Fingers Fumble Faintly In The Dark

These past two weeks I have had so much pent up rage and angst and emoness. But really, I just got out of bed and really need to hit the can, so most of it is gone. I'll start with the easy stuff and see if anything comes back.

On my vacationmabob, we were at Grover Hot Springs and I had just gotten the lifeguard angry at me, so i couldn't expect a sucessful rescue if i knocked my head on the bottom of the pool. Some old, fat guy had asked whether or not the hotspring in question was chlorinated, and the lifeguard replied "Yes, but with Bromine." Taking a page out of TK's book, I proceeded to tell the lifeguard (who's biceps were huge, but he had chicken legs), that a pool can not be chlorinated with bromine. The hotspring must be brominated instead. He told me that since they were in the same family of elements, it meant the same thing. Naturally, I thought it was stupid, but stupidly, I told him so. The lifeguard gave me a dirty look and remarked that he had way more training that i did and so his idea was not stupid. A glance at the faces around the pool said otherwise. I had won the battle for now, but that was assuming I didn't start drowning.

My attention drifted to the two little boys who reminded me of myself the last time i came here. They were engaging in a conversation that I could imagine having with a friend of mine, so many years ago.

"I, I've, I've been up a thousand feet!"

"I've been up fiftytwo eighty hundred feet."

"wow"

"See, see, see the top of that mountain there? That's fiftytwo eighty hundred feet!"

"I've been up threethousand feet"

"No way! That's almost to the moon! You can't have gone up that far!"

"Nuh-uh, fiftytwo eighty hundred feet is farther than the moon!"

"No, cos, cos my dad told me and he's a, and he's, and he's a geologist! He studies feet! Like how high we are in the air! He TOLD me!"

"Well, if he's a geolgist.. but i still went up threethousand feet."


I faded away there cos my dad started talking to me. He was a geologist. And I could read the signs. Grover Hot Springs: elevation 2000ft.