoulder width apart and hands in front of her chest as if to stay  the onslaught of people.

“Okay,” She said in an authority that did not beg for peace, but demanded it. “Who needs forks?”

Not plates, not bowls, not napkins, not dignity. 

Forks.

We assumed our weapons and encircled the gluten and dairy delight, prepared for battle more than enjoyment. 

One of our party suffered an illness, though unlike a herd of zebra who may leave their weakest to the lion, we behaved like well-minded, thoughtful humans, quarantining a corner for her and declaring it hers alone. Not that it did much good as to keep her involved, the corner remained solidly attached.

And we were at it like wolves to a sweet, chocolate, creamy, melty, doe.

At least until we realized that after twenty minutes, that gift from Sandpoint above was still frozen solid. Not a fork, steel, silver, or otherwise, would penetrate that Canadian glacier exterior.

We were trapped. Yes, trapped. Stuck within a want and a can’t have. Much like being a toddler again. We fanned out along the hall, hoping it might drop it’s defenses and allow us a share. After a half hour of defrostation, The Wardrobe stuck a fork in it and declared it done. Kind of.

Just hardly soft enough to consume, but good enough for our time, energy, and patience.

And so we ate. Bite after bite until a discarded center was left in the middle of us, too soft and too sweet. We were finished, though the cake would have had us believe otherwise.

Cake on the floor, ice cream on chins, eighteen year old collegians laying on the floors of hallways, feeling a delayed sense of regret. Maybe wishing there had been more of us. Maybe wishing there had been less of it. 

When I returned in the spring of the following year, I would uphold a would be mocked, detested, highly anticipated tradition of The Ice Cream Cake. By no means timed nor quantified. 

I would simply show up at a friends dorm with a cake. Any who would answer the siren call would join us - always in the same manner. No plates. No bowls. No dignity. 

Only cake.

October 11th is National Coming Out Day and though I never considered what I did as a ‘coming out’, I suppose it felt that way to a lot of people.

I never knew what I was, but I always knew what I felt and I never intentionally hid it from anyone. I wasn’t straight, I knew that because girls. I liked them. But I had too many crushes on the boys I knew to be a lesbian.

I never considered myself 'Bi" because it felt wrong to limit my love to two groups labeled arbitrarily. I knew there where more out there and I knew they deserved as much love and consideration as anyone else. That I could give that love. I still know those things.

When I came to the University of Idaho and found myself thoroughly surrounded by the LGBTQA* community I also found that people were not sorted into cubbyholes of sexuality. That, much like cravings you have for this or that, it is fluid, changing, and very much a spectrum.

I also learned there are different degrees of sexual desire. As a teenager you learn that every teen wants to have sex. Their hormones are elevated and insane and all they want is to lose their pants.

Through self-reflection and close friendships, I now know that not to be true. Asexuality is one degree in which a person has no interest or desire in sexual contact. What they call sexual addiction, is a desire for constant sexual activity. There is also Demi-sexuality. A Demi-sexual only feels attraction to someone they have had an emotional connection with.

If I were to put myself in the societal cubbyholes, I would be in one entitled “Pan-romanitic, Demi-sexual.” Google is a great tool if you are confused by any of these terms.

As I said, this was not something I 'came out’ over. There were far more heavy situations where I had to admit something to members of my family.

I spent a lot of my childhood going to church and was baptized at age ten as a Christian. When I was thirteen, I realized that though I tried,my faith was neither genuine nor sustainable. It was not in my hard-wiring to be a person of faith.

My aunt questioned me and asked me to try again, my father said my reasoning was stupid. My mother, an unaffiliated spiritualist, looked sad but was not otherwise upset.

When it slipped out of me at my Gramma’s house, she told me I was going to hell.

Let me explain my Gramma’s sentiment. She was raised, I believe, Presbyterian. Her father did not often attend services and she disagreed with her mother’s church. As she grew into a woman, she found an interest in Catholicism. She met my Grandpa Fred, who was Catholic, fell in love and converted to the church. She has been a dedicated member ever since, deriding her own meaning from the bible while still staying within the faith.

So when she said I was going to Hell, it wasn’t because I’ve my deviance from faith, it wasn’t because of my sexuality, and it wasn’t because of some harsh, intricate, Catholic judgement. I have always been on the path to Hell, in her mind, because I was born outside of the catholic church and have never converted. No other religion can save me.

Her comment hurt the least.

When I came out to my dad about my lifeong anxiety and depression, his words were: “See, if you would ask God, he would heal you.”

This was the hardest thing to tell my family. It was the biggest lie spread over the widest timeline that I’d ever admitted to. I wasn’t happy, I didn’t think I’d been truly happy since I was seven. 

What my dad couldn’t bring himself to hear was that I had tried for years when I was a child. But much like praying the gay away, praying the mental illness away does not work. Still, he insists that God is my answer.

Serenity, is my answer and I find it in energy. I believe, I told him, that everything in this universe is connected and I believe as the Pagans did. Every word, every action, every thought resonates and effects everything else.

So in the spirit of National Coming Out Day, I not come out to you as mess of a Pan-Romantic, Demi-Sexual, mentally ill, Atheistic Pagan Witch.

Still no more important or special than anyone else. Neither am I less important or special than anyone else. Coming out isn’t about gaining the spotlight and it isn’t a symptom of Special Snowflake syndrome. It is someone humbling themselves in front of you saying “Here I am. This is it.” Instead of being upset by their deviance from the social norm, remind yourself that this individual has exposed a part of themselves to you out of love and trust.

Happy NCOD!

The day I walked across the stage and received an empty case meant to symbolize my diploma, I walked with my best friend. One of them, anyway.

When I moved up from Arizona, I left everyone I knew behind. The people I’d been in daycare with. The people I’d paired up for field day with. The people who went to Teen Break with me. A whole big chunk of how I categorized myself was gone with one left turn off of London Bridge Road onto Highway 95. 

As cheesy and silly as it seems now, it was at that stop sign I sent a text to my lifetime ally and enemy, Aiyana. I don’t remember exactly what it was.

“I’ll miss you." 

"I love you.”

Maybe both. I believe her reply was “See you tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t,” isn’t what I said but it’s what I thought.

It’s be more than six years since that moment and though I choose to ignore it, I feel that absence every day.

When mom enrolled me in Sandpoint High School, I couldn’t be there to choose my classes. Because of a very short stint I had in a play in seventh grade, she decided Intro to Theatre would be a very good fit. I was not happy.

I am an introvert with high levels of anxiety (according to a counselor and generations before me wrought with alcoholism) and I have stage fright. What was that woman trying to do to me?

Mom told me to give it a week before I switched. At the end of that one week I decided I might as well stay and the next spring I was cast as a spoon in Beauty and the Beast. 

That is where I met the person I would stand next to at graduation. She was cast as Madame de la Grande Bouche - the Wardrobe. For no other reason than I hate coming up with names for real people, we’re just going to call her the Wardrobe. Do you really expect me to spell French words correctly for approximately eight more inches of text? No.

The Wardrobe and I started hanging out junior year of high school. She was incredibly kind, had great taste in music, movies, clothes, musicals, and she gave me that music, she took me to movies, she let me borrow clothes. I went to prom in one of her dresses. That’s how amazing this girl was.

But none of that was why she was my best friend. She was my best friend because she included me in experiences and concepts that I’d never been privy to before. We’d go on aimless car rides around Sandpoint just listening to music. We’d get a group together and walk down main street taking pictures and window shopping. We’d just sit at City Beach, slowly amassing kids we knew from around town.

When I spoke, she listened. She was the first person since Aiyana that I’d been able to confide in about my dad and my sister and my insane, sad, over thought life. And I listened, too. She’d been discarded by old friends. A mild way of putting it, but it’s not my story. We were building a new support system together, along with a few others. Strays like us.

Then, one day during our senior year, she asked something wholly unexpected. “Wanna walk with me at graduation?”

Graduation was something built up in my head. This whole big thing where you walk with someone you’ve known your whole life you’re handed your diploma, shake hands with the principal, your family is crying, and by the end everything has changed because you walked across the stage and your tassel is on the other side of that cap.

I expected the Wardrobe to walk with literally any other senior before she walked with me. There were always small hints that this friendship wasn’t just in my head and that was one of the biggest. 

Of course, nothing I said about graduation up there is true. In Sandpoint, you are herded into the gated tennis courts and asked to get in a straight line next to your walking partner. You then walk in front of the stage and up into the very crowded bleachers and listen to your Valedictorian and Salutatorian, neither of whom I knew, talk to the parents, not us, about our high school experience and how we will go into the future. We played Apples to Apples in the stands.

After this, row by row people in the bleachers stand and shuffle back down to the stage, hand two teacher representatives cards with our names on them so they can announce us as if we were beauty pageant contestants. We walk across, get an empty case, and go back to the bleachers with our walking partner. When all of that is over and everyone is back in their seats, we listen to the principal describe our class with her trademark One Word. I believe for us the word was “spirited,” which means we were a pain in the ass. 

What she doesn’t know is that we had plans to each hand her dog bone treats as we shook her hand and hold up a sign in the stands that said “You’ve been boned." 

Ladies and Gentlemen, high school.

I used to think of the Wardrobe in Aiyana terms: she would always be there - even when she wasn’t. Even when she was 1,321 miles away or more. I expected the friendship to be the same. Then one day, after living together for nine months, she didn’t come home. I mean, she did now and then, but she never lived there again and we didn’t talk anymore.

Everything was very different and I’m not one to take change out of my control very well. I don’t know what happened with the Wardrobe and maybe I never will, but I will always remember that graduation was only worthwhile because I played Apples to Apples with my best friend.

Cheers.

This is my cousin Kelsey. Everybody say “Happy Birthday, Kelsey!!!”

Kelso is one with my soul. She is me if I were ginger, about 60 pounds lighter, and a little more confident and extroverted. I love her and I hate her. Most importantly, I miss her. So because it is the anniversary of the day this Ginger Supremacist clawed her way out of my poor skinny, blonde, mild mannered Aunt Mia, I will tell you some Kelso stories.

On long term vacations to Spokane, my Aunt’s house was often full to the brim with relatives. It was rare for someone to have a bed to themselves and more often than not, I was delegated to Kelsey’s bed. It wasn’t as though we squeezed into a twin, she had a full mattress. 

Being so close in proximity for such intensive amounts of time in the summers of our youths, we ended up very close in spirit. I said she is me. It’s almost an exaggeration to show just how much I love her, but it’s also kind of… not. Se’s everything I wish I was. Self-confident, at least in appearance. Smart. High energy. Tactile. And then she’s everything I am: Highly logical. Socially active. Stubborn. Idealistic. Eager.

I listen to her rattle on for five minutes about what we’re doing for the next week when I walk into her parent’s house in Spocompton and I feel like there is someone I could totally live in a house with three cats and five dogs with - that’s our plan. And then she disappears. I hear from the bathroom, the door left slightly ajar, “Pssssst. Sadie?”

“What?”

“I’m pooping.”

She is not mentally damaged. She does not have ADHD. She just like me to feel included, I guess? I have told er to stop this. I have begged her. Short of getting a shock collar, I don’t think anything will stop her from doing this to me. Only to me. It’s messed up.

When we were thirteen, I convinced Aunt Mia to let Kelso skip the last week of eighth grade and her middle school commencement ceremony. Instead of school, she went with Gramma Donna and I to Battleground, Washington. 

Great Aunt Furl’s home was… There was a pond in the backyard, acres large with ducks and fish. There were berry bushes, flower beds, a trampoline. Everything you could want in a house. Except bedrooms. I think there were maybe two legitimate bedrooms in the house. Furl and her husband’s, a guest room for Gramma, and a hide-a-bed next to the washer and dryer in the basement with concrete floors and a sliding glass door without blinds. 

Doesn’t sound to bad. Kelsey and I had shared a bed before. But not with three or so other, what? Third cousins, maybe fourth who neither of us had ever even heard of, all of which were boys.

It was fine. Definitely not the highlight moment of the trip. That was our first dinner. Steak and potatoes were stacked on plates in the center of the table with a pot of green beans. As is typical of most homes on the west coast, there were no seating rules and it was a round - you’ll learn why that is an important note on a later date. 

Kelsey’s on my right as we serve ourselves and she grabs what is a very decent sized steak. We eat. Furl asks us how old we are, what we like to do, how school is. She’s never met us before but we are important to her sister so it’s important to her. 

I notice during our conversation that Kelsey is struggling to cut her meat. Furl turns her attention back to Gramma and I seize the opportunity to help feed my hopeless, muscle-less cousin. 

“Let me.” I tell her. She hands me her steak knife and fork and begin trying to saw through it myself. 

No such luck.

“It’s all fat.” She whispers, eyes wide in both uncertainty and disgust.

I hand her back her utensils and shrug. She guides the slab of fat to the edge of her plate with her fork and reaches for a second steak that appears more like meat.

Stopping her conversation with Gramma in a fraction of a moment, she looks Kelsey directly in the eye.

“Sweety, why don’t you finish whats on your plate?”

 Kelsey glances at me, her mouth open very slightly and then back at Furl. “It’s fat. I can’t…”

“We tried to cut through it,” I intervene. “It’s too tough.”

Kelsey attempts to demonstrate the point by ravaging it with her knife and fork once more.

“Give it here.” Furl says, snatching it off of the plate with her own fork and taking a bite out of it. Apparently no cutting necessary. “It’s just gristle!” She says, chewing it for a a solid minute before swallowing.

Kelsey’s eyes drop to her plate and I smash my mashed potatoes with my fork. I have always wished I could say that Furl was teaching us a lesson about not wasting food but as I watched her chew every piece of gristle Kelso couldn’t, I know she just enjoyed it. 

We pen pal as often as often as we can, always in the appropriate Jane Austen style and in cursive. Mostly we talk about what we lack: each other, significant others, sushi. Sometimes we get a little deeper and we plan. We’ve talked about me moving up to Spokane and living together.

If I do, I’m sure there will be many more stories to come.

My Mama really wants me to come home.

It’s not a secret. Every time we talk she asks me to, though it’s not an outright request. Se begs in the form of an offer: “You can always come back here.” She does this the way only a parents fully invested in their child’s life can.

Every time she does this, I’m a little tempted. “Yes, as soon as this lease ends,” is always on the tip of my tongue. Happiness lies in those mountains. I know it.  Then I remember what I want and that Clark Fork, Idaho is not part of that. “I can’t,” I say. “I’m not the kind of person for that kind of place. Not yet.”

I think we both know I’ll never come home. Within the last few years I found this little piece of truth in myself: I will probably never live in the same place as my mother again.

Some people live for that moment when they leave and only return to the nest for Christmases or small vacations but Mom and I, we were it. All the other had. She has Apa now, and they are doing great, but there’s a big, sentimental chunk within both of us.

I called her this morning to hear her talk about her garden and as I listened intently, a hard task for both of us on the phone, I realize something. She is the earth. Every mulched leaf and churn of soil in the beds she was finally able to construct this summer, they are part of her..

When we left Arizona, we left permanence. The longest we lived in any given area of Sandpoint was a year and none of those places were ours. Her first respectable garden after we moved back up was grown entirely in buckets. Because we weren’t sure how long we would stay at my Aunt Mindi’s cabin, we couldn’t break ground to raise a crop.

Mom went to grocery store bakeries for weeks collecting buckets that had once stored flour and sugar and would be discarded and considered useless to all other hands but my mothers.

She bought hundreds of dollars worth of compost and soil, mixed it herself and implanted every starter she’d raised in our windows from plastic ice cube molds.

That summer was my last summer before college. I learned that pumpkin foliage smells like sour cream and onion chips, except less like chemicals. I learned about cross pollination. I learned that bugs in Sagle don’t care for fish oil. I learned that what you sew and reap yourself makes you feel the absolute best.

The garden was entirely organic, non-gmo. I watched my mom put as much love and dedication into that garden as she did to me. Her passion is a quiet one. She can sit in her garden in silence for hours on end, days at a time.

She and Apa are caretakers for a house out in Clark Fork now, where mom is allowed to really touch the earth. She planted sixty Roma seeds this summer, expecting only a fraction to grow, but every last seed germinated and every last plant produced their hefty share of tomatoes. The clusters are ripening five at a time, everyday. She can hardly keep up with them. 

I want that. That connection to life - unpolluted. 

At some point, when I was a very small child who did not understand numbers, my mom tucked me into bed, gave me a kiss, and turned to leave. To which I responded:

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

“I love you ten to a thousand.”

I don’t know where it came from, but it followed us past the age of tuck-ins and into my teens. When I left for college the first time, remember standing awkwardly in my dorm in Gooding wing of Wallace, my bottom bunk stuffed with boxes. She pulled me in close, much shorter than I, her hands wrapped around my torso.

“Ten to a thousand,” she whispered into my shoulder. 

“Ten to a thousand,” she says as I say goodbye and go to hang up my phone.

In rural North Idaho, Huckleberries are typically sold by the gallon. If you are lucky and berries are in abundance, a fifty-eight year old man with a patchy beard, missing tooth, and torn off jean shorts sitting under a slab of cardboard that says “HUCKLEBERRIES” will sell you a Ziploc gallon bag for forty dollars. More often than not, the season was dry and your wallet looks at losing about fifty to fifty-five bucks. The Sandpoint farmers market merchants typically ask for sixty. Moscow Food Co-Op sells them for 11.99 a pound.

If you don’t know what a Huckleberry is, it is a small ball of gold loosely related to the blueberry - only better. My roommate Cami, a Priest River native, says as I am writing this that “when North Idaho finally succeeds from the nation and goes off the gold standard, Huckleberries will be our main form of currency.”

A currency you truly have to work for. If you are unwilling to part with a portion of your bank account, you must the sacrifice sleep. Early in the Huckleberry season, about mid-summer, it is typical for families to wake at five a.m. and head up the mountains. Or if they are really dedicated, they will take a weekend and camp out.

My family carried none of these necessary burdens. Parents would plan to leave the house at eight, rain or shine. After waking kids up and making breakfast and preparing lunch and collecting buckets we would leave my Gramma’s house closer to eleven. This, of course, meant more hours in the sun.

Large coolers would be stuffed into trunks, not for lunches, but for berries, and hoards of Williams’ (Yes, all related.) would climb steep banks and swat mosquitoes for hours upon hours while carefully hand picking berries we were born knowing how to identify. One more thing that runs in our veins.

We scowled at Californians with pickers that shamelessly destroyed the bushes that took years to grow and years still to produce.

One day, during the only vacation up from Arizona that my Grandma Sharon accompanied my Mom, sister, and I, my dad coaxed us all up the mountain in the rain - I believe it was the Upper Pack River area. We hastily left the car. In is attempt to show up the best berry patch he’d ever stumbled across, we had to cross the river. In order to dross the river, we had to carefully jump from rock to rock. Again, in the rain.

Most of us had made it over when we heard a splash distinct from the rain hitting the water and a “wwwhhhhaaa…” of uncertainty.

My Grandma had fallen into the river. Covered in icy water, she decided to warm up in the car while we picked the not-so-spectacular berry patch. Maybe my parents divorced because dad is terrible at Huckleberry picking. Probably not, but it’s a legitimate cause up here.

All of this was before the mass production of Huckleberry products. Chances are good that those Wild Huckleberry chocolates you bought at the candy stores in Seaside, OR are A. a synthetic flavor B. a cross-bred domesticated plant that barely resembles a real Huckleberry or C. only came to be because they came to mountain patches en mass and tore up whole bushes.

Not to say they didn’t come across true wild Huckleberries in an honest, honorable fashion. I’m just saying that there are too many Huckleberry products out there for every single one to be real.

I have no true issue with what they call “domesticated Huckleberry bushes” but let me explain you a thing: The true berry bush thrives only in specific conditions. It has to be in just the right altitude with just the right amount of sun at just the right time of day with just the right amount of water with just enough acidic properties in the soil. It’s home is in the mountains of the Inland Northwest stretching into Montana and into Canada and that is where it belongs. To ask this organism to grow in your clean, composted garden next to your strawberries is to change it’s entire genetic structure.

Essentially, scientifically, the Huckleberry begins to taste, look, and smell more like a blueberry - entirely defeating the purpose of domesticating the Huckleberry and devaluing the true rarity that makes it special in the first place.

I am not a competitive person, but I love game night. Perhaps it’s my millennial disregard for egotism or domination, but I don’t care if I win or loose, I just want to be involved - That’s right Baby Boomers, shudder at my participation trophies and ‘Good Attitude’ recognition certificates. I revel in them. 

My family cannot play a game of Scrabble without arguing.

Every other game in existence is just a silly pastime, but not Scrabble. It’s become holiday tradition for my grandmother to say those infamous words: “Let’s play a game.” As if we were in the next installment of Saw. We may as well be because after we discuss the possibilities: Uno, Risk, Trailer Park Wars (which is, indeed, a game), Grandma always insists on Scrabble. I wonder, sometimes, what feeds her fascination with this evil game. Was it a pastime she had with her father? Does she have an unknown passion for words? Does she find squabbles ending months of radio silence from the aunts amusing?

When she and I play alone, she dominates me. She has a great vocabulary and I do too, but she has almost eighty years of words in her mouth and I have twenty something. I love to play with her.

But as she pulls out the game board we all think: “Dear God, this is not happening!” But we get our hopes up because Aunt Kelly has decided not to play. She has to go into her office and do some work she has neglected today. I do not buy this as her boss is sitting right next to me at the table, handing me good advice or twenty dollar bills and telling me to take good care of myself.  “Would you like another Starbucks gift card?” “Why, yes.” “Don’t let anyone use you, ever. You are too smart for that.” “I know…” She really is a lovely woman. The most insanely sane of our collection of weirdo’s. 

After a collective sigh of relief, the board starts to fill with little wooden tiles. Twenty minutes in and one of Kelly’s children has given up due to boredom or fatigue or maybe just to go watch Rio and monopolize another cousin’s lap. Of course, Kelly must now step in.

A collective sigh of disdain as a score of twenty-seven suddenly becomes a score of three hundred and ninety-four. In an effort to make up this obnoxious gap, Aunt Val plays a word she thinks she may have heard at the country club once. She believes it’s a synonym for healthy- or maybe it was for gaudy. Although, Janice was talking about her children so it might have been more similar to indignant.

We all agree to let it pass but just as Val reaches for the velvet treasure trove of tiles, Kelly ponders and objects. Ten minutes into the debate, four separate dictionaries, a thesaurus, two Stephen King novels, and a severed goat head on a sacrificial alter have replaced the rest of us, who now gather around the discarded vegetable platter.

The game is left abandoned on the table as Kelly takes a shot of something we would have gotten into earlier had we known it was an option and Val keeps the issue alive by bringing it up every ten minutes or so. I agree with her and sneak into the kitchen to pour vast amounts of mid-shelf vodka into my sprite.

And every time I think: maybe next time Grandma won’t want to play a game… And maybe that goat’s life wasn’t sacrificed for naught. 

Of course, this routine has calmed over the years. We don’t often play family games anymore. 

I used to play a lot with my mom and sister, sometimes dad. I always liked monopoly, never good at it, but I liked it. Once I had lost too much of my money and hadn’t realized it. I didn’t count out my bank after the game started and the fake bills just kind of disappeared - kind of the way handled my real bank account when I first got it.

I rolled the dice, I moved some spaces, I land on my sisters property. It has a hotel. I have thirty-eight dollars and everything is mortgaged already.

“You lose.” My sister says. I think that’s how I remember that going.

“Mom?”

Mom smiled at me with very thin lips as if to say “ God, I hope tis child is not so financially irresponsible as an adult.” Sill:

“I’ll loan you some money.” Se started counting out enough to square me with my sister. 

“That’s not how it works.” Jess says. “That’s cheating.”

“Jessica, it’s just a game.”

She gave my mom a look that told us, without words, that she was one thousand percent done and left the table. We thought she’d cool down and we would finish the game so we left the board out but after that, she refused to play monopoly with me again. 

After Jess left the house, mom and I started playing games together again. Our favorite was, you better believe it, Scrabble. We didn’t keep points and we eventually we stopped following the rules. We came up with a version of the game we called Scrabble: Street Rulez. 

Nothing was limited. Acronyms were a legitimate play, as were proper nouns, text talk, and misspellings. We had a blast.

I have puked on maybe 4 occasions in the last three years of active drinking. when I walk down Greek row and try not to smell the flowers outside of the Tri-Delt house, I feel like four is a pretty low number, comparatively.

Three of those four times, I was, legitimately, too gone to keep it down. In the story I am about to tell you, I distance myself from guilt by asserting that I had eaten a mere bowl of cereal the entire day and, you know what? Gin can sneak up on you.

My mom told me this story once about when she was a teenager in California. She and her friends sat on a picnic table or something with a bottle of tequila. She said that at one point she laid back on the table and in the sky she saw Jesus. Just as she was reveling in the spirit, my uncle came down the road with a message from her father: “Get home, now.”

Her best guy friend carried her to his house, threw her into the shower and blasted cold water to get her to sober up, though she remembers nothing after Jesus.

I have this friend, James - yes, the name has been changed. James was a grad student at the university who was around ten years my senior. He was always very fun, a little grabby, but kind and not into the ladies, anyway. We’ll talk about him more in other stories. In this story, he was throwing an impromptu party.

My drink of choice is typically lemonade and Gin. That night was no different and by the time we’d gone around the circle once in that night’s game of King’s Cup, I was feeling… good. 

Not Jesus good, but good.

Another friend mixes me a second drink, I don’t remember who, and we continues the game.

For those who don’t know this game, you put playing cards face down in a circle and pick a random card that has a specific rule attached to it. 

As my drink gets set in front of me, someone draws a six.

“Six is for dicks.” The player says.

“And those who love them!” The circle calls back and everyone drinks, defeating the entire purpose of the rule in one fell swoop.

I feel a little uncertain about the lack of content in my stomach, but I drink.

The next player pulls a two.

“Two is for you.” He points at me. I nod and sip. 

I catch the attention of the guy who made me the drink. “Can you get me a glass of water?” He nods and fills a glass from the tap.

“Seven.” Someone says. Seven is for heaven, so I point to the sky as the water is set in front of me. 

I sip a little. I’m still feeling pretty okay. Just time to slow down a little.

“Ace!”

“Waterfall.” Someone groans across the table. We tip our drinks back and I appear to be gulping, but I’m really sipping. It’s an art. The person before me, the one I am relying on to end this quickly for me, holds it out far longer than she should and I have gone from ‘wait it out’ stomach rumbles to 'nope’ stomach turning.

I turn to my friend Codey for some inexplicable reason and say “I’ll be right back.” I squeeze behind chairs towards the living room, hoping to make it to the bathroom in time.

I don’t.

Idomake it to the trashcan before quietly losing my bowl of cereal. I look up and not a single person appears to have seen me. I think: I did it. I did it with class. I did it in secret. I need to clean myself up. I get into the bathroom and clean my face off before rinsing.

By the time I make it back into the kitchen, they know somethings up.

“What’s going on?” I ask, disassociating myself from this incident in my own mind.

“Someone puked in the trashcan.”

“Shit.” I step into the kitchen and get into the towel drawer. “Here, Let me help.”

“Thanks.” James says as I kneel on the floor and clean up the water I’d apparently spilled as he ties the garbage bag.

“No problem. Are they okay? Do we know who did it?”

“No, whoever it is, they seem to be fine now.” He says. 

I was, by the way. Perfectly composed.

“No worries, then." 

The party continued on. I overheard one or two people asking if anyone knew who it was that got sick, but no one seemed to have a clue. Scott free.

Three months later, during another game of King’s Cup, I was asked about the time I’d been the most embarrassed and, laying my heart, soul, and pride on the line, I told this story.

"Oh, we all knew it was you.”

Who? This precious thing? Nah… 

In rural small towns of Northern Idaho that lay in the foothills of the Bitter Root Mountains, one finds it very difficult to  grow up without knowing or knowing of every singular person of the town. This can get you into some peculiar situations.

I will disclaim right here, right off the bat, that this is not my story, it is my father’s.

A number of years ago, when I lived in Arizona and my dad was living in Idaho, my Gramma asked my dad to pick my cousin, Cameron, up from school. He agreed.

They were driving down the highway when Cameron turned around in his seat.

“Max! Turn around!”

“Why?”

“There’s a dead raccoon!”

“So?”

“I Max, I want a coonskin cap! Turn around!”

When dad thinks you’re an idiot, his eyes open a little wider, his eyebrows raise, his head tilts down a little bit and shakes quickly from side to side as if to say “Who gives a shit?” without actually saying it.

“Max!” Cameron doesn’t elongate vowels to whine when someone doesn’t want to give him something he wants. A lot like his older brother, Ryan (from the knife fight), he is straight forward and demanding. “I want a coonskin cap.”

“If it’ll get you to shut up.” Dad pulls a u-turn on the highway, pulls over opposite from the raccoon, and tells Cam to stay in the car. He crosses the road and when he gets to the carcass he notices in it something like breathing. 

“Cameron, I don’t think this thing is dead,” he shouts.

“Yeah, Max, it is. Pick it up!”

Dad reaches his foot out and nudges it.

It jumps, runs into the highway, and gets hit by a semi.

It’s dead now.

He waits for the traffic to pass, picks it as he crosses the highway, and throws in the back of the truck.

“Thanks, Max.”

As they continue north on the highway, maybe a mile or so up the road, dad sees a couple walking along the side that he recognizes and pulls over. 

“You guys need a ride?”

Dad’s clocked a lot of hours hitchhiking and likes to pay it forward when he can. Of course, this time they are beyond gone on something hard.

They climb into the back of the truck. With the dead raccoon. Don’t say a thing.

Dad stops at a gas station and tells Cameron to stay in the truck. He’s perusing the refrigerators for a cheap tallboy when Cameron appears next to him with eyes wide and breath held.

“Max.”

“I told you to stay in the truck.”

“She cradling it.”

“What?”

They come out of the gas station and the woman has the raccoon tucked in her arms like an infant, rocking it and singing.

At this moment, dad chooses not to do anything. They both get back in the cab and Cameron looks my dad in the eye and says “I want my ‘coon skin cap." 

'Cause he’s Davy Crockett or some shit.

The guy tells dad to drop them off at a nearby motel and he gladly agrees. He pulls up outside the motel office and the woman gets out with the raccoon still in her arms.

Cameron is freaking out.

"Max! Max! She’s takin’ it!”

Dad gets out of the truck and catches up to them. He sees now that the woman is in tears, still singing, and shuddering violently (induced by either grief or severe drug use). 

“Look lady,” he says, “my nephew really want that raccoon. He want to make a hat or somethin’. Could you just leave it?”

Her whole face twists and distorts into some kind of iconic B-movie horror close up and she sputters her one clear, lucid phrase of the day: “I’m gonna give it a proper burial." 

With that, she walked past him toward a motel room, presumably theirs, and dad walks back to the truck. As he sits in the drivers seat and closes the door Cameron gapes at him.

"Max.”

“No." 

To my knowledge, Cameron never got a Coonskin cap, real or fake,  and probably for the better. Though he still get’s a little worked up about it when the story comes up.

The lesson: Maybe don’t pick up roadkill? Or maybe don’t pick up hitchhikers? Maybe both?

I don’t know.

He does.