The Thing I Saw At Three In the Morning

Friday, December 15th, 2017

Well, finals week is almost over. Now there is only one class left, with an oral final and a paper due. Thursday night, which turned into Friday morning, was spent hurriedly writing that paper from scratch and pretending to study for the oral final. At least I wasn't alone, for there was at least a dozen people in our apartment writing papers too. At any rate, as the hours before the deadline grew shorter and shorter, more and more people left to go back to their homes and sleep. By and by at four in the morning, Luke and I went to bed, leaving John to stay up by himself writing away. Ughh, it was way too late. But I had a plan: I'd sleep for three hours, go clean the Stormcellar, and then have about an hour and a half to study before my oral final. Great plan! And with that, I went to bed.

I woke up, not to my alarm, and did my first sit-up of the day. I looked at my phone, which told me it was 10:12am. "What!? Shootnam, I slept in, I gotta get going!" I thought to myself. I burst into action. Oh boy was this bad. I hurriedly got ready in record time, and ran down to the school as fast as I could, arriving with five minutes to spare before my final was supposed to begin. Gulp. I'd studied probably a total of twenty minutes for this. It wasn't going to be pretty. I met Brooke on my way to my professor's office, and she was glad to see me, and said, "Oh there you are Leaf. It's just about you're turn to go in, and I didn't see you around the school at all. I was about to call you to make sure you were up!" Breathless, I nodded in reply and said a few words, then sat down and tried to recollect things I had seen on the study guide. Ain't nuthin. Oh well. The time came, I walked in and sat down, and did so poorly on the final; it was astonishing how pathetic it was: just barely passing. Well, that's what happens when you overextend yourself, don't study, and sleep through your alarm and what sliver of study time you actually did plan for. Oh well, guess I deserve what I got. Good prodding to do better next time though!

After that I finished up my paper and turned it in, and as I was walking down the twisty staircase back to the library, I looked out the windows and saw... SNNOOOWWWW!!! IT WAS SNOWING! My heart skipped a beat then leapt a thousand feet. What glorious timing; just as I was finally done with all my papers and exams! The library was down to just a few remaining stragglers, and there weren't many around to share my joy with, except Charli, who was putting the last touches on her paper. I got her attention then exclaimed, "Nix cadens est!!!" [The snow is falling.] Her eyes lit up, "Really!?" she whisper shouted, because we were still in a library. We walked fast to the door and then out into the beautiful scene of freshly falling snow, which you could tell was going strong and gaining pace. Just then, Christy walked up. "Hi guys!" she said, "It just started falling as I was walking over here, isn't it nice?" We all admired the snowflakes. We also reformed our plans that we'd made earlier, since everybody except Christy and Caleb had forgotten about them, (heh, funny story) and then we each went our separate ways.

The walk back to 6th street was something else. Sure, I'd probably flunked my Anselm class since the paper I'd just turned in was garbage and the oral was a mess to say the least, and sure, Latin kicked my tail too, as well as that three thousand word paper for that other class probably wasn't very good, and sure, I was slightly sleep deprived and my apartment was a disheveled heap of ashy dishes and empty pizza boxes ( to be fair, the pizza was not my idea, though I may have participated in the enjoyment of it...), but at least it was snowing. And it was beautiful. And I was done with finals. And I had friends, and it was almost Christmas break, and I'd see my family soon, and... I could go on and on. I'm blessed to have all the wonderful things I do. It's great. It really is. For all yall students out there, don't let grades get you down. Yes, they are important. But they're not everything; there is so much more to life. I'm not saying don't try to get good grades, by all means do so, but at the same time don't let your academic aspirations dominate everything else. Strive for the best, work your hardest, and be grateful and content with the outcome.

These were the things I thought about on my walk back home, along with the conviction to be more diligent next quarter in my classes. Heh, for starters, I should try actually studying for my exams! I then decided to not worry myself about my classes, and determined to not think about them one bit for at least a week, and to enjoy my remaining days in Idaho before Christmas break proper as thoroughly as I possibly could. So that's what I did.

Upon arriving home, I found Caleb sitting on the couch amidst so many dirty plates and aforementioned empty pizza boxes, quietly reading a book waiting for me to show up. He'd been there since noon, and it was now about one thirty or so. Yeeaaah... this is what happens when you forget about the plans you make folks! The previous plan was this: several people were going to arrive at my place at noon, we'd eat pancakes, then I'd get a haircut. (Evidently this haircut was quite the deal, and several people had expressed interest in observing the deed being done. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because it'd been long and curly and Bob Ross ish for quite some time and they were intrigued as to whether more eggs or hatched chicks would fall out when my hair got cut off. I'm not sure, the evidence is inconclusive. (full disclaimer, it was a tie: an equal number of chicks and eggs fell out.) At any rate, I decided to make an occasion out of it and invite all those who wanted to see it over for pancakes after finals. Not all could make it, but some did. Caleb was one.) Well, I had said there would be pancakes at noon, and Caleb had planned accordingly, and I'd forgotten and now it was past one thirty. This meant Caleb was hungry. So we cooked up a smaller batch with the intention of making more once everybody else got there at two thirty or so. We ate voraciously, and then we ran out into the now snowy parking lot to frolic in the joys of winter-actualized. We slid on the slickness of the asphalt, pelted each other with snowballs, and generally goofed off, before I at last acknowledged that my feet were in fact cold and it would behoove me to go inside and warm them up whilst there was yet a certain degree of feeling left in them. When we got back inside, I started cleaning. Caleb offered to wash dishes, of which there was a ton, and together we began a house-wide purge, bagpipe music blaring all the while. After what seemed a good bit, it was looking pretty good: Caleb had washed all the dishes, the counters were clean, the floor swept, the bathroom sanitized, the trash put out, and I was just then vacuuming the livingroom. The house was clean again! Caleb is a star, it'd've taken me twice as long to do it all myself! Just as I finished vacuuming, I noticed Christy and Charli walking up, so I opened the door to let them in.

We fried up pancakes and talked excitedly about everything, and then Luke came and joined in too. By and by, the time drew near for the cutting of the hair. Luke ran over to Laura's apartment to borrow a tall mirror, Charli grabbed her scissors, and I pulled a chair out and sat down. The last haircut I'd received at the hands of Froh, and it was a long, painful ordeal. My hair was far too thick and curly for his dull clippers, and the only way to get the hair off was to yank and pull so much I thought I knew what it felt like for Zeus to have Athena jump out of his split head, as the myth goes. That haircut was by all means to avoid repetition. After much looking around and fall-throughs, I finally asked Charli to cut it and she agreed. So here we are. The first thing she did was to cut off this one little particular bunch of hair on the far back left of my head that I constantly twirl around in circles. It's sort of a habit I've developed I guess. At any rate, it was gone. Charli kept cutting away at it, making slow but sure progress. Eventually it got to the point where both she and Caleb were discussing whether the sides were even, if perhaps a tad more should be taken from one side, or some other such question. At least twice we finished, and I ran my head under the faucet to get all the stray hairs out. Upon my re-arrival, both Caleb and Charli would say, "Oh no, that will never do, sit back down, we've got to fix that!" And so they did. But at long last, it was finally all the way done, and I was pleased. It turned out better than I'd expected! Charli had never cut curly hair so short as mine, (not that it was short at all, just short in comparison to girls' hair lengths) and it had been a while since she'd cut hair anyways. But it turned out pretty good, so we were both glad about that. Then they both headed home, and I was left alone with my pile of shorn hair.

After about an hour or so, Mariah, Priscilla, and Caleb came by, and together we drove through the still-falling snow to Darcey's house where a big class party was to take place. We got there right on time, so consequently we were obnoxiously early, but made ourselves useful by helping decorate the place before all the people arrived. Soon enough though they did, and we had a grand ole time. Pizza magically appeared borne on the wings of some guardian angel, and then we all prayed and sat down to eat. After the first two slices I ate, I realized there was, in fact, pineapple pizza there. Heh heh. I love pineapple pizza. Mandy does not. We have an ongoing feud over whether pineapple is acceptable or not on pizza, and it gets pretty involved sometimes, but that's a story for another day. Anyways, I changed seats and sat right next to her, being sure to let her know how delicious the pizza was. After that we all did various and divers things, some singing songs around the baby grand, some cutting paper snowflakes, others just talking or whatnot. Later on, we all went downstairs and watched White Christmas, which I'd never seen before. There's definitely more than one good one-liner in there.

By and by the time came to discedere, (I hardly ever say 'leave' anymore, 'discedere' sounds better and is funner to use too) and we all put our boots and jackets and scarves on. We all went outside, and the snow was too perfect not to, heh heh, throw around a bit. So I did. Next thing you know there are snowballs flying everywhere, and I'm scrambling around to make sure everybody gets just as much snow as the next guy. (I try to be as fair as possible in how I distribute snow to everybody, preferably in their face or the back of the collar.) Keziah was giving me trouble though, hiding behind his car and standing up only when he had a good shot at me, and being sure not to let me get in a snowball edgewise. If I went to one side of the car, he went to the other. The choice was clear, there was no alternative; if I was going to deal with this problem, it had to be now. So I ran straight for the car with a snowball in each hand, jumped and slid across the roof and threw the snow as fast as I could. Unfortunately I forgot to close my mouth during this whole ordeal, and as I slid across the roof of his car, powdery snow rushed inside, along with a well-aimed snowball from Keziah. I inhaled a bunch through my glottis down my trachea, and my lungs couldn't get any air. I crashed on the other side of the car and rolled over into a heap, at which point Keziah kicked yet more snow into my mouth as I was gasping for breath. I pulled myself up to all fours coughing violently, and finally managed to clear my airways and breathe properly. Then I was fine, and continued to run around throwing snow, but by this time I was covered head to foot in snow. It was great. I need more snow in my life. Just not in my lungs. ahhahahae

Around midnight thirty I made it back to my apartment where I found Luke, and we were both on the hunt for food, as young buckaroos like ourselves our wont to do at such a time of night, especially after running around a bunch. For a time we simply forgot that we were looking for food, and stood in the kitchen talking, but by and by the growling was too much, so we continued the prowl. We discovered leftover pizza and pancakes, and these we enjoyed while watching the very first episode of Stranger Things, since Luke had not yet seen it. It was now about two thirty in the morning. Ugghh. But it was fun. We both traipsed off to the stairs to go get some sleep, but then a howling monster of a memory rushed up out of nowhere and destroyed all such high pretensions of going to bed at a decent hour. Earlier today, I'd slept in and hadn't cleaned the Stormcellar. Now it must be done, there was no getting around it any longer. I hardened my resolve to get it knocked out, and began dressing for the weather and packing my music and speakers in my backpack. I walked outside, got about fifty feet down the way and then... turned tail and ran back for the door. I had seen something.

I rushed inside, closed the door behind me quick as I could, rushed to the other side of the livingroom, and dove behind the couch. Thankfully, I was the only one that made any sound, and the stillness of the night was pleasing to my ear. I then grabbed the reason of my sudden rush back to the apartment from behind the couch where I keep it, and with the sled went back outside. Now I was all buckets of joy. The snow had been falling for several hours now, and the plows had yet to go down the 6th street hill, the sight of which had made me run back to get my sled. Heh heh. Now was my chance. I hopped on my sled and slid all the way to the bottom. It was great. Then I went and cleaned the Stormcellar. By the time I was done with that, it was about four thirty in the morning, and my sleep schedule was now definitely getting a little crazy. I walked on my way back home, enjoying the quiet solitude of the empty streets, interrupted only by a snowplow driving by. It was calm and serene. Perfect. I reached the top of 6th street, then gave in and sledded down the sidewalk this time. I then walked back to the top, and ended up sledding down several different roads and alleyways. By the time I got back to the house, it was five thirty in the morning. "Oh boy," I thought to myself, "At least I ain't got nuthin goin on tomorra, so I can sleep ever so long as I want!"