To Protect My Honor

One Day III

An unfortunate tendency of mine is to think stakes are bigger than they are. This discussion with Victoria, or so I felt, made meeting my high school friends' female friends from other areas of life look like child's play. Of course, the stakes weren't all that high at all.

"Milton wrote a poem today," said Nancy. "He never does that."

"What's it about," asked Victoria.

"He won't tell anyone."

"Look," I said. "I don't know what you're trying to tell her, but the poem is irrelevant."

"I like poetry," said Victoria. "I like reading in general."

"I love to write," I said. 

"What do you like to write?"

"Everything," I said as Nancy nodded.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen," I said. "You?"

"Seventeen. About to go into senior year."

"Just finished that. It's probably the least fun year of high school."

Victoria walked up to order another glass of chocolate milk. 

"I'll have one too," I said. I walked up and handed her a few dollars to cover my serving. The counter server soon brought out our drinks.

"Thank you, Deanna."

"You know her," I asked Victoria.

"Yeah. We went to school together."

"I thought you were in school."

"I'm moving to Texas in three weeks."

"Oh, that's right. Where in Texas?"

"Irving," she said. "A suburb of Dallas."

"That's right. Where do you live?"

"California. Pasadena, California."

"Never heard of it," she said.

"It's just north of Los Angeles."

All of a sudden, thunderous applause was heard outside.

"Probably some dumb teenagers," said Victoria.

Nancy asked, "Like us?"

"I wouldn't say we're dumb - if we can dare to assume any teenagers are not dumb."

"Well, I'll go check out what happened," I said.

It was, in fact, dumb teenagers; they were taking turns doing improvised stand-up comedy for each other. I listened to one of the current speaker's jokes.

"Why did the rocket ship land on the football field? So it could...touchdown," he said.

I shook my head and walked back inside. Nancy and Victoria met me at the door.

"What now," I asked.

"We're going down to Bayfront Park," said Nancy.

"How far is that?"

"Only a few blocks."

"That's a long way to walk in this weather," I said.

"True," said Victoria, "but we want to spend time by Lake Michigan."

And so we walked in the heat. It felt like a long way, but it mercifully was not.

According to Victoria, the temperature was only a few degrees off the all-time record. It very rarely got this hot in the upper Midwest.