How I spent my Friday

Missing school on a Friday is awesome. You know what's even more awesome? Missing school because you're lying in bed with a temperature of 101.8 and a body-shaking, eye-watering, furniture-trembling cough. Add the fact that you can't swallow anything but warm liquid because your tonsils have swelled up so much it feels like you're gargling razor blades, and you've got a pretty good description of my Friday. TGIF, man!

Doctor says it's not strep throat, at least. Maybe bronchitis. Hopefully not mono. I'm taking this gift from God rather well, sleeping about 18 out of 24 hours with Foofie my huge white stuffed bear, watching some HBO. Okay, I was actually too weak to watch TV yesterday so I just wept silently into my pillow wheezing woe is me.

Then, at 3:25, a phone call woke me up. I didn't mind much since I've pretty much slept the entire day. The call was from Friend, who was apparently standing outside our apartments for the past hour trying to get inside his house. Apparently, he fell asleep at 11 at somebody's house and was later carried into the car and driven home; his mom, when he called her around 2 AM to open the door, didn't want to believe his story and continued sleeping. "Brrrrwwwrwrwrrr it's cooooooold," he stammered into the phone. I felt so bad for the guy, I offered to sneak him out a jacket and maybe a cup of hot tea, but he refused, saying I was too sick and he shouldn't have woken me up in the first place.

We hung up so that he could try calling his mom again. I couldn't help it; I peeked through my blinds at his sorry figure knocking on the door over and over again, with his thin Abercrombie hood barely covering his large head and disproportionally small ears. But they were cute ears. Ears that were now surely about to turn blue and fall off. After ten minutes, he called me again, but his phone died in the middle of a sentence. In a mad fit of rage, he banged on his mother's window. She must have said something, because he growled "I've been standing here for an hour" in response. The banging must have pissed her off because soon enough, the door opened and Friend disappeared behind it.

He called me a few minutes later after plugging in his phone. I'm not sure why; I could barely make out any words in his half-assed whispering, and after about 30 seconds he gave up and told me goodnight.

I couldn't fall asleep for about two hours after that. It was probably because I got way more sleep than my system needed, but I was thinking. And, in case you weren't aware, we can't fall asleep if we're consciously thinking, thinking and imagining scenarios and situations on new levels that our contemplation has taken us on. When you put it into perspective, I thought, my day wasn't so bad. I can't imagine living a life where I wouldn't even be able to come home on a Friday night in the afterhours because my mother doesn't want to open the door. Then again, Friend loves his life. Or does he? Being the total opposites that we are and having gotten a taste of each other's worlds, which one of us is truly happy?

That night, I had a strange dream where I came out with a cup of lemon tea and my large beige jacket, but Friend had already gone into the house. Disappointed at all my hard work of stealthily walking out the front door unnoticed, I was about to turn back - when I saw him with a pillow and blanket inside his mom's car (which, in my dream, had transformed itself into a convertible). "She made me sleep outside," he half-smiled. Although I should have been horrified, I was a bit glad my efforts didn't go to waste. And then I woke up.