Our Thursday

Tag: drugs

  • Exceeding Expectations

    Exceeding Expectations

    In high school I felt untouchable. But at a large university, it was easy to compare yourself to others and realize you just aren’t that good. I was a B+ student getting wrecked by all the Asians in my computer science classes. I was a red shirt on the soccer team filling in for the guys who were exceptionally talented. I wasn’t very tall or short. I wasn’t very rich or poor. I was run of the mill. But on one Saturday morning, I scoffed at the mill and exceeded everyone’s expectations.

    I was sitting with my roommates at Wahoo’s Tacos in Costa Mesa. It was 10am and my face was deep in my palms as I tried to sooth the pain in my head that was roaring from the night before. It had been a long night and I had only gone to bed a few hours earlier. I don’t want to risk my reputation or station in life, but let’s just say that the night before involved a lot of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine.

    In the middle of my second taco, my shitty japanese knock off palm pilot “DINGED!” at me with a message saying:

    11am: Go be experiment at Physical Sciences building 2a for $100. Woop!

    Two weeks earlier I was asked by a random person on campus if I wanted to be a test subject in a Science Experiment. They would pay me $100 and it would last 3 hours. I didn’t need any more details. I was in. The only other pre-requisite was that I could not eat or drink for 12 hours prior to the experiment.

    So hangover and all, I raced my motorcycle to the Science building and prepared to lie through my teeth about the last time I had put any sort of substance into my body, food or otherwise.

    As I entered the building, I was greeted by a grad student who asked me to fill out some paperwork while he asked me questions about my mental and physical health. I averted eye contact and speaking more than necessary to avoid any automatic disqualifications from pupil size or bad breath. All seemed to be going well and he moved on to explain just what exactly they were going to do to me.

    The Experiment

    The goal of the experiment was to determine just how soon they could release a patient from the hospital after they had received general anesthetic. The sooner the patient could leave, the more beds would be available for more patients, and thus more money. So I was either going to be given a low dose of general anesthetic (to add to my cocktail)  or I was going to be given a placebo. I would then be asked to perform tasks and they would measure me. Seemed simple enough.

    I was led into another room that was no bigger than 15 feet squared with no decorations and a single window looking into an office. At it’s center was a big brown leather chair and the grad student told me to take a seat. At this point, I would like to imagine this grad student, who was reaching the climax of his educational career and about to finish all over the faces of his advisors with this experiment, put on his headphones and began the final jerks. He casually strapped my shins and biceps to the chair so escape was not possible. He effortlessly stuck me with an IV and flicked the tube as he looked into my increasingly concerned eyes. He roughly attached electrode sticky things all over my chest and neck. He then walked behind me and almost caressingly, placed a breathing mask over my mouth and nose and gently tightened the straps above my ears. And finally he rolled a cart directly in front of me. It had a computer monitor about 18 inches from my face and a special keyboard that had four big buttons on it labeled one through four. One and two on the top row, three and four on the bottom.

    “OK, I think that’s everything. How do you feel?” he asked while he stood in front of me looking over the various connections and straps as if there was no human behind them.

    “Actually, it’s a little tig…” I began to muffle through the mask but he quickly continued before I could describe any discomfort.

    “Excellent. OK, we have already began giving you either the placebo or the drug. There is no way for you to know so stop trying to smell it. Once I leave the room, the monitor is going to start showing you images. If and when you see a red dot in one of the four corners, as quickly as you can, press the button that corresponds to the corner the dot is in. One is top left. Four is bottom right. Understand?”

    Now, at this point, it did occur to me that $100 was not worth whatever the fuck they were about to show me. But I meekly and groggily nodded my head in agreement, and he left the room.

    The lights were dimmed and the monitor flickered on. The first image came up. A picture of a family laughing in the park. It stayed on for two seconds or so and was followed with a cat sleeping that had a red dot in the top right. I pressed two. The next picture came up of a gruesome car accident with blood flowing from the head of the dead driver and a red dot in the top left. I pressed one. Then a picture of students studying. Poppies in a field. African children with flies in their eyes. A car driving with a red dot in the bottom left. I pressed three.

    This went on for at least 100 pictures and then the screen was turned off and the grad student entered.

    “So how was that?” he said to me while he checked the connections and straps.

    “I don’t know man, that was pretty fu…” I tried to blurt out from behind the mask but again I was interrupted.

    “Excellent.” he said coldly. “OK, now we will begin the actual experiment now that the medicine has had time to enter your blood stream.”

    Now, at this point, it did occur to me to Godzilla my way out of this situation, ripping out IVs and straps and running through campus in a hospital gown. (I was’t actually wearing a gown.). But I again weekly nodded my head in resignation and looked towards the monitor as he walked out.

    The lights dimmed and the process began again. The process was the same but it went on for a lot longer and the time intervals between images were never the same. A few times I was left looking at a child crying with a gunshot wound and a red dot in the bottom left for what seemed like an eternity. Flowers. Rape. Love. Violence. War. Language. Travel. Starvation. Open wounds. Dead babies. And red dots.

    After roughly two hours and one five minute break where I was allowed to not have the monitor directly in front of my eyes, I was unstrapped and unplugged and told to go wait in the first room I had been doing paper work in. I was then asked to write down as many images as I could remember that had the red dot on them and in what corner. This was not easy as I had seen hundreds but I made a best effort and handed them the paper. They asked me to wait a few minutes while they reviewed the experiment and would be out shortly to give the results and the money.

    The Results

    Now, at this point, it had occurred to me that these people were fucked up. What computer were they on looking up all this child porn and animal killing images? I paid tuition for those computers? How many people had seen this stuff? Why would people coming out of a surgery care if a grand mother cut in half by a hack saw has a red dot in the top right corner? My thoughts were interrupted as they came in.

    It was now the grad student and an older looking professor who was carrying a manilla folder full of papers. They didn’t seem happy and anxiety and guilt began to surge through my veins. Guilt for lying to them about not eating or drinking or whatever else I wasn’t supposed to do before these last three hours.

    “First Luke, thanks for coming in today and helping us. We understand Saturday mornings are valuable.” the professor began which immediately made me feel I was in the clear and I had just a few more nods and smiles to give before I would get my hundred bucks.

    The professor continued, “But it seems we have some anomalies with your results, and we are not really sure how to interpret them. In fact, we are not positive we can even include these in the experiment. In all my years of Science I have never seen anything like this. In every aspect of the word, you are an outlier.”

    “Outlier?” I questioned with a twist of my head as the possibility I wouldn’t get my money came back into play.

    “Ya. You see, the human body has a minimum time that it must take to perceive something, process it, and then react. In your case, it was to see a red dot, determine what corner it was in, and then press the appropriate button.” the professor explained while pointing his fingers at his eyes and brain and hands. He continued, “The whole point of this experiment is to measure that time while the affects of anesthetic are present in the body.”

    They seemed to be waiting for me to say something but I stared blankly at the two of them. Not because I didn’t understand, but because the hangover was demanding I go get some sleep.

    Eventually the professor ended the silence, “You are an outlier because you repeatedly were reacting significantly faster than what science believes is the human minimum time. And this was WITH the anesthetic!”

    The professor seemed to want to jump up and scream that last sentence but restrained himself when he noticed me not giving a single fuck. He composed himself, straightened his jacket, and stood up gesturing for me to as well.

    “Again, Luke, thanks for your time.” and he handed me a white envelope with a hundred dollar bill inside and sent me back into the mill.

  • Shroomin’ at My Reunion

    Shroomin’ at My Reunion

    It’s Saturday night, and my best friend and I kick things off by smoking a bowl in his parents’ backyard– because since high school, on through college and into adulthood, that’s how most good nights start. (And bad nights, and mediocre nights, and nights when I wake up at 4 the following morning on the couch with the TV blaring and cake in my mouth.)

    The only preparation I’ve made for my 10-year high school reunion is buying a pair of skinny Seven jeans (earlier this afternoon). I’m not successful, I’m not feeling particularly sociable or witty, I’m just gonna look the part. If I get laid tonight, better believe it’s gonna be for all the wrong reasons.

    Actually, denim isn’t my only preparation. I’ve also armed myself with a fresh pack of smokes, gum, and a condom hidden in my blazer pocket. Because you never know, especially when you’re me. I usually don’t even know after the fact.

    Then there are my buddy’s chocolates. And by “chocolates,” I actually mean “mushroom chocolates,” but that’s just too many syllables. And less catchy. So, there are chocolates.

    Having agreed that arriving at our reunion stone sober is a bad idea, we meet up with a half dozen girls from our class at a bar on Main Street; four of whom I’ve spoken a collective dozen words (if that) in all of high school, one I’ve already told my buddy I’m planning on sleeping with, and one who, understatedly put, has blossomed. Holy shit. How–and WHEN–did she get that ass?

    Since I’m already baked, not successful, and not feeling particularly sociable, I nurse a $10 beer for a half hour and stick to my game plan: innocent chit chat with my target, a few “you work in entertainment too?!” moments with the duckling-turned-swan, keep my career word total below 20 with the other four. No offense, ladies–I’m already planning on taking this one home, and–look at her, she just can’t stop kissing my cheek! What, do I have some peanut butter on there or something?

    Before I can verbally cockblock myself, we’re back in the car and headed to the Moose Lodge. Have I mentioned our reunion is at the FUCKING MOOSE LODGE?! We park, spark another bowl for good measure, and take our first crescent moon-shaped bite of chocolate. (Final reminder: mushroom chocolate.)

    –                        –                        –

    Walking around the corner of the building, we realize it’s only been 45 minutes since the doors opened. We have zero desire to be the first ones in, let alone in the first third. Thankfully, a small crowd’s already smoking outside. Oh yeah, we can do this now! No detentions for smoking ciggies! We’re greeted with handshakes and fist bumps from a few immediately recognizable faces: the druggie skater donning the same baggy sweater and cargo pants I last saw him in ten years ago, the half-black dude with the perfect smile who’s legitimately cool enough to pull off the leather jacket/tie/baseball cap trifecta, and the ambiguously ethnic loudmouth with a waxed chest and two too many shirt buttons undone. The latter can’t stop talking about how he’s got five bottles of Dom and Veuve Clicquot waiting inside. See? Told you there’d be bottle service at the Moose Lodge.

    Before we can finish our first cigarette, one of our classmates pulls up in a shiny black Maserati. No valet, homie– it’s the fucking Moose Lodge, not Mastro’s. He scrapes the bottom of his car violently pulling into the parking lot, eliciting a hearty cackle of “Ohhhh”s from the whole smoking section, as if he’d been caught passing notes in geometry. Perhaps this won’t be so bad, after all.

    –                        –                        –

    We suck it up and head in– down a narrow, dusty hallway with Warren G’s ‘Regulate’ blasting on the other end. After filling out the obligatory name tags and receiving three drink tickets apiece (my heart sinks at this reality; no open bar?), we proceed through a curtain of cheap streamers and it hits me– I’m standing in a transplanted cafeteria of the last group I actually referred to as “my peers.” (Well, if anyone had actually hung out our school’s cafeteria, that is.) I deserve a hemorrhoid for making the reference, but there’s no better way to put it: this is straight out of Napoleon Dynamite.

    No one’s dancing, and the only people sitting at tables are the plus-ones: husbands, wives, dates. Remember the kids’ table at Thanksgiving? It’s like that, without all the enjoyment of being a kid. Instead of chasing the family dog with a turkey leg in his mouth and tracing crayon outlines of your hand, you sit with the other misfits and watch your significant others being eye raped by their entire graduating class. If you’re lucky, she’ll turn around once every few minutes and blow you a kiss– but it’s gonna be a long night. There are many things in life I’ve never wanted to be: a meter maid, an amputee, and now a plus-one at a reunion.

    My buddy taps on my shoulder. “We’re about to get drunk in a real life Facebook group.” He couldn’t be more on. Facebook has changed everything. Even if I haven’t seen you in person over the last decade, I do know what you look like, I do know that you got married to a disproportionately hot girl, and I do know that you ate lunch at Bay Cities yesterday. All I can think is “I’ve defriended so many people in this room!”

    First up, the girl who couldn’t have been more than a few months away from becoming my stepsister. Her mom was my dad’s first girlfriend after my parents split, and her family moved to Santa Monica to be closer and make things work. They didn’t. I would’ve hit it back then. Not much has changed.

    There’s the cheerleader I ended up going to college with, who complained after I didn’t take advantage of her the one time we hung out and killed three bottles of Charles Shaw. She’s a single mom now. Savor small victories.

    There’s the kid who paid me $500 to do a semester’s worth of world history homework in tenth grade. (I loved history, it was a labor of love. Not to mention the fact that I was only copying mine verbatim.) He’s some sort of financial consultant in DC. You don’t say.

    The worst thing about reunions? The moment you see someone you’re genuinely excited to catch up with from across the room, you’re charged with navigating a sea of familiar faces and handshakes just to get to them… and that’s assuming they don’t move on their own. Thankfully, my buddy’s got a reasonable size advantage on this portion of the crowd, so I call an audible and follow him through the crowd like a running back behind his trusty lineman.

    And there she is, the closest thing I had to a long-term crush in high school, pint-sized and barely looking a day over 19. (We also met in world history; naturally, I did her homework for free.) We’d actually grown close after college when we both found ourselves back in Los Angeles, but nothing ever became of it, as I’d convinced myself my salary was less than half her prerequisite. She tells me she’s just broken up with her boyfriend in New York, and for the first time all night, I realize I should’ve driven my own car. But since I didn’t– to the bar!

    Disappointed in my lack of foresight, I finally make it to the watering hole, wrestling for standing space next to an unidentifiable cue ball who looks better suited to be on the other side serving me. Before I can order, he’s on my shoulder: “What we drinkin’, son?!” Boy, this may get awkward when I can’t remember who you are. There’s a reason people write both their first AND last names on their tags, you know. When he offers up his name with a handshake and a double whiskey rocks, it all comes back. When he tells me he’s “livin’ the dream, producing porn in Texas and ridin’ a redhead with double-D’s,” I’m reminded why I didn’t have much of a reason to talk to him in high school, and tonight is no different. Thanks for the whiskey, though.

    –                        –                        –

    A handful of smokes, shots and Nate Dogg tracks later, we’re liberally slapping fixings on tacos by the food table with our good friend’s ex-girlfriend– the one we haven’t had much (if any) contact with since they broke up after 8 years together– since sophomore year. While he had the option to attend tonight, he declined. (Likely in that for the past few years, he’s found a different girlfriend who’ll likely be more than a girlfriend someday, and who’d want to deal with any of that nonsense?) I’ve bumped into her a few times already tonight, each time muttering something along the lines of “Thank God I’m high for this,” each time slightly less coherent than that which preceded it.

    “You two smoking any more tonight?”

    My boy and I lock eyes like we’re in a beer commercial; there’s understanding in our gaze.

    “Blunt?”

    God, yes. A friend with weed is a friend, indeed.

    We step outside again. Ciggy, bite of chocolate, stare at the sidewalk for a hot minute.

    “Anything yet?”

    “Not really, to be honest.” You haven’t been accidentally feeding me just chocolate chocolate, have you? These jeans are so tight my balls are asleep, I don’t want excess calories unless they’re fucking me up.

    “Alright, I thought I had an Optimo on me. We need papers.”

    “No sweat, we’ll walk to the market right down the street.”

    We walk down to the market right down the street. Closed. No biggie, we kill the last of the chocolate, hop in the car and drive to the nearest liquor store, back so fast we don’t even lose our parking spot.

    I should mention I finally started losing my shit while waiting in line at the liquor store. I should also mention we were the only patrons in the liquor store. Must’ve been those lights on the ice cream freezer I couldn’t stop staring at. I should’ve gotten some ice cream. Ice cream sounds good right now.

    In order to keep inconspicuous (and not have to share our drugs), the three of us stand a good 30 feet from the door and spark our blunt. Before it’s made a full rotation, two more have joined, but they’ve also contributed a joint. This has to be how the whole Occupy movement got started. While they’re moving in opposite directions around our mini-circle, I keep ending up with both the blunt and the joint at the same time. Plus, I’ve lit another ciggy, so I’m smoking like a goddamn factory at this point– a factory with a busted assembly line, sleeping employees and a faulty emergency system. My knees get wobbly and I can’t feel my right foot. Always a good sign.

    –                        –                        –

    Next thing I know, we’re back inside. I slink my way next to an absolute stunner who wouldn’t give me the time of day back in high school; from what I can gather in a matter of seconds, she’s a singer now, so she still won’t. Joke’s on her, I don’t even HAVE a sense of time right now! Plus, her older boyfriend blew a load in her eye junior year and everyone’s been joking about it ever since.

    Remember the loudmouth with the waxed chest? He’s roving about with his merry gang of rich kids-turned-rich young adults, all of whom have an arm wrapped tightly around their dates’ waists. (Any tighter, and it might constitute rape.)  As promised, champagne has been popped, so I’m grabbing at glasses like a toddler for treats. While gorgeous, these girls are virtually identical, one moment half-struggling to separate themselves from their captors’ steely claws, the next giving up and laughing at one at jokes I can’t even hear.  I wonder if they’re all sisters, but I realize it’s likelier they all have the same employer. I wonder which one’s being paid the most for her company tonight. When did the  Twilight Zone take a bath in hepatitis and hair gel?

    After all that bubbly, I make a mad dash (read: determined stumble) to the bathroom and piss for a solid eight minutes, though looking back, the last seven were probably just me staring at patterns in floor tiles with my dick out.

    Now I’m making small talk with the tall blonde I hooked up with in my little brother’s bed the summer after graduation, when my parents were out of town and I went all Risky Business on their house for the better part of a month. (It would’ve been my bed, but my room had been designated the VIP lap dance lounge by the strippers we’d hired and I couldn’t get past the bouncer standing guard at the top of the stairs.) She’s engaged now, to a 40-year-old with an Affliction t-shirt & receding hairline; he greets me with little more than an uninterested “Yeah.” In his defense, my input isn’t much richer, so I feign interest with a flat “CongratsI’mgonnagotothebarnow” and a limp handshake. Probably better than “I put those fingers on your fiancée’s cooch for fifteen seconds a decade before you, bro.”

    I run into two of my old friends from elementary school all the way up until college, formerly scrawny little cousins who look nothing alike. One’s bursting out of his shirt in muscles I didn’t even know humans were supposed to grow, drunk as fuck and bouncing off everything (and everyone) in sight with his tongue wagging freely like a dog’s. Without a doubt the most forceful hug I get all night. I jokingly ask if he’s fighting UFC, and it turns out he’s actually fighting MMA. I think back to the time I gambled $64 away from him on a putting green after school; when his aunt showed up at my house to pick him and his cousin up, she’d made him pay. Probably wouldn’t go down that easily today. He suddenly grabs the back of my head, positioning my gaze squarely on the ass of the shortest girl in our graduating class, whom, as luck would have it, I’d also gone to college with. “How good does she look?!” I’d thought the same thing when she walked in in front of me earlier.

    The second of the two cousins is slightly more proportionate, but comparably trashed. He’s finally growing a little facial hair. Turns out he lives down the street from my current apartment. He hypes the fact that despite the little sex we had in high school, tonight we’re surrounded by this “pussy buffet.” (Except for “the bitches with babies.”) He points out the duckling with the sleeper ass. Dude, I know!

    –                        –                        –

    As far as I’m concerned, the final hour or so didn’t happen.

    I vaguely remember fielding a redundant barrage of questions on whether I still play golf, how I’ve been since my accident, and if I still remember any Latin. (When I can, awesome, nope!) Another old crush’s husband whom I’d only briefly met two weeks ago at a wedding told me he’s since fallen in love with my funny status updates. There may have been a slideshow. Pretty sure they didn’t hand out an award for funniest Twitter feed. Not that I’d prepared a 140-character speech or anything, who does that?

    Seeing I’ve yet to hear any horror stories about how I poured a drink on my chemistry lab partner’s chest, my blazer didn’t require a trip to the dry cleaner the next day, and there’s no reason to believe I sexually harassed anyone with my iPhone, I can only assume I kept my shit together. (Reasonably.)

    I do remember leaving. I got plenty close with my original target. Call it selective memory and maybe she was only holding me so tightly to prevent me from tumbling, but she kissed my cheek goodbye for what felt like 20 minutes on the way out and her name tag ended up on my lapel. Had I been of a better constitution at that point, I likely would’ve made a bold decision or two. Crap, I could’ve left this thing with a new reputation.

    On the plus side, I’m visiting my best friend next weekend in San Francisco. Cheek kisser’s up there too.

    I suppose the moral of the story is this: the best reunions require no specific date or anniversary– and much like this post, they never seem to end.

     

  • I Watched The Matrix On LSD – Send Help

    I Watched The Matrix On LSD – Send Help

    It’s a beautiful summer Friday at the beach and I want to do something on drugs right now.

    I should point out that in this post I am 100% condoning drug use.  If you want to go skydiving or street-luging, I support that, too.  Euthanasia?  I won’t stop you.  I am very pro-choice when it comes to dangerous or dumb activities.

    To demonstrate:  As I pondered that last paragraph and marveled at its shortsighted logic, I looked up to see a man walking down the sidewalk.  He was typing on his phone while shouting into a Bluetooth headset.  He looked like a crazy person.  “HEY DUDE, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT STREET I’M ON RIGHT NOW!”  I didn’t say anything to him.  He kept walking.  He kept typing.  He kept yelling.  I watched.

    THWACK.  CLANG.  FUCK!

    He slammed right into the street sign for Brooks and Speedway.  He learned a valuable lesson about where, and who, he was.  That sort of epiphany is painful in the short term, but tremendously beneficial in the end.

    After all, our protagonist had been properly briefed on the hazards of walking.  He knew the potential side effects better than most Viagra users.  And yet he walked!  And failed.  Perhaps, in time, he can heal his psychological trauma and walk again.  The whole world could benefit from such a heartwarming story of the Human Spirit.  I believe in him.  I believe in us.

    With that preamble out of the way, and the moral statute of limitations exceeded, I confess that I have been under the influence of LSD on precisely one occasion.

    I was freshly 21 with a voracious appetite for 1960s American History.  On a fateful July evening in Irvine, a small breeze gusted through the palm trees.  The moon was full.  Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.  The breeze picked up and sent a small piece of paper gliding directly into my yawning mouth.  My roommate, Phillip, burst through the door.  He told me that the SAME THING had just happened to him.

    We ran to the internet to ask it what to do.  The internet told us we had been poisoned by an extremely strong dose of LSD.  The onset was irreversible.  All we could do was brace for impact.

    Luckily, our fanatical love of 1960s American History meant we’d already spent over 80 cumulative credit hours studying and researching the physiological, psychological, and spiritual effects of this culture-defining drug.  If you took into consideration all the extracurricular research (Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Ken Kesey, et. al), then our knowledge of what to expect was immense.

    Neither of us died.  It was very educational.  I “get” Pink Floyd now.

    We only went crazy once.

    We made a mistake.  Our decision to watch The Matrix was a poor one.  Somewhere about a third into the movie, I felt a brain spider on my frontal lobe.

    “I think something is going to be shown to us,” I said to Phillip, “Something that we don’t want to see.  I think it’s going to be on that screen and I think it’s going to involve… a bug.”

    It was hard to explain things.  Despite having seen The Matrix a dozen times, neither of us could remember specifics.

    “A… bug?” Phillip asked.  And at that precise moment, Agent Smith put a gigantic, slithering metal bug into Keanu Reeve’s pasty outie belly button.

    I literally ripped the TV’s power cord out of the surge protector.  That was the most dangerous activity of the night, but it probably saved our lives.

    Next thing I knew, Phillip and I were in the kitchen.  It was very, very bright.

    “We’re going to eat ice cream,” Phillip said.  “And it’s going to make us happy again.”  His voice was stilted, but I could tell he wanted to believe it.  I wanted to believe it, too.

    “Where does the ice cream come from?”  I asked.

    “The head of the fridge.”

    “You’re just going to take it,” I guffawed, “from the brain?”

    “We’ll see if it lets me.  While I do that, you find us the tools to eat it with.”

    “Where are the tools?” I asked.

    “I don’t know,” Phillip said, not-sarcastically.  “Ask a cabinet.”

    I spun around and tried to figure out which swirling face to grope at first.    I opened a cabinet.  Then another.  Each was EXACTLY like the portal to John Malkovich’s brain in that John Cusack movie, but with more slime.

    “Hurry!” Phillip whimpered behind me.

    “I’M TRYING!” I screamed.  “BUT EVERYTHING I TOUCH JUST MELTS!”

    It was true.  My third eye was open wide and pulling focus from the other two.

    “That’s just the drugs, dude,” Phillip said, voice like a hostage negotiator.  “You gotta look past that.”

    That phrase sobered me up.  A rush of energy!  I felt like Neo when he finally saw The Matrix for what it is.  I knew what to do.  I knew which drawer to look in.  I knew which handle to pull!

    I yanked it open, with great expectations.

    It was empty.

    I was wrong about everything.

    My reality shattered.

    I spun around.

    Phillip was staring at me, eyes the size of Jupiter, mouth and face covered in chocolate goop.  In each hand, he clutched a snowball of brown ice cream.  An open container sat on the counter and watched the whole thing unfold.

    “Well?” Phillip sputtered.  His teeth were chocolate coated, too.  “What did you find?” he asked.

    I was happy again.

    I yelled as loud as I could, “THERE IS NO SPOON!”