Monday, February 21, 2011

Mellow Hammock

One day, in a parallel fashion to a day Forty-Eight moons earlier, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry walked across another line when their names were called. They once again were handed sheets of paper with their names on them. This time though, they wore red gowns and hats. At this point in time, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry had known each other for almost One-Hundred and Ninety-Two moons.

Not long after the day when they put on red hats and then took them off, after a four-hour drive away from home and a four-hour drive back, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry decided they would like to go to another school together. This school was very, very far from where they had learned to play with Suns. This school was surrounded by corn. The pinecones in their heads had grown in a certain way, that at this time they very much resembled corn. So, going to a school surrounded by corn was a very reasonable choice. Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry put a lot of their clothes and a few other things into their parents’ cars, and drove four hours away. The boys took their things and clothes out of their parents’ cars, and stayed, surrounded by corn, as their parents returned home.

By chance, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry were selected to reside on the same floor in their first dormitory. Here, they met many other people and took different classes. Boy Evergreen soon became so excited by all of life’s possibilities, that he began taking classes in every subject! In a not too distant past summer, Boy Blackberry had fallen in love with a girl who had a foreign tongue. He couldn’t take classes to gaze at the girl, so he took classes to gaze upon the tongue.

Through falls, winters, springs, and summers, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry remained close friends, maybe best friends. At the school surrounded by corn they ate meals together, drove many hours together, sat together, and most importantly, they laughed together.

While at the school surrounded by corn, Boy Evergreen had taken up his old habit of finding girls to stand with, gaze upon, and say together “Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi”. Boy Blackberry still found this funny. He still did not understand. While Boy Evergreen had crushes on blonde girls, Boy Blackberry had a crush on roll-your-own cigarettes.

Sometimes during the school year, Boy Blackberry would become full of grey-blue feelings. He was very far away from the home where he learned to play with Legos. He searched everywhere, but couldn’t hear anyone making the sound of playing with Legos. These grey-blue feelings would well up within him and evaporate. Then lightning and thunder would send them back down in little droplets. Boy Blackberry missed his new friends with whom he could make the sound of playing with Legos.

Strangely enough, Boy Blackberry never really talked about these feelings. Instead of asking Boy Evergreen for help, he would lose orbit, and go for long, lonely walks into corn-mist. He breathed in the smoke of lit roll-your-own cigarettes and wondered why he felt grey-blue. He wondered if he was different than other people at the school surrounded by corn. But then, out of the blue, he and Boy Evergreen would sit together and laugh as though they only had seen Twenty-Four moons.

Whenever he and Boy Evergreen would laugh together, Boy Blackberry’s grey-blue feelings would drown in the light of Suns way over its head. But, Boy Blackberry slept more than Boy Evergreen. What Boy Blackberry didn’t know at this time was that grey-blue feelings eat their most hearty meal when people fall upon sleep. Boy Blackberry slept so much that his grey-blue feelings grew strong.