Saturday Strange

send me yer strangeness! i needs some new strangers!: [email protected]
(press STOP on yer browser to stop ze music)
--------------------------------------------------------

Hey Todd,

Here's my strange experience. 

For one week every year when my cousins and I were
children, my grandmother would  take us to the same
summer resort in Ontario.  When I was 15 years old, I
left  Vancouver to work at the resort where I'd spent
my childhood.  I spent my days  washing dishes and my
nights getting ripped drunk with all of the college
kids that  worked there.  I did have the time of my
life.....in fact, it was just like Dirty  Dancing.
Some of the staff kids were smoking pot in my cabin
one night before we  headed up to the resort's
clubhouse.  About a 1/2 hour after we arrived at the
clubhouse, my roommate Chris ran in and told me that
one of ashes from a joint had  lit my mattress on
fire.  Chris had put out the fire & come to find me.
We all ran  back to the cabin to find the mattress
lying in the road out front cabin, a hole as  big as a
basketball burned in the center.  Had my roommate not
returned home exactly when he did, the whole cabin
would have burnt to the ground.

The next summer, when I returned to work at the
resort, I left behind my  girlfriend of 10 months.  I
promised to be faithful & really thought I would, but
my  teenage hormones & lack of morals took over and I
started cheating on her left &  right.  I slept with
any girl who would have me.  (the total was only 3 --
two pretty  and one ugly -- but in the 2 & 1/2 months
I was there, I thought I did pretty well).  I even
made out with a 36 year old married woman and had to
spend the rest of the week avoiding her vengeful
husband.

When I returned to Vancouver, I didn't tell my
girlfriend about any of my  indiscretions even though
we spent the next four years together.  When she
finally found out, she dumped my cheating ass.  My
life went into a tailspin & at the  early age of 21, I
was like your typical divorced guy -- depressed,
pathetic and  remorseful.  I kind of figured I got
what I deserved.

That summer when I went to visit my cousins, we
decided late one night to head up to  the old resort
just for good times sake.  When we finally got there,
it was pitch  black out & my old cabin (Staff cabin
#4) was gone from where it was years before.  I asked
one of the drunk staff kids what happened & he said
that they'd moved it to a  back field so that the
guests didn't have to listen to the staff party hard
at all hours of the night. 

I always thought of the cabin as a symbol of all the
bad things I'd done.  Full of remorse and three shots
of Jack Daniel's, I sat down in the spot on the road
in front of where the cabin used to be.  I decided
right then that I had to let go of  the past & move
on......damn it!  I concentrated real hard and
suddenly, a glaze came over my thoughts and the world
didn't look so bad anymore.  In fact, it looked
amazing.  I sat up and walked over to my cousins.

5 minutes later, a staff kid ran by. 
"Staff Cabin Four is on fire!"

We ran with the staff kid to the back field where the
cabin had been moved.  Staff  Cabin Four was indeed on
fire.  About 1/4 of it was ablaze.  People were
running with  buckets of water trying to put out the
fire, but to no avail.  The Fire Department  was
called & they showed up about 20 minutes later,
eventually putting out the blaze  that had consumed
the entire cabin...the exact same cabin which I had
almost burnt  down years before.   As I watched the
scene unfold, I somehow knew that through strenuous
effort and concentration, I had lit the fire with my
mind.

c.dewan