I Want to Run in Fields

and love someone.
But I can’t do any of that here, can I.

Well, last weekend at Gull Lake was pretty okay, and so was this weekend.

I found a pattern. Surprise, surprise.

As an aside, I find it hysterically funny when jr. high girls sigh and say that the band is playing too loudly and that the people listening in the room are almost certainly doing permanent damage to their ears.

So we went back to the cabin and listened to our own music at a reasonable volume. Eventually it evolved that we’d choreographed a goofy dance number to Jennifer Saunders’ “Holding Out for a Hero” and would perform it for the high school girls upon their return. The “snag” in the plan when the other girls sharing the building with us caught wind of it and wanted to watch, too. Leah and I had to seriously talk them into doing it still.

The other girls were gorgeous. Tall, lithe and perfect. Ballerinas, all of them, I soon learned. What surprised me is how much I didn’t mind performing our dumb dance with them watching. How things change.

Afterwards, our girls retreated to their rooms and fretted about bugs for the rest of the evening while the ballerinas got the idea to rehearse their (much more beautiful) pieces. I eavesdropped like a cupcake dog at hearing them talk about pas de bourees. I truly missed ballet class in that moment.

By Friday I could tell I was coming down with my unfailing post-camp sickness. But I went to work happy because I thought I could rope Lyndsay into hanging out with me and I sure did. And I even met her friend Brad at long last and we had a wicked good time, I laughed all night.

The next day I paid for it because I had utterly no voice. But it was worth it.

Mostly it was okay because I’d scheduled this weekend for my yearly scrupulous room clean-up in which I go through everything and try to be ruthless in tossing stuff I don’t really need. At the same time it’s like taking inventory, and I love my intense clean-ups because they are always a time of good memories.

I came across a photobooth picture of Kristen and I in jr. high. When it was taken, I was brace-faced with uneven bangs. I was sure it was the worst photo of me in existence. Looking at it now, I feel a strange affection for my seventh-grade self. She’s beautiful in that gawky, adolescent way.

So the pattern of the two weekends have to do with the ballerinas and with that photo. Looking back, I see things differently than I did. What I thought was scary then I don’t anymore. What I thought was ugly then I think is beautiful now. Make of that what you will.