Address Marathon

It was spring break. And Gonga was engaged in the most grueling marathon of his life.
Twenty-six dozen full length addresses to painstakingly copy from the address list to the boxes of glaring white envelopes. Twenty-six dozen stamps to affix to the upper right hand corner of the envelopes. And twenty-six dozen cards with Derrick’s grinning maw enclose by illegible cursive purporting to announce his graduation to stuff into the envelopes.

Gonga’s decision to stay in Columbia over spring break was the quickly turning into the biggest mistake of his life.

Derrick was graduating. And his mother had forbidden him to skip town during his last snippet of freedom before entering the real world of drudgery and bills.

“I am not sending out your graduation announcements, if you want that return trip to Mt. Everest your uncles promised you, you better stay in town and write addresses till you puke.”

Derrick had imitated his mother with truly remarkable flare. Until he got to the part about puking. Gonga wasn’t quite sure he could picture Derrick’s Mom using a word like that, but he hadn’t given it much thought as he fell back on the couch, laughing at Derrick’s machinations.

It wasn’t till a few minutes later that Gonga realized he was getting roped into help. He had already made the fatal flaw of complaining about having no plans over spring break. By the time he realized where Derrick was leading him, there was no turning back.

Unfortunately, all of Derrick’s other “friends” had decided to skip town. Either they really did lead more interesting lives than Derrick, or they heard about Derrick’s imitation of his mother through the grape-vine and quickly invented excuses to be out of town.

Actually, based on the timing of their other facebook activity, Gonga found it very unlikely that Sean and Tommy would be through the grape-vine about his Mom’s threat. In any case, no one else was available.

The only person besides Gogna not smart enough to get out of Dodge was Lilia. But then again, she wasn’t smart enough to get away from Derrick either.

The Textbook Game Blogger: Laura Prather