The Restoration of All Things (Part 29)

Monday night. Yikes.

Despite my hopes that the earth would open up and swallow me alive before Monday night happened, the day had proceeded as mundane and usual as always. Whether it was God who told me to bring a friend or simply my desire to get through the meeting in one piece, I was monumentally grateful when a friend of mine (Rae) decided to come with me.

I do, however, firmly believe that it was God who sent the raccoon into my path on my way to meet Azalea in the University Center. It was too precious and random. Nothing calms me down like a close encounter with a wild animal. Call me weird.

Rae was eating a hamburger, and happily handed me a piece when I requested it. I sat down on the sidewalk and tapped the concrete to get his fuzzy little attention. It worked like a charm. He trundled over and happily took little pieces of hamburger out of my hand and sat on his haunches munching and staring at me lest I make any false moves.

When we ran out of food he carried on his way.

We got to the 2nd floor of the University Center and there Azalea was. She had a friend with her, too. Despite requesting that I come alone.

They had a tub of some kind of frozen yogurt and a bunch of spoons. After they finished explaining that they thought it would be fun to hand spoons out to people and see how many we could get to join in, I began excitedly telling them about the raccoon that I found on my way over.

I wasn't a 4th of the way through that story before I saw Azalea shoot her friend a look that said now.

Her friend looked bewildered for a moment and then her face said oh yeah, okay... and she interrupted my raccoon story to say, "So! Azalea! How are you and your boyfriend doing?"

They both stopped and looked at me.

"Oh, you mean Joseph? We're doing great! I'm just so glad he's not Ben! This is such a better relationship than that one was!"

They stopped and looked at me again.

I blinked. Was it hot in here? It was a little hard to breathe. I started to take my coat off. I slid off one sleeve and was halfway through sliding off the other when I saw (and remembered) the sharpie mural on my arm. I panicked and started trying to put my coat back on in a hurry, but in the process I looked up and saw that it was too late.

Azalea and Friend were staring at my arm.

I let my coat fall to the floor.

"Oh...", Azalea stammered, "I... he... you know, Joseph draws on me all the time too! Yeah, at contra a few weeks ago... you weren't there... he had drawn on me so much that one guy said he danced with me because he thought I had the most ink of anyone there. You should have seen his face when I told him it was just sharpie, and that my boyfriend drew it on me!" She and her friend were ... forcing laughter?

Azalea said she liked to draw too and took a huge smelly sharpie out of her friend's backpack, uncapped it, and started making a dot on her friend's leg. The dot grew into a giant black oval before Azalea realized the sharpie was too big and unwieldy, and it wasn't going to become anything else.

She gave up and asked me if I wanted to come to her house and see the kittens her cat had.

Oh sure. Try to lure me in with kittens.

"Um, no thanks... I have a lot of homework, ya know?"

"Would you like a ride back to your dorm?"

"It's a really pretty night, I think I'd rather walk. Thank you, though!"

Rae and I left.

Once we were halfway back and completely out of earshot, I begged Rae to tell me I wasn't crazy.

"Did that just happen?"

Rae confirmed, yes. Yes it did.

(Continued here)