I was in a room of either my mother's or my father's home in Portsmouth, where my brother Chris was lying on a bed. I was happy to see Chris, whom I hadn't seen in quite a while. He said something about his being horny. I thought he had reached the age when he was aware of sex, and I thought it a shame that he would never be able to experience sex because he had muscular dystrophy.

Although I had already been in Portsmouth a while, I had never made it up to the Cabin, even though I had been thinking of going there. Now I was planning to leave Portsmouth and go to Europe. I was unsure exactly what I was going to do in Europe, but I thought perhaps I would sell real estate. I would have enough money to buy a car, and I would take my suits with me. I had decided I was going to go to Germany, and I would simply learn to sell real estate there. I wondered if there would be any labor laws which would prevent my doing that.

I gathered all my things together. Leaving my family again was difficult, since I had been staying there with them a while, but I knew I had to go.

I went to Germany, stayed for one day and then returned to Portsmouth to pick up some more things. It seemed to be a terrible waste of money to only stay for one day before returning, but I did it anyway.

When I returned, I went to a house and stood on a balcony where I could see a view over a lake. Below the balcony were some high-school students, male and female. I began watching the girls, and thought about how attractive they were. They were too young for me, but I was attracted to them anyway.

Finally I walked down to where the students were and I discovered they were playing a game in which they were standing in two lines of three people each. Several different groups of people were arranged in two lines. Sometimes someone would move from a line in one group to a line in another group. I began playing the game with the students, and as I did, I got to know some of them. Finally someone asked me if I were going to Europe, and I replied, "Yea, I'll probably be going tomorrow for good."

We were standing near the lake, and I noticed a small sail boat coming in from the lake. When the boat came near the shore, one person jumped off the boat into the water to help pull the boat into the shore. Large waves began crashing into the shore. The waves also crashed over the fellow who had jumped into the water. Everyone went to the boat and began helping to pull it in to the shore. Someone mentioned how dangerous sailing boats on that lake was. Apparently people often had trouble with waves on the lake.

As I continued looking at the lake, I gradually realized it was covered with ice. In fact, people were walking around on the ice. One fellow began telling me how he liked to go out on the ice when it had a pale, silver color. I thought it must be coldest when it was like that.

It looked as if about a third of the ice was hard enough to walk on and about a third wasn't. The other third I couldn't see. But it really didn't feel cold yet to me. I looked at some of the fellows standing around me and said, "It's going to get cold, boys."

As soon as I had said that, I wondered whether I should have called them men instead of boys.