I Could Have Gotten Detention For This
Stalker In Training
Vacations Don't Always Clear Your Head
Off to the Mountains
The Ones You Least Suspect
Don't Drive to Boston
I guess I'm sick of winter.
Obviously, I have family issues.
The Amazing Animated Slime Mold
Don't Think About Texas
David Sedaris Doesn't Have All the Answers
Even a Sock Puppet Can't Save Me
Upstaged
Makeshift Runway
The Death of Indie Boy
My Stalker Soulmate
Imaginary Friends
Indie Boy Falls in Love
What Are the Odds?
College In the Woods
Airport Under Attack
Bart Simpson, SUV Driver
More School Dreams
Dysfunctional Family Vacation
Three Mixed-Up Places
A Fine Educational Institution
Why I Shouldn't Go Back to High School
Please Make These High School Dreams Stop!
Slimy Fish, Blood, Bad Poetry, and Other Things of Annoyance
In Which I Get Hungry
The Weird Running Girl Cheers on the Team
Welcome Home to the Eve 6 Apartments
The Dorky Road Trip
Rich and Stupid
The Starving Shutterbug
A Wholesome Night Out
I Swear I Would Follow Anything... Just Get Me Out of Here
Not Quite as Fun as a Blue Light Special
I Challenge You To a Duel
Deja Vu, College Style
The Love Child That Wasn't
Just a Little Awkward
The Two Enthused Concertgoers
Shopgirl Beauty Queens
Why You Shouldn't Date Me
Five Beers to Forget
The Game Room Crack-Up
I Shocked the Monkey
Always Second Guessing
At the Movies
I watch too much syndicated TV.
When I go to New York, I'll know not to spend my entire visit in an elevator.
Speed Racer is Dead.
Night School
In Which I Become a Whiny Brat
Friend From Another Planet
How My Fanatically Popular Ex Became a Powerpuff Girl
Why I Don't Spend Spring Break At the Mall
More Reasons to Avoid Family Vacations
What Do I Hear When I Say I Hear the Call of the Road?
Grilled Cheese and the Magical John Updike
The Unmasked Ex
Trying to Forget Your Name
The Tribe Has Spoken
Shakespeare, Kung Fu, and the Manhattan Countryside
"So I'm standing in this rye field..." and other bad literary allusions.
Why I Avoid Family Vacations
The Forgotten Sister
Home Invasion
The Flying Train
Let's Just Be Friends
The Masochist Strikes Again
We be hangin' in sex ed, yo.
The Psychotic Psychologist
So It Goes
A Nacho Cheesier Reconciliation
The Rummage Sale That Wasn't
Ex-Boyfriend Dream #4007
Forgetful Me
How 'Bout No Longer Being Masochistic?
Birthday Bust
Big Time Shopper
Would you like fries and a hooker with that?
Every Night is Ladies' Night at The Crab Shack
Pseudo Revenge on the Ex
Holiday Party Reject Extraordinaire
The Time is Out of Joint
TV Heroines Don't Get Dumped for Gay Guys, Do They?
Holiday Cheer
The Distorted Boyfriend and Other Stories
It's the Cheesiest
Gone Snowboardin'
Laura comes home.
Going to Ithaca
Chris the Druggie

Jungle babies and bunny births
The Scary Hospital
Night School Is Weird
The Queerest Of The Queer
Burger King...or should I say...Burger King/King of the Chickens???
The Science Of Music
How to dispell demons
sex tutorial
near death experience 1
Theft
Gone Snowboardin'
Christmas at Ricki Lake's House
DREAMS
Nukes
Weird Rape Dream
saving the world and waking up at the neighbours
white marsh parking lot
Ice Cream Man
In This Dream, My Name Was Rachel
traveling in a VW camper
wee-hee
my baby
Walking to school
winter
David Sedaris Doesn't Have All the Answers

Author: Frannyglass





(I had begun to think I was exempt from having weird dreams when I was suffering from terrible sleep deprivation. So much for that.)



I was at high school graduation practice in a strange brick building that looked nothing like my high school. My favorite high school teacher, Mrs. Davis, was directing everyone to line up alphabetically "by first names," even though everyone somehow knew she meant "by last names" and organized themselves correctly. Everything was just as I remembered it. Funny how my subconscious mind still knows the alphabetical order of everyone in my senior year homeroom. I was standing next to my friend Heidi Holz in line, and everyone was whispering about who they thought the valedictorian was going to be. I kept looking at them strangely, because I couldn't believe they didn't know. Apparently I had travelled back in time or something: I was the only one sitting at high school graduation practice with the perspective of a third-year college student.



Everyone filed into line correctly the first time, though a couple guys in the class thought it would be funny if they messed up the order the second time. Mrs. Davis got exasperated and told us to all break for lunch. I went outside and saw Chris's mom going through my car. More evidence that time was all screwed up. In June of 1998, I had yet to meet Chris or own a Mazda Protege.



"Hi Laurie," Chris's mom said as she tore through my glove compartment. "I just know that Christopher took a secret road trip to Montreal this year. I can prove it if I find a map of Canada in his car."



I was going to mention that the car was MINE, and I was also going to ask why she had come to Georgia from Rhode Island just to search a car, but I kept quiet and sat in the passenger seat, waiting for her to leave so I could go get some lunch. I tried to organize all the contents of my glove compartmen, but she kept messing them up again.



Apparently the only people who were caught in the world of June 1998 were the people in my high school class. Chris and his mom and I seemed to be normal as far as perception of time was concerned. Chris said he'd meet me during my break from graduation practice, but when I reached the spot where he said he'd be (a plain classroom: off-white cinder-block walls, blue indoor-outdoor carpet, no decoration except a brown table and a wipe-off-board with a few stray red and blue markings), I found myself alone.



When he finally appeared, I was crying.



"If I tell you where I've been, you'll get mad at me," he said.



"I know I will," I said. "Tell me anyway."



"Look, I'll just give you some hints, and then you can guess."



"Fine."



He got out a piece of paper and started drawing lines on it. They looked arbitrary at first, but I finally saw that he was writing parts of letters but leaving some parts out (like an "M" without the first line on it). He seemed to be spelling out two names. One of them was "Amanda," while the other was a name I had only seen in an online journal I read once every few months (again, strange what my subconscious remembers).



I said, "You went out with two girls?"



He nodded. Then he lifted his dark green sweater over his head to reveal a t-shirt that said "New York Snowboarding 2000." I started crying even more. "You went *snowboarding* with two girls when you knew you were supposed to meet me for lunch?"



He nodded, though he didn't try to comfort me. I was sitting on the floor crying when he started trying to justify his actions. He said *I* had driven him to want to go snowboarding because I had asked him to come visit me over New Year's.



"That's prime snowboarding time," he said. "I would have never been able to use my new snowboard if I hadn't gone now."



I only cried harder and told him he'd broken any number of promises he'd made to me. I finally got sick of trying to make him see what he had done wrong. So I went to the grocery store.



I don't remember much about shopping, only that I had a basket instead of a cart and that a lot of the products had retro-looking labels on them. I headed up to the cashier with my basket of groceries. The cashier was a smiling old woman who knew my name.



"Would you like to pay your past due grocery bills?" she asked me after she had finished scanning my items.



I said, "I have past due grocery bills?"



She nodded, and I handed over my debit card. When I got my receipt, I found that I had just paid $1500.25 in groceries.



"I have really, really overdrawn my account this time," I said to myself.

June Island June

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