Looks like a pretty good forecast for 2012.

In front of me there are hundreds of blinking red and white lights. Behind me there are more, some strobing  and some just a steady beam, making my shadow dance almost as well as Sammi does. I follow the lights ahead, turning and stopping when they do, throwing a foot to the ground because my brakes don’t work very well. There are so many of us, and we sail in a thick mob of chains and wheels. The dentist plays his music and manages to dance while riding. Somehow it works out; we sway and weave but no one hits anyone else, like a school of strange glowing fish.

I’m laughing to myself, because a while ago I was slogging through trigonometry, and now I’m coasting. Then suddenly we hear the sounds of hundreds of bells ringing. I lift my head and struggle to comprehend what I see.

Up ahead the mass of lights swirls around a turnabout. A circle of cycling. Lights blink and blend into neon streaks, and the bells. The bells! They hit my ears like drops of water. We have built ourselves a carousel and we wait for our turn to ride.

There is a break. We go for it, pushing off the asphalt and becoming part of the ring. I no longer know which way is North. I’m simply going in a circle, surrounded by bells and music. People whoop and howl and screech. I sing aloud a song that has been stuck in my head. I look at the person next to me, and I see that he is just as happy as I am. Happy to be there, not doing homework, happy to be lost, happy to be chilly, and happy to be alive tonight.

The carousel turns into a ribbon that slowly unwinds around a corner. I am sad that I don’t get to go around again. I look back and see a few stragglers have stayed and continue to go in circles, grasping in vain at the magic that was just there a second ago.

You go to a place like this without a list. You wander the isles, mispronouncing the names on the labels and smelling different teas. Who knows what you’re there for; you’re kind of hoping that it will jump out and punch you in the face before you have to leave.

You turn your head sideways, but a Lotus root is still the oddest looking vegetable you’ve ever seen. And because of the nature of the place that you’re in, odd isn’t bad anymore.

Brand new treasures are all over the place; delectable treats like Mochi and two full isles of noodles. It’s very easy to get fat here.

There are somethings that taste just as bad as they look, and even have nasty little black pellets inside of them. Take note of your friends horrified face and avoid at all costs.

You learn new things in here. Not just how many variations of gourds there are, but you learn things about the people who pick them up or walk straight by without a glance. You learn things about the people who stop to try the mustard chips and the people who just buy a Hershey’s chocolate bar because it’s familiar. You learn things about the people who ask questions and the people who pretend they already know. You learn about what types of risks people are and aren’t afraid to take.

It’s a fascinating place. I guess I’ll stick around for a while.

Ahahahaha!

Dilly is my favorite, but don’t tell the others.

Spell check is a German invention. Did you know that?

Ha. I made that up, but you believed it for a second, didn’t you? Ah, the power of the typed word.

I’d like to meet a conspiracy theorist someday. I imagine that they are a) profoundly interesting and b) tragically good looking.

It is 1:32 am, and I can’t sleep. I decided to put my thoughts on the Internet, because I was sure their intrinsic value would benefit all of the two people who see it.

I really don’t know what I was thinking.

Which is why what happened today was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

It all started because I really wanted a banana. I craved a banana the way a pregnant woman craves hot wings at 1am. I lead-footed it back home anticipating this banana, anticipating the first bite of soft yellow flesh. Alas, it was not to be. There were two bananas sitting in the basket on the counter. Both were the color of Molasses, the horse that tried to kill my instructor at a poorly run summer camp. (Black, like the beast’s soul….) When I prodded one with a finger the skin caved and didn’t bounce back.

Desperate, I peeled one. It wilted over the edge of a cutting board, Salvador Dali style, and oozed.

Damn. I really wanted a banana.

And the gears in my head started to grind a little bit. Little systems of nerve endings swiveled around and tested possibilities. What does one do with two overly ripe bananas? As far as I could tell, there were only two choices. One was clearly better than the other, but a banana mush war would require another person, and my cat didn’t seem up for the excitement. So instead I googled recipes for banana bread that only involved two bananas.

I thought Hell, I can follow directions like any other schmo, right?

Flour was thick in the air. Everything was sticky, but I fought on. I even braved the knife drawer, plunging my hand into the deep chaos of the serrated unknown.

The toasted loaf is sitting on the stove across the kitchen from me right now. Dad was supposed to come home, see it, and make a beeline for it. Dad was supposed to take a bite, pause, chew slowly, and then allow a grin to spread over his face. He would either laugh at me for my attempt or, surprised, congratulate me on my success.

But he got home later than usual. And now he’s in bed. And it’s just me and the loaf, staring each other down. It’s only ten o’ clock.

We have all night.

Someone was going to have to buy me two refrigerators, because it was going to need two floors. Near the hole I’d make to get to the second floor, I planned to put this picture I’d saved of a spiral staircase. (A powerful imagination would be necessary in order to use it.) The paint job was going to be silver and red, my favorite color combination at the time because I thought it made me sound sophisticated. I’d cut the door in the shape of a star and reinforce the hinge with some of Dads hot pink Duct Tape. We bought it for him for Christmas but go figure, for some reason he never used it.

I would hold parties on the bottom floor, where I’d bend the rules of physics and put the furniture. My water bed would go on the top floor with the TV. I even graciously added a guest room, since the TV would provide me with another box to use, for my little sister when she wanted to sleep over.

The only problem, of course, was where I was going to put the fridge.

That’s right. I have a bigger, badder weapon.

With it, I could redirect the flow of aged and furious rivers. With it, I could bend a tornado to my will and get the picky eater in the family to try tongue. I could rob a bank with ease, herd unruly children, and EVEN get the repairman to come between the hours of four and five, instead of two and eight.

If I could control it.

Yes, I have yet to master my weapon. As it stands, I can use it for no more than five or six seconds, a small window for accomplishing tasks of a grander scale than making Tomek share his waffle with me. But a few seconds is longer than I could wield it when I first discovered it. And I’m improving all the time. So beware. Anticipate the day when no one will be able to refuse my will.

Fear me, and fear the raw, awe inspiring power of my puppy-dog eyes.

Anyway

The beginning is the hardest part; I have to bend a little backwards to see the first bolt. I rummage through the attic in my psyche, looking for the mindset I’d packed away from the bouldering season. It turns out okay, because in some places I can wrap my hand all the way around the immaculate white limestone. I strike a pose just under the top of the overhang and bring the rope from the salty puddle where it was sitting to my teeth. Then I give it a new home in the first draw.

I would write about the climb itself, but when I finish I can’t remember it. This is how I know it was probably priceless.

At the top I am named the Queen of the World. Salt curls my hair and tingles under my fingernails, on my lips and on my tongue. The sun spreads on my shoulders like whipped butter. Everyone told me it would be so cold, and I laugh at them a little bit now. I have a camera with me. We spent a while rigging it so that it won’t drop. But I don’t have time to look away; in a second I’m going to lower back to Earth and I won’t be Queen anymore. I guess this is a moment I won’t be able to show everyone else, a moment I’ll just have to remember by myself.

This is okay. This way I don’t have to share.

But alas, as I made the subtle transition into late teens, this behemoth wall I’d built against the dangerous organisms of the world began to deteriorate.

I think I know why.

This isn’t us. These are somebody else’s kids. (I Googled “kids mud gross” and found this picture.) But this is exactly what we used to do, in a mud pit that formed in a bend of the Illinois river. This same river happens to be an industrial river; barges are frequently traveling up and down carrying cargo such as gasoline, sand, coal, gravel, something that looked like piles of rice, etc. And since the water is slowing down and eddying in this particular bend, it deposits all the fun pollution in this giant marsh that, when you jump off a certain log, you can sink up to your belly button in.

It was only the coolest thing. Ever.

Fact: I am alive, sitting here, waiting for my hair to dry, and so far I haven’t grown any extra toes or anything.

Conclusion: I survived the Mud Pit. My immune system was still Godlike at the time.

Fact: Eventually, our parents made us stop playing in the mud, and even took steps to prevent us from sneaking away from them to go do it anyway, like we did for a while afterwards.

Conclusion: This is what happened to my immune system. Suddenly, we actually started to spend sick days in bed moaning, aghast at the reality of Strep or the Stomach Flu.

This was a difficult time for me.

Face it- kids are tough. I made a small fortune babysitting in middle school, and I watched kids eat candy found on the ground, share popsicles with the dog, lick their fingers after numerous outdoor activities, forget to wash their hands, refuse to brush their teeth, you name it. (How I made a fortune if I couldn’t prevent such things, I don’t know.) If we listen to Darwin, more than half of us don’t deserve to live to pass on our genes.

But as you can see from my example above, it’s just preparatory conditioning. The common school of thought is that kids are tough because their unsanitary natures call for it. On the contrary- they’re tough because their unsanitary natures make them that way. If kids actually listened to the countless warnings and carefully disinfected themselves after every excursion into the wide world, their superior immune system would disintegrate from lack of use. A scrape on the knee would become fatal; a kiss from Mans Best Friend would become a childhood destroyer.

There is a lesson to be learned from all this. A little dirt has to come with health, Yin and Yang style. A bit of the bad is needed to make the good, being small has to come before being big. The invincible has to be in a constant state of vulnerability. Even little kids know this.

Why is it so hard for us elderly folk?