#Cliff will never live the 20 dollar thing down | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kinsey3furry300 · 3 years

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So how the heck do the Avengers pay for stuff, and how rich are they?

So, in the wake of “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” There’s a lot of debate about why Sam didn’t seem to get paid well for his work in the Avengers (at least in the MCU continuity), and this has got me thinking: we’ve got no evidence that the Avengers are, financially, anything but a hot mess. So lets break it down, Avenger by Avenger, using real-world pay scales for the ones who have jobs.

Tony: a billionaire, so clearly he’s a financial genius, right? Well….. his actions say otherwise. He’s shown to be wildly irresponsible with his money. He inherited a lot of wealth form his parents which was managed by the first Jarvis, Obadiah, and Pepper for him, he buys and then gives away not just woks of art, but entire collections by major 20th century artists on a whim, destroyed his own cars and home without concern, he tanks the value of his own company in the first Iron Man with a bad press interview, gets kicked of his own bord of directors, and ultimately, in Iron Man 2, gives control of his company to Pepper. He’s insanely rich, and insanely smart, but man, he’s not smart with his money. So all the cool stuff, his suits, the Avengers tower, the facility up-state: that’s all paid for by him, but Pepper is holding the purse-stings. So, does he pay the others? We have no evidence for most of them… but we do with Spidey. Peter Parker is in the Stark Internship Program a euphemism to hide the fact he’s training and mentoring him as a super-hero, but I find the wording interesting: he refers to Spidey, his surrogate son and chosen heir, as an intern. I.E., Unpaid. I’m guessing this is Howard’s influence over him, some sort of ‘make you own way in the world, son’ attitude, but if he’s not paying Spidey, is he paying anyone else? He certainly pays for stuff super heroes suits and things, equipment, fuel, the base, but does he pay anyone a wage? No one ever mentions it. You think it would come up.

So, if he’s not paying them a wage, where do Avengers (and thier allies) get their day-to-day money from, and are they rich? Using google and https://www.federalpay.org, lets find out.

Cap: Well, before Civil war, he’s a shield operative, and he presumably still holds his military rank: he’s a US Army captain, with (well) over 40 years service, so USD$88,142.40 per year, with $237.71 drill pay (pay per drill you have to do on weekends, on leave or outside of normal service) and $175.00 per month hazard pay (which I bet is interesting) on top of that. As a WW2 veteran, he’d be eligible for a war pension if he:

Was not discharged for dishonorable reasons; and,

Served 90 days of active military duty; and,

Served at least one day during wartime ("wartime" as determined by the VA); and,

Had countable family income below a certain yearly limit; and,

Is age 65 years or older; or

Regardless of age is permanently disabled, not due to wilful misconduct.

As he’s still receiving 90k per year, he’s ineligible for a pension as his countable yearly income is above the limit. So if shield pays him in accordance with his rank and years of service, about $90, 600 per year incuding hazard pay.

After civil war, he’s a fugitive on the run, so presumably flat broke. I’d asume he gets his pension returened to him after the snap.

He’s also just gone from the 40’s to the present day, so 70 years of inflation probably makes buying things very confusing for him: everything would seem insanely expensive at first. He’d also not know what the correct prices are for anything invented after 45. You might get used to how much more expensive food and coffee is, but how much is a smart-phone worth? $200? $2000 $20000? Who knows? I bet the others have to facepalm a lot when he either refuses to pay for what he sees as clear price-gouging, and at the same time regularly pays insane amounts of money for goods and services because he doesn’t know better. He also has no known assets other than his pay: he rents an apartment making him one of the few American males in his age-group who isn’t a home-owner

Thor: Does Asgard even have currency? It’s depicted like a “Crystal spires and toga” type utopia with no poverty: even working class Asgardian’s like Scourge seem to be pretty well-off and want for nothing, so he’s from a post-scarcity society where actual magic is a thing. His “Another” coffee cup smashing and the fact he doesn’t have a computer of phone in Ragnarök might indicate that, no, he just doesn’t have, need or understand money. Splitting a bar tab with him must be a nightmare. His breakdown post snap indicates he’s got some cash, but not a huge amount, and is probably skiving of Valkyrie and the other Asgardians.

Banner: Okay, so a PhD could make you a lot of money from patents… in pharmacology or engineering. Theoretical physics? Not so good. And if Banner did have any patents, they’ve probably been seized under eminent domain by the US military. At the start of The Hulk film, he’s working a entry-level factory job at a botteling plant in Brazil. The minimum wage in Brazil is 1069.62 Real per month, that’s 12,835.44 Real per year, or around $2437.79 US per year, before everything goes wrong for him! He then runs off to India, works for Tony for a bit and then gets shot into space. Spidey may actually make more in allowance than Banner does, and Banner is a gown ass man with bills to pay: I’d imagine he loses a lot in ripped clothing.

Natasha and Barton: Pre Civil-war, both are government spooks, so how well does that pay? The salaries of CIA Intelligence Analysts based in the US range from $25,838 to $685,701 , with a median salary of $125,340, so let’s assume that Shield pays in a similar range: $685,701 per year for Director Fury, around 125,000 for Natasha and Cliff, which explains Cliff’s nice, middle-class mid-western home. Post civil war, presumably not great: we know that Natasha spends a lot of her savings running and hiding all across the world, and Cliff takes a deal and presumably lives of his savings, pension and his wife’s income.

Rhodes: Full USAF colonel with over 10 years service? $105,562.80 per year, plus $293.23 drill pay per drill and $175 per month hazard pay, and because he’s team Stark and not Team Cap in Civil War, he’d not lose any of that. He presumably also gets an injury pay-out after his accident. After T’challa and Stark, he might be the best paid avenger.

Dr Strange: spends all his money he made as a surgeon on trying to cure his hands: spends literally his last dollars heading to Nepal to train. Wong even jokes with him about their lack of worldly money when asking for a tuna-melt. But, can use illusion to make people think he has money, and his home and clothes etc. come with the job, so in the same boat as Thor in that he has no money, but needs none AKA, he’s a bastard to try and split a restaurant bill with.

Wanda and Vision: No know source of income, just sort of live in Tony’s hose and eat his food, and on top of that Wanda goes on the run after civil war… yet they can stay in fancy hotels in Edinburgh, a relatively expensive city, and Vison apparently bought them a house to retire in, so one of them has some source of money. Maybe Tony gave Vision years of back-pay form when he was still Jarvis, or maybe the vison has a day job, which is, frankly, hilarious. Could you imagine him as a barista? I can, and it makes me very happy.

Scott Lang: I’d assumed he’d be super, super broke, but apparently the average pay for a private security consultant in the Bay area is $85,430 per year. Not bad. Pity he gets sucked into the quantum realm just as his business is taking off, so presumably, flat broke again.

Bucky: no known income, and I doubt Hydra paid him for being the Winter Soldier so he probably has no savings, but he should, technically, qualify for a military pension. As a single veteran, he’d be eligible for federal tax-free pension of up to $1732 per month, or $20,784 tax free per year. Not much for someone who lives in NYC. He may also be eligible for medical benefits over the loss of his arm. Whether or not he got to see any of that money given how confused his life has been over the past 10 years is unclear, but on paper he’s eligible.

T’challa: He is, quite possibly, richer than Stark, and as an absolute monarch pays no tax and has access to his Nation’s vast wealth in vibanium. It’s good to be the king!

Captain Marvel: USAF captain, and a test pilot; the test pilot school only accepts applicants with a service length of less than 9 years 6 months (10 years six moths of helicopters) as they don’t want older applicants. With 8 years service, $79,538.40, plus drill pay and hazard. However, no know (human) pay since 1990. Flat broke.

Guardians of the Galaxy: no data, but I’m assuming “Cowboy Bebop” levels of perpetual never-ending poverty given the way they choose to live. I’d also assume Rocket has taken all their cash into some sort of Ponzi scheme of his own creation, because just look at him, of course he has.

Spidey: he’s got about $10 of his aunts’ money at any given time, so he can buy lunch… which may in fact be more than Banner or Lang, and we know it’s more that Strange or Thor.

So, here the big one: how rich or how broke is Sam?

Sam Wilson: annoyingly, we’re not directly told what rank Sam held in any MCU film. USAF pararescue “Maroon berets” are generally NCO’s (but there’ are officer-ranked pararescue) , and he’s seen working on his wings at one point, where as officers don’t generally work on or maintain airframes. He’s shown wearing a Nation Air guard grey while jogging at one point to confuse the matter further. The general consensus on redit is he’s a former USAF tech sergeant (E-6). But how long was he in the air force? With six years service (the minimum sensible time he could have served to work in pararescue based on his age), that would be $41,464.80 per year, plus drill pay and hazard. As Anthony Mackie, the actor that plays him, was 36 as of Civil War, and assuming the character is the same age, and assuming he retired from the air force that year, and he joined the USAF at 17, the youngest you can join, he’d have served 19 years, giving him a pay of $51,566.40, the maximum pay you can get at this rank before promotion to Master Sergent, but meaning he left just before he’d qualify for the 50% final salary pension you’d qualify for after 20 years. Which seems weird. So let’s assume the character is one year older than the actor that plays him and served 20 years (ages 17-37), that means Sam has a military pension of $25,783.20 per year (20,784 of it tax-free), plus any injury benefits. He councils other veterans, but doesn’t get paid for that. He also chooses Team Cap in Civil War, so would become a wanted criminal, and so lose his income between 2016 and 2018, and then gets snapped and has no income for 5 years, which would destroy his credit rating. Like the rest of Team Cap, he presumably gets his post snap pardon, and goes to work for the US government at his former pay and rank. However, given how Captain John Walker treats him as an equal, it’s possible he’s been promoted to a captain when the hired back, giving him a pay of between $54,176.40 to $88,142.40 (with 20 years experience, depending on if they take into account his prior service or not, and how much prior service he has), but either way, he’s just starting this as a new job after being legally dead for 5 years: no savings, and no credit.

Commercial fishing vessels cost about 10% of their total value per year in maintenance alone. I can’t identify what sort of boat the Wilson’s have, but some quick googling indicates that the cheapest 15m long wooden in-shore shrimp trawler costs around $140,000, so that’s $14,000 per year in maintenance costs alone, minimum. And that’s a lower estimate, assuming the rest of the business is sound, which we know it isn’t.

So, in concussion, yes, Sam is in some serious financial trouble until he can re-build his savings and credit, but the scary bit is he’s not alone in that: he’s probably better off than Lang, Banner, Danvers, Strange, Thor, Bucky, Wanda and Parker. Only Clint (if he gets a full pardon and gets his full pension), Rhodes, Stark and T’challa aren’t in some sort of potential financial problems. That asshole bank teller was right: despite the fact it seems to pay well on paper, with a few exceptions, the Avengers financials are probibaly a mess. EDIT: Rocket is running the Ponzi scheme, if that’s not clear from context. The others know they have money somewhere, but not where it’s gone. And It’s been pointed out to me that as he’s technically a POW while he’s the Winter Soldier, Bucky is owed over 70 years back-pay, equal to over 3 million dollars, details in the notes.

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bunkershotgolf · 2 years

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Trip Advisor Community Votes Branson (Mo.) No. 3 in ‘Top Trending U.S. Destinations’ Category

Lakes, Golf Courses, Ozark Mountains, Family Attractions, Live Entertainment Theaters Fuel Popularity

For the 11th year in a row, the TripAdvisor community has voted #ExploreBranson in the top 20 US destinations, this year No. 3 in the “Top Trending U.S. Destinations” category.

That Branson is packed with visitor delights – many new and unique – aligns with what travelers want.

“As the world returns to travel, priorities are changing, and people want more memorable experiences on their trips. Three-quarters (75%) of Americans say that it’s important they ‘see new places’ when thinking about their future travel plans,” said TripAdvisor’s Steven Paganelli.

“Branson adds new activities and family fun every year, providing a virtually endless list of interesting experiences,” said Lynn Berry, Explore Branson Director of Communications. “We’ve been entertaining guests for decades, yet the number of visitors has been increasing annually, this is largely attributable to the fun and new things to see and do.”

Some of Branson’s most popular offerings are dozens of live entertainment theatres, iconic Silver Dollar City theme park, Ozark Mountains’ majesty, three pristine lakes, award-winning museums, shopping venues, scores of restaurants of every kind, and some of the best golf courses in the country.

Regarding golf, Branson is home to 10 courses including the recently awarded “Best New Public Course in America” by Golf Digest. Designed by Tiger Woods, Payne’s Valley is a fun and geologically astounding course, largely due to its bonus 19th hole – “The Big Rock.” The par-3 island green is surrounded by water on all sides at the surface level and towering limestone cliffs with waterfalls cascading down them. An amenity of Big Cedar Lodge, build by Bass Pro Shops Founder Johnny Morris, it’s no wonder the amazing natural elements steal the show here.

Five of Missouri’s top 10 rated courses – including the top three – are in the Branson golf destination. And three of those are ranked among the top 100 nationally.

While golf is thriving in Branson, it is made more appealing thanks to the destination’s plethora of complementary other attractions. Three superb lakes offer boating and water sports. Astounding museums – Titanic Branson and Ancient Ozarks Natural History – showcase displays not found anywhere else. Hundreds of restaurants and lodging establishments beckon, along with a variety of live entertainment shows and outdoor adventures (zip lines, world-class fishing).

For more information about Branson visit www.ExploreBranson.com.

For more about Branson Golf, visit www.explorebranson.com/golf or www.facebook.com/bransongolf

About Explore Branson Golf

Ozarks National, 800.225.6343

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About Explore Branson

Branson is a one-of-a-kind family vacation destination nestled in the lakeside beauty of the Ozark Mountains — and an incredible value — with dozens of live performance theaters, three pristine lakes, an international award-winning theme park, dozens of attractions and museums, a Historic Downtown district, a Town Center-style shopping complex, a full range of dining options, and a host of hotels, motels, resorts, RV parks, campgrounds and meeting and conference facilities. Branson is less than one day’s drive for one-third of America’s residents. With low-cost flights to the Branson Airport (BKG www.flybranson.com) and nearby Springfield-Branson National Airport (SGF), it has never been easier to access Branson. Call 1-800-296-0463 for help planning your next vacation, convention or reunion. See more at: http://www.explorebranson.com

#golf #new #Golf Courses #submission

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writingpuddle · 4 years

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“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Nicky asked, digging in his pack for a chocolate bar. To their left, the cliff dropped away precipitously, sheer granite cliffs like sentinels at the end of the world.

Neil stared at Nicky. “No,” he said.

“What, never?”

Neil looked out across the sweeping vista of mountains before them. A speck that could have been a hawk or a raven or a sparrow spun against the sky, too small and distant to judge. He’d stood in the middle of busy cities; he’d gone to school with hundreds; he’d even tried out for a track and field team once. He’d been surrounded by people, and he had been so ferociously lonely it had been like a knife in his chest.

“No,” he said, because he didn’t know how to explain—didn’t even want to, really. He’d felt more alone back in the so-called real world than he’d ever felt in the wilderness, miles from any other person. When there was no one around, there was no one to miss.

~~~The Long-Distance Hiker AU (A Bullet Point Fic)~~~

So after Neil’s mom died he kinda of ghosted around for a while and eventually ended up in a small hiking town in California

He met a bunch of thru hikers and figured, hey, my dad probably won’t find me if I’ve fucked off into the wilderness

So he starts hiking

And pretty soon he realizes it’s the best thing he could imagine

He spends all summer in the mountains and when winter rolls around he finds a temporary job in a skiing town working in a second hand gear shop

He’s an ultralighter in the most accidental sense possible

His gear is weird and cobbled together and his shoes are held together with dental floss

He sleeps under a tarp with a down blanket and a thin foam mat and he’ll eat the same shit day in day out without even registering it while he covers frankly obscene distances every single day

It basically gives Kevin an ulcer

Kevin’s an ultralighter, but in the stuck up, rich bitch way; his gear is probably worth thousands of dollars and he’ll lecture anyone who listens about ripstop nylon and is super snobby and elitist about who is a so-called “real” thru hiker (hint: anyone who doesn’t do it his way isn’t a real thru hiker)

(don’t worry he’ll get smacked around a little by people like Dan and stop being such a little bitch about it but he grew up rich so even though it might’ve been shit living with Riko he really doesn’t always take into consideration the context of how much fucking money gear costs when he’s preaching about ultralighting)

(yes I’m taking out my dislike for pretentious rich ultralighters on him, okay, but the difference is he’ll have character growth versus the people I met are probably still being preachy and self-important to this day)

Andrew’s like the exact opposite

His pack weighs like seventy pounds and he’ll pull a six-inch knife (a gross misuse of smart gear weight management) at anyone who comments

He has a completely contained single person tent that’s big enough to sit up in and a four-inch inflatable mattress

His sleeping bag is rated to like -20 even when he’s hiking in the summer

Nicky swears he once saw him pull a full-sized chocolate cake out of his backpack three days down the trail and everyone says that’s stupid and made up but secretly think its totally true

Andrew likes to hike alone but somehow he’s never more than a day away from Aaron and Nicky and when he keeps showing up near them it gets harder and harder to pretend like he doesn’t actually care about them

Nobody says anything, obviously, but Nicky gets a little teary when he starts to notice the pattern

It was Nicky’s idea; in this universe Erik got him into hiking when he was in Germany so he got the cousins into it as a bonding exercise and then it turned out it was the best family activity they had ever found

This is several years after they graduated and they’ve scrounged together enough time and money to hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Now the upperclassmen:

So Stephanie Walker is a trail angel: one of those people who lives near a long trail and provides snacks and rides and somewhere to stay and basically helps out anyone who comes by with whatever’s going on; she’s pulled a lot of people out of frankly dangerous situations and she’s not afraid of anything the trail has to offer

So Renee finds herself and her faith while living this life of meeting new hikers every day and it’s almost inevitable that she starts to hike and find solace in the wilderness

Allison is one of those Wild types: she’s done some hiking (much to her parents’ chagrin) but she’s never done a thru trail or even much overnighting before, but she’s ready to throw herself into it and doesn’t care how dirty she gets

She totally carries a tiny spa package though

The other women are very skeptical because they take pride in being free from societies expectations and make up and shaving but they come around after Allison pulls it out one time when they’re seven days into a ten day section and gives them face masks and they all have a little pedicure pampering session (so, so needed when your feet are being beaten and bruised by hard terrain all day)

She has a lot of new, expensive gear and is super touchy about people trying to help her (because a beautiful woman absolutely gets people trying to “help” all the time and it’s infuriating and condescending) but she learns to accept help from her closest friends

She was showing off near the beginning of the trail drinking with a bunch of guys and probably got too sloshed trying to act tough (alcohol hits you waaaay harder at high elevations dude, if you’re not expecting it you can get Fucked Up really fast)

It’s Seth who realizes things are getting out of control and pulls her out before the guys can do anything shitty which is how their friendship and eventually their relationship gets started

They piss everyone off with their constant breaking up and getting back together on the trail, sometimes hiking together for days and then splitting up and going to hike with other people but they find a lot of healing out there in the woods

Seth’s mom is totally dismissive and condescending of his hiking, she thinks it’s a stupid waste of time, but she thinks everything he does is a stupid waste of time so at least when he’s out there without cell service he has an excuse to not respond to her

Now Dan

Dan’s trailer trash, right

She’s got no fucking cash but she has this dream in her head to hike the PCT and she’s going to fucking well do it

Her gear is probably most similar to Neil’s except where his is a mess of weird priorities and held together by spit and twine

Hers is meticulously planned

It’s cheap, some of it’s over forty years old, but it’s hers

It’s probably the only stuff in the world that’s actually hers

She accumulated it over about four years, hitting all the second-hand gear events, saving up every penny, packing and repacking and writing everything out in great detail until David Wymack got wind of her plans at a gear event

He’s one of those guys who hiked the PCT thirty years ago back before anyone knew what it was except instead of feeling superior about that it means he knows exactly how much impact experiencing the wilderness can have for disenfranchised people

He approaches Dan and offers to sponsor her hike

She’s resistant at first; she planned this hike, she got all the stuff together, she was going to do it without anyone’s help

But he comes back and says he just wants her to write about her experiences and publish it on his website

He’ll pay her for the work, of course

And she wavers and finally caves because this will move her plans up by about two years if she can make money while she’s hiking instead of having to hoard up enough cash to take six whole months off

Her blog posts are a huge hit

She doesn’t preach about how the mountains saved her, or get too metaphorical about hiking or anything like that

She just talks about the real, raw experience of hiking

The friendships, the trials, the triumphs

The infuriating people whose mental image of the hiking community doesn’t include poor black girls who grew up in a trailer park, who say she’s an inspiration like they actually mean something else

She talks about the days that she flies up the mountains and the days that she can barely drag herself out of her tent and the day she realizes that Allison and Renee, these women she thought could not be more different from her, are the best friends she’s ever had in the world

And she’s takes fucking amazing pictures

She’s also very determined not to have a trail romance

That’s stupid and cliché

Look that guy Matt might be hot but she’s not interested

He’s clearly working through some stuff and she’s not here to be some guys savior or whatever

So Matt then

His mom helped him get sober a couple years ago and he’s been struggling with it ever since

She got him into hiking as an outlet and a healthy hobby and he took to it like a fish to water

He’s got legs for days and he doesn’t mind carrying a heavy pack, he can hike for hours without stopping

(The fact that he’s faster than her pisses Dan off a bit, but sometimes you gotta accept that you’ve got short legs and just hike your own hike, there aren’t any prizes for speed)

He relapsed again a couple months before his hike started and he and Randy weren’t even sure if he was going to be able to do it but he’s damned well going to try

So anyway

Pretty much everyone is trying to actually hike the PCT except Neil

He drives everyone bonkers

His motivation isn’t really about the trail so much as staying out in the wilderness where there are no gangsters to murder you

So he just does whatever he wants and keeps showing up at random points

He’s technically got one of the thru hiker permits but he frequently goes off on side trails not on the PCT and ends up hiding out in the woods so rangers won’t find him

He’ll just hitchhike straight through boring sections or anywhere that you pass through too many towns where he’d rather not be remembered

He keeps coming back to the PCT but it’s more like it’s a rough guideline of where to go than an actual route he’s taking

He’s got his natural colouring back because who’s dying their hair or wearing fucking contacts on the trail?

But also

Who would ever associate a runaway mafia kid with a guy with overgrown hair and a stained t-shirt who’s sitting serenely on a mountain pass in a photo on David Wymack’s website?

Nobody

That’s right kids, Nathan doesn’t have a role in this one because he doesn’t find Neil

Maybe he gets killed in a shoot out or something and some other gangster steps up and takes over, and in the shuffle Neil’s just kinda forgotten

Maybe he finds out months later and he just stares at the computer in shock because he should have known, shouldn’t he? He should have felt it when his father died

He should have realized that he was free

That happens later though

Who fucking cares what Riko’s doing honestly

Kevin has somehow attached himself to Andrew and is driving him up the wall with advice to improve his hiking/base weight/distance/etc and he sees this guy (Neil) who regularly covers like thirty or forty miles a day (obscene!) and is like YES this guy is my people!

Except when he starts talking to Neil he realizes he’s this total weirdo who doesn’t even have a cook set he just eats cold food (a common enough thing among ultralighters, but not like this. Oh god, not like this)

Neil’s just sitting there gnawing on a pack of uncooked ramen like a fucking animal

And he’s not! Even! Hiking! Properly!

You’ll never finish the trail if you hike like this!

Neil just gives him a blank look

He’s got no interest on getting on some “verified” list of people who hiked the PCT, he just likes hiking

Andrew likes him

I mean obviously he despises him what the hell is with that janky ass setup but also he’s so unconventional and unapologetic how could Andrew not be into that?

They’re the kind of people who give wilderness rescue personnel grey hair, but for completely opposite reasons

Neil keeps running into them because even though he covers so much ground every day, his meandering route means he doesn’t actually move down the trail very fast

They’ll be like wait weren’t you like a week ahead of us and he’s like oh yeah I heard about this cool waterfall and took a sixty mile side trail to visit it and nearly ran into a momma bear with two cubs, it was awesome

And they all start to grow on him, and each other, almost accidentally

Look none of them are out there romanticizing the trail as some kind of magical place where the problems of the real world disappear and the people are somehow more pure and true or whatever

People are people and they bring their issues wherever they go

But there is a paring down

When your daily concerns are just mileage and shoes and food and weather, a lot of other stuff fades into the background

And well the truth is a lot of people are on those trails to work through stuff

And they find each other

Gradually, without even really noticing

They team up in June, groups of three or four with crampons and ice axes to get over the Sierra’s.

Neil was planning to just do side hikes and wait for the snow to melt—he isn’t so reckless he wants to go over the ice alone, but Kevin insists he join them and for the first time he hikes in a group with Kevin and the cousins all together.

It’s weird

He’s not used to people talking to him when he’s hiking and he frequently doesn’t respond and it’s not because he’s being rude he’s just so focussed on what he’s doing and what’s around him that he literally doesn’t hear them

And then

Nicky slips

It’s not his fault, they did nearly everything right (Kevin may be a pretentious ass, but he does know his shit) but sometimes shit just happens for no reason

And they’re at the edge of the ice sheet so Nicky’s just untying himself from the rope that links them together, he’s not even moving, and the snow beneath him shifts and he doesn’t even have time to scream before he’s hurtling down the snow below the trail towards the cliff at the bottom of the ice sheet

Neil doesn’t even hesitate

He dives after him, ice axe in one hand like a fucking gladiator and gets his arm wrapped around Nicky’s waist

He slams the ice axe into the snow and it drags behind them, and it looks like it’s not going to catch, and the edge is getting closer and closer—

Until the axe catches something, and Nicky and Neil lurch to a halt, clinging to each other, hanging off of Neil’s one arm and the axe.

Neil looks up and sees Andrew, Aaron and Kevin in various places on the slope above them, their axes dug in and long gouge marks in the snow beneath their heels, strung together by a ropeline that’s still attached to Neil’s waist

That rope is probably the only thing that slowed them down enough that Neil could stop them without ripping his arm clean off

It’s hardly a by-the-book rescue, and in fact it was pretty stupid, but they’re okay, they’re okay, that’s all that matters

That night they light a fire down by a lake and Nicky cries on Aaron’s shoulder and Andrew keeps clenching his fists because he’s never felt so helpless in his life and it was Neil that jumped, not him

He knows that he was at the far end of the line and he would’ve made it worse if he had, but doing nothing while Neil risked his life to save Nicky

They don’t really talk about it

But you kind of can’t help being friends after that

And even after they’re out of the high mountains and back on solid trails Neil keeps tabs on them

And Nicky befriends the others and without even meaning to they start to develop a sort of loose trail family vibe

They’re not hiking together all the time like some of the groups they meet, but they check on each other all the time and wait up in resupply villages and bond over firepits and shitty hot chocolate mixes and swap tips on how to keep the butt-chafing at bay

Neil sticks to the outskirts, mostly, but he starts to open up a little, in fits and spurts, tiny non-specific things that wouldn’t even register to most people but that this particular group knows means more than that

He’s slowing down, too, sometimes hiking entire days with people and covering half his usual distance even when there’s no cliffs or glaciers threatening him

He likes hiking with Andrew the most, though

Because neither of them are big talkers when they’re hiking and Andrew’s pack might be absurdly heavy but he’s got legs the size of tree trunks and endurance to match, so he might not be fast but he can outwalk half the people on the trail by sheer relentlessness

They both like to camp up high, near treeline (so Neil can set up his tarp) and in the places that it’s legal they’ll start a small fire and Andrew will loan Neil his pot so he can actually cook his fucking ramen for once and sometimes they’ll watch the Milky Way rise and share secrets under the open sky, not looking at each other so they don’t break the illusion, and sometimes they won’t say anything at all but it’s okay, because they’re saying nothing together.

It’s nice

It’s maybe more than nice

The summer draws to a close and Neil is starting to realize that he doesn’t want it to

He never wants the hiking season to end but this time it’s different

This summer has been perfect

And he knows deep in his bones that once they leave the trail things will change

The others have lives to return to, and Neil…

The trail is all he has

And if he’s barely hiking alone at all these days, well, who’s going to call him out on it?

The others like having him around because he stops them from getting too fixated on the Trail to see the trail

He still takes side trips but now sometimes people will come along and he’ll stand at the base of a canyon staring up at the glossy white walls and Dan will snap a photo for her blog and smile, because the PCT is just a line on a map, but the hike is all of them; together

He’s hiking with Andrew in September when a storm hits, this time vicious

Neil huddles under his tarp in resignation

Storms suck, he always gets wet, no matter how much he lowers the tarp, but he’s used to it; he just waits it out

But it’s just getting worse

Hail lashing at the tarp and pummelling the ground and maybe for once he regrets camping so high up

And Andrew has to shout to be heard but finally Neil realizes he’s offering to let Neil come into his tent

You’re going fucking freeze, just get in here

Neil goes

It’s weird

It’s instantly weird

The tent is not built for two people, so they’re both sitting cross legged with their heads ducked to not press against the roof

The storms probably not going to let up soon, Andrew says

Yeah, Neil says.

Andrew sighs

Lie down, he says, and Neil does, and Andrew lies down next to him, shoulder to shoulder

It barely works, only because neither of them are very big people

Neil’s pack is outside wrapped in his tarp and all he has is his damp down blanket but he’s not cold anymore, not with Andrew bundled up in his ridiculous sleeping bag right next to him

The storm rages for nearly two days and what passes between them in that tent, nobody knows

If they’re barely ever seen apart after it, well. You only see people so often on the trail. It could easily be a coincidence

And if Neil doesn’t even set his tarp up on rainy nights anymore, well. They never camp near other people anyway, so who’s to know?

In early October the snow blows in, blocking the route to the finish.

They drift around a resupply village for almost two weeks, waiting for the trail to reopen, but finally even Kevin accepts that it isn’t going to

After all of that, none of them are going to finish the trail

It’s a disappointment—of course it is. For most of them, the end of their trip is now a nondescript exit into a village, no fanfare, no closure; they didn’t even know they were done for days

Still, it’s not so bad

They’re all together

Allison suggests Vegas, but they all laugh it down; they wouldn’t even know how right now, bearded and hairy and ravenous as they are

They go to South Carolina instead

It’s not really even discussed that they’ll stay together, they just all go; Allison hosts them at her resort and they laugh at the incongruous weirdness of seeing each other in real clothes, and it’s different, but it’s also okay

They stay for another two weeks, and they don’t hike another fucking inch

We should try the Continental Divide Trail sometime, Dan says

Her blog is so popular now that she’s got sponsorships from more than just Wymack waiting for her

She could make a career out of hiking and blogging and doing gear reviews and it’s a dream she’d never even realized she wanted until she had it

And if she accidentally fucked up and ended up with a hot trail boyfriend? Well, nobody’s perfect

And he has a great butt

(she has photos of it on her blog, from when they jumped into a glacier lake naked back in August)

Everyone is jealous

How about that trek in Iceland? Matt suggests

Or the whats-it-called in New Zealand, Allison says

Oh, I bet there’s some good ones in Europe! Nicky says. You guys can all meet Erik!

And it’s going to be different, but it’s not going away, and Neil feels calm in a way he never has at the end of a hiking season before

Eventually everyone has to start making plans to return to their lives, and jobs, and Neil sneaks out to the back of the house to sit in crisp fall air and watch leaves spiral down out of the trees

Andrew follows him

They sit together, watching the moon rise over the hills, and when Andrew asks Neil to come home, Neil says yes

#me? coping with my inability to go hiking by writing headcanons? its more likely than you think!#aftg headcanons #aftg au #andreil #bulletpoint fic #my writing #hiker au #gratuitous descriptions of hiker life #found family #this is like 3.5k idk man #this is very self indulgent lol

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sooghostwriter · 5 years

Text

Iliada

Pairings: Do Kyung Soo x OC

Genre: Mature, Romance, AU, action, Bad guys and secret agents, smut baby!

Warnings: Kyung Soo is not a good guy, mention of violence, bad language.

Summary: After a long and hard assignment, Yoon Suji is sent to a new mission that involves less violence but needs a lot of acting. Do Kyung Soo has one of the biggest drugs rings in South Korea, but police haven’t been able to get him. They need proof that he is the one in charge and Suji is the one sent to get them.

She has the freedom to decide how is she going to get his trust.

Chapter 11

June 11th to June 15th

Suji didn't let go of him. Not even after their second orgasm. She held to him, snuggling in his chest, her naked legs tied around his body "Suji, you're suffocating me"

"I don’t care" Kyung Soo hugged her back, sticking tightly to her skin. He didn't care either.

"We are a bit smutty aren’t we?"

"I know. It’s just that I’m kind of relieved. I thought you would never allow me to kiss you again, let alone make love" Kyung Soo felt kind of guilty. He knew he was in all his right to be mad with her for what happened. But at the same time, he never wondered how she was feeling. And with Suji, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg, so on the inside, she must have felt devastated.

"I guess in jail I don’t get to have marital visits"

"I don’t think so, anyway I can't visit you, it would ruin the new plan" Kyung Soo wanted to complain, ask what she was planning, but he opted for ignorance.

"Maybe I will be back at work for a while"

“So that means months away from here"

"Yeah, I’m sorry, but please trust me"

"I do Suji, I do”

Kyung Soo came back from the kitchen with a toolbox and a shovel.

"I guess bank accounts are useless for me right now so we are going to need some metallic” He kneeled in front of the music system inside his library and turned around one of the speakers. With expert fingers, he unscrewed the back of it and took off 10 rolls of dollar bills.

"1 million per roll, we are going to put them in that suitcase and gave them to Baek"

"All this for him?"

"Yes" Suji saw the money with yearning eyes. This could make everything much easier. The plan she had needed some cash. So she asked him with no shame.

"I need money too"

"What?"

"I need some money too... Not for me but... Please trust me" Kyung Soo looked at her with sympathetic eyes and gave her a signal to follow him. He grabbed the shovel and walked outside the house into the garden. Kyung Soo stopped behind a row of fruit trees and handed her the shovel he was holding.

"If you want it, earn it" She grabbed the shovel with an accomplice grin and started digging where he indicated to her.

“Really?, you buried your money?, Ahoy my dear Kyung Soo” He was very entertained by the strength Suji showed. And despite the sweat falling down her forehead, she didn’t stop until she hit something hard with the tip of the shovel. Kyung Soo approached her and grabbed the box from inside the hole.

"20 million dollars, you can keep the change" He said passing the box to her.

"Don’t worry, I will use it wisely"

"I trust you will" She grabbed the box with force and wished for that money to bring her luck.

Kyung Soo called Baekhyun that Monday night and invited him for breakfast. He knocked at his door 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

"Good morning Suji!" She gave him a polite salute and took him to the kitchen, Kyung Soo was waiting for him at the table.

Baekhyun sat in front of Kyung Soo, she served him coffee and then sat next to Kyung Soo. Baekhyun’s face amused his friend very much.

"You said it was something important...are you guys getting married?"

"No, is not that…you were right, I should have been more careful with her. She wasn’t who we thought she was"

"What do you mean?" He looked at Suji, she gave him back a blank stare and no words.

"She works for national security, she was here to get proof about me and get me into jail" Baekhyun stood up from the chair, hitting the table sending her a recriminatory stare.

"You bitch! And what is she doing here then?!" Kyung Soo stood up too, posing a hand in his friend’s chest, trying to contain him.

"Baek, calm down please let me finish, there's more" His breath was coming out in fast shallow exhalations, his hands shaking with rage. Kyung Soo stood with him, making sure that Baekhyun wouldn’t grab the fork next to him and stab Suji’s throat with it. He stayed still, mad, but following his friend’s orders. If he was like this, so calm and standing up for that woman, there must be something there that he didn't know.

By the end of Kyung Soo’s story, Baekhyun could only wonder if this was some kind of joke. It wasn’t the first time the police tried to get into their business to get the information they needed. Then why now it worked. How’s that only one lying woman could do it, but not dozens of detectives that had passed by Do Kyung Soo’s case?

And the answer was in how Kyung Soo stared at Suji when he was telling what happened that weekend, and to add even more, she looked at him the same way.

Just brilliant. A couple of idiots.

"So she is giving you to the police, and you are still in love with her"

"She is not turning me to the police, I’m giving myself up. She tried to stop me but...I had already made a decision" He looked away from the couple in front of him. He was about to hit the hell out of both of them. Baekhyun held his head in his hands and took his time to evaluate everything.

“Would you leave us alone for a while, Suji? I need to talk to him"

"Sure, I’ll be at the library" She stood up and walked outside the kitchen.

“What the hell Kyung Soo?”

“Baekhyun, I need this, I really need this”

“Then stop working on this, take all your money and leave the country, but jail? I get you feel guilty, I get it, you never really liked this, you were full of rage so you just acted, but jail?! You don’t deserve that!” Kyung Soo gave him a sad smile.

“Suji said the same, but I think I deserve it…to start over”

“Kyung Soo, you killed a man once, and they suspect about you doing it, if you confess that, you’re not starting again, you would have to wait for death and then start again”

“I’m not confessing that and Suji is not telling them” His frown started to grow deeper, especially with Kyung Soo’s calm face in front of him.

“And why do you trust her now?”

“I just do” Baekhyun hit the table again, he was really losing it, he could understand that he believed in her, Why not? But why jail?.

“They are going to be here this Friday”

“What? Who?”

“The police, Suji told me that they are coming with an order to take me and everything inside my house. She will take the important things with her, some papers, money and my diaries” So they have everything planned already, he thought, a bit sad.

Kyung Soo was his best friend. The only one who keept up with his childish attitude was him, since childhood. And he has seen him going through so much. It pissed him off how someone as good and caring as Kyung Soo had to live a life he didn’t deserve. He deserved a perfect life, filled with happiness. But he got none of that. And now, he wanted to jump from the cliff.

Baekhyun didn’t care about their business, he didn’t care about the money, their clients or their co-workers. Fuck all that. He cared about his friend. His Kyung Soo. His brother, his dear brother.

But he knew his dear brother so very well. And when Kyung Soo was this calm only meant he was already decided and in peace with his decision.

“Is there any way I can convince you to run away?” He shook his head, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“So you love this Suji uh?”

“Yeah, I hope you can understand it, but Baekhyun, I want you to stay close to her”

“I don’t want to,” Kyung Soo laughed at his friend’s reaction and spoke to him with a calm voice.

“She has something between her hands, and she might need your help sometime. Also, it will be hard for us to keep in contact, so I’m going to need you to be our mediator” Kyung Soo’s pleading eyes reminded him when they were little kids and Kyung Soo acted a bit selfish, asking him for half of his kimbap or money for sweets.

“Baekhyun, I know I’m being selfish, but I need your support, I know I ask for it always, and you have always given it to me…now again…I need it”

“Kyung Soo, come on! I know I am a bit angry, maybe shocked, this is all very sudden, but of course you have my support, you will always have it, and now, that Suji too”

“I need her too, Baekhyun”

“I get it, you love each other, you guys are gross, whatever… Kyung Soo, I don’t think you need another human being to make your life complete, but if we are completely honest, having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn’t see them as disasters but cracks to put their love into, that is one of the most reassuring thing in this world” He put into words the exact feeling Kyung Soo was having. As expected.

“But despite all that cheesy stuff, you will need a lawyer”

“I’ll be under your care”

“Of course, now call that girl so we can have breakfast” Kyung Soo stood up, and before leaving the kitchen, he gave his friend a quick hug.

Now that Baekhyun and Kyung Soo had spoken, she felt better around them. He didn’t look at her with murderous intentions anymore.

“You don’t hate me for doing this to your friend?” They had finished breakfast and Baekhyun was bidding goodbye at the house front door. She tried to match the jokingly tone he has been using.

“Well, I do curse the day you were born, but in some way, I saw it coming. If it wasn’t you, probably Kyung Soo would have turned himself”

“No, I wouldn’t”

“Yeah you would, after all, you are a good guy”

“You too Baekhyun”

“No, I'm a lawyer, that immediately takes me to a very low level of human being” The two of them laughed and Kyung Soo pulled him into a tight hug, making Suji’s heart hurt with guilt.

She stopped him before Baekhyun could get inside the car. He didn't even feel her following him, that freaked him out.

"Baekhyun, take this" She handed him a card with a number on it "Call this number when all this is settled...I'm going to need your help and guidance in the future”

“Is this about some plan that Kyung Soo talked about”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know the details” Baekhyun stared at the paper, wondering if this was good, or he would end up as his friend. But this was going to help Kyung Soo, so it was worth the risk.

“Ok, I will save this, and Suji...what is going to happen to you after all is settled?” She got serious and the stare she gave him turned him to ice. It was a bit scary.

“I will go back to work” That surprised him, and angered him too.

“Are you going to keep working for the people that put the one you love behind the bars?”

“Yes, I’m more useful there...I don’t expect you to understand it, now excuse me" Her defensive tone surprised him, he could identify with it, especially when it came to Kyung Soo.

"Does he understand it?” “

“He does" Baekhyun only nodded in understanding.

"Oh, And Suji? Somehow, I feel with the need to say thanks to you, this could have been worst"

"What do you mean?"

"Park Jongsoo, that name will follow Kyung Soo for the rest of his life. You and I know it, but if anyone finds out about it, things would have been a bit harder" Suji only bowed and walked inside the house.

After dinner, Suji got inside her room to call Chanyeol. His joyous voice greeted her at the other side of the line.

"Suji what happened to you?!, you didn't go home this weekend?”

“No, I had to stay here, any news?”

“No, they are just waiting until Friday, boss had been a bit mad towards you for not reporting anything”

“Well, tell him to suck it up because I’m about to send him a big one. I'm uploading to the cloud some important information”

“Ok, I’ll call him right now”

“Before you do that, anything new about the other case?”

“Yes! A lot! I found footage of the accident! Kyung Soo was there, he saw the accident, did you know that?”

“I did, Can you see who was inside the other car?”

“Sort of, but oh! Suji, I have a lot of new info!”

“Great, leave it at my house”

“Understood! Here comes the boss” Suji heard some noise before she could hear Junmyeon’s voice.

“Yoon, where are you?”

“At work”

“Can we have a video call?, if it’s not too much to ask, miss” Suji hated the passive-aggressive tone her boss was using, but it was within his rights.

”Yes, Kyung Soo is sleeping. Give me 5 minutes and I will be there” She hung up her phone and turned on her computer. Just when she was about to make the call, Kyung Soo got in her room. She explained him the situation, and he asked her if he could stay “Sure, but quiet”

Kyung Soo winked at her and sat on the floor. The first face that Suji saw was the face of Junmyeon with bags under his eyes and a deep frown “Long time no see Yoon”

“Sorry sir, I had to stay for work”

“Did you forget about your other job?”

“No, that’s why right now you are receiving all the information regarding Kyung Soo’s buyers and suppliers” The look on his face was all she wanted, wide eyes and mouth hanging open.

“Oh” Was the only thing he said. Suji wanted to laugh, at least smile, but no, she stopped herself. He was her boss.

“Yes, oh” She heard Chanyeol screaming from somewhere inside his lab.

“Sir!! Look at this !!!” Junmyeon walked away from the camera.

“Yoon, where did you get this?” She couldn’t see him, only hear him.

“Kyung Soo’s safety box. There were some papers too, I’ll send them later”

“This is very good, that reminds me, did Chanyeol tell you?”

“About the hurry your people have? Yeah, I heard, fuck them, I could have found more info, but if they can’t hold their shit, is not my problem”

“Yoon Suji, you are talking with your boss, keep your language in line, and also, they are your people too” She didn’t answer, only grunted.

“Anything else Yoon?”

“No boss, nothing else”

“Ok, then your job is done, I want you here this Thursday, tell Kyung Soo that you have a family emergency or whatever, you don’t need to go to your temporary place, we will take care of it, go home, rest and then I want you here so you can start working in Do Kyung Soo’s report”

“Understood”

“Ok, good job Yoon, as usual”

“Thanks sir, now if you excuse me” Suji closed her computer and threw it from her lap on to the floor.

"Fuck!"

"Suji, is alright" Kyung Soo ran to her side and brought her close to his chest, feeling how the first tears were getting his t-shirt wet, this was the first time he saw her break down "Is alright, come on, don’t cry"

“It’s so close Kyung Soo, we still may have some time, and if we are careful I think we can still...”

“Suji, I'm giving myself up, next Friday I will no longer be a free man” She closed her eyes tightly. She was scared, mad and frustrated. And Kyung Soo was talking so calmly about going to jail, that it scared her.

"I’m so sorry"

"It's not your fault, come here" Kyung Soo pushed her onto the bed, covering her with his body and kissing her deeply. She tipped her head, pressing back into his solid body.

“I can't believe you still want to make love to me after all this, I wouldn’t even..." Kyung Soo cut her off mid-sentence with another kiss. He pulled back just as she was about to respond. She followed him back and pressed her lips to Kyung Soo in retaliation.

"Of course I still want to make love to you, I need some recharge so I can survive god knows how many years away from you" She got sad again. Kyung Soo kissed her cheek gently, trying to erase the sadness away from her face. He gave her another kiss, this time on her jawline, then down to her neck. She sighed, a sigh that ran through Kyung Soo’s body. He kept dropping soft and gentle kisses on her exposed collarbone and Suji wrapped her arms around his neck. Kyung Soo moaned against her skin before kissing his way back to her lips. With her neck tilted back and exposed, he leaned in and sucked on it, leaving a mark. A mark that could stay there for several years, although he knew it was impossible.

“Kyung Soo, do it harder, please leave…”

“Something to remember me by?” She smiled this time, amused by his playful tone, despite all the drama. She pressed her lips harder against his, telling him to go deeper; and he obeyed. He opened his mouth and slid his tongue over her lower lip, tasting her softness, carving the feeling in his mind. His kiss was heated and slightly painful.

“Take off my clothes” He ordered, getting up from the bed and standing in front of her. Suji stayed on her back for a few seconds before sitting up, with a grin and crinkled eyes. She removed his t-shirt, taking her time to kiss his smooth skin. His collarbone, his wide shoulders, and chest. She passed her hands around his torso with urgency, absorbing its perfection through her fingertips. She moved her hands down his hips, hooking her fingers in his pants and boxers, pulling them down in one go. Suji sat on the edge of the bed, locking her arms around his waist, resting her head against his stomach, feeling the warmth it radiated. Her heartbeat was rising, and her breathing was so shallow that she felt on the border of hyperventilating. Kyung Soo placed a gentle kiss on her head, caressing her nape, whispering soothing words in her ear. Her grip got stronger, and he didn’t know what else he could do to calm her down. He stayed there, caressing her head and back until he could feel her relax, her breathing rhythmic again “Suji, stay here with me, right now, don’t let your mind falter, stay here, at this moment, let me do it”

“Kyung Soo …”

“I know, you’re sorry, you feel guilty, but don’t, you are not guilty…come here, forget about all that” Kyung Soo pulled her up by her arms and set her in front of him. She stared at his face, his eyes were heavy with lust and his lips glowing, so tempting.

“You propose that I should forget about everything and drawn in a night of wild sex?” She asked playfully.

“Exactly, wild and unforgettable sex” Suji giggled, a shy laugh that Kyung Soo hadn’t hear before, and suddenly his mind was wavering too. They shared so little time together, there were so many things he still didn’t know about her, so many things he hadn't seen, and now there was no time to do it. But he had to follow his own advice and stay there, focused on Suji, and only Suji.

Kyung Soo grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it up, marveling at her body. He caressed her neck and trailed his fingers in between her breasts, and down her stomach to the top of her jeans. He unbuckled her belt and opened the buttons of her jeans, pulling her pants and underwear down. He helped her get them off and dropped a kiss on her knees, her thighs and hips. He stood up again and grabbed her, his fingers splayed, running his hands up and down the skin of her back, before finally releasing the hook of her bra. The straps slid down and the piece of lingerie fell onto the floor. He pressed her chest tightly against his own feeling as much of her skin as possible. Kyung Soo ran his tongue over her collar bone and brought a hand up, cupping her breast and dragging his thumb over her hard nipple. She couldn’t suppress her moan, her chest arching into his touch. He set her down on the bed and Suji reclined back on one elbow, her right arm around his neck, pulling him down with her.

He trailed his kisses up her jaw to her ear, grabbing her hair, tilting her head to the side so he could have better access to her neck. She sucked in a breath, burying her fingers in his hair. His hands slipped down, cupping the back of her thighs and lifting her hips from the bed. She locked her legs around his hips and clutched his shoulders. Kyung Soo ran his tongue over her lower lip and swallowed the moan she released, then bit her chin and scratched his teeth down her throat.

Running her fingers across his scalp, Suji guided his head where she wanted it. He obeyed and moved down to her chest. But rather than taking the nipple directly into his mouth, he ran his tongue and lips along the underside of her breast and around the outside edge of the areola.

“Damn teaser” She said, grabbing his head, watching him grin against her skin.

They locked eyes as their bodies moved at a frenzied pace. He watched her from beneath his lashes as he closed his lips over her nipple. Her eyes closed as she rolled her hips against his stomach in response. He trailed his left hand down her side, across her stomach, cupping her. Suji moaned through her open lips, her eyes rolling to the back of her head. She called his name with a sensuous voice that sent a jolt through him. A sudden necessity rushed over Kyung Soo and also her. He sat back and pulled her so that her bottom rested on his knees and lifted her right leg onto his shoulder pressing kisses on the inside of her ankle. His free hand pressed against her clit as her fingers traced his thighs. He buried two fingers inside her, slightly hooking them and brushing her inside. She panted, unable to formulate words at the moment. Kyung Soo kissed her ankle again, moving his fingers faster and rougher inside her. He watched her face closely as his fingers brought her closer to absolute pleasure.

“Kyung Soo, I’m going to come” She muttered in between shallow breaths.

“Always so ahead of me” She grabbed his hand, trying to stop the hot wave that was covering her body.

“It’s your fault, you’re too thorough”

“And your wick is too short” She laughed, and he took that opportunity to keep moving his fingers.

“Don’t worry, come if you want” She nodded and relaxed, lying on her back, releasing his arm and bringing her hands to her breast. Kyung Soo bit his lip, feasting at the sight of Suji, her hair tangled around her neck, her lips open, moaning with no shame, and the feel of her tightening around his fingers.

After a few brushes Suji came screaming his name. He let her body rest for a little while before scooping her up in his arms and changing their position so she was now straddling him. He cleaned the sweat from her forehead with his hand and arranged her perfectly on top of him. He guided his cock inside her, slowly.

“You’re so sexy” He moaned, pushing in all the way to the hilt, she gasped, her breath stuck in her chest.

“And I love you” He said before thrusting for the first time. She sighed, biting her lip and rocking her hips, holding to his shoulders as leverage. Kyung Soo moaned her name as she ran her hands down his back. Suji’s back arched at the sound of his voice and her walls tightened around him. He held her in place above him as she rapidly moved her hips, stirring his first orgasm, and her second one. Her airy cries filled the room before she came.

“Keep moving” He said, grabbing her hips with a stronghold and coming after a few more thrusts. She rested her forehead against his, getting down from the high Kyung Soo’s body caused her. She felt him smooth his hand across the small of her back and press his other hand against her nape, moving her head for a kiss. He brushed his fingers over her shoulders, down her torso, and rested his hands on the curve of her waist. She always looked so vulnerable after sex, and he secretly liked it. She looked at him, at his drowsy eyes and swollen lips.

"You are so beautiful Kyung Soo "

"Well, you are not bad either" Both laughed, followed by a sight due to the feeling of their flushed skins rubbing against each other.

"You know what? My first thought when I saw your picture at the agency was damn!"

"You put your eye on me immediately?"

"I wonder" She rearranged her position, pulling him closer.

"Suji, was your objective to make me fall in love with you?"

"Not really, I just had to get the info, boss told me to do whatever I had to do to get it"

"And you choose to get into my pants" She pinched his waist, kissing the squeal he released.

"Sorry, but I wasn’t the one giving oral in the kitchen"

"You were asking for it" He faked a smug smile, gaining another pinch on his waist.

"Yeah sure, although I originally wanted to gain your trust, not get in your pants, then I realized that you wanted it, so I bit the bait" He cupped her face and kissed her breathless. He just wished this moment would never pass, but he couldn’t help it. He made a decision. And as much as Kyung Soo thought it over, he was at peace with his decision. He was going to miss her, and it was going to be hard as hell, but he had a good feeling.

He had Suji.

“Want to go another round?” He asked against her pouty lips. She simply laughed and kissed him, feeling happy and relaxed for once.

She woke up that Thursday after a long night of packing, talking and fucking. Kyung Soo was still asleep next to her holding her waist. She stayed up looking at him, until his eyelids fluttered open.

“Good morning agent, ready for your last day at work?”

“Shut up” Suji hid her face against the pillow a bit mad by Kyung Soo’s intent of light the mood.

“Oh come on Suji, it is what it is, now come here and give me a kiss” She got up reluctantly, dropping a heartless kiss on his lips.

“You are sad aren’t you?”

“Well, I’m not happy” He turned around and dropped on top of Suji’s back, kissing her nape, still trying to light up the mood.

“Suji, is the last day, come on”

“The thing I hate the most is that I’m actually feeling things, no agency psychiatrist will help me with this, I feel hopeless and miserable”

“And it’s all my fault, I know, what can I do to make you feel better?” She turned around, but he didn’t move an inch, he dropped a kiss on her forehead and waited for her answer.

“Kiss me and …all that, I don’t know, just stick to me until I have to go”

“Understood” He arranged himself on top of her and dropped soft kisses on her face and neck. He was surprised by her cute, childish reaction but it made him realize that the Suji iceberg was showing a bit more at the surface.

“So you have your bags, the money, the papers I asked you to hide and the books you wanted” Suji checked around her all the things Kyung Soo named and realized she had everything she needed. Most of the luggage were things he gave her. Books, his diaries, some records and some jewelry pieces that belonged to his mom.

“If I leave them here in a few years they will be sold in an auction right? I want you to have them”

“Sure, I’ll give them back to you once you are out” He looked at her with a brooding expression.

“Suji, I wanted to talk about that, and I waited until the last minute for obvious reasons” She nodded, grabbed his hand and walked him outside the room onto the terrace. He sat at the table where he used to have his breakfast and Suji didn’t sit at the chair, but kneeled next to him, without releasing his hand.

“Kyung Soo, they will probably give you 15 years at jail, with some luck maybe 10 years”

“I know, that’s why I wanted to ask you, are you going to wait for me?”

“I am the one that should be asking you that, no, I beg you, Kyung Soo, wait for me”

“What do you mean?” Suji stared at their linked hands and taking a long breath she told him half of the truth.

“I need you to wait for me, stay strong, even if I don’t contact you at all, I need to make them believe that I came here, did my job and then keep up with my life”

“Suji, what are you up to?” His haunted face made her smile, she knew he was worried, and she actually liked that.

“You must know that I can take care of myself” Kyung Soo looked down, a bit pained, but sure that Suji was telling the truth. She knew how to take care of herself. Hell, she could take care of both.

“Understood, I’ll wait for you, and I will leave everything in your hands, but why don’t you tell me what are you planning to do?” She didn’t answer, she only looked at him, and Kyung Soo decided to drop the issue. And anyway, it was already a bit past 8, and she had to leave. Suji said goodbye to Taro and Sabotaro, and walked inside the house. Kyung Soo followed her, with his arms crossed and in complete silence. She collected her things and stood in the entrance door, looking at Kyung Soo who was resting against the wall, across the hallway, far away from her “So I guess that’s all”

“I guess, now I just have to wait until tomorrow” She wanted to answer, kipping the relaxed tone they were using, but her throat closed, and the pain in her chest didn’t let her utter a word. He saw the pain pass across her face, and how the iceberg floated into the surface, finally showing up fully. He walked the distance that kept them apart and pulled her in a suffocating hug, bringing her the closest he could to his chest, feeling her trembling in his embrace. She answered the hug, as tight as she could, and in between thick tears she made sure to inhale his scent, memorize the lines of his back and the strong hold of his arms.

They stayed like that for some long 30 minutes until she decided to move apart, for her own sake. Kyung Soo let her slide from his arms, her breath already settled, no trail of tears in her eyes. They didn’t exchange more words. He only touched her face, neck, and hands. Kissed her cheeks and lips countless times until she put together all her force and took a step back, opening the door and walking outside the house.

Kyung Soo saw her leave with a faint smile. Suji looked back at him only one time. She tried her best to give him a peaceful face and promised to herself that from now on, she had one only mission. Help Kyung Soo run away from jail. In five more years Do Kyung Soo will be a free man.

And not only because she loved him and wanted to see him free, but also because Kyung Soo had given her his trust, and she will always be in debt for that.

June 16th

Junmyeon stood in front of the wooden gate covering his eyes from the burning sun. He checked his watch and took note of the time. 11 am, he wrote in his small notebook, time of arrival. He looked around, the house looked like a fortress. He pressed the doorbell and waited until a voice answered.

“Yes?”

“Is Kim Junmyeon, can we have a word mister Do?” He didn’t get an answer, only the sound of the door opening. Junmyeon brought in three of his men, all of them armed. The door of the house was already open, and Kyung Soo was waiting for them under the threshold.

“Good morning Mister Do” He said from afar.

“We have an order to take you with us to the police station” Kyung Soo walked outside the house, reaching Junmyeon. He was fully dressed in jeans, a thick sweater, and leather shoes.

“You’re being accused under the charges of drug trafficking, illegal sale of narcotics and blackmailing, you have the right to remain silent anything you say can be used against you in the court of law” Kyung Soo remained silent. He looked at Junmyeon, then at the three men behind him, and finally, he looked back at his house. His next move took Junmyeon by surprise. Kyung Soo stood in front of him, with his arms outstretched, offering him his wrists, ready for the handcuffs. Junmyeon knew that his surprise was noticeable as he took the handcuffs out from his back pocket. He placed Do’s palms facing outward with the thumb up and held the handcuff in his right hand. He pushed the bow between the base of the left hand and wrist bone and repeated the same with his right hand. He stayed in silence, with his head held high, staring at him.

That made Junmyeon very uncomfortable. With that reaction, Junmyeon didn’t know what to do, he was ready to confront Do’s guys, maybe some bullets, but Kyung Soo was by himself, calm as the summer sky.

Junmyeon walked behind him and pushed him softly, telling him to walk. He obeyed and started walking with a steady step. Junmyeon followed him from behind, holding his right shoulder. They walked into the street and as soon as Junmyeon stood next to the car, the rest of the team walked outside their cars and got inside the house. Junmyeon sat Kyung Soo in the back seat and he sat next to him. The cop behind the wheel initiated the engine and drove down the street.

“We got you Do Kyung Soo” Said the driver, sending him a nasty look through the rear-view mirror. Kyung Soo only smiled at him.

“Sir please, refrain yourself from any comment” Said Junmyeon, not sure why. Kyung Soo stared at him in surprise and finally opened his mouth.

“You say your name is Kim Junmyeon?”

“Yes” Kyung Soo nodded a couple of times and looked away.

“Why? Is my life in danger” He said, with a hint of playfulness and Kyung Soo answered with a light tone.

“No, I just feel like I heard your name before, but maybe I’m wrong” He bowed at him, a bit apologetic and fixed his stare in the road.

Junmyeon did the same, and a cold shiver ran down his back.

TBC 11

#do kyungsoo #do kyung soo #dokyungsoo #d.o fanfic #d.o smut #d.o #exo fanfiction #exo fanfic #Kyungsoo #kyungsoo smut #kyung soo fanfic

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mydearsaddiary · 4 years

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Speakeasy Tonight Neil Season 3 Fanfic

Neil Season 3- Chapter 3

Hello! For those of you who don’t know Im writing a fanfic on how I’d imagine Neil Season 3 to go! This is chapter 3, here’s a link with all the chapters: https://mydearsaddiary.tumblr.com/NeilSeason3Fanfic

Little Curiosity notes: Because this chapter is all about the high society of BAHS-ton, there’s some currency involved! I put the amount in 1926 dollars, in parenthesis I adjusted it according to inflation on how much it’s cost today!

WARNING: LOTS OF ANGST AND DRAMA. LIKE SO MUCH DRAMA.

Chapter 3- Ghosts Are Alive in a Haunted Night

1926

The way to Boston was long. The anticipation built was driving me over the edge. I’ve been around the upper crust of Chicago, but even so most of them seemed like new money. Extravagant women who just got their hands on dough and bought everything they could. The upper crusts I met in Chicago weren’t elegant, they just had money in their hands. Even so I felt like an imposter amongst them.

I had a perception Neil’s family would be different. They were the true high society. Money was in their roots and they’ve never lived without it. For generations and generations I imagined most of them never worked, but increased their riches by letting others do the work for them.

I noticed when Lucille wrote to Neil, she always signed “Lucille Dresner of Boston”. Only the wealthy referred to themselves with their hometown attached to their name like “The Dresners of Boston”. They measured each other by how prominent of a family they were. For the first time I didn’t think of Neil as just Neil. I imagined him as “Cornelius Dresner of Boston” or “Cornelius of the house Dresner from Boston” or some fancy Jane Austen society title I could never imagine myself belonging to.

I knew Neil was living in an apartment in Chicago, living the same economic life as I did right now by choice, but that didn’t change where he was from or who his family was. For the first time I also realized that you could notice the high class in Neil in his personality.

There was just something in him that distanced him from people like Cliff or Vince who’d come from nothing or even me, who came from some but not as much. I thought of the elegancy, the way he never let himself look like a fool, the fact that he was highly educated, enjoyed chess like no other, the fact that it was easy to look at him and respect him. He had the air of being classier than most. He had his troubles and he wasn’t some snob who thinks he is better than everyone, but something in me said I needed to step up to the gentry, who breathed old money and who would judge me as middle class.

I looked down at the dress I chose for the trip. It was a delicate red. I always thought it was a good color on me, but it wasn’t the best dress (or the best shoes) I could be wearing

I looked at Neil who looked so calm he could have no idea of the internal battle that was happening in my mind. However, I felt guilty for struggling so much. Neil hadn’t seen his family in years, they’d probably be talking and paying so much attention to him that they wouldn’t even have time to look at what I was wearing

Nevertheless when we stepped out of the train in Boston I felt trapped. When I first got to Chicago, it seemed like the city was bursting, it was like my world had expanded and there was no seeing its end. In Boston I got a different feeling. The elegancy, tall buildings and the cold air engulfed you in its atmosphere and urged you to climb the social ladder. It seemed to tell you if you didn’t, you were bound to fail

-Hey…-It was the first time I said something in at least half an hour- I’ve been dying to see the fashion stores in Boston. Whaddya say you take me to see one, just to look around the city for a bit before we go?-I held his arm firmly

-Is the calm and steady Miss Granger nervous to meet my parents?- He got back at me from what I said in Columbus

-Alright, alright, this point goes to you!- I giggled nervously more than playful- I am, alright. Nothing calms my nerves better than shopping for a new outfit

-There’s a store nearby Lucille loved when she was younger. Can’t make any promises it’s still open.

-Doesn’t hurt to try!-I followed him around

It took a little while for Neil to remember the exact spot of the store and kept saying “It’s somewhere along this street”. While I followed him I looked around with interest. The city was full of cars and people. Constructions happened all around and every building was glued to the next one. Two words to describe it were: Completely packed. It seemed like the whole New England lived there. People were moved fast like all of them were in a hurry and it contrasted Columbus in a way it did make me feel like I came from the middle of nowhere. Among the cars there was a policemen on horseback flying by, it struck me as one more thing engulfed by the modernization and craziness that I found myself in. Chicago’s population surpassed Boston’s by a lot, but it was funny how I felt lost in that new city in front of me. Maybe I’d gotten used to Chicago so it didn’t seem that big anymore

And I thought I was ready for Boston

-Was Boston always this full?- I walked holding him tightly, afraid I could lose him in the crowd.

-Full of buildings and people? Yeah, it always was. Although before the war there used to be less cars, floor-length dresses and high hats- He pulled me in into a building, inside it was revealed a store as huge as Menken’s- Here it is, still open

The store was cream-colored with eccentric chandeliers around. I could see at least two floors. I never managed to bring Neil shopping with me before, so I might as well enjoy it.

I took a look around at different dresses. Something had gotten to me though. Look at the price of those dresses! I could buy at least ten dresses at Menken’s for the price of some of these!

If it was Lucille’s favorite store, at least before, then of course everything would be expensive. I swear I found a dress that was $300 (~$4300)! You could buy a new car nowadays with that kind of money. However, my expression remained calm. I looked at Neil sometimes but he didn’t even mention anything about the prices. I felt myself in the obligation to act like it was all normal to me

I remembered some conversations me and Neil had in the past: “Act like you’re entitled to the world”, “You positively grow with middle-class respectability”, “You’re not gonna wear sables and diamonds and be rude to the help, are you?”, “They’ll know you’re not one of them. But you’ll never notice when they’re looking down on you, that’s how people in high society treat people like you and Charlie”. I sighed in despair

-What is it? Nothing matches your photoplay dream?-He said sarcastically behind me and I noticed I had been staring at a dress for too long, lost in my own anxiety- I thought you said shopping lifted your spirits.

-Oh, nothing!-I looked at him- I was just thinking about the Ice Box that’s all, I was worried that-

-MC, I know you’re deeply infatuated with your illegal activities, but there’s nothing you can do from Boston

-I know- I let it go, it was just an excuse anyway. I was excited about the vacation and I couldn’t let the whole pressure just make me crumble. I had to prove to Neil that I was able to deal with whatever life threw my way. We were going to work this out together

-Say, why don’t you keep shopping? I’ll wait outside, all this glitter is hurting my eyes

-Alright, yea, I shouldn’t take long- I gave him a quick peck before he went out, I could see him grabbing a cigarette before turning my attention to the dresses

Alright, MC, you need to choose something classy enough but that won’t burn your pockets. Now, where do I find something that’s doesn’t cost more than $15 (~200)? I could spare that, it’s a special occasion.

Wishing I could have some gin in me right this second I went through the embarrassment of asking if they had anything around the price range I wanted. My luck was that there was a dress that was worth $100 (~1450) that was about to be thrown away because the zipper was broken. When I looked at the dress I didn’t understand why they’d throw it in the can.

It was beautiful. It was this pale pink color with a V-neck. The sleeved has the same gold details as the dress, but otherwise it was transparent. The details on the pale pink went down in waves until right below the knees. I smiled at it, it was perfect for the event of meeting Neil’s parents, and I’ve never worn anything like that.

I asked her if I could have it and she shrugged in a manner like she didn’t understand why I was even there. I couldn’t blame her, I didn’t know either. I got the dress for $20 (~280), it was more than I could at the moment, but I was just happy to have found something I could afford and still look ritzy in

Due to the extra money spent I couldn’t really go looking for shoes or accessories, but I wasn’t worried. What I had would work for this.

-Alright!- I caught Neil outside- I’m ready, first impressions are everything! Now I just need somewhere to put this stuff on!

Yes… Like the back of a rental car in a dark alley…

-It’s so convenient nowadays, you know, they started renting cars and everything right- I said huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf in the back seat getting my dress off and the new one on- So you can change in the middle of the road too

-I thought this way we could go places without having to use one of my family’s cars- Neil waited in the driver’s seat

-What’s wrong with your family’s cars, huh? Not ritzy enough for ya?-I put on the dress to realize it didn’t close in the back. Shoot! I forgot to ask what happened to the zipper. Think, think, think!

-It’s the contrary- Neil responded- If I remember well from back then, I always felt like I was in a circus truck, doubt they changed the way they do things- He seemed to hear me struggling- Do you need help back there?

-No! Nope! I am just fine- I said putting a pin on the zipper so this way it wasn’t broken anymore. It closed all the way up! The only thing was the pin showing a little bit on the top, which looked a little tacky, but with all the details in the dress it could be overlooked

-Let’s hurry then, I told them we should be there for lunch. With your little shopping going on, we’re late

-Sorry!- I put on my rhinestone tiara and went through my bag to find my golden pair of heels that matched the details on the dress, then I hurried up to the front seat- I’m ready, let’s scram!

Neil started to drive, I could feel him a little tense as he drove. I put on my hand on his leg squeezing it- Are you excited?

-When I left Boston I was twenty-four. I haven’t been back since

-Neil- I calmed my voice- They’ll be happy to see you, they’ll be thrilled. Especially Lucille, I really can’t wait to meet her. How old is she?

-We’re about ten years apart, she’s the youngest. So she should be about twenty-two right now. Damn…-He went quiet for a few seconds- When I left she was fourteen, now she’s a woman, married and is about to have a baby.

-Oh, little Cornelia- I smiled thinking about it

-Don’t remind me, I still feel for the kid

-Can it, Neil! It’s sweet. I can’t imagine how she must have felt when she got a letter in the mail from you

-I can’t believe I let you convince me to go through with this-He shook his head

-Hey, pal, I didn’t say anything! You wrote the letter to her yourself

Neil smiled, as if there was something in his thoughts he didn’t want to say out loud- I know.

We pulled up to a narrow street full of four stories apartments- I didn’t know they lived in a flat- I said, a little confused. I expected it-

-They’re not flats-Neil responded- They’re houses

My eyes widened looking again at the row of houses with my new perspective. It was pure Boston Brahmin. The houses were glued to one another, only separated by color, each of them were massive once I understood the four stories were for each family. Rows of fancy cars were parked in front of each designated house and U.S. flags stood in front of each one.

Neil parked in front of an elegant brick house, it was full of organized windows and one big wooden door stood right in the middle of the ground floor.

-Is this where you grew up?- I opened the car door on my side

-No, this is just the city house. I’d spend a lot of time here, but usually we’d be down by the estate

-Estate?- I turned to him, wondering if my ears heard right- Your family owns a estate?

-About 15 miles out of the city- He said like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I focused on my breathing not to let myself get too nervous. “Act like I’m entitled to the world” is what I kept playing in my head. I went around to meet Neil and then I noticed his look was distant

-Neil?-I shook him a little bit and he looked down at me, his face was not upset, but the usual mask wasn’t there either- What’s the matter?

He hesitated a little bit. Being back here must be hard. It’s still not easy for him to open up, so I appreciate it even more when he does- That house right there- he pointed. I looked back at the white magnificence across the road, just as beautiful as the one that belonged to Neil’s family. It had a black door instead of a wooden-colored one. No cars were in front of it, so it looked solemn, distant and different from the rest- It’s the Hasting house.

I looked back at him squeezing his hand- Alton…

-Yeah… Alton- He replied

I didn’t know what to say, I never knew what to say when Neil mentioned his past. But he said all he needed me to do was listen. I gave him a kiss on his cheek, hoping to comfort him. I was glad to see it got a smile out of him- Ready?

He breathed profoundly, turning his head back to the wooden door- Yes, I’m ready- He knocked on the door

----

It creaked as it opened, it was like seconds got transformed into hours. Once it was open a servant smiled. Some kind of butler? Gee, this is something else. However that only added to the moment. He positioned himself by the door, looking into an area in front of him I could only imagine it was the living room. He stuffed his chest like it was the most important thing he was going to say in his life to the ones who waited

-Cornelius Dresner is home

I nodded to Neil, letting him walk in first. He took his hat off as he walked, each step seemed to hold anticipation in them. I walked in right after, but staying away from him. I understood this was a precious moment, so my eyes turned to watch instead.

The silence was so expansive you could hear if cotton balls fell on the ground. When Neil stood there, a second set of steps started. My eyes turned to a very visibly pregnant woman, who could be due anytime soon. She had bright icy blue eyes, her blonde bob fell elegantly on her face. She had the posture of a porcelain doll and her face resembled Neil’s.

She stopped right in front of him looking up at his face, like she was examining every detail, her serious face was beautiful in that light. I assumed that was Lucille, the one who never gave up on him. They now held this very serious starting contest, I almost thought no one was going to say anything

-You got old- Her melodic voice let out and Neil burst into laughter at the same time she did. He hugged her carefully but tightly

-And you grew big, in more ways than one- He joked with her but then turned serious- Lucille, I’m sorry…

-Oh, forget that! You’re here now…

Others walked up to them, I counted them in my head and assumed mother, father, Maude and Warren. I let them have their moment. It was so intimate I stepped back not wanting to hear much. It was like Neil had gone off to a war, survived and now was home once more. In a way, that’s what had happened. Neil had won, or at least started to win, his internal battles and now he had made it back there. I smiled watching the scene. He didn’t reserve any smiles and his family seemed to be everything but mad at him. They relented.

I couldn’t help but think how proud I was of him

A few minutes passed, they started pulling him to the living room to “sit, relax and update them on everything that’s been going on”, then he looked at me and stopped them in their tracks

-Wait- He walked over to me and then looked at them. This was the first time they noticed I was there. I didn’t blame them, Neil had all their attention- This is Mary

The older woman, I’m assuming Neil’s mother walked over and I felt the chills down my spine. She had cold eyes but a warm face. You could watch her and feel that she was judging you and it made you wonder if she considered you worthy of her time. She was the image of classiness, the peak of the upper class. She was one of those wealthy people you see walking by and wonder how they must live. She walked like she had books piled up on top of her head. More charm than Vera Peters, that was for sure, but I felt bad that her aura reminded me of the former mayor’s wife. After all, I wanted to attribute her to someone nice

-Of course- She smiled- Miss Granger, right?

-That’s me! - I smiled- It’s a pleasure to meet you ma’am- I was going to say something about how beautiful her house are and introduce myself to the others, but she turned her eyes somewhere else

-Please collect their bags, you can put Neil’s in his room-She said to the servant- And Miss Granger’s bags can take to the spare room downstairs

-Mother- Neil interrupted her- I’d like Mary to stay in the guest room upstairs- He said in an imposing a tone. If there was a guest room upstairs, I got a weird feeling about her asking for me to sleep downstairs in what I could safely assume was an underground floor.

-Fine, yes. Take hers to one of the guest rooms- She said and the servant started moving according to orders

When I turned around, Lucille was walking up to me and Neil. She in turn had kinder eyes, and I could see them a little wet. The pregnancy probably added to the emotion of her beloved brother coming home

-Miss Granger, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My brother spoke highly of you in his letter- I didn’t know whether to pay attention to her eyes or the diamonds she wore

-He must have flattered me too much- I said shyly. She wasn’t much older than me, but she spoke clearly and no slangs were in sight

-I only speak the truth- He said behind me

-I’m sure- she replied- I understand it’s you I must thank for having him write me

-I may have pushed him a little bit- I squeezed his hand- But he made the decision on his own

Neil introduced me to rest of his family. His father seemed a tad quiet just like him, his other younger siblings greeted me well, and he reintroduced me to his mother who was next to talk again

-It’s so nice of you to wear something so simple to come see us. I did hope you felt at home- She mentioned I could feel my face getting hot- Why don’t we all sit down, there’s much to talk about!

I was more nervous now than when I first walked, but I didn’t want to let on everything was getting to me.

The living room was mainly white, so white it was like staring at snow in the sun. The couches were the most comfortable seat I had ever felt. In this place where comfort was displayed all around, I felt all the eyes and social pressure of high society that made me feel like it was the most uncomfortable place in the world. What calmed me was Neil sitting next to me and his hand on my waist.

-How’s life in Chicago?- Lucille asked- I tried asking Drummond when you wouldn’t reply but he always told me you weren’t working for him anymore

-Yes, I only worked with him for a few years- He continued, and I was sure he was going to give them the clean version of the story- Turns out we didn’t get along so well. I moved to this neighborhood where I met this man called Charles Granger. He in very involved with the city’s anti-saloon league and involved in the politics and he takes care of the neighborhood he lives in, it turns out they were in need of a doctor. So he offered me a job and I accepted, worked with him ever since. He helped me get settled, I do owe him a lot

-Well, we’ll be sure to send Mr. Granger our regards for taking care of you- His mom gave a forced smile. I’m sure she had questions but it was noticeable she was trying to be on Neil’s good side, afraid he might escape again

-So my life was settled there. A few years later he announced to me and his associates that his niece was coming from Ohio to live with him. She helps him out at work and that’s how we met, through Charlie

-And now you’re seeing each other- His mother continued

He smiled softly- MC and I are engaged, mother. I mentioned in the letters

-Oh yes, Lucille told us the news- Her tone seemed like… Disappointment? No, I’m just reading too much into it

I had to do something to break the ice- We were planning for it to happen in late April, early May, wait until the cold passes by

-Yes, it’s smart to wait a while-She smiled at me- A lot can happen in those months, things might end up different

I held my breath, I couldn’t pretend to be dumb to myself. She was definitely unhappy with Neil’s choice. For the first time I felt a sting in my chest. It wasn’t embarrassment or anxiety. It was… Insecurity. I usually never lacked confidence and I was sure that I could take everything and anyone. However, being on the receiving side of the looks from Neil’s mother made me feel like a pin in a haystack. Tiny and lost.

-We weren’t planning on waiting too long- Neil said. Even he acted different around his family, but his tone was firmer. I knew it was him sticking up for me in the ritziest way there was. So I appreciated in silence.

-I hope you don’t mind that we organized a ball for your return- She said excited, changing the subject- We invited the Hastings, the neighbors, just close people to spend the night with us

-Oh mother, you know I always loved the balls you gave- He said in a sarcastic tone but she ignored it, Lucille did giggle though

-Get up and get ready-She said- Do you need me to send the valet upstairs?

-No! No... I can manage myself- He said walking towards the stairs and taking me with him

She then spoke to me before we left- Oh dear, you’ll want to wear something a little bit more elegant for tonight

Once we were in the second floor I couldn’t help but look around. There was a piano room and then a corridor of doors, I assumed they were bedrooms. It seemed kind of oddly placed, surely nobody would like to sleep while the piano is being played right outside their doors. However, everything inside was so white the black piano was a welcoming contrast.

-So… I’m guessing balls are a normal thing in the upper class

-It’s traditional, not my thing if you ask me- He lowered his voice to say the last part

-I’d imagine not

I didn’t have much time to admire the guest room, even though I did notice that its grandiosity made it hard to imagine that it was a room that didn’t belong to anyone. I sat on the bed stressed, wondering how I was going to find something in my bag that would fit the expectations of Momma Dresner. The fanciest dress I could find didn’t impress her, and now I had to step up my game for an official “welcome home Neil” ball

In the middle of my mind’s perturbations, a knock on the door got my attention. When I opened the door, Lucille was standing there smiling

-Mrs. Branford!- I started

-Lucille is fine, if I can call you Mary

-MC- I stepped out of the way to let her in- What can I do for you?

-My mother, she is… Traditional- She sat on the loveseat by the window- I’m not going to lie. People like her, they are not easily impressed by… People like you

-People like me, you mean middle-class

She nodded- Yes, it’s in her ways. The Dresners, they come from very old money. Me, Neil and our siblings, we’re more used to the ways things are nowadays. But our mother never really spent much time with people who didn’t have as much money as she did. So she always looks down on them- She looked back at me- And she always expected Neil to marry an indoor, wealthy girl if you know what I mean

I must’ve made a face, because the look of sympathy rested on her eyes- She doesn’t think I’m worthy of Neil

-Yes, MC, but you must understand it’s old thinking. She thinks that solely based on money. Besides, it’s a little tougher on Neil because he is the oldest of us. That makes him have to marry the perfect woman in her eyes.

I looked at her- The oldest… So…

-Neil is the heir of our estate. Of our parents fortune.

My eyes went wide. It must’ve been obvious, but I just realized that- I never thought of it that way.

-Listen, MC. When Neil left Boston, after Alton passed away… He was not just unhappy. He was lost, his eyes were haunted. He was cold and it seemed like all life from him was just gone. He had this hard edge, and he estranged himself from all of us- She looked at nothing, but I could see pain in her eyes- When he came back from France I convinced myself I would never see the Neil I use to know before the war again, I knew some of his troubles. Then a few years after he left I started to convince myself I’d never see him again- She turned her eyes to me- And then a few months after knowing you he writes back, and then he comes home. On top of it, although there’s still a hard edge on him, I can see it in his eyes that you make him happy. I can see the old Neil in him. That’s why I know you’re more than worthy to be with my brother, you brought him back from the darkness he lived in

Wow. I was so caught up in what she said. It was nice knowing she was on my side- Lucille, I didn’t really do much… I

-No humbleness. Just take some credit for it. I can see you care for him very much

I nodded exaggeratedly- I love Neil.

-And you can see it in his eyes he loves you-She got up this time, going to a dresser in the room- My brother will be happy with you, and I’m so excited to have you as my new sister. However, convincing my parents require a different approach- She pulled out a dress. A beautiful and obviously expensive dress

It was a salmon color, a soft V-neck that was more of an U and graceful short sleeves. While the looseness of the dress was there, it’d flatter whoever’s waist it was on with a slight inward curve, going down in a soft A-line. The dress ended right below the knees. The pattern on it was two colors. One the color of the dress, only visible if you really paid attention to it, the other was white and in the shape of leaves, like a garden going around and forming a heart around the chest area, small flower-like drawings of the same color elegantly finished the dress.

-Oh Lucille, it’s beautiful, but I couldn’t-

-Yes, you can. It doesn’t fit me anymore and it’d help you impress everybody, plus I’m sure Neil would love to see you in it. C’mon, put it on

I hesitantly did so, and once I saw myself in the mirror with it, it made it a lot easier to accept it. I loved it- Thank you, Lucille

-We’re not done. It’s not just the dress- She said pulling some accessories out. First she fixed my curls, like she watched people doing hers enough times to know how. Then she placed a white headband on my head. It had a details on the side, I didn’t dare ask if they were diamonds or something else. A pearl necklace was put around my neck, I asked myself if they were real pearls. Lastly she brought in beautiful heels. They were white as well, clasped in the middle of my feet, and closed in a salmon bow.

When I finished putting them on I looked myself in the mirror again. Oh boy, Momma would pass out if she saw me like this. Poppa would finally consider me his pride. I was all dolled-up. That sensation that I was an imposter grew in me, but then I was only human. I felt confident again- What do you think? - I asked her

-I think you’re ready to face them. Now, I have to go get dressed myself

-For sure, yes- I smiled to her- Thank you Lucille, really

-You brought my brother home back to us… It’s the least I could’ve done- She hugged me tight- Remind me to properly introduce you to Michael at the ball

I agreed laughing lowly and feeling a lot better

A little while after I heard another knock on my door, when I opened it, I was more than happy to see it was Neil. He seemed surprised at my get-up at first, then he smiled

-I see you’ve had some help

-Well, your sister came in and-

-You look beautiful- he offered me his hand and I took it. I was going to say something smart, but the look in his eyes was so sincere I didn’t want to ruin the moment

-Thanks- I said instead- Did everyone already leave?

-Well, lucky for me, I’m the reason of this party- He said it in a sarcastic tone- So I get to come in late and be the center of attention, I’m hoping their curiosity about you takes some of it away from me.

-Neil Dresner is back home, and he brought a low-class girl with him and he’s saying he’s gonna marry her?-I raised my voice to sound like upper-crust gossip- My oh my, Doctor Dresner, quite a scandal

He gave me that warm smile that went all the way up to his eyes. The one that always makes me feel the jitters in a good way

However I wasn’t done- They’ll probably think you’ve gone crazy and send you to a psych ward or think you’ve knocked me up and now you’re stuck with me- I pretended to hold a fan imitating the rich older women- Disgraceful, truly disgraceful

This time he let out a laugh, a harsh laugh, but a long one that sounded like melody to me. For a second I thought he wouldn’t stop laughing, and then I started up laughing too. We walked all the way to the car like that

-People will think I’ve gone soft if I spend too much time with you- He said

-You agreed to spend the rest of your life with me. You’ll be the biggest softie the United States has ever seen

He let out a harsh chuckle this time, as if he told me he wouldn’t ever let that happen. Then the servant from before opened the back door of a fancy car, it had a long hood and it was half black and half white, a wheel sat on its side. I could also see a chauffeur in the front

-Wow, you’re getting the whole ritzy treatment today- I said getting into the car and we were on our way

-You get used to this kind of stuff- He mentioned and then turned to me- You will…- Before I could ask what he meant, he kept going- You know, during these balls we were required to attend, me and Alton would usually spend the entire time together. He didn’t use to be a fan of it either. Having him there… It always made it feel better, it always made it fun somehow- Then he turned to look at me- Having you there, it’s going to make it feel better

I smiled, filled with emotion, but I had to say something- You’re definitely turning soft on me

He rolled his eyes-I should’ve known better than being nice with you, Granger

Our verbal sparring continued until we stopped in front of a big house, the doors were open to reveal a ball room at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve done this before. They’ll announce us and we’ll go down and I’ll act like I’m entitled to the world

So we did just that. The servant opened the car door and Neil took my hand to help me out of the car. Then, I took his arm and we walked in to the top of the stars. People there looked at Neil like he was a rare diamond, like the king of England just walked in. I could feel his tenseness with the looks, but the preparedness for it in his eyes, he whispered to the announcer and then held my arm tighter

-Mr. Cornelius Dresner of Boston and his fiancée Miss Granger

-C’mon- I said lowly and he followed, so we both went down the stairs.

At the bottom of it his family came over again, and soon I could see people looking and gossiping. It was a good hour of walking around and talking to his family and everyone Neil once used to know and introducing me. I felt like I was in one of those old periods of time when the upper crust used to announce engagements.

After a while I was talking to Lucille while Neil talked to some of the other men. Then she looked behind me and got closer to whisper something- Look, Momma just took Neil to talk to Lillie and left them alone

I looked around feeling my heart jump, at first I felt was surprised. I remember who Lillie was, Lucille’s best friend and… Neil’s ex-fiancée. I remember feeling pity for her because Neil left her, but the pangs of jealousy struck me once I saw her.

She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, for the second time that day I felt insecurity, but this made me feel much tinier. Because I knew Neil’s mother approved of her, because she was part of the high society and she grew up in it. Her pale skin, her green eyes, her dark smooth hair. She was tall and charming, she was the figure of elegancy. I also knew Neil found her attractive, that he was romantically involved with her once. If he used to love her, how can I be sure all those feelings are gone? No… It’s just the atmosphere and everything, it’s just all throwing me off.

I must’ve been so shaken up I felt paralyzed. Lucille shook me- Hey… Hey! They walked outside. We can spy on them from over in that room- She said pulling me along, I wasn’t even paying attention until I was already there. It was a dark room, looked like an office? Lucille brought us to a window, the drapes were almost closed so you couldn’t see us, but we could spy on them

-I have missed you, Neil- She looked up to him, and her eyes were shining. I knew what that look was… She was still in love with him- I haven’t courted anyone else- She showed him her hand- I’m still wearing the ring you picked out for me.

-I didn’t really pick it out, Lillie it was…

-Yeah, your grandmother’s. You told me remember? You got it when you were fourteen. It was to keep it to the woman you loved the most, to the woman you wished to spend the rest of your life with, whom you’ll always love and that woman shall always love you- She held his hands this time and I felt my stomach sink- You told me that you would always love me if I always loved you back-She got closer to him, this time placing her hand on his face- Here I am, still loving you. Can you say everything was washed away?

He took a few steps back, his confusion could be seen on his face. I wondered what he had to be confused about- Nothing is ever just washed away, Lillie. You of all people should know that.

My heart hurt, what did he mean by that, did he mean his feelings for her were still there?

She smiled softly-Neil… You never gave me closure. You never ended our engagement. One day you were just gone. People kept telling me that you were gone for good-She looked away at the stars, it was a well moonlit light. It was perfectly romantic, but that didn’t fit me one bit in that moment. I hated the romanticism of the stars and the shine that it gave on her face. I hated that it made her look more beautiful- But me and Lucille we knew you’d come back to us. That you’d come back to me. And you were so troubled when you left…

-Lillie…-He looked at the stars now too- I’m sorry for what I’ve done in the past. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve done that I can’t fix and I have to live with it. But I got a second chance to make things better. I’m not the same man who proposed to you back then

-Then how is it I look in your eyes and I see him? I see my Neil

I don’t know if I was feeling anger, sadness or disbelief. It could’ve been all of those together. Lillie knows Neil is engaged to me, she must know, we were announced together. You’d think she’d have some respect

-You see what you want to see, Lillie. You think you love me but you don’t

-I went after you! I went to Chicago-He looked at her with interest, she was caught up in her emotions, crying now- Mr. Drummond told me how you were troubled, lost in… Morphine, was it? I looked for you all around the city, and I couldn’t find you. I’m fighting for you Neil. I can’t give up on us

He breathed funny- Lillie-

Before he could say anything else she hugged him, and he hugged her back for my surprise. When was it that Neil hugged any girl like that?

-Seemed you two form quite the spies- A voice behind us said- Me and Lillie jumped. It was Neil’s mother, and she seemed satisfied from what she saw outside, seeing as she was the facilitator in the situation- You see, Miss Granger. Neil belongs back here, in Boston. And you belong is whatever infested middle-class house you came from with your people. You will never be worthy of my son, and of course it only took the right girl to pull him back into his senses.

-Mother…!- Lucille started

-I’ve had enough of it, Lucille! The little gal needs to know her place. Did you think you could ever make your way into OUR family?

I didn’t say anything. This was so far away from my reality at the Ice Box, my family or everything that I’d ever done before. I couldn’t… I can’t handle this.

-I have to go- It was the only thing I could say before flying out of there. I got back in the car asking for the driver to take me back to the town house, once I was in I couldn’t stop my racing thoughts until I was in the guest room, packing my bags.

But then I stopped. Neil… I can’t just leave him like this. I was so mad at him, I was so mad at all of this, I… I want to go back to Chicago. I looked in the mirror again, all dressed up in fancy things, this isn’t who I am. I surprised myself by ripping it all out of me, putting on my favorite green dress and hat, the ones I wore all the time. Once I was back in clothes that made me recognize myself I swore I’d never again try to be somebody I wasn’t. C’mon MC, you always knew you didn’t have to prove anything to anybody.

But I let my stupid wandering thoughts continue. Neil knelt down in front of Lillie once and asked her to marry him. He asked her to marry him, not me. She had a ring on her finger, not me.

I don’t know how much time had passed by when I heard people in the house.

-MC!- I heard Neil’s voice from downstairs- MC!- He didn’t knock on my door, just walked in- Lucille, she told me you listened to me and Lillie talk

-Yeah, I heard it, alright

-I…-He was going to say something when he saw the bag I started to pack, then he looked at me, visibly mad- You were leaving? Without me?

-No! Not without you. I was gonna wait for you- I walked until him- Let’s go back to Chicago

-We’ve only been here a day

-I can’t be here anymore, Neil. Please, let’s leave

-I haven’t been back in years. You convince me to write to my sister, convince me to come over here, we’re here less than 24 hours and you want me to leave? I just got the courage to be here

-Neil, today has been the most stressful day of my life! I have been dressing up like a paper doll, I have been trying to impress your mother and all I’ve been hearing is how much I’m not worthy, how I won’t fit in, how I’m way in over my head! I have been feeling nothing but insecure, down and I’ve been trying to do everything for you, but I can’t- I was rambling on and tears had begun falling from my eyes, but I didn’t even care- I’ve been keeping a stone face all day trying to make you happy because I know this is huge, but it’s tiring! It’s tiring feeling so out of place, and then hearing your mother say all those things, and then I walked out there to the ball and you go in a secluded area with your beautiful ex-fiancée to exchange words of love under the moonlight?!

-I didn’t say any words of love!- He raised his voice, more than I’ve ever heard him raise it before- I was feeling bad for Lillie, I left her and never came back after promising her a married life! I gave her time because I was trying to fix what I did wrong in the past, with everyone!

I didn’t know what to say or think- Neil, let’s just please, go!

-Yes, I think it’s time you went back to Chicago, if you’re going to behave like this the whole trip you should go!

I looked back at him wide-eyed- You don’t mean…!

-I thought I saw a woman, MC. But how could I, you’re nineteen! I’m thirty-two. You’re the same kid I saw the first night you came to Chicago.

I looked right at him as I wiped my tears off my face, then I grabbed my bag I had packed. Neil called Lillie a ghost back in Chicago, but he was wrong. Lillie wasn’t a ghost, nothing back in Boston or his past life had anything to go with ghosts, ghosts terrify you, but he seemed just fine where he was. Maybe this is where Neil belongs after all. But it’s sure not where I belong.

That night for me was the true ghostly aura. A memory that’d haunt me forever. I left Boston, alone, under the beautiful moonlight that would have enchanted me otherwise. I left with only one certainty: I’ll be dead before somebody ever mentions the name Neil Dresner to me ever again!

1933

-Alright, ready?- I asked and the kids all agreed. Neil wasn’t one to make a big deal out of his birthday, but after a few ones together he knew there was no point in fighting against it. I’d always want it to make it a special day, so we settled on a cake and some candles. Just me, him and the kids- One, two, three!

The kids along with me started our little choir, for that man that was so special to all of us- Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear daddy! Happy birthday to you!

-Do we really need to do this every year?-He asked, cynically, but with a little smile on his face

-Alright, mister doom and gloom! We have this discussion every year!- I kissed him in the cheek

We all had our piece of cake. After putting the kids to bed, I walked outside, the moon was shining in the sky and it was a cold January night. Neil soon joined me- One more year close to death- He said raising his glass, then proceeding to drink the bourbon inside it

-You always know how to lighten up the mood-I pulled him in for a hug and along with it a long kiss

-You’re something else, MC, you know that?

-I’ve been told-I smiled up to him, mischievously

-You can never have any idea of how much I love you- He played with my hair, moving it out of my face

-I have some

He chuckled very softly, almost inaudibly- I just ask one thing of you, MC Granger… Never change who you are

----

Little curiosities: DRAAAAAMA. I thought they deserved a little fight and angst. Well, next chapter we’ll be back in Chicago and it’s time for the Ice Box to shine again! Woo Woo, Prohibition stuuuff!

Thanks so much for reading this chapter, guys! Hope you enjoyed it!

Chapter 4 is already on its way!

-Candy, My Dear Diary (5/24/2020)

#voltage usa #speakeasy tonight #voltage inc #voltage amemix #voltage games #voltage #neil dresner #lovestruck #lovestruck voltage #vince moretti

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randomlerson75 · 5 years

Text

Stuff people at my high school have said or done

• “I’ll just pretend I broke my ankle. I’ll limp a little”

• “You’re face doesn’t even have many bones”

• “Do you wipe your ass with your fingers”

• “I look cute though so I’m saving it”

• “They’re not dirty minded they just have a sexy brain”

• “This is not a good situation now. I’m not happy”

• *sleeping in class and randomly screams* “STOP!!!”

• “I’m coloring my weed symbol”

• “I stretch pretty violently I’m sorry”

• “I look like I’m more full of life than you”

•”I’m a good person” “haha ok”

• “I’m gonna round it to the nearest 11”

• “You don’t always have to swallow”

• “What a fucking time to be alive”

• “why are you harissing me”

• “That’s why you turn around and punch him in the face”. “I don’t have time”

• “You are the highest grade”

• “Does it taste normal”. “No it tastes good”

• “Why are we all up in this cold ass blueberry”

• “The sun can’t be that hot”

• “I could have overreached but that would make me stupid”

• “I’m all muscle bro, it’s tight on me”

• ”I’m a stripper that’s how I make my money”

• “You’re my mom” *talking to the teacher*

• “Are you high” “just get it off”

• *laughs normally* “you sound like a pedophile”

• “Pinkie ring until I roll”

• *about to jump off a cliff in a video for free diving* “push her”

• “Capitalism is ok”

• “It’s so funny how you can be alive one second and dead the next”

• “Change the m in marijuana to a j. Jarijuana”

• *teacher puts desk in the hallway*

• “He smoked water”

• “You can’t speak Latin” “Can you?”

• “May I acquire a pencil” “yes you may” “have a blessed day”

• “I’m going to write a book about how depressed I am”

• “God has forsaken me”

• *girls trying to stab each other with scissors*

• “I got a pretty long weenus. It looks like a penis”

• “My skeleton is twerking”

• *draws a skeleton twerking* “this is why it’s fun to learn art”

• “Why does he have eye holes?” “He’s a skeleton”

• “Don’t get my businesses ”

• “YOU ARE A WHORE”

• “love is so good”

• “Happy 17th day of birth”

• “You know it’s cold when you walk outside and it’s cold

• “why are you smiling like a creep Jess?” “That’s my normal face”

• “I’m living my best life, right here right now”

• *About thirty kids doing nothing but snapping*

• “Yes, I am very racist about smart boards”

• “I used to be like ;) but now I’m like :|”

• “Physically I’m here but mentally I’m still at home”

• “Emotions are like hurricanes. They never go where they are suppose too”

• “it took me a whole 27 minutes”

• “I would pay for the fire alarm to go off again”

• “Why did we get such a gay name like Florence”

• “this is my dad” *points to Albert Einstein

• *A REAL debate on wether to rip the clippy part off of mechanical pencils*

• “Not gonna lie. I grinded a friends marathon this weekend”

• “FINISH THE TEA”

• “You should know to never mess with another persons tech deck”

• “She has a thing against white people even though she’s white”

• “Speak of the devil. All white, what a fright”

• “You are a children”

• “You think a bull in a china shop? How about a bomb in a restaurant”

• “Me do”

• “I cheesed myself”

• “I never said I was going to jump you at Bojangles”

• “Knitting is VERY fun”

• “I’m not good enough, I’m great enough”

• “North Korea, South Korea, Same thing”

• *drops pencil* “NOOOOOOOOO”

• *light flickers* “excuse you”

• “You can make Australia bigger?”

• “Why don’t we burn people at the stake anymore for doing crimes. It was proven very effective”

• “It’s like I went into the pits of hell”

• “Can I borrow her crutches” “She has a lot”

• “You have arms?”

• “I was born thick”

• “I wasn’t sick I was drunk”

• “be a good person. Go go go”

• “Lotion and ravioli”

• “It smells like weed in here”

• “F*ck oxygen”

• “bring it back tomorrow or you die”

• “Tables are for glasses, not asses”

• “Stick it in between her boobs”

• “A lot of religions end in ism” “Christianiaism”

• “I just want someone to snort my ashes. That would be cool. Mix it with a little cocaine”

• “The United States of Australia”

• “Clark Kent who. I’m kidding, that’s not even Spider-Man”

• “Mental cheese”

• “Your blood is not supposed to make whistling noises”

• “Who sleeps on a Friday night”

• “A whole ass race”

• “that’s a sexy button” “I know right”

• *Screams* “and....”

• “Judaism is neither a religion or race”

• “Have you ever met someone and thought ‘wow. I would feel no remorse killing you’”

•“I hate this school with a burning passion”

•“Beep beep in your seats”

•“What is wrong with the world? The simulation is breaking”

•“What if we’re each other’s dad”

•“You use mental gymnastics to get around your head and get what you want”

•”You can’t just roll up to North Korea. You have to beat me in bingo”

•*teachers wear a dress and played despacito on the trumpet*

• “He’s a stingy boi”

• “A for anarchy? Dude i wish”

• “shut up I’m choking”

• “The snack the smiles back” “GOLDFISH!!!”

• “Where’s the pointy boi?” “I don’t know. I have the thick boi”

• “Dude. Fish can’t talk”

• “Stop taking my eraser” “it’s a ruler” “it can be whatever it wants to be”

• “A female vacuum is attractive”

• “I can love you but not like you”

• “I am mother gothel mentally, physically and spiritually

• “Mother gothel is my religion”

• “IM GETTING A COW!!!!”

• “It’s like Leonardo Da’Vinchi but instead it’s Leonardo Decaprio”

• “I wish I had some crippling disease. Schizophrenia would be nice”

• “I’m gonna kill someone for the rush of adrenaline I’ll get. I’ll get pumped, then I’ll work out”

• “Should I become an important political figure”

• “My cats might have eaten him”

• “Who else is trying to overthrow the government”

• “Where’s our kid?” “He looked at me funny and I had to teach him a lesson. I flushed him down the toilet”

• “I text Jesus all the time”

• “You are a saucy boi”

• “Your neck is really soft. Do you know that?”

• “Um. No professor. I don’t give a fuck”

• “Bro I look like a whole ass beetle”

• “You know? I’m definitely going to hell. But I’ve accepted that”

• “We need to go to the woods and have a collective cry”

• “Moths = whore”

• “Can we watch more food videos”

• “Just outlive the old people and health care prices can go back to normal”

• “Let’s just start the gladiator games again to handle population”

• “I’ll be Michael Phelps”

• “Don’t you just hate it when Nolan steps on your 69 Barbie head”

• “He’s so 20”

• “LITTLE BOY! WHERE ARE YOUR NIPPLES”

• “You guys disgust me”

• “I thought I had a good nights sleep but then I stood up and was like ‘oh no’”

• “you look better as an apple”

• “Why the fuck does it smell like weed in here. Mrs. Burch be blazing it up”

• “What is the coast of South Carolina growing” “Fish”

• “Why are we here on Halloween but not on Thanksgiving”

• “Even though I’m 18 I still might go trick or treating”

• “All minors should be allowed to trick or treat”

• “Tomorrow is not today, is it?”

• “ah yes, the glorious uno and dos”

• “I think Kanye is a crackhead”

• “Like. She’s not hideous”

• “Casserole and Gatorade?”

• “That’s what Google’s for girly”

• “this class has corrupted me”

• “You stepped on my fat”

• “What would Jesus do?”

• *Squeaks kazoo in anguish*

• “We’re going to watch a video about the depression” “weird, nobody has been following me around with cameras”

• “Approximately 50 minutes till ice cream”

• “Did you know heroin is not good for you?”

• “I have the constant need to fight myself and my demons”

• “what the hell?” “I know”

• “you are crack-a-lakin me up”

• “I have no muscles so what’s the point”

• “Flex on the legless”

• “didn’t that movie come out in November? Fifty shades of green?”

• *County music blares from another class down the hall*

• “I got a twin brother” “What’s his name” “Pj”

• “Keep the iPhone in your ear”

• “Super white red lipstick”

• “They just need a lot more dollars”

• “Don’t be like Anthony” “Isn’t he your son”

• “There’s a lot that needs to happen in the next.... today”

• *Plays bagpipe music walking down the hallway*

• “Say sorry to Billie Eilish”

• “We should make army merch”

• “Some of us have bitch lips”

• “Time is moco loco”

• “Alfred Adler sounds like Adolf Hitler”

• “Albert Einstein is my favorite president” “YES”

• “It’s winter berries”

• “She just unfollowed your ass”

• “Do you ever get so mad you’re like rrrrr”

• “Bear Grills filtered that shit”

• “The US army is trying to recruit us with socks and bandannas”

• “This dude tastes bad”

• “I’m a sophisticated retard”

• “It’ll get your heart rate up” “I think asthma will make my heart rate go down”

• “She was like egh and the he was like EGH”

• *Door won’t open* “DISRESPECTFUL”

• “if she wasn’t my sister she would be my baby”

• “Will you let me make love to an Oreo”

• “Directions turn me on”

• “I’ll eat you” “Dude that’s gay”

• “you’ve been had a 69 in here”

• “I’m gonna be real with you. Hayden is a whole ass lesbian”

• “I’m sorry that picture is ugly. Sorry sis”

• “A whole jump suit with pikachu on it”

• “He’s been birthed”

• “Ru Paul’s drag race has been dragged”

• “Imma sip some chlorine”

• “why do you gotta throw up”

• “suicidal dog collar”

• “I’m pulling out Murphy’s head ass”

• “you’re gonna be single forever”

• “Do you trust me?” “No” “why” “you know why” “I told the truth after”

• “I didn’t mean to make her suicidal”

• “I did it in the most respectful way I possible could” “oh Jesus”

• “it’s not my fault she had that much of a connection”

• “she’s a sly bitch”

• *dresses in a Thomas the train hat and plays Thomas the train theme song on a piano*

• “I’m getting better at this” “what” “this”

• “It’s just my master plan to manipulate people’s emotions and have many successes in my future”

• “How do you do that” “I just empty my eyes”

• “You know what. Give me my birthday back”

• “Bitch bye. Not even cousins”

• “they go away. They don’t putt putt”

• “why” “so you don’t die in a police chase”

• “are you a virgin” “yes” *throws paper* “there’s my virginity for you”

• “I’m not stupid. I’m just not smart”

• *tries to hit someone with a decapitated mannequin head that has swim goggles on and fake blood coming out of its eyes*

• “you ignant”

• “I hope she chokes”

• “I had to sit at the edge of my chair, feet flat on the floor and hold my horn”

• “I don’t want to get my freaking hair done”

• “he hates my moms guts” “yeah no shit”

• “ok. Can you go cry over there”

• “Fuckin Jurassic world”

• “will you please beat up my mom”

• *drops phone purposefully* *immediately gets scared*

• “I want a new mom” “then break her”

• “did you just say what’s frog juice”

• *freshman walk by* “oh shit there’s a parade of them”

• “that five year old king is a queen”

• “Join the ranks”

• “Garrett’s carressing the computer” “cool”

• “You’re going into my dragons mouth”

• “Don’t snap my crab”

• “Crab breaking black belt”

• “are you milking the crab”

• “Cameron buttered my lemons”

• “Mixed with god”

• “What’s the juice”

• “I’m your bestie and you won’t even tell me the juice”

• “Let’s amazon.com this”

#generation z #gen z culture #gen z #gen z humor #high school #quotes #2000s kids

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multipleservicelisting · 3 years

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What happened when I tried to become French

(CNN) — Julien was a tennis instructor with steel shoulders, blue eyes and two terraces we could never sit on because he stuffed them both with his marijuana plants.

Everyone back home in New York City told me that if I’d move to France I’d fall for some French guy, and that French guy was Julien. (Well… at first it was a guy named, Nico, but he had a girlfriend.)

It was the summer of 2008, and I was 28 years old and I’d done the crazy thing and moved to Montpellier, France. My rent was 250 euros a month. I munched an entire crusty baguette each and every single day. I got tan on Mediterranean beaches and I got drunk on bottles of pale French beer at open-air boîtes de nuit (night clubs.)

Very quickly, I’d become that girl, dating that French guy and living exactly that French dream we all think will be so damn beautiful.

And it really is…

… until it really isn’t.

If I’d stayed in Montpellier, I might still be that French girl. After several months, though, I couldn’t get the French dream to match the French reality, and that damn return ticket was always there waiting for me.

Escape from New York

Turns out Montpellier is France’s seventh largest city.

PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty Images

I’d been living in New York City for eight years in one insect-ridden apartment after another. I had a job in television programming my coworker described as “moving color bars around a screen all day.”

I was tired of the crowded expensive city and I needed much more than a two-week vacation. I have dual American and French citizenship thanks to my Caribbean dad, and I was thinking the French life would be for me.

So, I decided to attend a language school. All across Europe you’ll find these small, non-credit, unofficial schools which offer three or so hours of conversational classes per day. They help students find housing and organize group activities. They’re probably meant for European college students, but they attract anyone looking for a short escape.

In my case, it was a crutch to a new start in French life.

Once I bank transferred my 1,000 euros for my first month of classes at Odyssea Language School, I got on the web to buy a one-way British Airways ticket leaving in June. Then I panicked. I clicked instead on a refundable round trip returning in October. If my savings ran out, and I couldn’t find a job, the return was already paid for.

The school was in the Languedoc region in southern France. From the online photos, the town looked blissfully suburban compared to New York and Boston (my college town.)

In fact, Montpellier is France’s seventh largest city.

My creamy colored heaven

Day trips from my French school included an outing to the historic city of Avignon.

AFP Contributor / Contributor

When I arrived, I stashed my stuff in a closet-sized room in a tiny apartment the school hooked me up with. I shared it with a girl who spoke not much English and not much French.

With no help from her, I somehow figured out how to explore the town on my own before my classes started.

Montpellier is actually a sprawling little city known for big universities that bring in 50,000-plus students seasonally.

Tall clusters of apartment buildings and department stores dot the outskirts and a small metro snakes in and out of the town center. The central square, or Place de la Comédie, is paved in white and cream-colored stones and anchors a maze of tiny shops and restaurants.

Every friend in this photo comes from different ends of the Earth: Italy, Hong Kong, Canada, US and Germany.

Channon Hodge

There were too many historical buildings to count, but I vividly remember walking by a plaque commemorating one of the first medical schools in France. It had been there since before the United States was even a concept. That’s when my decade spent studying American History seemed rather trite.

On a tour the school organized, I learned about Europe’s southern history before borders carved it up. Some of the townspeople still speak a Catalan language and love explaining the region’s ties to Spain before it became part of France. They made sure Catalan names were etched on signs along with the French ones and their independent spirit was a precursor of what I would eventually encounter when I finally found a job.

The Spaniards taught us how to play ‘Merde’

Open-air clubs were everywhere in a region where summers are long and winters are mild.

Channon Hodge

The school organized wine and cheese “meet and greets” for new students and bus trips to Avignon and Carcassonne. They organized trivia nights at the local British pub, The Shakespeare, and made sure everyone gathered for outdoor watch parties to see the French lose out in the World Cup.

The social part seemed as equally important to the language classes. I’d taken French in high school, college and even doled out $500 for classes at New York’s Alliance Francaise. My entrance exam at Odyssea informed me that none of that effort put me above “advanced-beginner.”

I could answer “Comment allez-vous?” but I couldn’t have a conversation for more than two minutes before becoming mentally exhausted.

Odyssea – Institut Européen de Français – Language schools attract European students who can take long breaks to learn a language. My friends did not feel the pressure to graduate from university in four years and thought nothing of a long break.

Picasa 3.0

No worries. These schools have no set term start or end dates. You simply roll in any week at all, get placed with students at your level and “graduate” up if your teacher feels you are ready. That open acceptance helped me make all manner of new friends, including:

Jim — An American film editor determined to pick up a language in between contracts.

Marianna — A vivacious, gorgeous, curly haired Russian Italian who refused to wait in any line ever.

Hannah — An adventurous Canadian who’d eventually convince me to scramble down an off-limits cliff in Marseilles because we’d heard the waters were crystalline blue (they were, and they were freezing).

Felippa — A smiley Swede who shockingly explained that Ikea product names actually have real meanings and who would become my roommate in a much bigger and nicer flat.

A young German couple who’d just had a baby and who were spending their year of parental leave hopping around Europe.

Plus a gaggle of young dance-loving Singaporeans on exchange, a party-hardy group of Italian nuclear scientists sponsored by their company, and a rowdy group of Spaniards.

We’d spent so many days on the beach, we once foolishly tried spending the night on one. We were frozen by midnight and fled home at 4 a.m.

Channon Hodge

A bunch of us would spend our afternoons biking out to the beach in a town nearby. I’d found a massive red checkered sheet on our apartment’s clothesline and we’d sprawl out on the sand while everyone turned out offerings of cheese, sliced meats, chips, fruits and baguettes.

The Spaniards had a car, they smoked like a coal factory, and they soon taught us a card game they insisted was called “Merde!” (S–t!)

We sadly mostly fell into speaking the more mutually understood English. Try as we might, French all day was simply exhausting. Eventually, though, I did get the accent down straight. That’s all thanks to a lot of fruit and a questionable pick up line.

Framboise, fraise and frozen juice

After a few weeks, I realized if I wanted to stay in Montpellier for a long time I’d need a job. The euro was nearly double the value of the dollar then and my savings were dwindling fast.

Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to find a job as unemployment for young people was around 20%. Businesses were loath to take on news part-time employees because once they had you, they were stuck with you because of labor laws.

At this organized social event, we learned how to make crepes and a local favorite – bread with goat cheese, honey and herbs de provence. Events cost extra, and the euro’s value was double the dollar then.

Channon Hodge

The Russian Italian convinced me to try working for an Irish bar in town by pretending that my first name, Channon, gave me some Irish cred with the owner. That failed as soon as he realized I was African American.

Instead, he offered me about 15 hours per week making frozen juice at his new Jus Plus store in the mall. It was a new concept in France, then, and I suppose I looked like I could handle a blender.

I easily learned the frozen mixes, mostly based in apple juice, and quickly blended them together before calling out the drink orders to guests.

“FRRREZ!”

“FRRRRAMBWAZE!”

(Fraise = strawberry, framboise = raspberry)

Customers stared back at me dumbfounded and I didn’t know why. My dear coworkers Stella and Charles helped me to realize that a hard American “r” doesn’t really work in French. I quickly learned to make the correct and softer sound using the middle of my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I describe it as a mix between: a soft g, w, and que.

“Fgwquezzeeee”

“Fgwquambwazzee”

It worked! Stella also kindly forced me to speak French. Charles was a musician and he loved to explain all the rights I then had as a worker and all the great ways young people were starting revolutions.

The “mec” taught me something else entirely.

Le mec et la petite amie (the guy and the girlfriend)

I’ve been told French relationships can become serious rather quickly, which is completely at odds with what I’d assumed about French promiscuity.

Channon Hodge

French people do indeed drink lots of wine and eat lots of bread and cheese. But they also guzzle down cheap beer and stock up on tinned meats, packaged toasts, bags of processed cookies and cartons of highly processed milk.

I was drinking beer with a group of friends at a café (which is, in fact, a bar), when a guy named Julien walked up to me and asked in English:

“Where are you from?”

“New York,” I said.

“Oh really?” he asked and then added: “I thought you were from paradise.”

Maybe it was the French accent? Maybe it was the tennis instructor body? I was immediately in like.

We had one date. He kept texting me and after a few weeks he referred to me as his “petit amie'” I quickly learned relationships can really form that easily in France.

Julien had lived off chômage (French unemployment) for nearly two years and would gasp when I used all his beurre on my baguette. He knew not much more English than he’d used to pick me up, so our relationship was mostly about what you think it was mostly about.

One day he did manage to scrounge some cash for gas and we went out to the beach, swimming out as the waters turned choppy and filled my nose with salt.

My days were all free and clear and sunny, until I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

The French way — No bills, no laws, no worries!

It was completely against the law to scramble down the dangerous cliffs to the water in Marseille, France. Even moms with little children ignored the signage.

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I’ll never know if it was all that saltwater, but a week or so after the beach trip my lungs started shrinking. I could barely wheeze. One day it got so bad, I woke up in a panic sinking to the floor beside my bed feeling like my throat had become a red cocktail straw.

When I walked into a doctor’s office, I signed my name on a slip of paper because there was no receptionist, just him. He took a listen to my sad lungs and gave me a prescription for expectorant and a calming agent at the pharmacy. When I asked about the bill, I mentioned my French citizenship, but I admitted I hadn’t worked long enough to get a medical card.

“Well, you’re French so you’re not supposed to pay,” he told me, politely letting me go.

The medicine cost me around 15 euros, but over the next several weeks the infected lungs never quite went away. I never spoke again in France without coughing.

The beautiful haze grows hazy

My typical morning started with café au lait, baguette with cheese, and French magazines. I lived in four different apartments over the season. My last room cost me €250 per month.

Channon Hodge

The weather got cold and crisp and the beach lost its charm. Then my friends began to leave, one by one returning to their home countries. The Spaniards left, then the Canadian, then the Russian Italian. My cheap summer room had to be turned back over to the fall student I’d sublet it from.

Then the strikes started. First the wine growers protested land taxes. Then the metro stopped working for weeks in the name of metro worker’s rights. The strikes caused chaos and brought attention to a cause, but they always ended without much progress.

To truly improve her French, my roommate enrolled in a real university for the fall and she wanted me to join her. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of being a college student again living in a dorm at then 29. (I’ve only realized now, of course, that 29 is still so young.)

I grew tired of never completely understanding anyone and only getting the gist. I hated all the money I’d spent buying tickets for the wrong day, and having packages sent to the wrong destination. I was frustrated that I couldn’t have a real conversation with Julien.

And it was so hard to shout “fgwquambwazzee!” while coughing.

While the news in France was full of les grèves (strikes) and the financial crises, the news in the US was becoming more hopeful. Senator Barack Obama was quickly gaining speed as the nominee for President of the United States.

Channon Hodge

At one point I realized I was a lot funnier back in New York. I just didn’t get French humor. I didn’t understand why movies never had a real ending but were instead vaguely unsatisfying. I didn’t get all the constant anger at the government.

Then my coworker Charles started his own revolution in our little shop. He and my British boss screamed at each other over shift changes until he stormed off one day and I lost him, too.

But I still had that return ticket.

Just a tourist again

Jardin du Luxembourg. I spent my days wandering the beautiful parks of Paris and headed home each night to my dear aunt in Villejuif before nightfall hit.

Channon Hodge

Late September, I left Montpellier and took the TGV up to Paris to stay with my aunt for a few weeks before my flight out. As I rode the smooth train north, I gazed out at vineyards whipping by with their grapes hung low to the ground waiting to be picked and crushed.

In the city, every morning my dear aunt made me a bowl of café au lait along with pâté smeared on bread. She sent me out into the city with a thin paper booklet called “Balades a Paris.” I climbed the bright Montmartre hill, learned Notre Dame’s secrets from a volunteer tour guide and bought a classic leather Cassandra bag at the Marche aux puces.

My mom and my brother joined me for my final two weeks and we were dazzled by the marbled figures at the Musee d’Orsay. We loved the thick chocolate at Angelina cafe. We drove down to see the Loire Valley’s castles.

As the date of my return flight drew closer, I realized I was dreading finding a new job in New York and starting my life there over again. Moving to France hadn’t been so hard after all. What had been difficult was staying there, building up a real life. That’s the work you have to do wherever you choose to go and wherever you try to stay.

I realized too late that you never pick up a language. It simply drags you along till you’re standing.

For a short time, I had been that girl, dating that French guy, living that French dream, but eventually I became just another American in Paris and a return ticket took me home.

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the-record-newspaper · 6 years

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Unsolved: Murder at Jumpingoff Place: Epilogue

By: Larry J. Griffin

Special Reporter for The Record

“A man who is laden with the guilt of human blood shall be a fugitive until death; let no one support him.” Proverbs 28:17

I have never been a fan of the State of Mississippi.

There is a certain energy there that I perceived during my initial foray into the Magnolia State—in August, 1967—that remains inconsonant with mine. Yet, I have visited there many times, and in a one-week stretch—not too many years ago—I had speaking engagements in the cities of Columbus, Philadelphia, Jackson, Laurel, Hattiesburg, and Gulfport. Further, I am fortunate to have a considerable cadre of cogent colleagues and congenial comrades amongst Mississippians.

But I know its bloody history of craven crimes perpetrated against humanity during the Civil Rights Era—hundreds of which remain unsolved.

The City of Natchez, Miss., hugs the southwestern border of the state. Across the Mississippi River from Natchez--two miles and eleven miles respectively—sit the Louisiana towns of Vidalia and Ferriday. Because of their geographic proximity, that stretch of highway is referred to as the Natchez-Vidalia-Ferriday area or corridor. Geography, however, is not their only link—they share a sordid past of Civil Rights-based murders and mayhem, perpetrated by a violent cell of the Ku Klux Klan known as the “Silver Dollar Group.”

Comprised of about 20 men from Mississippi and Louisiana, each member carried a “silver dollar” minted during the year of his birth for identification. They prided themselves in being the toughest Klansmen found in either state. They mutilate, murdered, bombed and burned in an effort to “keep the negro in his place.” Moreover, they are responsible for the perpetration of crimes that are among the “cold cases” yet to be resolved through the FBI’s Civil Rights Cold Case Initiative—a 2007 collaboration between the FBI, Civil Rights groups, and state/local law enforcement.

In Ferriday, however, resides a newspaper editor who is a part of a three-person newsroom responsible for publishing The Concordia Sentinel—a weekly publication, like The Record—with a readership of 5,000, half that of Wilkes County’s only international newspaper. Editor Stanley Nelson has been characterized as a “slow-talking, easy-going good ole’ boy.” But, don’t let that description belie the fact that he is an accomplished investigative journalist who has written 150 stories on three Civil Rights crimes committed five decades ago—cold cases. And he has reported these in much the same way that I presented the 27 articles comprising the Murder at Jumpingoff Place series.

“I took it week by week and reported what I learned that week so that it would open people’s eyes as it did mine and help jar memories and maybe compel people to come forward,” Mr. Nelson stated in a 2011 interview with Hank Klibanoff of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Stanley’s journalistic efforts have yielded results. In January of 2011, for instance, he implicated a living suspect in the 1964 Klan murder of Frank Morris in Ferriday, LA, which led to a subsequent grand jury investigation. Additionally, in May of that same year, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting “for his courageous and determined efforts to unravel a long forgotten KKK murder during the Civil Rights era.”

“Investigative reporting is not something I ever thought I would do. It’s not glamorous, especially when you’re…looking into murders that took place forty and fifty years ago,” Stanley Nelson averred. “…You feel lucky just to learn whether the people mentioned in old documents are alive. Finding, reaching, and talking with them and others who may know about it [a case] is another challenge altogether. The biggest hurdle is finding out what happened…And how did the killers do it?”

That paragraph characterizes my life for the last eight months, as I have endeavored to reconstruct the 1984 case of the disappearance and death of Sherry Hart for readers of The Record. Despite the challenges—and perhaps because of them—this journalistic journey has been “worth the squeeze.” And I have discovered some things about myself in the process, none-the-least of which is that I am intrigued by investigative journalism. Perhaps the biggest pay-off has been a more comprehensive understanding of that which occurred a cold Sunday Evening in January along the crest of a precipice known as Jumpingoff Place.

Along the journey, I have been asked questions by readers relative to what I personally think, posit, and/or have come to believe about the case of the untimely death of Sherry Lyall Hart. As previously stated, I have assiduously avoided expressing opinions and proffering editorial comments in my columns. However, since I have been asked to do so in this several part epilogue, I will pose and answer the most “frequently-asked questions” by inquiring readers.

QUESTION: “Larry, do you think Richard Lynn Bare is guilty of murdering Sherry Hart?”

Yes—after conducting extensive research across eight months, I believe the evidence to be incontrovertible—Lynn Bare pushed Ms. Hart off that 1200-foot cliff at Jumpingoff Place. Jeff Burgess said so; Lynn’s girlfriend, Dottie Jenkins Staley knew it; even Lynn implicated himself in his statement to Ashe County Sheriff Gene Goss. About the only individuals who maintain his innocence can be found among members of the Bare Family. But I am more interested in the “why” of his actions.

In the 11th article of this series entitled, “Rhyme and Reason,” I explored several theories which offered explanations for Bare’s actions. Of course, that installment was written prior to my being allowed to peruse the Ashe County case file for the first time in December, 2017. Surprisingly, a couple of the theories resonated with sworn statements and other information contained therein.

The most plausible explanation for Lynn Bare’s action that evening is a pastiche of a couple hypotheses. There is, however, no substantial evidence to support the notion that his judgment was impaired by his ingestion of drugs or imbibing too much alcohol. Rather, this impulsive, abusive 19-year-old young man knew that he was on probation. In fact, if I read correctly the Suspect’s Identification Records secured through the FBI Identification Division, Lynn received—in 1982—two years of confinement and two years of probation for Breaking/Entering/Larceny and 12 counts of Breaking into a Drink Machine. Having already experienced imprisonment, Bare was disinclined to return to confinement. If Sherry Hart had lodged a complaint with authorities relative to Bare’s two failed attempts to rape her, then likely his probation would have been revoked immediately and he remanded to the Ashe County Detention Center. Pushing her off the cliff, he reasoned, would alleviate that possibility.

QUESTION: “Do you think Bare is guilty of first degree murder?”

At first, I didn’t believe that Lynn Bare would have ever been convicted of premeditated murder—I told April Billings, Sherry Hart’s daughter, as much during our initial interview. And I have never subscribed to the notion that Lynn intended for that January 15th car ride to be Sherry’s last. It was his intent, however, to lure Sherry into a sexually-compromising liaison. Somewhere along the route of a 30-mile joyride, the dynamic changed.

A couple of statements that Jeff Burgess made across three interviews altered my perception somewhat. He recounted for Sheriff Goss and SBI Agent Steve Cabe that he urged Cousin Lynn to take a bleeding Ms. Hart to the hospital for treatment. “There is no way we can get out of it now….It’s too late,” Lynn replied. It was at that crucial juncture that intentionality was introduced into the equation and an impulsive reactive response transmogrified into a premeditative action. And when the trio approached the turn-off at Jumpingoff Place near J. D. Taylor’s bar, Lynn Bare knew how all of this was going to end for Sherry Hart. When Burgess asked him what he did, Lynn retorted, “The bitch got what she deserved….She hung up and then slid on down.”

Admittedly, those two statements bothered me more than I revealed in the reporting of them. The first reflects a complete lack of empathy and a pervasive, perverse disdain for human life. The second mirrors a cold-blooded determination to ensure that the job was thoroughly, irrevocably concluded. It also recommends to suspicion that Bare may have hit Sherry on the head again in an effort to render her unconscious before shoving her over the edge. The momentum of a victim’s sudden descent is likely to be arrested and “hang up” if the victim in insentient and lifeless rather than grasping and struggling all the way down.

That being said, even if Richard Lynn Bare had stood trial on July 29, 1985 or even when he eventually does so, I doubt that a jury would have returned or will render a verdict of “murder in the first degree.” More likely, second-degree murder. There just doesn’t seem to be enough evidentiary support for premeditation. However, Lynn’s observation, “She hung up and then slid on down,” disturbed me when I first read them—they haunt me still.

Three questions remain….These I will answer next week in the concluding segment of, Epilogue to a Murder Case.

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futurepoetlaureate · 6 years

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Exposed

Million Dollar Answer

The million dollar answer

The beating question to a specific cancer

Finding a way to speak from the heart

The feeling has been there since the start

In the summer my heart use to melt

Because she never knew how I felt

Now I’m wondering who gets your love

Does anybody take you on flight with the doves?

Lost in my thoughts

Lord where have I been caught

A rock and hard place

My heart against the world it’s race

The memories forever hit like wind hitting chimes

I never thought any moment with her was wasted time

I been down many paths before

But I’ve never felt this way in my core

I use to think I shouldn’t catch feelings

Then God showed me the meaning

How to love?

The feeling of God’s love.

Perfect Fits

Let’s be honest

I’m just trying to be modest

Ever since I heard your name

And since the first time we met I put that memory in a frame

I never knew feelings could be complicated

I’m just hoping the energy can be replicated

Last night I had a dream of us walking on a white sandy beach

Even in my dreams God seems to try to teach

But the skies above were laced with doves

The sun rays felt like an unfamiliar love

Watching the waves crash across our feet

Just speaking the truth to you would be an amazing feat

Looking into your eyes is easy

I just want to be real and not cheesy

Sooner or later I’ll speak with you about it

I’m just puzzled if my place in your life will be a perfect fit.

Liquor & Misunderstanding

Last night my thoughts were freestanding

All because of the liquor and misunderstanding

A couple of things I’ve been keeping bottled up

A certain presence can make me shut up

It only takes one world to slip out of my mouth

My stomach dropped down to the Deep South

I probably lost my mind

After it’s gone it becomes hard to find

The nectar digs out the deepness thoughts

I’m trying not to get caught

But lately I haven’t said anything

Dreams of being on bended knee with a diamond ring

Lord my mind wants to sing

The heartbeat in my chest has its ping

Everything is going off

The lights won’t shut off

One night with the room spinning might not be as bad

After all it might make us all glad.

Things Change

Trying to reach God but my faith was out of range

This shaking feeling within shook like pocket change

I barely keep the lights on

The weigh on my shoulders feels like a ton

Wondering if I can be the same person they feel for

The feeling of failure is hitting at my core

Walking in the footprints of my ancestors

I remember trying to get pass the long semesters

Years later I’m still learning

The feeling of success remains churning

I use to think the times would never change

The worst feeling I’ve felt has been not going to La Grange

Such a heavy burden

But in my heart is where the love occurred in.

Catching Fire

I know my zest for life is catching fire

Greatest story ever told with no intent to retire

God has everything going good

My faith has withstood

Even when I was knocked down on my knees

I never forgot he paid the price and our fees

Our admission

Speaking to God we sometimes make omissions

Like he didn’t know us before we knew ourselves

Unbound but put together by blood, sweat and tears we were taken off of the shelves

I’m deeper than before because of that

Now my feet feel welcome every time I cross the promise land’s welcome mat.

Young. Black. Gifted.

This moment in my life has shifted

God made me young, black and gifted

His presence made me comfortable

Even doing times of feeling uncomfortable

I felt like I was losing my grip

I was taught to tie up loose ends since people sometime trip

I wish life was as simple

On bended knee with God in his holy temple

Living freely under those heavenly stars

The feeling of greatness to me means being more than subpar

Everyday feels like Christmas

I found out during my journey of faith I could go the distance

I know God felt the resistances

I wanted to follow my heart versus the stars

A kind of burning in my chest

My mind was in its own unrest

Trying to remain against the grain

Only my tears at that moment acted as the rain

Deep down my thoughts helped me move comfortably

Everything done was purposely

The feeling of greatness can be replicated

Even when my life can be fairly complicated.

Traveler’s Rest

A travelling man with his bible

Decided to never follow the idols

I find my place under the sun

Against the hatred I decided never to run

Facing 20 years to life since I was born

Between love and hate I was torn

Wondering what was the American dream?

Trying to hold it together at the seams

I woke up to my greatness

But I swear who I thought was real was really blessed with fakeness

For those who believed I wouldn’t make it

Just watch me as I take it

The crown fit well on my head

Before these people live this world I hope they make their bed

Chasing clouds will lead you over the cliff

Jealousy among friends will cause riffs

The greatness things to life have nothing to do with colors

And people’s worth are not only define by dollars.

Pray

May we all pray?

Under the stars where we lay

Late nights like this it feels like May

My hearts wishes to stay

But it beats and remains on the go

Trying to bounce back from the bottom like a yo-yo

My mother use to tell me speaking of others out of names was a no-no

My future remains the greatest story not yet told

I swear somedays my heart has to be cold

A protected draft pick

Moving through the jungle my words have to be as slick as Rick

And if the sum becomes greater than the rest

Then there’s no equal at the end of God’s test.

Burying Me In Gold

Feeling soulful

I’ve been talking about myself, boastful

The hatred never had me sold

But my love was buried in gold

The greatest story not yet told

I wanted to her heart so I had to be bold

I walked down from the mountaintop

Careful not to let my heart drop

These words I speak are worth more than gold

Walking up to her with a blindfold

I don’t where this encounter will go

My tongue tied up like a yo-yo

I saw a star shining so bright one night

Oh Lord what a sight

I didn’t have any physical gold

But my soul was filled with the greatest spiritual gold.

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cynderros-blog · 7 years

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American Teen

American Teen part 1

Sam Holland x Reader

I know this is trash but Khalid is my baby daddy rn and this was inspired by his song American Teen from his album

And this was also 100% inspired by @lovelyimagines and her Harry Holland fics so please read them

And guys btw I know the song lyrics should be in italics but I use my phone and it wont put the italics in when I copy and paste🤷🏻‍♀️ - You were standing behind the register at your local bookstore. Your mom was close with all the local businesses so she got you a job there. It was all you could ask for in a job, never really busy or crowded. And you got to read all the books you could for free.

One day you were reading an old copy of The Outsiders when a large group of people came in. You could tell they were a family.

“Hello” you smiled at them

“Hello!” The woman said. She had an accent that was foreign to you.

“How are you folks today?” You asked stepping out from behind the counter.

“Oh just wonderful darling thank you” she said. “I’m looking for Chaos Walking do you have the books?” She asked.

You shook your head and waved at them to follow you. You knew exactly where they were. You’d finished them in a little over a week and put them in a display for the suggested young adult reads. Instead of the whole family following you a tall freckled boy followed you. You saw his cheeks turn bright red when you flashed a smile his way. And boy was he cute.

“Here ya go” you said pointing to the display.

“Thank you” his eyes roamed your body. Not in a sexual way but you knew he was looking for your name.

“Y/N” you smiled.

“Sam” he said.

Both of you walked back to the front and he handed you the books. You could tell he was looking at you as you rang them up.

“33 dollars and 60 cents will be your total today”

“Love do you have a 50?” The woman said looking through her wallet.

“I do mum” Sam said. He handed you the bill and his mom slapped his arm. He flinched and you giggled.

“Don’t take that darling here” the older man who you assumed was his father handed you a twenty, ten and a five. You handed Sam his money back and finished ringing them up. The woman was looking at the pamphlets at the front.

“Sam look there a poetry club here” the woman said.

“I don’t write mum”

“Don’t mean you can’t come” you chimed in. His mom smiled and agreed.

“There’s even a piano here Sammy” his father said looking around.

“Cool” the younger boy said running over to it.

“Don’t touch it unless you ask” Sam said.

“You’re fine” you said. You handed Sam the bag of books.

“You know” you began. “There’s a party going on tonight at the cliff. It’s for my brothers birthday and you should come”

He blushed and looked down giving a big smile.

“Are you asking me on a date?”

“N-“ you were taken back a little. “Yes” you shoulders straightened out and you stood up more.

“Okay I’ll go” he made grabby hands at you. You handed him your phone.

“Could you at least unlock it?” He turned the phone to you. You placed your thumb on the home screen unlocking it. He did the same for you. The two of you exchanged numbers and they left. • You couldn’t stop thinking about him and you hoped he couldn’t stop thinking about you.

Living a good life full of good vibes My eyes are on the grey skies Saying I don’t want to come home tonight

You began to doubt he was even going to come when you felt your phone vibrate in your hands.

“Hello?!” You answered quickly.

“I’m here but I don’t see you” he sounded confused. You stood up on your tippy toes and looked around. Finally you saw him standing on the outskirts of the party. You waved and he waved back. You ended the phone call and ran toward him.

“Hey” he said giving you a hug.

“I was doubting you’d even show up Sam” you looked up at him. His freckles looked like star constatations and it kinda turned you on.

“I’d never leave a pretty girl hanging” he shrugged his shoulders and you two broke out into laughter. He was awkward but it was okay because you were too.

Yeah, and I’m high up, off what? I don’t even remember But my friend passed out in the Uber ride

The whole night consisted of beers and laughter as everyone danced their hearts out. Some people were drunk but you and Sam stayed clear of it. One beer was enough for you and him. You lead him to a bunch of rocks near the cliff over looking the lake.

“So, are you on vacation?” You asked sitting on the tallest rock. He wasn’t far behind you. He plopped himself down next to you and you handed him a soda.

“I’m actually looking at schools” he said opening it up. He took a sip and offered it to you. You shook your head and he cleaned the bottle laying it against a smaller rock nearby.

“Schools huh?” You said. He looked at you and you could swear his heart was about to beat out of his chest. He closed his eyes and leaned into you. You placed your lips onto his. They were soft yet rough. You placed your hand on his cheek and moved closer to him. Next thing you knew you were making out with the cute British boy from the book store.

Oh, I’m from the city of the 9-1-5 Where all the girls are pretty And they’re down for the hype All my boys are with me Going up for the night But who cares, who cares?

His hand were all over your body and you wanted him here and now and you knew he wanted you too.

“Y/N?” You heard someone calling. The two of you broke your kiss and looked around.

“Oh my god there you are!” Your friend came up a little to drunk for comfort.

“Yeah?” You said a little frustrated. Sam looked away a little embarrassed. You propped your self up on your elbows looking up at her.

“Your-hiccup- brother-hiccup- is loo-hiccup-king for you”. You rolled your eyes.

“for what” you whined.

“The happy birthday song!” She pleaded with you.

“Fine we’ll be there in a minute” you sighed. She stumbled away and you looked for Sam. He was already walking down the rocks on the opposite side of where your friend came.

“Sam wait!” You said running to catch up to him.

“I’m sorry” you said panting when you caught up to him.

“For what?” He down at you with a smile.

“My friend”

“No need to be sorry love I just needed to take a piss” he kissed your forehead. “I’ll be back, promise”

‘Cause this is our year So wake me up in the spring While I’m high off my American dream

You waited near the center of the party where Sam said he’d meet you. You assumed he got lost so you walked around looking for him.

“Looking for your boyfriend?” Your friend said. You jumped in fear

“God Ty you scared me” You said putting your hand over your heart.

“He left like 20 minutes ago Y/N sorry” he placed a hand on your shoulder. You were a little hurt by the fact he left you hanging. Exactly like he said he wouldn’t

We don’t always say what we mean That’s the lie of an American Teen

#sam holland #sam holland imagine #harry holland #harry holland imagine #Khalid #American teen #tom holland imagine #tom holland blurbs #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader #tom holland #tom holland fluff #tom holland headcanon #haz osterfield imagine #harrison osterfield #harrison osterfield x reader #harrison osterfield smut #Harrison osterfield headcanon #cynderrosat

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kpopdreality · 6 years

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06: [ARA]

Masterlist

Two months with BTS went by really quickly and right before I had to head back to work my grandmother called an emergency family meeting before new years eve. I wrapped the blanket around me tighter as I stood on the deck of my grandmother's house facing the flat land that lead to a cliff that opened up to the ocean.

"Ara, Grandma is calling us in to talk."

I turn my attention to my sister's voice. April, my oldest sister was standing there rocking my 3 year old niece Jasmine to sleep. She was 25, with a loving husband and beautiful daughter and a job at Vogue in New York. I follow her in to see the family gathered around the living room. My mom and dad spoke softly to each other probably trying to figure out what my grandmother had in store. My little brother, Anj, who was a year younger than Jungkook typing away on his phone to who knows who. Then my brother-in-law, Cam, who took sleeping Jasmine away from her mother's arms, allowing my sisters muscles to rest. We were a fully fledged Korean family but our names confused so many people, I was the one with the most common one, I still don't know how I should take that. And by the fireplace was my grandmother, she was a quiet women with eyes that were always smiling and she was always making something never letting her hands stay still. My grandfather used to tell me that he saw a lot of the spark she has in her in me, that's probably why we both were as stubborn as an Ox.

"So children I have something important to tell you. I'm getting older and who knows how much time I have left. But before I passed I wanted to provide some answers to questions you don't yet have. I first thought about just leaving it as one final surprise and be really cool but I realized I wanted to see your faces so..."

Anj and I look at each other in confusion.

"I'm a millionaire, possibly a billionaire the zeros are a give and take."

Anj sighed beside me and focused his attention back to his phone, grandma was up to her old jokes again. The room was silent and you can see my mom roll her eyes at her own mothers words.

"Ok, that was expected but hear me out before I pull out the accounting books. Yes, none of you knew about it especially your mother that's because we never told her. See when I was growing up my father had our lives mapped out. I was going to be a good housewife and my brother was going to take over the family business, which at that time was just a small sweet shop in the town. But my brother liked to draw and paint and had no interest in business. Once we became of age my father handed the shop down to my brother and the hunt for a suitable groom started. What my father didn't know was that I actually ran the shop, my brother was a mere front man. With me running the shop he was able to paint and slowly start to sell his painting as well. When I met your grandfather I had told him about what I was doing and he supported it. After your grandfather passed the company was transfered into my name legally. I didnt tell your mother this because I didn't want her to grow up thinking she had it all, she should make it out on her own and create a name for herself. Just as April has with her position in Vogue, and Ara at Seoul Hospital, and Adj as the top business student in his high school. I wanted to wait until Adj turned 18 for this to be reviled. So as of now all Ara and April's student loans will be paid off and Adj's education will be paid for. All three of you will be getting some of your inheritance now but before you do you have to answer the following questions and fulfill my last wishes."

We all sat there is shock no one moving a muscle except for Jasmine who was oblivious to the whole thing.

"Mom are you ok?"

My grandma gave her daughter a small smile.

"Im fine dear but I am old, I want to see this done before I move on to the after life. So let's begin April. For your inherentince you will get several properties and an amount but inorder for you to do so you must move back to Korea and stay here until Jasmine is 7."

I glance over to the sleeping child who has to spend the next 4 years in this country.

"Its to ensure she learns korean and the korean cultures to some extent, in addition ¼ of your inheritance will have to be set aside for Jasmine when she turns 18"

Cam and April exchanged worried looks, they would have to uproot their lives to fulfil my grandmother's last wishes.

"Next Anj, you will be inheriting the company but to do so you must be accepted into an Ivy League in America for Business. When you graduate from the university you will officially take over the company. If I am to die before you do so you Mother will take over as CEO until you are fit to take over as CEO, if you fail to gain admission to an Ivy then you will take over as either COO or CFO with your mother as CEO."

Anj just sat there shocked.

"Now Are, you will be inheriting money and some properties as well as Seoul Hospital. I bought it last year as an anonymous buyer and if you fulfill my last wish it will be publicly known that it was us and that you are the new owner and head of the board. My wish for you is simple marry the boy of my choosing within a year."

Marriage, hospital. Last year the hospital was about to go bankrupt and a lot of people were going to lose their jobs until an anonymous buyer stepped in and saved everyone.

"If you fail to fulfil my wish the hospital will be sold as well as the other property."

If she sells the hospital people would definitely lose their jobs, new management aren't always as nice as she was.

"Now I get that you have to think this through so I'm going to go on a walk around the pond and when I get back I expect an answer."

She grabbed her cane and made her way out. Everyone sat there in silence as they thought about the proposals, my mother made my way over to me and rubbed my back.

"An arranged marriage isn't a bad thing Ara, your grandparents were arranged and they bother turned out well."

My dad spoke up from his seat across the room,

"Shes 20, 21 this year thats too young."

"April married at 22 and you didn't say anything then."

"She did it out of her choice" my mom sighed and turned to April and Cam

"What did you decide."

They both looked at each other and nodded, "We are going to move back in a couple months once we get jobs here."

Cam spoke up, April nodded looking down at Jasmine. "What about you son."

"Grandma just dropped millions of dollars on us" Everyone turns to Adj who still is in shock.

Masterlist

#exo #exo fanfiction #exo reactions #exo request #exo chanyeol #chanyeol #chanyeol fanfic

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type-a-nomad · 6 years

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First REAL weekend in South Africa-- Sat Feb 17- Mon Feb19

Weekend

Feb 17 Today I went on a surfing day to the beach at Big Bay. The beach faces the main city of Cape Town and you can see Table Mountain looming over the entire place. The view is spectacular. Basically, the premise of the surfing day was a collaboration between two NGOs in Cape Town dedicated to helping the kids in the townships get out of the townships through extracurricular activities. One of them is SAVE Volunteers (my people) and the other is Wings, an organization started by one of the SAVE employees from Norway who raises money to buy surfboards and wetsuits for the kids here. Surfing has a reputation of being kind of airhead-y or unambitious, something people who just want life to be easy and relaxing seek out. The organizations I am working with prove that wrong on so many fronts. The most critical, to me, is the water. The ocean is so powerful and so healthy. I might be the only one, though this is unlikely, but when I go into the water, I am entirely filled with energy and life and consciousness. Further, physical activity is so important for mental wellbeing and it helps these kids channel energy and frustrations from the hardships they experience daily into something that isn't self detrimental (like joining a gang or being swept up in the alcoholism and drug addiction that plagues a good amount of their parents and family members). Another critical part is the challenge. There is a very tangible outline of success: getting up and surfing the wave. Thus, surfing is saving these kids’ mental wellbeing. Or at least aiding it. It’s incredible to see how appreciative they are for everything. They are so excited to be there and are having fun from the second they show up till the second they leave. I went into the water for about 45 minutes. The waves were enormous. I have never experienced anything like it. There were swells of 10 feet. A lot of the volunteers didn't go out because they were so uncomfortable with the swell. Apparently, the waves being this big is rare. But, this is the first time I have surfed in a year and I was anxious to just try. So, I forced myself into a wetsuit and decided to make myself uncomfortable because that’s why I'm here— I’m not about to live timidly even though a lot of my brain wants me to. Carpe this fucking diem. All that. When I got out of the water, after being crushed by many waves and ignoring the cramping in my shoulders from paddling, I was starving and grabbed my German friend, Nicole, to go to a smoothie place right near the big beach. When we got there, I noticed they had wraps so I got a breakfast wrap. I know this is super boring. Who cares what I’m eating? Right? Except it’s actually a big deal, because I only eat carbs for breakfast and lunch and my body is not used to only having a small amount of protein at dinner on good days. I’m trying to go shopping more to supplement the fact that I just eat peanut butter toast to survive here because I’m so emotionally and physically exhausted all of the time from giving every piece of myself to the kids that making something more than that is basically impossible. When I got back, I had potato salad and meatballs out of the fridge that was apart of the dinner the night before. It was yummy but also a second lunch at 4pm and, thus, I was not very hungry when dinner rolled around at 6pm. I got my portion of pasta and put cling wrap to save my rations for the next day. I ate the salad and then most of a chocolate bar that I bought and designated as my “emegency chocolate bar”. I guess craving sugar constitutes an emergency for me.

Feb 18

I woke up at 6:20 am today because I had a zipline tour that I booked. It was an hour and a half there and the tour was at 9 so we were going to leave at 7 so we would be sure we wouldn't be late. I was a bit loud getting ready because I was so exhausted. Linda, my roommate who is 60-ish, from Canada, and now retired and living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She’s super cool and even says “eh”. It’s very exciting. We are starting to get kind of close. We even gossip sometimes. Anyways, back to ziplining. The way I got into this in the first place was because Natasha, a British girl who lives in my house and has been very outgoing and nice to me so far, was talking about wanting to do it with somebody and asked (out of semi-desperation because others didn't want to do it) me. I’m still not in great physical condition. I’ve had a really bad cough since I’ve gotten here and it is showing no signs of leaving anytime soon. Please, Mr. Cough, you are overstaying your welcome. Natasha and I called an uber at 7. The guy pulled up and seemed nice enough, but I was worried that he was going to kick us out when he realized how far we were going. Directly inland 90 minutes is basically to the middle of nowhere. When he noticed the destination he did something very, very weird. He says “Is this a cash or card trip”, uber doesn't let you pay in cash so I found this very sketchy. We told him it was a card trip, to which he said “ don't have any cash or cards, can you pay me in cash so I can get us all the way there”. Obviously, I am feeling a little more than weirded out at that moment because of all the horror stories we have heard about transportation, safety, and being a woman in Cape Town. However, we were stuck. It’s 7am, we are already out of town, we have to be at this place before 9, and this guy is offering us to take us there, just being sketchy about it. We allow him to pull over and cancel the trip. The quote that uber originally gave us was 750 Rand for the way there (rand to dollars is around 11:1). He says he’ll take 500 Rand for the whole thing. For him, it’s not actually a discount because uber takes 75% anyways and he doesn't need to pay taxes. For us, we save 250 rand. It’s a win-win. We spend another hour in the car. The man driving the uber was named Gabriel and he had lived in Cape Town for 28 years. He didn’t even put in directions to where we were going even though it was way outside of Cape Town. Of course he gets lost. I don’t get why people feel the need to prove how “local” they are by doing things like that. Just use your map. Jeez man. We end up having to put the map into Natasha’s phone because there is basically no service where we were so her wifi hotspot is the closest thing to internet that we had. We roll up to the nature reserve where we are going zip lining, finally, and there is a gatehouse where you need to check in before driving one more kilometer up the road to the actual headquarters/cafe of the zip lining company. Natasha and I realized how far in the middle of nowhere we were, but we figured we could call an uber when we were finished and it would take maybe 30 minutes to get there. The zipline company offers no transportation to or from the middle of nowhere, there is no public transportation anywhere close, and taxis in cape town are basically unusable because they're so sketchy and they will charge you crazy amounts because they know they might get away with it. When we get out of the car, we are told almost immediately that we need to tell our uber driver to WAIT for four hours while we zipline because we will be unable to call one when we are done because we are in the middle of the middle of nowhere. Great!!!! What a reasonable request. The woman at the front desk phones the gatehouse and tells Gabriel to turn around and wait for us until we are done. He is so sweet he says that he will and we don’t even need to pay him. Just 500 Rand there and 500 Rand back. So $50 per person round trip for over 3 hours of driving. Not bad. Ziplining was hard to describe. It was so insane every time I’ve trie dot describe it, it sounds hyperbolic. We were driven in a big jeep-truck thing about 20 minutes through the bumpiest road I’ve ever driven on. Several times I actually thought we were going to tip over and fall down the cliff. The entire thing was so full of adrenaline even the car ride felt wild. We zip lined for four hours. Besides walking to the first platform and hiking out of the canyon, there was literally no walking, just zip lining from mountain to mountain. It was insane. We were hundreds of feet up. Each zipline was 500 feet or longer. Below us was hundreds of feet and then a rocky canyon with waterfalls and rovers throughout it. The drought isn’t as serious the farther you get out of CT so a lot of the vegetation was green and full. There were trees and bushes and flowers and lizards. It was beautiful. The dirt is red and full of clay. Everything seemed so saturated. In our group it was me, Natasha, and a Dutch couple who were in CT for vacation. They were very nice. Every time we got to the next zipine (approximately every 10 or 15 minutes), we had to jump off ourselves. I cannot describe the amount of self control it takes to willingly jump off of a platform above a canyon hundreds of feet in the air suspended by nothing but a wire. We were flying at up to 40 miles an hour suspended hundreds of feet above the ground. Calling it exhilarating feels like an understatement. When I got back to my hostel, I decided to rally and go to the beach before dinner. I covered myself in sunscreen and walked down to the ocean with some girls who live in the same building as me named Sydney, Emilie, and Natasha (same Natasha). It was really nice. I’m reading a book called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron and every paragraph makes me stop and think about my worldview. It’s totally fantastic and spiritual without being annoying about it. As I am writing this, it is Monday. This morning was rough because I have very little food here besides bread and cereal and whatever is made for dinner. I usually go for peanut butter toast but this morning there was no peanut butter so I just had bread and butter. I thought i could make coffee with a lot of milk for protein and I heated up my milk but then we were out of instant coffee. Thankfully, Coll showed up and handled it and got us new food. Coll is actually superwoman. It is a great injustice that I have not payed tribute to her or her daughter, Shannon, since I have been blogging about my experiences in Africa. Shannon basically runs SAVE volunteers as far as I can see. She is the go-to manager. She runs our lives. From having enough food, to transport, to daily activities, it’s all her (and another manager Robyn who is equally great). Shannon is Coll’s daughter. Coll is around 65 years old and makes dinner for us every night Monday-Saturday. She’s vegetarian and is very evangelical about it. At least 3 days a week I have very long conversations with her about politics, gender identity, sexism, vegetarianism, and general humanity among other things. She’s brilliant without being self important or condescending towards younger generations, even though she totally could be. Did I mention she cooks for over a hundred people every day? Yeah, pretty wild. Today there was no peanut butter or instant coffee and when I told her, all of a sudden peanut butter and instant coffee appeared. Here, where food is not diverse and sometimes scarce, that is nothing short of a miracle. So, yeah, the ladies who run this program are badass and fun in all of the right ways.

Currently, I am having a lot of trouble deciding if I’m leaving South Africa. If you are reading this and have advice, I need it. Fill my ears. I want to be on the beach and the project I thought I was going to go to next is in Turkey and it’s cold and not on the beach. I know this sounds small and kind of self-indulgent and a priority only a teenager would have, but it’s actually a big deal for me. My quality of life by the water changes a lot. Having access to go to the beach, and swim, walk, etc. gives me so much energy. I love the energy of towns near the beach and it makes me want to stay in Table View, South Africa because everything here is set up and I’m near the beach, even though I don’t particularly feel a strong need to do exactly this kind of volunteering for a whole extra month. I have been looking for places in Central and South America because I would love to improve my Spanish, but almost all of those would be working at a hostel which I think would be fun and I could meet lots of people and work on my language skills, but my parents would see it as pretty meaningless and I don’t blame them. It doesn't help other people, it would just be fun, new, casual, and something I probably an experience I would never have again. If anyone knows of a permaculture farm on the beach somewhere where it is warm (besides Australia, I know there are tons there but I don’t want to ask for the money for that plane flight), please let me know. I don’t want to take away from my experience here by looking everywhere for a new project, but I am also itching to go new places after this and only have clothes and supplies to be in warm weather, and the emotional disposition to be at the beach. I don’t want to just sit around. Meaningful work is, well, meaningful, but the environment in which I am doing that work is super important to me as well because I only get one Gap Year and it is going to be a while before I go to do something this eccentric and carefree again. Harvard isn’t a beach vacation.

Peace, Q

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pilgrimonpoint · 4 years

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“The Pattern Aggrandizment of Self-Delusion.”

Is There a Term for Convincing Those Around You of The Obvious, Then the Obvious Thing Doesn’t Happen?

Yes. It is called “The Pattern Aggrandizement of Self-Delusion.”

I have been in a near constant state of awakening and suicidal ideation, but really, who hasn't been?

Anyway, one of the realizations I had sprang from the analysis of my accrued data metrics that addressed “whether or not”, in aggregate, “listening to my ‘gut' had the generalized overall result being beneficial, certainly positive, and nice feeling upon post examinations of my necessarily subjective experience of the undocumented events as remembered after the fact".

What I learned was ‘jaw dropping.’

The unqualified result was that, astoundingly, I had never listened to my gut up until the age of 46, and my life had generally been a sucky experience, BUT, since then, while being in the most chaotic time in memory, it has also been the most mind-bogglingly creative and satisfying time I have ever lived!

The crises personally and country wide were seismic! In many, many ways I was the same me, but in a different place and time. The question then occurred to me, "what is the most consistent random thing to occur in my life?”

Without hesitation, the thought manifested within my expansive mind, “420”.

Now mind you, I am not a pot smoker. Sure, in the past I liked to “loosen the screws", but for me the experience was “losing the screws altogether. Has anyone seen my glasses? How about my keys?”

You feel me.

Since I was 16, you would not credit as believable how many times I have wondered,” what time is it?”

Looked at the clock, and, you guessed it, exactly 420.

It happened so much that I have been using it as a running joke for over 10 years now. Even going as far as to text my partner every time it happens to try and share the weirdness of it. It did not even occur to me to wonder, “I wonder what it could mean in relation to April 2020?” prior to last Nov.

When it did, the first thing I thought was, “I wonder if that is when I am going to die?” My ‘gut’ reacted when I considered it. So, I considered it more.

Now this is the part of the story where it REALLY starts to make sense. When I was 22, and just out of the Marines, Texas had just started the state lottery. Looking at the odds of winning, it occurred to me that the best random odds one could have would be to pick one set of numbers at 21, or 22, then play those numbers with odd regularity until I died at 127, and have a better chance of winning than any other strategy.

Let me tell you, I was SO impressed with myself. Especially when each number I chose had a special significance. OF COURSE, I told my family, my friends, strangers, little children, EVERYBODY about my brilliant plan. I talked about it so much, my friends and family knew my numbers without the need for hints.

After two weeks of being fully the most annoying pleasant intellectual in all West Texas, my roommate and I were parked in front of The Colonial at 9 pm. Terry was in the store, and my gut went crazy!

I had the darndest feeling that I should buy a ticket, BUT I only had 5 dollars and we were headed to the dollar theater to watch a movie. $1 to get in. $2 for a large soda, and $2 for a hotdog or nachos. So, in weighing my desires, I found getting a soda and hotdog outweighed my need to buy a lottery ticket, and realize again I was paying “the poor man's tax” as my father was want to call the lottery.

OK!

I had decided.

Shut UP gut!

Then Terry got into the vehicle.

“Aren’t you going get a lottery ticket??” He asked significantly, leaning over towards me and wagging his eyebrows to indicate he was only half mocking my intellectual prowess, which was profound, yet untested at such a young age. I then had to explain to him my well-reasoned excuse not to purchase a ticket, even repeating my father's moniker for the gambling game.

“Alright!” Terry said, and we went to the movies.

In those days, the theater would put up the numbers next to the movie screen on drawing nights. I was watching the trailers when Terry punched the holy living hell out of my shoulder.

“What the F Ter-,” Terry interrupted my indignant anger, “Look!” he said loudly, pointing. Following his pointer finger I saw at the end of it, my lottery numbers. Loud, recriminations ensued.

That was my first gut failure and will long live in the annals of family history of missed chances.

I have had many times from then to my present 47 years where, every time I ignored my gut, I later learned I should have listened to my gut. It was with this infallible information in hand last Dec, I decided TO follow my gut for ONCE in my life. Further, I decided to combine it with another observation regarding my life.

That observation was my life seemed to, without intent, be the most cliché life that I am aware of. So much so, that if I am in an unusual situation, or witness to one, and I can think of an absurd situational cliché similar to what I am witnessing, then further picture an even more absurd cliché that involves me, then it will probably happen, and then leave where ever I am because I am tired of experiencing absurd clichés in my life. Really.

As a brief example of what I mean, I have actually been in a situation where a hot, beautiful, younger woman was BEGGING me to be with her, and my response in that moment was, “No, not until you tell me something personal about you. It can be made up, I don’t care, but it has to sound personal.” To which she said, “Shut up and GIVE it to me!” I then responded with, and I am completely serious, I said, “But I want to get to know you as a person!”

Really? What!

And I meant it! I realized the irony of the situation as well as the cosmic humor of the organic interaction.

My friends said that I could get struck by lightning on a cloudless day. It was so ridiculous, even my friends and family could only agree with the sentiment.

Back to 420.

So I combined “Cliché” with “420” and came up with the conviction, not mere supposition, but conviction that the “Big One” was going to happen in the San Francisco Bay area on, you guessed it, 4/20/20.

For those too busy for historical references, “Big One” in this context refers to a geological tremor, of OMG proportions. If I had lost some of you to a more debauched definition for “Big One” when associated with San Francisco, no worries, I added some useless but fun filler for the rest of us to read until you came back from your “wonderings”. We are not judging.

Welcome back!

I further backed this up with a dream I had my first night in the area. I dreamt that I was on a roof with another guy and water was swiftly rising up and overtaking us, and I was yelling, “which way do we swim for the Berkeley Hills?!”. Not a normal dream, but one of those super lucid, real feeling ones.

I had had 5 of them in my life. One of THOSE 5 was a dream where I standing on a cliff on the west coast overlooking the ocean, and there were meteors, several of them trailing huge smoke trails behind them, and I said in the dream, "And behold, a mountain was cast down from the heavens, and this is the 6th seal”

I quietly began telling friends and family and those I like to go camping or be out of town on 4/20. Hell, I was so convincing, my sons and partner were trying to help pack so we could get on the road at 2 am on 420! It was such a mess despite all efforts, I took that as a sign I should just chill and not drive to the border of OR to wait. The border of Oregon, OF COURSE because, during our research, we discovered that our RV Trailer Park of extravagant plushness, was encircled on three sides by liquefaction zones. LIQUIFACTION ZONES! We were also within a 15-minute walk on our other side to the Hayward Faultline. As well as 5, not 4, not 6, but 5 volcanoes that had active within enough historical time, to add a nice hysterical flavor to our familial rash of survivalist instincts!

Did I really want to see if, in another cosmic cliché, I was a prophet?

“Oh man. Please no. Not in the middle of a pandemic with apocalypse feelings like this happening with everyone in twenty-seven social interactions I had been having lately. I even read a couple chapters of Revelations. The only thing more catastrophic than reading revelations with serious intent to understand is our local crazy on the street corner not carrying an “end is nigh” sign. OMG, he is carrying a sign! I will get burned at a stake for sure!”

I reasoned one of two things were going to happen come 4/20/20.

One, my talent for identifying unusual, but true patterns in meta social data was more that I wanted to actually have, or two, I had a lesson to learn and needed to reevaluate some of my life choices.

Not doing anything would be irresponsible, where doing something COULD save some lives. If nothing happened, no real trouble for anyone, and I didn’t broadcast across the internet, and set myself up for being an I-D-I-O-T publicly. Only privately, and within a small circle of people who would either need to be stopped from making more of my prophetic powers than is seemly, or hopefully, they could accept the above reasons as fair, and let me learn said lessons without too much joking about Nostradamus or even considering crossing a pandemic border to then go into a more serious lockdown for 14 days of shame, or anything. I mean, I DID tell them the same thing as in this paragraph BEFORE 420, so I have a very reasonable, and self-evaluating insanity.

YAY!

*my partner says I must inform y’all that we had actually been planning a trip to OR for many months before our invisible stalking COVID frenemy began crawling up both legs at the same time

It being June 8th now, you can figure that I learned the lesson of not associating entirely subjective experiences into any kind of designation of anything prophetic or inane. Trust me, I am not that guy, which is exactly why the whole collection of things felt MORE probable. People were like, “Man, Adrian is saying this. Shit! Maybe something IS going to happen!”

Yeah Something happened. I realized my hair was not on fire, and humans are silly as hell. Oh, I made up the term up top. Seemed in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek feel I was going for.

Pattern Aggrandizement of Self-Delusion in no way whatsoever, needs to be credited to me when bringing up who coined the phrase, but if absolutely necessary, you may use Sabrina Siebert, 42, from Troy Michigan. She IS the boss. I merely dictated this answer.

*OOOOwwwww

**she is giving the evil eye, but smiling, and denying, and now looking down at her phone. Mission accomplished.

Feedback in comments! THANKS!

Respectfully,

A. Yobi Blumberg

#veteranartist #voctrbe #veteranwriter #ptsdtherapy #thetruth #hmor

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sunshineweb · 4 years

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Are You Betting on a V-Shaped Recovery in Stock Market?

Here are the best things I read and thought about today –

“Have the record number of investors in the stock market lost their minds?” asks The New Yorker, given how investors appear persuaded that the markets are headed for a “V”-shaped recovery even as history suggests a more complicated story –

Stocks don’t always rebound in a “V” shape. During the last lengthy bear market, which accompanied the Great Recession, stocks prices started falling in September, 2007, and didn’t bottom out until February, 2009, seventeen months later. During the Great Depression, in the nineteen-thirties, the bear market lasted even longer. It began with the Wall Street crash of October, 1929, and lasted until the middle of 1932; by then, the market was down about eighty per cent from its pre-crash peak. Stocks didn’t hit new highs until the nineteen-fifties.

In the current context, that seems like a scary narrative. [Yale economist Robert Shiller, who shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, for his studies of what drives stock prices] told me that he had been thinking about the Great Depression, too. In early 1930, he reminded me, the stock market rallied for a while, much like it is doing now, only to roll over and go into another remorseless decline. “But nobody remembers that,” Shiller said. “The recent past is more resonant.” Some people do study historical episodes, of course. On Tuesday, Scott Minerd, the chief global investment officer at the Wall Street firm Guggenheim Partners, wrote on Twitter, “Stocks have clearly topped the recent uptrend. Now we find out if this is 1930 all over again.”

By the way, the Indian Chief Economic Advisor has recently predicted a V-shaped recovery for the Indian economy. He cited the example of rapid economic rebound after Spanish flu, which had a much higher kill rate. “Most people are more pessimistic than they need to be,” he remarked.

With too many moving parts, too much uncertainty, and above all, the unknown nature of the epidemic, I will certainly not buy into that prediction. I will be optimistic, but not indulge into any predictions, good or bad. Let the V, or U, or W, or L-shaped recovery take care of itself.

Meanwhile, Mint tells me that many Indian firms, especially those with weak balance sheets in sectors such as aviation and hospitality, are seeing hopes of any revival dwindle, and Forbes reports that Indian real estate, especially commercial, is set to collapse like a house of cards. Not V, or U, or W, this certainly seems like an “L” for these businesses.

Bill Nygren of Oakmark Fund has written an insightful commentary on investing during crisis. He advised –

I don’t know that this is a new lesson, but in situations like this you need to quickly realize where your skills might give you an advantage and where you have no business taking your own opinion seriously. We think we’re pretty good at figuring out business valuations. We’re pretty good at looking past current events and what companies could be worth on a long-term basis. That doesn’t mean we’re better than anyone else at guessing how the virus evolves or when the economy returns to normal. We need to make sure our portfolios don’t depend on us being experts in areas where we are not.

If you have been cursing yourself for a 40-50%+ decline in your stocks, don’t. There are bigger griefs in the world. Consider the world’s largest technology investor Softbank and its investment in the office-sharing company WeWork. The latter had been valued at $7.8 billion at the end of September 2019 after the former agreed to its bailout. That was far from its once-lofty $47 billion valuation. Now, as announced by Softbank in its latest quarterly release, WeWork’s valuation stands at $2.9 billion. That’s a 60%+ decline in a span of eight months! And in billions of dollars.

To this, SoftBank’s founder Masayoshi Son, the richest man in Japan, says – “It was foolish of me to invest in WeWork. I was wrong.”

WeWork is not the only embarrassment SoftBank is facing. The Covid-19 pandemic have devastated some of its biggest investments. The satellite company OneWeb recently announced bankruptcy, India’s Oyo isn’t looking too good either, and Uber, where Softbank invested heavily, has failed to rise over its IPO subscription price, even once.

Anyways, check out Softbank’s March 2020 earnings presentation, wherein the firm has claimed its investments in billion-dollar-plus “unicorn” start-ups were on the ascent by using pictures of unicorns toppling off a cliff into the “valley of coronavirus” and then magically flying out of the abyss!

Coronavirus has made the world and its citizens, even the smartest ones, truly interesting.

I have never used a food delivery service to order food at home. But watching 15-20 delivery agents standing outside restaurants (in the pre-Covid days) waiting for orders made me wonder how do the companies really aim to make money, given the super-competitiveness of the industry, the costs and pain of acquiring and retaining customers, and scalability issues of running the business. Yesterday, I came across this brilliant article – Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage – that explains why this is really an awful business model –

You have insanely large pools of capital creating an incredibly inefficient money-losing business model. It’s used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. You leverage a broken workforce to minimize your genuine labor expenses. The companies unload their capital cannons on customer acquisition…the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and increased prices. But is that even viable?

…The more I learn about food delivery platforms, as they exist today, I wonder if we’ve managed to watch an entire industry evolve artificially and incorrectly.

By the way, news just came in that Indian food delivery major Swiggy is laying off 1,100 employees across grades and functions over the next few days, following in the footsteps of its competitor Zomato that let go off 13% of its staff recently. Sad!

Finally, for some time, keep aside V-shaped recovery predictions, flying unicorns, and all advice for investing during crisis, and read this beautiful poem on the best investment you will ever make – your child. It’s by William Martin, from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents –

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.

* * * That’s about it from me for today.

If you liked this post, please share with others on WhatsApp, Twitter, or just email them the link to this post.

Stay safe.

With respect, — Vishal

The post Are You Betting on a V-Shaped Recovery in Stock Market? appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Are You Betting on a V-Shaped Recovery in Stock Market? published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

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mnranger5 · 4 years

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Coronavirus Will Be Remembered Very Differently By Our Family

Coronavirus, also known as, Covid-19, and while not politically correct, The Wuhan (Josh’s preferred name), The China Cough (Brianna’s preferred name) or The Chinese Disease (Ashlynn’s preferred name), Kung Flu, The Rona (my favorite) is the pandemic flu virus that originated in Wuhan, China. This virus profoundly impacted the world in early 2020, killing a small percentage of those who contract the virus, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth in the stockmarket and causing panic and social distancing like nothing this world has ever seen.

The virus is an upper respiratory infection that can cause severe trauma to the lungs. For most people, the virus ends up feeling like a cold or flu, but for others, hospitalization is required and the harshest cases have resulted in death. While it’s believed the virus began impacting China and other SE Asian countries in the Fall of 2019, our media coverage in the states was largely just snip-it reporting of it being “their problem.” After all, there were no known cases in Europe or the United States. But in hindsight, you can’t have any cases if you aren’t testing. The United States had yet to develop a widely used test to detect the virus even though there were likely hundreds of thousands of undocumented cases from NY to LA. Out of sight, out of mind. For months, these cases probably passed off as just a run of the mill colds and flues.

January: The first time I really started hearing about the Coronavirus was in late January. I was in the middle of the refinancing process on my mortgage. I was watching interest rates daily. Typically, mortgage rates follow the 10 Year Treasury Yield. The 10 Year Yield is a fairly stable yield curve that really doesn’t have huge sways, unless there is some kind of global pressure. Well, in late January, the 10 Year Yield started plummeting due to an outbreak of documented Coronavirus cases in China. China’s stock market was in disarray and although the downstream impacts on other countries markets had yet to be felt, the uncertainly led to a steep downturn in the Treasury Yield, and therefore a cliff in mortgage rates. On a daily basis, I was in contact with my mortgage broker getting the latest rate and lock recommendation. In late January, I contracted a rough upper respiratory infection. I had a fever that came and went and a sharp cough that lasted a week. At the time, I thought nothing of it, as the virus then circulated through the rest of the house over the coming weeks. But in hindsight, the symptoms were perfectly aligned with that of The Wuhan.

February 13: With the stock market at an all-time high (DOW 29,423), Blue Cross sent out our first company-wide email notification providing general information about Coronavirus. At the time, BCBS’ statement was that Minnesotans and those in the United States were at low risk for contracting the Coronavirus. Although a handful of cases had been confirmed in the United States, there really was no cause for alarm.

February 20-29: One week later, the media coverage began turn. As more and more cases were confirmed positive, the US also recorded it’s first death from Coronavirus. During the final week in February, cases began popping up in nearly every state and person-to-person transmission of the virus had been confirmed. Travel to China was banned. The media started running with wild stories about the virus giving way to politicians lining up on their side of the aisle to either commend or find fault with the response by the Trump Administration. This was the beginning of a new era for Americans. The stock market started to nose dive..

March 1-7: By the first week in March something was brewing in our way of life that didn’t quite seem right. Every news cycle was about a worsening doom and gloom picture of Covid-19. I will never forget the pictures of stretchers carrying body bags out of a Seattle-area nursing home that was plagued with the virus, killing at least 35. Early on for the United States, Seattle would serve as the epicenter for Coronavirus. The impacts of the virus were impacting our everyday life too. That same week, BCBS issued a statement to employees indicating all non-essential work travel was being canceled. That meant Dyan’s trip to San Diego (that I was hoping to piggyback along with) was canceled as well as her upcoming trips to Vermont and Baltimore. The virus was steamrolling the stock market. The DOW was down nearly 20% since mid-February. I was watching my 401K hemorrhage value daily, err, hourly. This felt very different than any other stock market correction we’ve had. EVER. This one had no end in sight. Scary. And to make matters worse, people began panic shopping, completely wiping out shelves at the grocery store. It was so surreal walking around a store with completely empty shelves. This isn’t supposed to happen in America. This has to be a dream.

March 8-19: By the second week in March, Coronavirus was all anybody could talk about. BCBS issued a statement to employees that Friday, 3/13, would be a mandatory “Work For Home” day, as the company wanted to test network adequacy and bandwidth in the instance we all needed to work from home in the future. The following Monday, 3/16, BCBS announced that BCBS employees would be required to work from home, through the end of March. Just two days later, the governor of MN announced that all schools would be closed through early April. That meant parents pulling double duty – homeschooling while trying to accomplish their day job from home. Aye-yai-yai! By the end of the week, the market was still plunging into an unknown abyss, down 30%.

With no travel being advised, and new social distancing rules in place (stay at least 6 feet apart in public spaces), we were spending a lot of time inside with the kiddos. Since the weather wasn’t really cooperating like and ideal spring quite yet, we needed to come up with some fun things to do indoors. One of my favorite things to do is break boxes of baseball cards. One of my favorite boxes when I was a kid was 1990 Score (Mom and Dad bought me a box of 36 packs for my birthday that year). The reason it’s my favorite is that it contains a hard to find Bo Jackson insert. Flaunting shoulder pads and a baseball bat, this black & white card is one of the most iconic of a junk card era. I found a box online for relatively cheap and it was in my mailbox 3 days later. On 3/19, The kids helped me re-live my youth, by tearing into these plastic packs. I had given the kids a description of the exact card we were looking for, so the hunt was on.

Brianna pulled the first BO!

Scarlett and Ashlynn followed up with two more Bo Jackson cards!

In all, it took about thirty minutes to blow through all 36 packs. But wow, so much nostalgia, and so much fun. That Bo Jackson card is worth about $1 today, but the excitement we had together ripping those packs open made the investment so incredibly worth it!

March 21: Minnesotans were in full lockdown on Brianna’s birthday. No restaurants, entertainment venues or shopping was open. Therefore, we had to celebrate Brianna’s birthday quarantine-style! Brianna wanted to have a bake-off for her birthday, so Brianna and Scarlett made vanilla birthday cake while Ashlynn and Felicity made chocolate cupcakes. Both were off the charts good….there honestly was no loser between the two! For her birthday, she received two 5lb tubs of slime as well as a new bike.

Later that evening (after a family bike ride), we watched Jumanji 2 in the basement with theater popcorn and mega candy boxes!

March 22: This is the day why we will remember the Coronavirus Quarantine a little bit differently than most families. WE BOUGHT A PUPPY! Here is how it all went down. Dyan and I have been talking about getting a puppy for a long time…like for the past 3 years at least. We’ve just never pulled the trigger. Earlier in the week, I began thinking of ways to entertain the kids should this quarantine really eat into the spring and summer months. All I kept coming back to was: a puppy. I mean, it’s the perfect time. We’d all be at home to take care of the dog for a prolonged period of time. Plus, with spring on the doorstep, training outside should be a lot easier than it would be in the dead of winter. I had planned to find the perfect puppy and surprise everybody…including Dyan. I texted and emailed with breeders all week, but was coming up empty. I had one pup in SW Minnesota that I could find ready, but quite honestly, the dog wasn’t very attractive. I needed help finding a puppy, so I decided to tell Dyan on Sunday morning. SHE ADORED THE IDEA OF A PUPPY! Within an hour, Dyan found a litter of AKC Yellow Labs in a town southwest of Rochester, near the border of Iowa. And within two hours, we had placed a hold on one of four males in the litter, specifically, “Red Collar.”

We didn’t tell the kids yet, however. We had them all get ready for the day and head out to the car for a nice little quarantine-busting road trip. The kids thought the drive was just so we could get out of the house for the first time in a week. After an hour of driving, the kids were getting antsy, asking questions. They knew something was up. Finally, ten minutes before we arrived at the Hayfield farm, we told the kids we needed their help picking out the perfect puppy for our family. I have never seen so much joy and excitement from all of the kids, EVER. There were tears, shrieks and screams. The puppy, these kids have so patiently waited for was finally over.

And when we stepped foot in the garage of the breeder, there were puppies from two different litters. “Blue Collar” and Red Collar were just inside the door, while several other puppies were in a large cage. And while all the puppies were absolutely adorable, Red Collar, the puppy Dyan picked out in the pictures posted on Facebook, was going to be ours. No question about it.

He was bigger than the other puppies with floppy ears and so much skin that his wrinkles rolled in all the right places. The breeder told us his mom, Lady Red Fern (Fernie) was 80lbs, and his dad, Healthlands Love My Charger (Charger) was 95lbs.

She fully expected Red Collar to reach 90lbs. With his massive paws at only 9 weeks old, there was no denying this puppy would grow up to be a biggun! The kids took turns holding the puppies, but Red Collar never left our sight. Within 20 minutes, we were headed back to the car, with the puppy swaddled in a blanket. Welcome to the family, Red Collar!

Your new name is Ranger.

March 24 - April 25

Ranger really did help to break up the monotony of our daily grind from home.

The kids were always ready to put up a good fight over who got to take him for a walk, give him a bath, cuddle with him on the couch or play in our last spring snow storm.

The pup never had to walk. He was constantly carried around the house and neighborhood by the kids. As soon as one would put him down, somebody else would pick him up. He was treated like a Prince.

But even though our family had a new puppy to love, life was still at a standstill in so many regards. We didn’t leave the house the entire week. We had Hy-Vee and Amazon deliver all of our groceries. We were in the process of trying to find the right balance of being school teachers and BCBS employees throughout the day. Not going to lie, it was tough. All of us huddling up around the kitchen table with laptops, notebooks, text books and iPads seemed foreign and severely tested boundaries. Our kitchen table has never been used so much...

On March 29th, I was going stir crazy. I needed to get out of the house. So Mike and I hatched a plan to get on the water and do a little social distance fishing at the Red Wing Dam. Temps were in the 40′s with a howling 30 mph wind out of the north and light showers that turned to sleet at times. It was absolutely the most miserable fishing conditions I have ever fished in. But, being on the water for the first time this year was worth every moment of the experience. Mike even salvaged the fishing day with a GIANT 10″ Sauger!

On my way home that night, I found the cheapest gas I recall in my lifetime. Oh Coronavirus, I love how you are making the gas cheap!

Over the next month, Ranger brightened our lives so much. To the point where it’s hard to imagine a life without him. He attached to our family (and us to him) so quickly, that we didn’t leave the house without him. He came on our walks, trips to Target, pick-up & drop-off of the kids, food take-out runs and any other time we had to leave the house. We just couldn’t imagine him being home alone.

Way back in the day...like at least 4 years ago, when Dyan and I first discussed getting a dog, we always said we’d get two at the same time, so that they would be best buds and always have a friend to play with when we weren’t home. Our plan was to find a litter that had both yellow and chocolate males. For years we searched on and off for the perfect littler of pups, but could never find a large breed mixed litter. During that time of looking, Dyan and I put deposits on two pups (separate occasions), which we disappointingly backed out on because of bad timing.

But timing wasn’t an issue this time. In fact, timing was working out to our advantage. We had nowhere to be but home, for the foreseeable future. So how about that second puppy, Dyan?

April 26

We had once again scoured the puppy pages online looking for the perfect Chocolate Lab. Dyan would once again get the credit for finding this one. He was located in an obscure town in eastern Iowa. We’d make plans to drive three and a half hours and meet at Bass Pro Shoppes in Des Moines.

We arrived at 9:00, and when I say we, I include Ranger, because again, we don’t leave home without him. We were the Welcome Wagon contingent. The breeder pulled up shortly after us, with a puppy in his lap. Our puppy? Not so fast. We took to the puppy immediately. He seemed perfect, and at barely 8 weeks old. The breeder went on and on with stories about breeding world class coon hounds. We just wanted to get on the road! The puppy snuggled in tight to us, never touching the ground in the 20 minutes. As we were wrapping up, I decided to put the pup on the ground to meet Ranger. The pup had a severe limp on his rear right leg. The breeder was very honest about it indicating he had stepped very hard on the pups paw 3 hours earlier that morning. He indicated there “could” be some damage to the paw, or, he “could” be just fine. The entire conversation changed in that moment. It had been three hours since the incident occurred, so he should be feeling better if there was no damage, right? What if it was a broken paw? Having a broken paw cared for could be several thousand dollars depending on the damage. The puppy gingerly hobbled around the empty Bass Pro parking lot. Neither of us were comfortable bringing an injured puppy home. Finally, the breeder offered to drive home, pick up the next largest male in the litter, and meet us at this same spot in a couple hours. That seemed like the best option at this point.

Since Iowa did not have a Corona-related stay-at-home order in place, most stores were open. We leisurely walked around Bass Pro for an hour looking at puppy toys and puppy treats.

Around 11, the breeder arrived at Bass Pro for the second time, with his second dog. He profusely apologized for the entire ordeal, and for not being able to have given this second pup a bath. He pulled the pup from the back cab of the truck.

Now, I should rewind here just a bit for some additional context to the story. As Dyan and I walked Ranger around Bass Pro I think we were both leaning toward walking away from the sale anyway because the overall vibe the breeder was giving off wasn’t exactly selling us on his litter (but that’s another story.) We also both agreed that this second dog was NOT the dog we chose from the litter. We had no pre-attachment to him like we did over the limping puppy. We had gushed over the other puppy for two weeks as we secretly waited for pick-up day. But this second dog only had one picture posted online. He was Male #2, or “Blue Collar.”

Our agreement was that if Blue Collar didn’t seem like a good fit, or wasn’t cute, or wasn’t what we were expecting, we’d walk away and not look back.

So, when Blue Collar was pulled out of the cab of the truck, and we got our first look at him, it was game over. Immediate. Period. Done. Blue Collar was ours. He was absolutely adorable. I asked Dyan the question (full well knowing the answer,) “What do you think?” Obviously no response was required as the baby rubbed up against Dyan’s cheek before nuzzling in under her chin. We put him on the ground, for safe measure. Had to make sure Blue Collar didn’t have a limp! He cautiously moved around the parking lot, all paws fully functioning.

Ranger seemingly towered over Blue Collar as the two sat side by side. Neither quite sure what to make of the other. The breeder wasted no time and was gone quickly this time around. We stared at the two puppies, wondering what we had just got ourselves into. At this point one of us finally called Blue Collar by his new name. Moose, let’s take you to your new home!

The drive home turned into a much longer journey with several potty breaks along the way. Ranger and Moose shared a bed n the backseat a majority of the drive home.

And when we arrived home, we broke the surprise to the kids by walking into the room holding him. The kids went nuts! Hysteria, tears and shrieks of joy. The Blaniels Family was now complete!

And even though Minnesota is still on lock-down from Coronavirus, our family is quickly building new bonds and soaking up moments of excitement and joy caused by the two guys!

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