If there were anything worse than being sick, it would be being sick while standing around in the outdoors. And if there were anything worse than standing around outside sick, it would be being sick, standing around outside of the train station, with smokers and obnoxious groups of people that just missed a bus (who then find it as good means to start swearing). All that wrapped up in one - it was also my current situation.
On a quick note, I'd like to point out that yes, I probably COULD get busted down for ripping off the first bit of "Angela's Ashes" with my first few lines - let's just see that that doesn't happen, okay? But yeah, I was sniffing back the runny nose while leaned against a handrail at the infamous 22nd Street Station. It was Friday, so the plan was to
try to go to swing dancing (which we hadn't been able to successfully pull off in a while). Regarding others, they were all occupied with something going on at Natalie's place (ah, you don't know her, I bet; that's okay, I'll fill ya in as we go). But technically there should be three of us at least - Riley, Gavin, and myself. As of this moment, I was the only one here. Irony of it all, I had barely caught the bus.
I sniffed back again, and found it to be slightly unbearable; lucky for me I had a pocket-sized thing of tissues in my vest pocket. So yeah, "
honk", "
bubble", and so on, and I could breathe through my nose again - at least for the time being. I ended up balancing my butt on the round, green rail, swinging my feet back and forth (watching that I didn't lose my balance, of course) and whistling quietly to myself as I waited for the two to get here. I checked my watch again; they were already ten minutes late, and still going strong. Actually, that I was here at all was quite a feat: I almost didn't come. Earlier that day I had found out that lots of people were easy no-shows, and it would be down to us three. Considering that, I told Gavin when he called me that I wasn't going - me being sick and all. He just wouldn't let up and eventually I figured I might as well just go,
if not just for the sake of shutting the poor kid up.
But yeah, after al that, I'm still the only one here. The weather is still fine; it's still pretty warm for a September night. A couple of guys I know from school go by, and we all do the quick "why are you here?" routine. Well, they left pretty fast (I think it was a party or something they were going to), and I was solitary again. However, this did not last long - I saw the long, dark hair, orange tank-under a green unbuttoned shirt. Gavin was here.
"7:30, right?" I asked him.
"Shut up." he tells me back. "So what, we're still waiting for Riley?"
"Yup. He's still not here." He then replied in his forced Albertian accent,
"Aw,
well that's just FANtastic!" So we both sat on the round green rails as we waited for Riley. And sure enough, the little guy came running down the hill to meet us.
"Hey guys," he says. We barely say "hey" back when he suddenly continued, "look . . . this is REALLY bad of me, but I totally forgot that I promised some people I'd meet them tonight down by the creek." The statement left Gavin and I in total "Huh? What?" state. Well, Riley was really sincere about it, and I knew what it was like to have a last-minute memory-lapse. We then gave the obligatory, "well, alright, we'll see you later" speech, and he gave us the ground-rule "well, have a good time anyway" bit. (Still, it was really thoughtful of him to have come down to the station just to tell us that. But still . . .)
As he headed off again, I quickly called out to him,
"Hey, you know what was going on at Natalie's place? A lot of people seem to be there or something."
"Yeah," he confirms, "it's her birthday today."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Hey, if ya want, you can try to go down there and see if they want to go dancing, but from what I heard . . ."
"Yeah, I know. Nat's not a big fan of swing dancing. Alright, thanks man."
"No problem," he finished, and continued back up the hill to meet his peoples. Well, a birthday explains a lot. I mean, do I really have to say why? Everyone knows how birthdays attract friends like moths to light bulbs.
And yet I wasn't invited . . . . . oh well, no biggie - probably just a girl's-night-in or something anyway.
"I'm thinkin' tonight's off now, huh?" I rhetoric to Gavin, "what do you think?"
"I dunno," he goes, "we could still do something, I mean, we're already out here and stuff." We were two guys with a coupl'a bucks and no where to go. That kinda sucked for us.
"Uh . . . . . any movies on now?" I asked.
"I wouldn't have enough money for that anyway," he replied.
"Oh yeah. Me neither." We were screwed again. After a VERY long bridge of time, Gavin brought up how he had a coupon for some dessert-place downtown. I had never heard of the place, but hey, it was somewhere to go where we could save money, so why not, right?
So he bought his transfer, I kept my bus one, and we took the train downtown. I forget what we were talking about as we got there - all I recall was that we were standing, holding the bar as opposed to sitting (no free seats anyway). Actually, I think he was telling me the background about this character from the Witchblade comics - something about a guy in a toque that catches bullets with his hands or something like that. I don't know; it was interesting, but . . . . . ya know.
So let's see, while we're out downtown, I was throwing ideas back and forth with Gavin as to what else we should do on our outing. His first instant idea was to "go pick up chicks"; I just rolled my eyes (I just never saw much in downtown girls; that's all [I didn't tell him that, though]). I was thinking more along the lines of maybe picking something up for Natalie while we were out. Gavin thought likewise (eventually, I think). Well, we reached the downtown station - nothing disastrous has happened yet. Inside the train station I could faintly hear a guitar somewhere. Naturally I perked up looking for the nearby street-performer. He was a neat-looking fellow, with a few CDs stacked in front of him with his open case next to that. I always liked street performers - they aren't even asking you for money; you sometimes just feel compelled to. It's just nicer than the man sitting against a building, holding his palm out is.
"Alright," I asked Gavin, "where we goin' now?"
"Well," he swung out, "how about . . . I dunno. Where do you want to go?" I thought a bit, an answered,
"How about that hat place? I'm still looking for that fedora for Halloween." My plan was to go as Indiana Jones - wouldn't that just be the coolest? "That's on this street, right?"
"Yeah, if you're willing to walk thirty minutes . . ."
"Oh. Never mind then. I'll check it out another day." The funny thing about this whole conversation was that we had already walked down about a good third of the downtown area by this time! We were standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change so we could cross - why we were still going this way I'd never know.
"Hey, you realize we're standing in front of a whole bunch of sex shops, right?"
"Hmm. Go fig . . ." How we ended up in front of all these explicit adult items I'd never know either . . . . .
After walking past the FOURTH sex store, we figured it would be a good idea to start thinking about where we were going. Turning around was to be the first step - no, NOT so we could walk past all the sex shops again; it was so we could get back to the street that that ice cream place was.
Yeah, you totally forgot about the dessert-place that Gavin had coupons for, didn't ya? Actually, it was kinda strange how that worked out. Suddenly Gavin just remembered that was going to be one of the primary reasons we were here (completely out of the blue), and we turned around - no questions, no fuss, we just about-faced and went back up the street. I sniffed back some more mucus, reminding me again that I wasn't at full health today.
Well, we were about halfway back from where we were/started, when we chanced upon a comic store - ya know, one of those places that "cool" people just love to hate. Naturally Gavin wanted to check something out; technically, I kinda wanted to too. We stepped in and he looked around at some stuff. I just went around my own way, looking at the stuff on the wall or behind the glass. On the wall I saw a Darth Maul action figure from Star Wars. I was a little impressed that it was there, since NO store EVER has him in stock! I almost wanted to buy it, except I remembered that rare items are a little more expensive - yeah, about 10-15 dollars more expensive.
Maybe someday I will . . . . .
I continued around the store and came upon some old toys. I almost back-flipped at what I saw! Old, old, GI Joe action figures! I looked down the line and just time-warped back to my youth watching the good guys shooting at the bad guys; I just stood there smiling to myself. Nearby I heard another couple of people saying the same things I was thinking. Also nearby I heard a kid telling his dad or uncle or someone about how he had that one, and that one . . . he wasn't pointing at the Joe's, though. He was pointing at Transformers below the Joe's!
There they were - the characters from one of my favorite childhood cartoons - most with ALL their pieces still intact! I mean, you know how these things go: you buy them when you're young, you play with them, you start to lose guns, and hands, and then eventually the whole toy itself . . . it came to no surprise that a complete "Ultra Magnus" sold for $100 . . .
we HAD that toy! We also had "Metroplex", and "Starscream", and . . . my God, they had the original "Optimus Prime" too! I was suddenly really sad that we lost those toys - I mean, they were expensive now! (Sigh) if I only knew . . . . .
When I rose from my now-very sore crouch, Gavin asked me if I was ready to leave. I said (after a long breath) that I was. We were almost out the door when I saw the line of posters for sale along the wall.
"Whoa, hold on!" I said to him, grabbing his collar the same time.
"Ack!" he coughed, "what was that for?" I didn't answer him right away. I just started scanning through the posters, looking for something . . . eventually I chanced upon one of those hilariously nationalistic pro-Canada rant-things. I finally explained to Gavin,
"You know what? I think Nat' would like this." He did the whole "oh, NOW I get it" shoulders-&-face routine, and I went to pay for it. I found Natalie a birthday present after all!
"So you still wanna get ice cream or what?" Gavin asked me (slightly harshly). I sniffled and blew my nose; again.
