Morning Dignity

Setting: A campsite in central Wisconsin the morning after a dear friend's bachelor party. It's late July or early August... or possibly sometime in June.

9:13 am: I wake up alone in my three-person tent. I feel good. This is a small miracle. The amount of time I spent sleeping could have been hours or minutes... or days.

9:17 am: I am greeted as I cross the campsite. "Hey Curtis." I don't know who Curtis is.

9:23 am: I am Curtis. And apparently Curtis spoke very passionately the night before about the theory of evolution and agnosticism. Curtis is also worried that he has low testosterone.

9:31 am: I pull out of the campsite so that I can drive across the state and into Minnesota to attend my ten-year reunion. As I leave, I am told that I should stop listening to NPR because it might be screwing with my head.

9:33 am: I tune my radio to the local NPR station.

9:52 am: I stand in an A & W in Minong, Wisconsin. As I watch a greasy-haired teen fry a piece of breaded white meat for my crispy chicken BLT (CCBLT, I guess), I have time to think about the direction in which my life is headed. It's headed west after the CCBLT: west to Bertha and my ten-year reunion.

9:57 am: I burn my mouth on the CCBLT. The greasy meal does not make me feel better. In fact, I am steadily feeling worse and worse as the minutes go by.

10:13 am: I squint at my iphone screen. A blinking blue dot appears over Minong and at the far end of a purple line that leads home. "You can't go home again," I say to no one.

Well, I can't stay in Minong.

Goodbye, Curtis.