Wednesday
Finally got hold of someone at the park district and secured my concession stand gig, apparently. I don't remember getting the run-around, but since Dana was the third person I'd written down to talk to in 1954, I guess I did.
The "Free Manure" / "Pony Rides" signs on Miller Road cracked people up all the time. It was right next to the gas station I used a lot when I had Fufu the Killer Rabbit, my first car, because it was the closest place that carried diesel. (Fufu was a diesel -- hence "killer" rabbit.)
"A Fall for Icarus" is one of the poems I'm most proud of from back then. It's still pretty bad, but I thought I did a good job with the imagery, at least. If you were to analyze my poetic output from high school and college, you'd probably work out that I had some issues with public perception versus private persona, and that I was relied upon to clean up after friends a lot.
I don't remember why Brandon transcribed it into 1954 instead of me, but there you go.
Thursday
So, a certain circle of friends of mine stole this idea from a couple of their friends from a summer school program at Harvard. If you're well-versed enough in international politics -- or are at least hanging out with people who aren't -- you can talk about people in code by assigning each one (ahead of time, in secret, presumably) a country and discuss international relations. "Russia's dealings with England have been chilly as of late..." You get the picture.
None of us were particularly interested in all that, but we had a blast assigning everyone countries. I was Italy, Jill was Switzerland (though she was originally Ulster), Suzanne was the Fjord Queen (aka Finland, but also Germany), Kate was Ireland, Christine was Belgium, Brandon was Chile (long and skinny and ruled by a dictator) and so on. One night at Yvette's we wrote out the whole list -- most of which was made up on the spot, but quite a bit of which was real code -- and it totaled more than 40 people, plus a half-dozen places. I still have the list.
I have no idea why Tim was the Dead Sea, nor Nikki Singapore.
Note that this bit was written on Friday. And most of what's on Wednesday was actually written on Thursday, I think.
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