Nostalgia

Boba Tea & Pictures & the Universe in All it's Vastness

It had been little more than a week since my last adventure when another one had come upon me, but I didn't know it yet. No, I was quite nervous as I paced in my kitchen, waiting for my friend to come pick me up. 

Bella had invited me to go get tea with one of her friends, whom I didn't really know other than talking on a group chat. He seemed nice enough, and I was excited to go get this strange thing called Boba tea, but...people.

Let me explain. I am a major introvert. I do not like talking to people for longer than necessary, I don't like driving in cars with said people for extended amounts of time, and I most certainly do not go get Boba tea with people. 

Yet here I was, walking outside to get into Jaydin's car, and then go to Boba tea, where there would surely be a lot of talking for longer than necessary. What. The. Crap.

I slid into the backseat and scooted over so Bella could sit in the back with me. As it was, Jaydin was now our chauffeur. The car ride was a lot of awkward talking, music changing, and a little bit of silence as well. Great. 

When we got to the mall, we got our Boba tea - strawberry for me, because I liked the taste of summer - and then we walked around, looking for something to do. The only thing we had planned to do was get tea, but it seemed silly just to come all this way for only a drink. 

As we walked, I spotted a photo booth and dragged Bella and Jaydin in. If there was a photo booth in sight, then I was there. It was a tight squeeze, but eventually we got situated good enough to take the pictures. Taking photos went pretty much like this; 

First frame: Bella making a peace sign, me smiling, Jaydin looking down.

Second frame: Bella and I making a weird face while Jaydin laughed.

Third frame: Bella choking on her tea and covering her mouth, me barely visible behind her now raised cup, and Jaydin off screen laughing. 

Final frame: Bella laughing and wiping her mouth, me and Jaydin cracking up slightly off screen. 

Oh, did I mention that the theme we had chosen for our pictures was cats in space? It was great. 

I guess that sort of loosened everybody up, because suddenly hanging out at the mall, talking, and drinking Boba tea wasn't so bad anymore. 

We walked around a little bit more, talking. I asked Bella and Jaydin, "I wonder what we'd have to do to get kicked out?" 

"Do you want to find out?" Bella replied, grinning. 

"No, no, I was just wondering." Because I knew full well that Bella would be able to get us kicked out in less than two seconds. 

We walked around in Hot Topic, Jaydin always asking Bella if she wanted the things she examined, because he wanted to make her happy. She always told him no, but we ended up getting her three things anyway. It was sweet. 

Then Bella rode on one of those kid toys that you put the coins in and it moves back and forth. To anyone watching, including us, it was as if Bella was on a bull or something. She had trouble staying on. We laughed.

Then we went to a store that had lots of fans and then an Asian store with cool swords. Jaydin and I made short jokes about Bella and then we followed Bella around as she stormed away. We played hide-and-seek in a large store called The Quilted Bear and we almost got kicked out of that one. Almost. 

But we were all getting tired now and it seemed like it was time to end the day. We got salted pretzel bites from the pretzel place, even though we told the guy unsalted please. He didn't seem like he was in the best of moods. We ate our salted pretzel bites in the food court and talked about how the pretzel guy was rude because he salted our pretzel bites. 

One nacho cheese war and some salted pretzel bites later, we got in the car and headed back to Bella's house. We were going to ask her mom if she could spend the night because we didn't want to end our adventure quite yet. 

After her mom said yes, it was time to set our plan in action. We went to Winegars to get ice cream, but we ended up getting sprite instead. Then we went to Taco Time and got two large taco salads for Bella and I, and bean burritos for Jaydin. 

Then we drove to my house to get blankets, and set them up in the middle of the park where we could see the stars up above in the sky. Bella and I sat down and went to eat our large taco salads when we discovered that we had no forks. What kind of taco place didn't give you forks to eat your taco salads on your midnight escapade? 

We sent Jaydin back to my house to get forks and a bottle opener because we couldn't open our Sprites that were in glass bottles. But I didn't even know if I had a bottle opener, so he would have to find out for himself. 

Jaydin came back with one fork, but really two, and a bottle opener for our Sprites. We ate our food and talked and laughed by the light of our phones. Once we were done eating, we laid down and looked at the stars and attempted to talk about deep things, but Bella ended up telling a really quite horrifying story. 

We listened to music and I thought about how there were so many stars in the sky and how the universe was bigger than anything ever and how we would never understand it in its entirety because it was so vast. I compared the universe to a human mind and how very alike the two were because you could never reach the end of either and you could never really know what's going on and how nobody would ever understand it completely, probably not even more than a fraction. 

I looked at the stars and thought about all these things, and I even thought about how maybe people weren't so bad after all.