Temple Square (take two)

It was gloriously fun. I fell asleep on the way to Sandy while listening to the soundtrack from Nightmare before Christmas. Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones, an emptiness began to grow. There's something out there, far from my home; a longing that I've never known. While I was out we got lost and when I woke up our driver was taking a picture of Chewbacca on the street corner. We got to TRAX and rode to see the lights. We wandered and told stories -I got to see the visitor's center-we watched a movie about the nativity. Outside again, I jumped up into a Japanese nativity set to have my picture taken with something that was supposed to be a donkey but looked more like an anteater in my opinion. I took one more with a camel. We threw chunks of ice at each other in a frenzied snowball fight that knocked the leaves off of the nearby trees. I ran around. I offered M $100,000 to swim in the fountain. That would be too cold she said. I'll let you hold the button I have in my pocket if you spit on that huge chunk of ice. She did, and held my button until her hands were too cold. There was a statue of Joseph and Emma where he's putting a quarter or something in her hand, so we put my button in her hand instead and took a picture.
Four people in our group ran into people that they knew. B and I felt left out, so we staged a reunion. B? Is that you? It's been forever! Fancy meeting you here of all places! It felt good to run into a long lost friend even if it was a lie. I skipped along as high as I could. I ran. I yelled at the people crossing the street - "Jay-walking punk anarchists!"-as I crossed the street with them. I was spastic. M and I played chicken while we waited for the train. There's a cop now. We did it at the crosswalk and raced while the red flashing hand counted down. I made it across and back 3 and a half times. I won. The fence around one of the trees looked like an umbrella stand. The streetlamps had Indians on them. Native Americans. Red men. I saw a gargoyle and thought how terrible it would be if something fell out of its nose on me.

A boy on the platform had a red balloon and I talked about that old movie that has a boy with a red balloon. There were no seats. When the train went uphill I clung sideways to the handrail and pretended I was being sucked out of an airplane. Your mom's face looks like Jordan! I sang "On My Way" in a high falcetto voice for a bit. I talked loudly about the train being derailed. The movie Unbreakable. What would your super hero power be? Back at the Sandy station we walked on the train tracks. Went back to M2's house. We ate chili and cornbread and drank mint hot chocolate. What do you mean, who's One Eyed Willy? I can't talk to you anymore. On the way home I told stories about our old Ford Econoline van and its mismatched seats and it not having any seatbelts and how whoever sat closest to the sliding door was in charge of holding a short wooden baseball bat. In case of carjackers our dad said. We talked about people we knew who had died driving over Christmas break. The Pacific ocean is too cold. I asked if they had seen Pete and Pete, because of the episode where Pete and Artie (the strongest man in the world) beat up the ocean.

I'm glad I had a chance to do temple square the right way, with friends and naps and snowballs and a lot of spastic-ness. Life is good.