I had borrowed a shirt from Dave, and the time came to give it back. He worked behind the counter at a bar/lounge place in an old, trendy part of town. I was pretty embarrassed bringing this to him, as it had a stain on it. I had been stabbed the week before, and unfortunately, it was a messy wound and I couldn't get the blood out of the shirt. I was going to try to fold it so that he couldn't see the stain and then just run off, but I figured he'd be madder at me if I tried to trick him, so I just came right out and told him about the stain. Well, he thought blood stains were cool, so he was thrilled. I thought that was nice.

I walked out to where all the plush leather chairs were situated around tables as suited businesspeople sat around chatting and laughing. Towards the back, I saw some younger people sitting on folding chairs, and one of them was Deron. He just happened to be my roommate. (For a little background information, Deron (rhymes with Jerome) was this nice red-haired boy from Israel that lived in Auburn for a while. I stood next to him in the Christmas program in 1st grade when we sang Little Drummer Boy, even though he was a grade below me. I last saw him in 1985.) I went over and sat down with him and the other people. I didn't know anyone, so I decided to look for a jukebox. As it turned out, this place didn't have a traditional juekbox--you had to go up to the bar and buy a cd from them to have it played. I wanted to hear something by Public Enemy, so I asked the bartender, who had a strong Indian accent, and he showed me the two Public Enemy cds they had. They had Fear of a Black Planet for £9.99, and Greatest Misses for £23.95. I already had Fear of a Black Planet, and that was a lot to pay for Greatest Misses, so I just went back to my seat. Except my seat wasn't there! Some obnoxious girl had shoved it out so that she could sit closer to Deron. I wasn't having a good time anyway, so I just told Deron I was going home.

Conveniently enough, we lived right next door, and you could see into the lounge from our windows on the third floor of our building. However, I could only look up at our windows when I got to the building, as I had lost my keys. I hollared over to Deron, asking him if he had his. He looked out the window of the lounge and hollared down that he was hoping I had mine. So he came down and stood next to me as we both stared up at the windows. I told him that I didn't feel safe, as anyone could have my keys right now and they could be taking all my stuff or breaking in at night and killing us. He assured me that they wouldn't break in and kill us because we were never going to get in. But he also assured me that this was a very safe neighborhood.

Right as he said that, a scrawny guy came running down the street and into the building next to us. Behind him was a big huge Hulk Hoganish type who was in hot pursuit. The little guy appeared in the third story windows as he was shutting them. Deron said to me "See, he's safe! The third story is the best one to be on--no one can get to you." Well then the Hulk Hogan guy climbed up the stone face of the building and smashed through the guy's window and went on in. We figured if he can do it, why can't we? Well, probably because neither of us was Hulk Hogan. I got almost up to the second story windows, but that's as far as I could go before my fingers would just start bleeding. So much for that plan.

We asked the owner of the lounge if we could go up on his roof and hopefully find a way to get over to ours and into our apartment. We got up there and looked down (the lounge building was 4 stories tall) on our building and saw two hatches to the roof from our apartment. One was directly above my room, but it had been pretty severely tarred over, and prying it up would be pretty much impossible. The other was towards the rear of the apartment, and was directly above a boarded up room that we were told not to go into. Since it was boarded up from the outside of the room, we figured that climbing into the room from above wouldn't help much. So I told Deron that I was going to go over to the jail and ask around.

I walked up to the jail, which was up on a nice wooded hill right next to the zoo. (by the way, I don't know what town this was) The jail was a new, one-level building with an overhang coming out, covering the sidewalk. Between the sdewalk and the cell bars was about 5 feet of plowed up dirt, so that if you approached the cells the guards would see your footprints. I got there and saw no guards. I started calling out to the prisoners asking them if they knew where my keys were. I stuck my hands in my pockets and then realized I had a wrench in my pocket and that if I was caught with that, the guards might think I was trying to break someone out. So I tossed it up to the end of the walkway. I kept walking and asking for my keys, but no one knew anything about them. I got to the end and stepped out from under the overhang and picked up my wrench from the grass.

I looked up and there were Alan, Mark, a girl I recognize but don't know the name of, and a girl I don't know. They were going to the zoo. I walked with them and talked until we got to the door, and then I headed down to the restaurant. It was shaped like a train car, with booths on either side of a narrow aisle. I asked people I passed if they had seen my keys. No one had. I started to walk out the back door, but there was a cook coming carrying a huge load of dirty pots and pans, so I stood and held the door for him. He wouldn't go, though, and gestured me to go first, so I did, and then he went out. A man who was standing near me goes "Stupid booner" ("booner" here is the ignorant white man's term for "black" or "Indian").

I walked back uphill to the Student Union (at this point I realied this place roughly resembled the Peru State College campus, only they don't have a zoo and prison that I know of) because I was supposed to meet the other guys from the corridor for a game of some sort. I don't remember what we did, but we played it in this dim room in the basement with white walls and folding chairs everywhere, and the only prop I remember was an overhead projector. While we played, we had cds playing in the corner, and when it came time to clean up, Alan's Oasis cd was missing. He had the empty case only. Dan assured him that it hadn't been stolen, as "Everyone in England already has that album, and the only people who don't have it wouldn't steal it."

Somehow I acquired a boat so that I could go up and down the canal, and the whole family, cousins and everything, was coming to see it that afternoon. Wade was one of the first to arrive, and right away he got on the boat and went to sleep. Everyone else was showing up one at a time, and it started to get dark. Lisa and Kris had their children Alexis and Nathan put into a handheld video game so that they would be easier to transport across the Atlantic. I started playing the game, and as it was, you were Alexis and you had to bounce baby Nathan around. Items of food would show up and you had to plan his trajectory so that he would intercept the food. But if it was unhealthy food, he'd grow fatter, and eventually squish you. I thought it was nice because this way, since Alexis was part of a video game, she couldn't cry and run away as soon as she saw me.

It started raining, and two policemen walked down the side of the canal where we were all waiting and said "7:30! Time to cover the craft!" I asked Bailey, who was sitting next to me on someone's front steps, to hand me my sandals, as I had to go cover the boat. She did, but for the life of me I could not get them on. I was having a terrible time. When I finally did get them on, my mom, dad, Aunt Gloria, and Uncle Denny had already put the cover on. They had to take it off a bit later though when they realized Wade was still sleeping underneath.

I went back home to Nebraska with my family after the boat bash. They keypt commenting on how my hair wasn't that much different, and I was like "How can it not be different? I just got it cut 3 days ago!!" When I got home, though, I saw it in the mirror, and in that last day it had grown probably 3 inches. I didn't understand it, so I went to my room. I didn't have a door, so I used a folding wooden screen to cut off the corner of my room where the doorway was.

Right beside the door there was a drawing I had made of Spiderman in black pen. Someday I promised my mom I would color it for her. Well the next morning, my mom came in to wake me up, and she saw that part of the picture had been colored. She goes "Neal, did you let Paul color this?" I was like "Huh? I was sleeping, and I didn't let anyone color anything!" It was a terrible job of coloring, with rough scribbles going out of the lines and everything. There was some girl with her who I didn't recognize. She was probably about my age, but shorter with mid-back length straight blonde hair. She examined the screen and said "Hmm" but that was it. The next morning, more of the picture was colored. I swore to my mom that I didn't color that poorly. The other girl said "It wasn't Neal! Look, here on the back of the screen, Dale Eggert has been drawing on the screen as well as coloring the Spiderman picture! Right here, he even signed his name!" I had been proven innocent.

Then out of the blue I decided to go to London. I had all of Saturday free so I figured I should look around and try to find out where the Lullaby for the Working Class show was. I remember seeing stores everywhere, and practically every other person on the street was wearing a hooded jacket and holding a knife. The muggers were helpful though. One told me to give him my wallet, but I told him that I don't own a wallet. He then directed me to a leather shop around the corner. Another told me that my pockets were very well stitched, as he had a terrible time getting his fingers in there to search for cash. I went into one store that looked like it had toys in it. I didn't see any, but right as I was about to walk out one of the side doors, a man sat down between me and the door with his TWO DOGS. They had sort of light blonde hair, like General Custer hair. One was taller, and another was more roundish. They started barking at me, and I asked the guy if he could please restrain them so that I could pass through. I heard him say "Oh, they're harmless" only his mouth didn't move--the taller dog's did. They started saying more stuff, and he just stared straight ahead, wide eyed and smiling, as if any second he was going to fall over forward with a knife in his back.

I did finally get out, and walked across a large green space to a bar. I thought a bar would definitely have concert info. I had trouble climbing up the stairs, as the second step was about the height of 4 normal steps (but the 1st and 3rd were normal). Some person behind me gave me a boost though so I made it in just fine. I walked through the first room, which was all white everywhere, and there were a lot of concert postings on a bulletin board that had a Manic Street Preachers beer bottle emblem at the top, but none of them were the show I was looking for.

I moved into the next room, which was all reddish, and I just asked out loud if anyone knew about the Lullaby for the Working Class concert. There were three guys sitting in a booth wearing flannel shirts and seed caps speaking Midwestern American English, which I was surprised to find in a London bar. They weren't any help, but they had a lot of great farmer-type jokes, and I sat down with them and listened, thinking "This is really nice company."

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