This Is Not Encouragement

“A Secret Society?” This was Bec from her hospital bed. Madi and I went to visit her today and laid out the plan for her. She was understandably skeptical. She was even more skeptical when we told her what her society name would be: “CRAYON? As in coloring-book crayons?”

“It’s a derivation of your name, and not something that can easily be traced back. Pam is Lala, Mack is Smack, and I’m Hazmat. They’re not supposed to make a lot of sense.” Madi was so smooth, Bec just smiled at her. Ok, Madi is smooth or her morphine kicked in. It’s hard to tell.

“We’ve got two more members to recruit and then we’ll be set. I’ll pick one and you’ll pick one and then in the spring next year we’ll pick the juniors who will succeed us.” I petted her head while I told her the entire plan. I knew I’d have to write it all down for her, anyway.

I didn’t want to, but a bit of my obsessive-compulsive side kicked in and I noticed she hit her morphine button four times in the two hours we were there. It makes me sad that my bff is in so much pain. The morphine did add some interesting options to our Secret Society Name list.

We have:

1) The Icy Black Hand of Death: Bec’s input, a Calvin and Hobbes reference. Cute, but not easy to shorten and what do we call ourselves? Death-eaters? Hello, copyright infringement.

2) The Plaid Skirt Society: funny because we do wear the plaid skirts. Not funny because we do wear the plaid skirts. And then there’s the issue of what to call ourselves. Skirts? 1940 wants their slang back.

3) Society Silence: this one came from me. I like it; it sounds like we should be opening for Coldplay, though, so it might not win. And we’d call ourselves the Silencers....which I do actually like.

4) Society of the Laced Zebra....ok, the comment above about opening for Coldplay struck a chord with Bec and she recommended that we Google “Band Name Generator” and stick in the word “society” so we did and we got Society of the Laced Zebra. So we’d be Zebras.

5) and Society Tuesday...we could have our meetings on Tuesdays. Since everyone hates Mondays.

6) Doped Society And The Fighting Cloud...but then we’d be dopers...and No.

7)Society Organization....or the Redundants!

8) Atomic Society Of The Blistered Misfit. Ouch. Says Madi: “That’s soooo nuclear.” Points for timeliness.

9) Society Puppet And The Cosmic Tv....eh?

10) Cracked Society...feels right, but we’d be the crackheads and again...No.


Now that word is starting to look wrong. We narrowed it down to numbers 3, 4, 5, and 7. We decided to sleep on it and make a decision tomorrow.

Bonus: I did, in fact, have a fish-eye lens waiting for me at home. Apparently my stupidity and antics are rewarded by my parents these days. “This is not encouragement,” said my mom. I said it wasn’t a deterrent, either. And at the very least I could now document Madi’s crazy air in a new and fun way. With the fish-eye. And I got some great shots today. I told Bec that when she gets back out we’ll paper her wall with amazing photos. I can’t wait.

We ran into Mackenzie on our way out of the building to see Bec. We waved but didn’t invite her, even though she was making that puppy-dog face. Ok, Madi waved, I nodded. It’s hard to wave when you’re on crutches.

Time to retire. Tomorrow Madi’s going to drive us into Fair park and I’m going to play with my new lens while she skates around. It’s going to get hot so we’ve got to get out there early when there’s light but not so much heat. Stupid Texas sun. It’s like living under a broiler.

Out.