When we got home from the trip to Boulder I noticed a blood stain on one of Harrison’s socks. I inspected his feet to see if he had gotten a blister or cut on his foot during the workout, only to realize that he must have stepped in blood on the dorm floor before we left Leadville that day.
This episode marked the beginning of many problems getting Harrison back to college after our weekends home. He began referring to CMC as the “Lava Place,” a metaphor he coined for getting burned when setting foot there. He was uncooperative when leaving home on Sundays. When we got to the “Lake County Welcome” sign north of Granite, he would cower in his seat and make strange noises. This would continue for the next 17 miles to Leadville, and intensify as I pulled off the highway onto the college road.
When I drove up to the front door of the dorm to unload, he refused to go inside. If other students outside greeted him, he hid below the level of the dashboard. Once, he ran off into the dark while I unloaded the truck and was gone for quite some time. I would fetch bags through the doors and up the stairs to his room, and wait. Eventually, he would quietly enter the residence hall, and usually, I would hear him playing the piano in the multipurpose room. This seemed to calm him down and help him reintegrate into the college environment for another week.
During one of these times, as I was unloading the truck, a team member stopped me in the hallway and told me that Harrison had been singing in the cafeteria, and some students were uncomfortable with this. Some had even avoided eating in the cafeteria when Harrison was in there. This news saddened me and added one more issue to bring up with him, and another layer of discomfort for me. Singing in the cafeteria was not against the rules, but could be considered disruptive behavior. At the very least, it was not socially acceptable, especially if it was affecting the eating habits of other students.
I think due to stress, exhaustion, and disrupted sleep, I started having some strange dreams during my nights in the dorm. In one bizarre and almost comic dream, Evan had devised an elaborate scheme to bust me for possessing contraband in the residence hall. In this dream, I had brought in three chocolate-chip cookies and had eaten them. Evan enlisted one of Harrison’s teammates to call me on the landline phone (there were no landlines in the dorm rooms), and he was also secretly listening in on another line. The student asked me about the cookies and whether they contained THC. Somehow, I sensed someone else on the line and asked who it was. Finally, Evan spoke up. Adding to the absurdity, he was on another landline in the bathroom, which was oddly on the opposite side from the bathroom in reality. I told him that what he was doing amounted to illegal eavesdropping and was a felony offense. He then asked what I had poured down the sink drain, like I had tried to hide alcohol or something. I said I hadn’t poured anything down the sink. The questioning continued, and the dream seemed to last forever. He kept prodding me about having something illegal in the room. He wanted to inspect the cookies, and I was like, dude, I already told you, I ate the cookies.
While this dream was preposterous, it was peculiarly so because I had not heard from Evan all semester. I think the dream was a manifestation of the pressures I was feeling between Harrison’s ongoing behavioral issues, and the expectations of others, as well as his meltdown over the cookie incident the previous semester. Cookies seemed to be an ongoing theme.
Despite Evan’s appearance in this dream, the much-expected discipline report based on the recent public episode at the truck stop never materialized. Apparently, the disturbance in the dorm that morning went unnoticed too. Between these incidents and the singing in the cafeteria, I was certain we were due for a “check-in.” Instead, Evan emailed pleasantly asking for my account of what happened at the truck stop. I replied telling him about the restroom confusion that I believed set Harrison off, and also told him about our tour of CU. We agreed, along with Darren, that Harrison needed to earn back his bus privileges and that I would drive him to off-campus workouts and to competitions until he had done so. I agreed to this, fully knowing that I probably would be driving Harrison for remainder of the track season. Harrison would be unhappy about not riding with his teammates, but I would sell it to him on the basis that he would run better with a more comfortable ride and better music. I knew Darren had two Friday workouts planned on the Salida track which was on our way home. There also were meets on the schedule at CSU-Pueblo, CU-Boulder and Colorado School of Mines in Golden. If I had to drive him to all of these locations it would be less stress for everybody, including me.
One day, Harrison said to me, “Why are you saying college is fun when it’s really not. You have this whole schedule thing. You have to get up every morning and go to breakfast. And then go to class every day.”
I responded with a litany of experiences he’d had at college, including learning new things in classes, welding, becoming a better writer, making new friends, attending social events, living semi-independently in a dorm, competing and traveling with the running team. These were experiences that would last a lifetime. He listened and did not argue.
It struck me that Harrison was on edge because he could see the end of his time at CMC coming up fast, and he had no vivid picture of the future that would follow. There were only seven weeks of classes left in the semester, and Harrison had only three courses to complete. Yet I felt like he was navigating a figurative minefield with his behaviors. What I really needed was some sort of an incentive for him to work toward and help him regain his focus.
Notes from The Blur
There was an Apple product that I’d been curious about since its announcement the previous summer. The Apple Vision Pro is basically a mixed-reality headset. It operates like a spatial computer, but you use your eyes, hands, and voice to navigate this really expensive piece of tech. This device officially launched in February, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My dad had me promise that if I could get through this semester and graduate, he and my mom would help me buy it.
I once again became scared of going to the campus due to my own “fortune-telling” about something bad happening or getting into trouble. One night after arriving, I actually ran down to the bottom of the ski hill. Soon, I noticed the waning gibbous moon in the eastern sky. I then walked back up to the dorm room because I had to stay there anyway.
One evening, there was an ice-cream social in the cafeteria after dinner hours. I enjoyed the gathering, and this event actually helped turn around my mindset about CMC.
The next day, a big blizzard moved in with high winds, and the temperature continued dropping all day, unlike a typical day when the temperature would reach its peak in the afternoon. This made me wonder if we would have practice that day. I later learned that practice was still happening, although Darren moved it inside the Climax building to the gym and weight room.
Darren told everyone to wear our training shorts and shirts, and our winter gear over this, because we had to walk through the blizzard to get to the gym. We changed out once we got there. Soon, it was time for the warm-up. We ran in circles in the gym. When it was time for the workout, however, Darren had everyone sprint on the treadmills. I was scared of this because I wasn’t used to the treadmills going that fast, and I thought I was going to fly off and get seriously injured. Since I was scared, Darren modified my workout to be in the gym again instead of on the treadmills. While I did my intervals, Brooklyn timed me to help me hit certain times. After I was done, she and Nate congratulated me with hugs.
During dinner, there was some good craziness in the cafeteria. Fin was jumping over several students’ heads, and he’d even rehearsed this in the dorms earlier that day. I decided to volunteer to be jumped over. I handed my phone over to a friend so they could film it. When Fin jumped over me, his hand putting pressure on my shoulders, it kind of startled me, but I just laughed it off instead of freaking out.
After dinner one evening, one of the resident advisors organized a butter-making event in the MPR room. This involved putting cream in a jar and shaking it very hard, nonstop, until it turned into butter. This wasn’t a very easy task, but we were successful in making butter. I felt fortunate to go to something like this. College was starting to feel like fun again.
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