September 19, 2014

I filled up my water bottle at the sink and after I twisted the cap on, I looked at the contents to find that it was full of sand with a layer of oil floating above of it. The people around me were engaged in their own conversations when I spoke up and said, “Uh, I’m getting sandy water here, is someone going to fix that?” “Oh! Just use a filter, it’ll be fine.” came the reply.

I looked at the water again and thought to myself there was no way a simple filter was going to get rid of the huge portion of oil floating in the upper third of the bottle. I interrupted their private conversations once more, “I’m sorry, but where can I get some clean water here?”

The five or so people that were talking stopped while one of them led me to the marble dining table by the floor to ceiling window. We were about five if not more stories above ground and the sun was reflecting directly off of the white surface. She took out a map from the drawer and set it down onto the table.

“Okay, so the only place on campus where there is guaranteed clean water is here”, she pointed to what seemed to be a relatively large mansion on the map. “What usually happens there?” I asked.

“Oh, well that’s our refuge shelter. It’s where we go when there is an emergency and we can’t run.” She went on further for a good few minutes about how a sizable amount of people can live off of the supplies in there for weeks. Among such supplies were bottled water.

–

We were about to start a tricycle race however there weren’t enough tricycles for our team. Out of the 10 or so people that made up our team, I was the only one that managed to get a tricycle that was given out by the sponsors of the race. Confusion pervaded our group. The signal for the start of the race went off. Our captain looked down into my eyes as I was seated on the bike and told me that I would have to share the tricycle with two other people and go ahead while the rest of the team would have to find some alternative.

Two girls sat behind me on the bike as we exchanged awkward greetings among one another. I felt the seat becoming more unstable and feared that if I leaned back, the entire bike would just flip backwards. “So how are we doing this?” I asked.

“Well, I guess we’ll each just ride for one-third of the way… right?” said the one immediately behind me.

It was going to be a long race.