Stacey told me (among everything else she was thinking during the day) a series of disturbing stories. She’s really good at that. I was up all night pouring out of my ass thanks to something I ate at the EDR yesterday. Horrible diarrhea, in two stages. I didn’t know what was going on. So I wasn’t in the best of moods in the morning to hear:
- When you hit a deer on the highway, you are expected to kill it if it is suffering. Stacey has experienced this a few times in her youth growing up in Chiloquin. Once her now-fiancee had to kill one with a tire iron when the perpetrator refused. Another time she witnessed someone twist a deer’s neck to put it out of it’s misery. Legs flopping around on the blacktop, seizing as it tried to wriggle away from death before the poor guy in the car had to snap the beast’s spinal cord.
- Her father had to have 10 hours of surgery on his back. Her sister had 9 hours on her arm after she flew over her bike’s handlebars and shattered her elbow and broke her arm. Once Stacey was in the hospital to get her appendix out, and she had to urinate so badly but couldn’t because the catheter was bothering her. The doctors had to threaten to MAKE her urinate if she wouldn’t do it.
- One year at the Caldera (name for a crater made by a collapsed volcano), a couple decided to walk down the Rim to go swimming. The husband slipped and cracked his head on a rock, fell into the water and drowned. As he was dying, he was unable to hear the cries of distress as his wife fell and broke her arm. She survived at least.
You see, I knew something was very wrong with Chiloquin. That place is dark. The list of awful stories from Stacey goes on, and might be more enjoyable if the stories didn’t contain so, so many double negatives. And if I hadn’t been so exhausted from diarrhea. "This diarrhea has exhausted me," I thought to myself that morning.
I was chuckling to myself at the phrase and thinking back to a similar story told to me by a couple of teachers who made their living performing classes on Navy vessels - history and politics and stuff like that. Sounded like a pretty good job. They basically sit around all year and wait for the call, then are shuttled off to some exotic location on the Navy’s dollar. They live among the sailors, teaching for the military’s roving community college. Eat the food, live in the quarters. Then they get to basically vacation for a couple of months at the nearest port, again on the government’s dime. Anyway, Navy food gave one guy violent diarrhea.
Twice now, this dark-skinned Mexican guy who always wears a rosary has stumbled to my door and asked for Rabbit. Then both times he asked me if he could buy some beer from me. I gave him some, but the second time he did this I accepted his offer of money, because shit, if I’m going to run a miniature convenience store for one Mexican guy I ought to be taking some kind of payment. My ass ain’t rich.
Today, this 19-year-old ranger was talking to me about one of the creepier rangers, Rick. Rick is the one who’s just like Chet in Weird Science. He’s so very creepy. Just a big ball of testosterone, a walking date rape. So this girl, Nancy, whom I get along with well, mentioned off hand that Rick was especially lecherous because "He’s like 25 and he’s hitting on us." I laughed, "Boy that’s right, how creepy." But really I was thinking, "Ouch, I’m 26." That means that in this girl’s mind and likely the minds of others, me hitting on anyone in her age bracket is CREEPY. Not inappropriate or irresponsible or forbidden by morals, but CREEPY. I have a great potential to be CREEPY. I felt so old. Suddenly I might be a dirty old man.
August 19, 2004
Today I decorated the ticket shack with duct tape. Heavily. See pictures of five foot tall face of gaping jaw and angry demon eyes. See cooler labeled, "Agua," in foot-tall letters. See tape bars on the windows. See my initials on the wall of the shed. We have a lot of down time.
I invited Rabbit to go to a ranger Halloween party tonight and we were pretty excited. We were very disappointed to find the party consisted of about 5 eight year olds and three 80 year olds. We ate burgers in about 2 minutes and ran out. Thankfully, there was a small, cozy gathering of rangers that Rabbit and I were able to piggyback onto at Sleepy Hollow. Rabbit made some inappropriate gay jokes ("Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks." I'm not joking) in the presence of a gay man, but other than that, we had a very nice time. We came home, cracked two beers and watched the stars, only to be tracked down by Rabbit's boss. She was angry that Rabbit (standing with a beer in hand) was planning on coming to work late. They yelled and yelled and he left for work. And here I am now.
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