On Manners and Meeting Strangers

The Benefits of a Positive Face Forward

About five years ago, it was 2AM in a little ski town at the bottom of the Earth. I was sitting, squished, in a taxi van, with several fruity characters. On my right a man in a dinosaur costume drifted off to sleep. In the seats in front of me, a couple in studded leather were making out. Behind me was the girl who asked me to lick LSD off her hand five hours earlier. She stared out the window, clutching a drink bottle. All of these people are sky-divers. I met them that night. “Wanna come to a dress-up party?” My good friend, who works operations on ski fields, had asked. “Why not? It’s only a Tuesday.” I responded. 

Most of what occurred that night I have told again and again, to syphon laughs out of friends. I fell for a girl, as we sat staring up at the beautiful full moon, discussing poetry - as cliché as that sounds. A man arrived, dressed as a magician, with a rabbit in his hat. Except that the rabbit was real. And that it was dead. Many occasions throughout the night, I stood m…