I 'm leaving the old intro here , but adding this - it appears the doves have taken over my blog for their fiction . Just as well , I was doing a piss poor job of updating . They 're doing much better . This blog is infrequently updated , full of incorrect spellings , misused words , and general bad grammar . It started when I was trying to use google + ( which I 've since given up on ) and discovered there was no character limit for posts . If you 've known me a long time , a lot of these stories will be old hat . If you plan to know me for a long time , you 'll no doubt hear many of them in person . But , folks seemed to enjoy them , so here they are . first winter I was in Boston , My father had just moved to Miami . There was one really brutal week up north where the highs ( not including windchill ) didn 't make it up to 0 degrees . At one point during the week we were talking on the phone , and the weather came up . He started in about how it was cold down south , too , and all the fancy ladies had broken out their fur coats . I asked him how cold it was . He said it had gotten down to nearly this is very quick . At least the first few years I was in high school , the group of friends I was part of would have the Fete Du Triumph at the end of each school year . This was a big party , some two or three days long , out in the woods . Folks would camp out or not , but there was a bonfire , full bodily contact capture the flag , and all the other craziness one might expect . My freshman year , my brother was going , and so , of course , I wanted to go , too . I called up my mom . I told her about it . I asked if I could go . She said I still had finals left on Monday , and I needed to come home and study . Before thinking about it , I said " but Mom - there 's gonna be drugs and fire and sex ! " . There was a pause and a slight sigh from Mom . " Shall I bring your sleeping bag , or are you all set ? " Previously mentioned - there was a surprisingly active live action role playing club at my high school . I was part of it . My English teacher , one year , had done some in that past . She also felt that role playing increased kids vocabularies , helped them get past that first hurdle of starting to tell a story , and generally made for better writers . Her way of giving back - she would respond to anyone using the accepted signs as though in a game - that is to say , if you entered class just a bit late , but did so very quietly , while making the handsign for invisibility , she wouldn 't mark you late . Posted by As teenagers , we used to frequent the 24 hour diners . Honestly , even as an adult , I look for a nearby 24 hour diner when picking a living situation . If one happens to be still awake at 3am , diner food is wonderful . One of these times , we were at the diner very late at night . It was a group of us , and not the best looking group - there were black trench coats and boots and lots and lots of mud . One particular young man was in full on black lipstick and white facepaint that had begun to run after a full night of sprinting about in the woods . He looked like shit . He carefully counted out enough coins and ordered a coffee . The rest of us placed our orders as well . The waitress came back with everything , plus an enormous blueberry muffin , cut in half , toasted , and buttered , which she placed in front of him with a big smile . Posted by I worked at a pet store for one year in high school . People would sometimes drop off little kittens in cardboard boxes , hoping we 'd take over finding them homes . One time , we got two little bits who were only a few hours old . They came home with me - they needed to be few every hour , so I would take them everywhere . They would suckle on anything , given the chance , so had to be kept separate when unsupervised to prevent them from hurting each other . So - to attend school with them as subtly as possible , I would put one in the right pocket of my lab coat , and the other in the left . All my teachers pretended not to notice , and I pretended not to know that they knew . I 'd feed them in the bathroom between each class , and , for a few weeks , was late to everything . No one complained . As they got a bit bigger and only needed one feeding during the school day ( and had stopped suckling each other 's fur off ) , my art teacher agreed to let them stay in her office . Posted by When I was in high school , I hung out with a lot of goths . Being the perennially difficult person that I am , there was no way I was going to wear a long black coat if everyone else was doing it . One afternoon , after school , my friend Michelle and I were up to some mischief or other , and we ended up in one of the science classrooms . There was a white lab coat just hanging there , and in my size . I snatched it . I admit it . And I wore that thing all the time from there out - if it was cold , it would be under another coat , but it was always there . I loved having the pockets , and , I have to admit it , I loved that I was the only one who had one . Even my very conservative Jewish grandmother loved it - when it finally was so stained as to need to be replaced , she ordered one for each of us . Posted by I don 't know how this started , but I do know everyone had water guns . There was an arms race that reminded one of the cold war - if one side got a supersoaker , the other would find a way to procure a supersoaker 500 , and on up . There were folks involved that made no sense whatsoever - this war was not limited to the freaks and geeks - it was everyone . There were people coming in from out of town and doing drivebys in our dunkin donuts parking lots . No one was left dry . Alliances changed regularly , and with an alacrity that made it impossible for one to know if the car approaching was a friend or foe . It was best to simply leap behind the closest vehicle and hope to dodge the water that was quite likely to be coming your way . It ended as suddenly as it began , and I have no idea , really , what happened , except that for a few weeks , the world was tremendously exciting . Posted by My art teacher , Ms . Joyce Hannah , used to take us all into the city occasionally . She 'd hire a bus ( a nice one , with bathrooms ! ) and we 'd get our permission slips signed , and most of the time , she 'd just have the bus drop us off at the corner of Houston and Broadway streets , with the only rules being the time we were to meet the bus and that we had to eat something interesting for lunch . We 'd go to galleries , and my favorite toy store , and eat empanadas and think we were hot shit . One of these times , though , there was a particular exhibit she wanted us to see at the Met . She had the bus drop us off in the middle of central park . As anyone local to NYC knows , the Met is free if you want it to be , but there is a suggested donation of something very high . If you show up as a school group , they give you a discount , but take away the option of not paying . So , she divided us up into groups , and handed each of us a dime to give them , to at least pay for our little tags . And we all met up at the exhibit , thrilled that our teacher had gamed the system . Posted by Most of the real solid pranksters I was friends with in high school were either two or three years older than I . That meant that , my junior year , there was a gaping hole . No specific person filled it , but we did our best to keep up the tradition of pranks . For St Patrick 's day , the fellow I was dating at the time decided we were going to stage the Catholics vs the protestants . I sewed a huge irish flag ( accidentally bigger than the US flag on the pole - whoops ! ) Very early , before classes , we snuck onto the campus , ran the American flag down the pole , clipped the irish flag right below it , and ran it back up . Then a bunch of folks stationed themselves at the front door of the school , handing out either a green or an orange sash to each kid who entered , along with a water pistol and the admonishion that the war would happen only outside of classes - all classrooms were to be considered temporary truces . And sure enough , we had a schoolwide water fight , with spies , and ambushes , and folks who " just happened " to have larger guns secreted away in their lockers . My memory is that no one got in trouble , but I could be wrong . Posted by there 's a secret I haven 't told you . I have a diary . I only write in it occasionally , and it exists on my harddrive , there are no paper copies . It isn 't public , but , I wanted to tell the story of this day , and the fact is - there 's no way I can do a better job than to simply copy and paste the word document into this space . So , I know that this was written on 5 / 24 / 99 . This is the unedited text of a 17 year old girl 's diary , complete with embarrassing bits on my adolescent interest in boys . It was a grand day . I had lots of pets growing up . One of my ferrets got cancer when I was in high school - maybe sophomore year . I was sad , no way around it . I must have been even more quiet than normal , as one of my friends , a certain Armando , asked me what was wrong . I told him about my ferret . I likely cried - I was a sensitive soul . The very next day he set up a fund among my friends to buy me a baby ferret . Sure enough , they raised the money , and I got to go out , several weeks after my elder ferret passed on , and buy myself a little ferret kit . I was delighted with the ferret , but moreso , with the fact that a group of people ( mind you , a group I had not really considered myself terribly close to ) would do that for me . Posted by Our friend Dave had this thing called the Boognish . It was used as a nom de plume for pranks , and its face graced any number of unexpected places . Once , painted from edge to edge of a king size sheet , it was lovingly placed between the upraised arms of the field goal during the night before a home game . Several friends were in marching band , and thus got the full effect of this visage . It was beautiful . We felt like princes , or at least like rooks . It came down , but we were able to claim it and secret it away with the band uniforms . We decided we needed to recreate this wonder at the next away game . On the way , the bus stopped at a travel plaza thing for everyone to grab lunch , and our coterie snuck into the store , hoping to buy tape and rope . There was none . There were , however , furry handcuffs . I don 't really want to think about the person who buys furry handcuffs at a truckstop , but we bought two pair . There were three of us - two gals and a guy , buying two pairs of handcuffs while grinning maniacally and holding a balled up king sized sheet . We made a fantastic impression . When we got to the game , though , there was a ) no way we could hang the thing from the field goal without rope or a ladder , of which we had neither and b ) no way we could be gone long enough to really fully pull the prank , anyway . We hung it from the back of the stands , instead . Posted by This story that comes up sometimes in conversations about my interactions with police ( and the fact that I love them ) . I was in the role playing club , and we were the pinnacle of geeky - live action , vampire based games . Hell yeah . I loved it . Sometimes , we would have weekend games , not at the school , and sometimes these games featured boffer weapons - that is , pipe covered in foam with which two people might beat each other fairly safely . We would refer to these games as " going into the woods and hitting our friends with sticks " . One of these games , though , was not in the woods - it was in the local cemetery , very late at night . Sure enough , a cop showed up . We didn 't scatter , or not fast enough , and when he drove up , we were all standing there , looking foolish . He got out of his car . He asked us what we were doing . We explained . He asked us what kind of foam we used . We told him it was from an old couch . He said that some other , very specific foam was much better . We asked where to get it . He said he had lots extra , as he hadn 't really had the time to make any new boffer weapons since joining the force , and he 'd drop it by our club meeting the next friday . Then he told us to get out of the cemetery and go into the woods if we wanted to keep the game going . And , in a final note of awesomeness , as he was getting back into the car , he took a moment , turned himself into a gamemaster , and told a short story about why all the vampires had to run into the woods . Posted by on my way home today , I was crusing along in my empty bike lane , next to a long line of stopped cars waiting for their light . There was someone double parked blocking my lane . The cabbie on his back end actually put his taxi into reverse and pulled back far enough to give me room to merge into his lane . Then the taxi in front of him pulled forward , allowing enough room for me to pull back into my bike lane and keep moving . Right now I have a lot of love for Chicago taxi cabs . down Clark . The taxicab behind me saw the guy in the parked car in front of me start to open his door . He came to a screeching halt to allow space for me to swing out around the door , and then he got out of his car to yell at the dude for not checking and almost dooring a bicyclist . the show today , I put 10 . 01 gallons in a ten gallon tank . For some bizarre reason , I 'm really proud of that . I 'm also REALLY glad I pulled off the highway for gas when I did . There was another dude pumping gas . I went over to him , showed him the receipt , told him I had a ten gallon tank , and we high fived like we were in a movie . Then I drove off into the ( long passed ) sunset I was a kid , there was a partial solar eclipse . I was thrilled . Made the pinhole box to watch it , went outside and realized , much to my surprise , that the spaces between leaves did the same thing ; that the dappled light under a tree was , at that moment , thousands of tiny crescents . Science is magic . Posted by When I was 9 years old , we were moving away from Florida . My mom wanted us to wake up early enough to see the sun rise over the water , and to look for turtle nests hatching . We were too late for the turtles , but there was one little one that wasn 't making it past the breakers . My mom carried it out , but it washed back up , anyway . We took it to the turtle rescue place , and they told us that its flippers had been chewed by crabs and it wouldn 't be able to swim , but they would send it to the aquarium , and it would get prosthetics . I believed them . I believed them until I was telling this story , not more than a year ago , and got to the point of saying the thing about prosthetic flippers and realized , all those years later , that it was almost certainly a lie you tell to children . When I was first riding a bicycle in Boston , it was a little old upright English three speed . She was a great , easy little bicycle . Her name was Daphne . Riding to work one day , I was hit by a car . There was no serious damage , either to me or my bike ( those things are tanks ) and the driver was not confident in her legal status , so I sent her on her way . The biggest issue with the bike was that the seat post had bent , so I pulled up onto the sidewalk to try to straighten it enough to continue on my way . In about 3 minutes , the BU cops showed up . I said I was fine , and sent them on their way . Then a Boston city police car pulled up . I explained that I was fine , and they left . About 30 seconds later a firetruck pulled up . I explained that my bicycle was unlikely to explode , but while we were still talking , another firetruck and an EMT guy showed up . Yet again , I explained that I was fine . Then another policeman showed up - the EMT guy took over the job of pointing out my lack of injuries . Finally , about 10 minutes after the crash ( longer than I would have been held up there if not for all the interruptions ) an ambulance showed up . The EMT guy told them I was ok , and just fixing my bike . They wanted to take me in just to check things out . I was already late for work , knew I was uninjured , and was not going anywhere . They tried to insist . I said no . Then one of them piped up with " well , at least let us clean your road rash " . I was going to work and didn 't have a full first aid kit with me , so that actually sounded ok , until he followed it with " just step into the back of the van , and we 'll get it cleaned up right away . I looked at the EMT guy . He shook his head and mouthed " no " . I said I 'd be happy to sit on the curb while they did it . They looked really quite pissed . I am utterly convinced they would have kidnapped me to the hospital . Posted by was raining very hard today , so I had the big door closed but left the little door open for ventilation while I was soldering . When I was done with the torch , I turned it off , put it down , and turned around to see my UPS lady standing right outside the little door , under the awning . She said she hoped it was ok that she had stood there ; she didn 't want to put my packages on the wet ground , but it looked like what I was doing required concentration , and she didn 't want to startle me opening the door the rest of the way to bring them into the shop . I have the best UPS lady EVER . Before I had my own cross country ski equipment , I would run down to the EMS and rent a set for a day in the winter woods . There was this one time when things just weren 't quite right , but I didn 't realize till I was out in the woods , and being stubborn , I still went for a full day . I came home a bit sore , but these things generally take some time to sink in . I went to work the next day , and while things hurt a bit , I was pretty much ok all day . I wasn 't doing anything real physical - just cutting apart a model car to make a maquete for a piece the guys were doing that would be an exploded view of an Indy 500 car . I left a little early , and sometime about halfway through my ride home my muscles started locking up . By the time I made it home , I was pretty much out . I was so out that I left my bike , freelocked , leaning on the side of the house , and that 's pretty damned far gone , for anyone who hasn 't seen me with my bike . I went in , and found the muscle relaxers I got when I first started forging . Now , I only ever took half of one of these things , as I 'm extremely sensitive to most drugs , but I was already basically gone , and the idea of trying to cut one in half was just too much - so I took a whole one and went to bed . Dustin came home a few hours later , and , seeing my bike beside the house , knew something was up . He came in , and I was in bed . He asked me what had happened that day . In my drugged stupor , I waved my hand in the air and said " The car . It exploded . " He asked for clarification and I , rather annoyed that such a clear statement could cause confusion , simply repeated , louder and slower " The car . It exploded " . Dustin responded with the only appropriate thought " so , you won 't be eating dinner ? " and carried my bike in . happens on the same trip as the forty seventh . We were both young , and silly , and one of the things we most loved to do together was to get lost . Inspired by the previous day 's events , we decided to go ahead and deliberately do so , together . So we wrote up a plan . We would get on the metro . We would wait till we saw someone in an orange shirt , and take the next possible transfer , and get on whatever train we saw first . We would get off at the fourth stop , and go to the left exit off the train . We would turn left on getting to a road . We would take the third right , and walk past one bakery before turning left . Two blocks and turn right . And we would eat at a restaurant on the third block * . We ended up at a Russian restaurant with only two tables . It had red walls , red curtains , red tablecloths , red napkins , and red shades on the lights . We ourselves were red , with the tinted light coming in from the windows and through the lampshades . There was an open window to the kitchen , through which we were handed ( red ) menus . The menu was in Russian . There was a ( red ) wax figure of an accordion player sitting at the next table - except that , as we were trying to figure out how to order , the wax figure leaned over and very kindly asked , in very broken French , if we needed help . We were very happy to have any help , but it turned out we really could not talk with this man - he had so little French , and we had so little French , and there just wasn 't much overlap . He kept apologizing , and finally , we told him to just order for us whatever he thought best . We ended up with Boscht , and some sausage dish , and some meatball type thing - a whole lot of food . We took much of it home with us . The next day , for dinner , we opened up our takeout containers , and you can only imagine our childish surprise at realizing that the food itself was all red . * these are not the actual directions , but a recreation of how they were done . The actual ones were much more convoluted , but you get the idea When I was a junior in High School , my brother did a semester abroad in France . Naturally , I went to visit . He had classes , though , so I was on my own for some hours each day . During one of these periods , I took myself to the Louvre . I was supposed to be meeting my brother after his class , at roughly 4pm , on the other side of town . And I got lost . Truly , awfully , horrendously lost . I could not get out of that museum . There is , I kid you not , a staircase in one of the upper galleries which has , at the top , an exit sign , pointing down , and , at the bottom , an exit sign , pointing up . Picture me , if you care to , at age 16 , frantically searching for a way out of the Louvre , getting distracted at every turn by something that simply demanded my attention . Luckily , not too long after the museum closed at 5h30 , I was very politely thrown out . By the time I made it to my brother , he was pretty well worried sick . me to play with . She caught it fine , and brought it in , but when she went to show it to me , it bit her . They don 't have teeth , but they do have sharp grinding plates and powerful jaws - she ended up yelling and waving her hands in the air , with this long streamer of bright green snake flying out behind one of them . It was hilarious . Pretty much cured me of my fear of snakes , though I do still have a healthy respect for the big ones . Waiting in line at the taco counter I was conversing with the fellow in front of me . In the conversation it came up that I seldom go there , and was only there this day because I was on my way to pick up my partner . He got his tacos to go , and left . When I went to pay , I was told that he 'd already done so . I generally think i have a pretty positive view of the world , but it never would have occurred to me that a fellow would buy my lunch knowing that i 'm taken and that he 's unlikely to see me again to even get a thank you . Yay world ! Yay free tacos ! The Mushroom story : ( this one 's good ! it has a punchline ! it 's worth reading to the end ) I lived in one apartment for almost the entire time I was at Massart , but during that time , lots of folks moved in and out . After I 'd been there for six months , everyone but me left , and Svea , Tom , and Sonia all moved in . This was ideal . Everyone got along , everyone had similar ideas of personal space , things were great . Svea moved out and Tyrell moved in . Things were still great . Sonia moved out and Amber moved in . It still worked . Then Amber decided we needed a chore schedule . This pissed off everyone , and everyone , without talking about , decided they were only doing chores as they were assigned , but mostly still only did the chores that they had been doing before the schedule . Previously , Tom pretty much didn 't clean , but he regularly made chilli and cheese cakes , and that was a fine balance , as far as I was concerned . I kept the bathroom and counters cleaned . Everybody did their dishes ( including Tom ) . Sonia had done most of the neatening , and I admit , we were collectively falling behind in that department with her gone . One month , on Amber 's bathroom cleaning turn , she made everything in there REALLY neat . Cleaned the mirror so it shone . Put the shampoo bottles in order by size . Looked great . That night , Dustin was over . About three AM he got up to go to the bathroom . He shouted back " Kest , come here ! You 've got to see this ! " There is , I thought , nothing I could need to see in my bathroom at three am . I shouted back a simple " no " . He insisted . I put on a bathrobe and went out , bitching in my head . There , though , in the corner of the bathroom , were mushrooms . Sprouting right from the floor . They were aesthetically pleasing , and also absolutely hilarious , particularly after the scene Amber had made about how she was the only one who ever really got anything clean in the house . Dustin and I stood there and laughed for a while , I took a picture , and we went to bed . I left the mushrooms in place , knowing that Tom would enjoy them at least as much as I had . In the morning , I got up and asked Tom if he 'd seen the mushrooms . He hadn 't , and I took him in to show him , but they were gone ! We were both upset by this tragedy , and asked Amber if she knew anything about it . She was livid , and utterly unamused . This story is from the first time I went to Thailand . Across the street from the Grand Palace campus is Wat Pho . This temple is only just bigger than the Buddha it houses . There are two doors , one on each side of the head , such that you walk in , do a " u " around the feet of the Buddha , and walk out just about 20 feet from the entrance . There is no point where you are far enough away to see the whole Buddha - instead , one contemplates details . When we were there the first time , there were scaffolds set up to do some upkeep on the Buddha . We walked in and heard this metallic " tiktiktiktiktiktiktik " . I assumed it was tiny hammers , associated with the repairs , but it was quickly evident that no one was working . When we finally made it around to the other side of the Buddha , we discovered the source of the sound . Hundreds of tiny metal bowls were set on stands , and , for luck , many folks were walking down the line , putting 1 baht coins in each of the bowls . Bowls had different tones based on their own make , as well as how much weight was in them . Monks came along and emptied the bowls at regular intervals , updating the sound When I dropped out of Oberlin , I called up my mother first . This decision was based soley on the fact that she , too , had taken the long route to graduation , so I figured she 'd understand . I told her I had dropped out , she asked if I planned to go back , I said yes , and that was that . I didn 't manage to get in touch with my dad till that night , and somehow , either through mom or my brother , he had heard before I got a chance to talk with him . I hadn 't even said anything , and he was terribly upset - it sounded , over the phone , as though he might be crying . My dad doesn 't cry . This was disturbing . We talked around in circles for a bit before he blurted out " But why did you have to elope ? You could have told us , we would have supported you ! " I was baffled . I had no idea what was going on . I assured my father that I was not married , nor was I knocked up . It wasn 't until later that I made the connection that , progressive as he may be in his thoughts , in the world he was raised in those are the only reasons a woman drops out of school . Takes place during the one semester I spent at Kent State University . The parking for commuting students was quite far from campus , and in the beginning , I had to wait for a shuttle after class to take me back to my car . After a few weeks , I made friends with a fellow who for reasons I do not remember got to park right on campus , and on days when we got out at around the same time , he 'd wait around and give me a ride . One afternoon , we dropped by the local camera shop - I think he had film to pick up from a recent vacation or something . In retrospect , I was probably supposed to ask to see the pictures , and then ooh and aah over them . Instead , we walked in and I immediately spotted a object which I had been coveting , and had been unable to find , for years . There it was - a perfect little 50mm fixed focal length macro lens for my old OM - 1 . I needed that lens . I didn 't have my wallet . And , on the spot , I asked this fellow to borrow two hundred dollars . Poor kid , there 's this gal who you don 't know at all but you 've been kinda trying to pick up , and she asks you for the equivalent to a full month 's rent . He was so utterly shocked that he agreed . I did pay him back the next day , and he did keep giving me rides , but I think he stopped trying to flirt after that . win - win . This one is also at the pet store , and happened relatively soon after I started , so not long after my 16th birthday . I include that as an anti embarrassment feature , because this is stupid even for me . Whoever was opening the store would come in at least an hour before the shop was to open - this gave time to clean the cages , scoop out dead fish , and generally make the idea of having pets look appealing instead of like drudgery . Tasks included cleaning all the fish tanks ; they were on one system , so you could simply set the siphon going in the end tank , effectively run the water backwards , and there you 'd have it , clean water . It was , though , very important to stop running the siphon . The first morning I was there by myself , I forgot that last bit . I flooded the store pretty thoroughly . I had flooded it to the point that there was water flowing out the front door . And I couldn 't find a damned mop . So I did what any self respecting young girl would do in a difficult situation - I called my dad . This was another of our entertainingly cryptic phone conversations . " Dad - do we have a mop at home ? " " I 'll be right there , Princess " ( yes , my dad calls me princess sometimes . Drop it . ) Between the two of us , we had the whole mess cleaned up well before opening , but my brand new boss , when she came in , was VERY suspicious of the clean floor . My first real paying job was at a pet store . At the pet store , we had birds . We also had fish , but fish don 't really care one whit about people . Amongst the birds , we had some cockatiels , a small parrot , that sort of thing ; those would live in the shop long enough that we would make good friends with them , and were always sad to see them go . We also had a big flight cage with parakeets . The parakeets were fairly cheap , and so made their way through the shop quite quickly - also there were so many of them , and they looked so similair , that it was hard , on our part , to make friends . We just didn 't ever take them out and play with them . All they knew about us was that , occasionally , one of us would reach into the cage and grab a bird , who was never seen again . They didn 't like us , and this was a reasonable conclusion on their part . One time , there was a little boy , and he had his eye on a particular bird . This always made things complex , but I was game . I waited till the one bird was near the door . I put down the internal gate so the other birds , further away , couldn 't get out . I opened the door . I stuck my hand in . He attacked . I have never been so viciously and singlemindedly attacked by a living creature , before or since . This tiny bird wanted my blood . The way he was holding on , I couldn 't get my hand out of the cage without potentially hurting the bird ( for the purposes of this story , assume that this is synonymous with " It was impossible to get my hand out " ) . I also didn 't want to make a scene , what with this kid and his parents there . So I stood there , trying to gently pry this nasty , malicious little creature from my hand . I did finally get him off . I grabbed a different bird , and , with my injured hand behind my back , told the kid that the bird he wanted just wasn 't very well behaved , and I 'd chosen him a better match . He was pissy . His parents got pissy , demanding the first bird . I told them that , not only did they NOT want the first bird , I wasn 't going to try to catch it again . This went back and forth for some minutes before I finally got sick of it , pulled my bloody hand from behind my back , and said " This ! This is why ! " . They silently paid for the bird I 'd chosen for them . And I have the silliest assortment of scars on my right hand . takes place right after the thirty seventh . In the end , we did not have what I would , as an adult , call snow . We had an icy covering on the grass , with maybe some hail pellets to make it look a little white . My brother and I , htough , were snow kids . We loved the snow . We loved snow men , and sledding , and the whole deal . Sadly , in addition to not having real snow , we also didn 't have hills . My grandfather was in town , though , and while I have a lot of negative memories of that grandfather , this was one of those times when he put aside being an asshole for long enough to be one of the awesomest people on earth . He got my brother and I to put on our snowsuits , walked us down to the park , and spent the entire rest of the day - many hours - all the way to full dark - pulling as around the flat park in our sled . It couldn 't have been any easier to pull than it would have been on a summer 's day , but we were calling it snow , and wanted to go sledding on it , so he did it . It was fantastic . I was born in rural PA , but we moved to Florida when I was four . I missed the snow something fierce . The following winter , when I was in kindergarten , we got snow flurries . This had never happened . My teacher took us all out into the hallway , to a big picture window , to watch the snow . I promptly walked back into the classroom , grabbed my ( bright pink , faux ) fur coat . Imagine , if you will , the tiniest girl in the class , the shy one who has to be badgered to so much as participate in saying the ABCs out loud with the class , and now imagine this bitty thing marching up to her teacher and announcing that she is going out to play in the snow . At first my teacher said no - school policy was not to let the kids out in the snow , for fear of colds . I held up my ( pink faux ) fur coat . Then she pointed out that she had to have her eye on the whole class , and couldn 't let me out by myself , nor could she leave the class alone . I promised to stay by the window where she could see me . And then I walked past her , out the door , and caught snowflakes on my tongue while trying to make snow angels in a flurry . another story from Mali , this one very short . The Dogon country features some remarkable gorges . We stayed part of a day and two nights in a village located inside one of these , with very very tall , very very steep walls on two sides . There was a donkey in this village , too . He would bray , and , with the echoes , the sound simply never left the valley . It would bounce back and forth , the echoes echoing each other long after the donkey had brayed again , harmonizing with himself . A few years ago ( maybe quite a few years ago ? ) I did Falcon Ridge Folk Festival as a vendor . Business was slow , but I was having a grand time , so that was ok . Two of my friends were along , helping out , so I was able to go see some music , and we were very near the main stage , so even while in the booth , things were not bad . Falcon Ridge folk festival is four or five days long , and the kinda thing where you camp on site and no one has any access to any information from the outside world ( also , no one has soap or running water ) . It is grand . On the last day , while my friends were off at a contra dance thing , the wind picked up really suddenly . I stood up and grabbed the upper horizontal pole on the backside of my tent . Immediately , I felt the whole thing start tugging . Being the contrary person that I am , I dug my toes into the mud and held on - this put my face to the back wall , so when the hail started falling , there I was . I heard someone in the front of my booth . I was never able to let go long enough to turn around , and thus , have no idea what pronoun to use , but for the rest of the story we will go with " him " for no apparent reason . He shouted back at me ( yes , it 's only ten feet , yes , shouting was necessary ) and asked if I wanted him to hold the front . I , naturally , said yes . He held the front of my tent and narrated as everything else started going down - first other vendor tents , then the cafeteria tent , then parts of the main stage . As the storm passed , he complimented me on my tent staking skills , said he thought things were good , and left . The friends came running back with information . A tornado had touched down at another spot on the farm , and more were expected within 15 minutes . I figured we could get out of there in ten . I sent one of the friends for the car , and the other and I packed everything up . Turns out I sent a person who can 't drive stick to get my manual transmission car , but it did make it back , and we were , in fact , out of there in 7 minutes flat . I still think that 's impossible , but as it Posted by