Chapter 55: Going a Bit Wild

Friday, November 26, 1982

After breakfast, I fetched Jasmine and she, Angie, and I started working on holiday lights and tree decorating. With three of us, things went a bit faster, and we certainly had a lot of fun.

We had everything done by just after lunchtime — lunch being Thanksgiving leftovers, naturally — so the three of us headed to Jasmine’s to do the same for the Nguyen house.

Camille and Francis helped a bit more than Mom and Dad did, but mostly left it to us to get things done. Camille declared that we’d gotten the most out of their artificial tree, and I had to agree. We were very careful with placement and fluffing up the not-as-pretty branches, or hiding them.

Since Angie was over, we opted not to retreat to Jasmine’s room, even though Angie would’ve been fine with that. Or helped out, if that was within ‘behaving’ — which it very much was not.

The conversation got around to spring semester and what we thought about it. December would likely be, in essence, a break. Oh, sure, there were finals and other things to worry about, but it was still comparatively light.

Spring semester would likely be the busiest and most consequential semester of high school. Why? Well ... let me count the ways. We had two major Debate tournaments plus perhaps ToC, Nationals, or both. We had the spring musical. For most colleges, spring semester, junior year, would be the most scrutinized, at least if we went ‘early decision’ — and, of course, we likely would. We would have to narrow our college choices and pick at least a tentative major, as well.

That’s just for starters. I had Jessica’s mystery guy looming over things. There was whatever might happen with Janet and Lizzie at Prom. We’d almost certainly have another Student Council election, and my guess was that I’d be under intense pressure to run for President. Right now, I’d likely be the clear favorite. We’d probably have fights over the dress code proposals, maybe over Project Graduation, and ... who knew what else?

I could certainly make the case that spring of senior year might be ‘worse’ (though I couldn’t make it to Jasmine as effectively). Any Dell investment would be in that time-frame (or maybe late in the fall semester). We’d have to finalize college plans. I’d become an adult and could start investing. But: no Student Council race, hopefully no new ‘mystery guy’ messing up my friends’ lives, and so forth.

It all seemed manageable — but was still a lot. We were all happy to have the ‘break’, such as it was.

After meeting up for dinner at a barbecue place — always good to try something different — we drove down to the ‘Dome, rendezvousing in the parking lot and heading in together. All of the Study Group gang went.

We got settled and watched the pre-game festivities. Everything looked smaller in the ‘Dome. Jessica was smaller and didn’t fly as high. The team looked a little puny, but then so did our opponents. And so on, and so forth. Great venue, but it wasn’t built for high-school-sized contests.

Our opponent was Beaumont West Brook, a school I knew absolutely nothing about. They’d fought an extremely close game last week (a tie; they advanced based on a tie-breaker), but it was against a tough Baytown team. This would probably be a tough game.

Beaumont West Brook was a strong team, I’ll give them that. We hadn’t played behind much this year, but we were behind at the half, 14-7. It would’ve been worse but for an amazing series in which Cal stopped their rusher three times inside the one-yard line, leading them to settle for a field goal — which they missed. I hoped all of the scouts were taking notes.

The second half was a nail-biter until late in the fourth quarter. We’d tied the score, then they’d gone up a touchdown. Then we scored again and succeeded in a two-point conversion to take a one-point lead. Gutsy call.

They got the ball back and proceeded down the field, slowly picking their way through our defense. On first and goal from the four, with under two minutes left, Cal struck again, getting through the line and somehow stripping the ball, knocking it right into the hands of another Memorial player, who rumbled his way to the fifty before being tackled.

On the next play, just needing a first down to seal the win, Brett lofted a near-perfect pass to Andy, who was flying down the sideline. 29-21 Memorial, and that’s how it ended. West Brook got the ball back, but couldn’t do anything with the scant time remaining.

We were state quarterfinalists. I still believed we hadn’t gotten this far this year in my first go-round. The going would be tougher, and who knows who might win, but we were still in it.

Saturday, November 27, 1982

Ang and I slept late — not too late, but late — and puttered around the house much of the day. Our date plans weren’t until the evening, after all. We’d done most of the shopping we needed.

I caught up with my reading just a bit, and I’m pretty sure she did, too.

Too much downtime of this sort wouldn’t be good for either of us, really, but a day of it? Wonderful.

In my opinion, we’d gotten a beautiful fall evening for our outing. Not too hot, not humid, a nice steady breeze. Angie, however, declared it ‘cold’ and put on leggings under her skirt, bringing a light sweater.

We picked up the group one by one. The four others wanted to squeeze into the back, but I just didn’t have the seat belts for that, so — over objections — Gene and Amit agreed to split time in the front seat, away from their dates. That put Jasmine in the middle, close with me.

The Zoo is about a twenty-minute drive, and we had plenty to talk about. Christmas plans alone were more than enough. Once we got there, hands found hands and we walked in, three happy couples.

Zoo Lights is a lot of fun. Everything is done up in Christmas lights — well, everything they want to decorate, anyway. Not all of the animals are compatible with all of the extra lighting, and some need their sleep. But, many of them get to enjoy Christmas, or some extra humans to gawk at, or ... well, whatever zoo animals think of while we’re watching them.

I still had some weird feelings about 1980s zoos. I’ve been to plenty of zoos, but mostly in the 1990s and beyond. During the later 1980s and continuing on, zookeeping standards changed quite a bit, and they replaced a whole lot of ugly concrete enclosures with very nice naturalistic enclosures. It made me feel a bit bad for some of the animals, who most likely couldn’t have been all that happy in their concrete boxes.

That said: I was sure the zoo was giving them the best of care, and I’m a believer in zoos, particularly as humans constantly push species out of their habitats and into near-extinction. It’s all very well to say that we should just go see animals in the wild, but many people will never visit remote and exotic destinations and see many species, and seeing pictures in a book doesn’t really compare to seeing something alive.

You’d never see many of the species that most desperately need saving in the wild, either. The tiny, the rare, the elusive, the solitary, the stealthy ... we’d absolutely ruin their existence if people insisted on trying to find them in the wild.

After an hour, we headed for the restaurant, taking a break and enjoying the food, continuing our conversations from before. Amit — who we all knew had been born in England — talked up all of the Indian animals we’d seen and the ones we had yet to see.

We headed back out, to the back of the zoo, visiting both the Indian and African Elephants (clearly, Indian Elephants were superior).