At first I thought that the last day of school was boring, except it wasn't. The school day itself was nothing remarkable, but the rest of the day was a blast from 11:59 PM onward.

What we traditionally do as seniors is have a senior campout in the school parking lot. It's sponsored by nobody and everyone who comes brings their own food. We decided to start coming around around 8:30 to 9:00. The thing is with these kind of unofficial events is that we make like the Spaniards and come at least an hour later than the expected time. Except I made like an the all-American man I am and I headed there slightly early, just a few minutes before 8:30.

Go figure, no one was there.

I happened to bring my own food, which included soft chocolate chip cookies, chips, and the remaining half of an apple pie I had cooked earlier and had been keeping in the fridge ever since. Not wanting it to get too warm, I walked back home again, which was a pain.

So I stayed home for a while and looked for some stuff to sleep in. When my father got home at 9:15, I was afraid that I was totally late for some nighttime fun. I hurriedly packed up a tent that I ended up never using, my blanket, hot dogs, and the all-important stick for roasting hot dogs on.

I arrived finally at 9:30. There was still hardly anyone there.

Go figure.

TRANSITION!

Well, to make a long story short, people did eventually arrive. Absolutely none of them were interested in my pie. Nobody ever cares when I bake pie. Why don't people like pie? Why?

However, I know plenty of people who like it when I offer them pi. They may be eccentric, but they're still sane.

We moved our supplies and started a fire. Everyone who had a pickup truck backed them up to form benches for John & Jane Doe's convenience. We found ourselves a cozy group.

All of a sudden, a van came rushing by with its lights out. We recognized the vessel. It had only two seats, but otherwise was a giant floor on wheels. Within its walls contained our resident future Marine Corps recruit, the mighty Prince Alexander, the glorious Russell Crowe of the senior year arena! He and two accomplices - the Ferret and our Valedictorian - jumped out of the van and grabbed the first person they came across, carrying her into the depths of their villainous ride and whisking her off into the night!

Don't worry, it was only a prank. They ultimately only drove her half a mile or so out and dropped her off so she could walk back. The local Mary Sue laughed and wondered if she should record their next "kidnapping" on her phone, only deciding against it when she figured that our buddies with a sense of humor would get in trouble if there was ever proof that they had even pretended to be kidnappers. We have a strong sense of trust in one another, but we knew that this was technically crossing the lines on what was appropriate.

They drove up again. We were all laughing. They had their lights off, but they made it as obvious as possible that they were coming. It was like watching somebody overact in one of those silent films, except it was with a van.

They pulled up again and started acting casual, only they sort of surrounded my friend Emma.

"If you kidnap her too I'll punch you!" I said. I meant it. Hey, she was the self-proclaimed "best prom date ever".

Suddenly they pounced like tigers. They grabbed Emma, pulling her to the van. I pounced as well, but like a lion. I punched the one known as Ferret, and as they attempted to shove Emma into the Villain Van I grabbed the Valedictorian by the leg. The Villain Van began to jolt, and I kept holding on, because I was one Jack that would never let go.

Well, they drove off anyway. Emma was enjoying herself, anyway. She later told everyone that she was actually pretty scared for the Valedictorian.

Don't ask me why I did that. She wasn't in any danger. I don't have a crush on her. She's just a good friend at school and at church (we had even shared our first communion together), and perhaps I didn't want to see her disrespected. I would have done the same for my best friend.

So ended that particular episode.

TRANSITION!

Later on that night Emma told a scary story over the campfire, a variation of the dripping tap urban legend. Cool stuff. I had never figured that my peers would find a campfire story fun to listen to.

We continued to do nothing for a while until our future Marine decided to play music. It's an otherwise completely irrelevant detail, because for one I don't like the modern music that everyone plays (save for "We Are Young", which is a dang good song), but out of nowhere he brought up the song from Hercules "Go the Distance". It's one of my favorite Disney songs, and it was amazing that, without any prompting, someone else decided to play it without prompting, purely out of his independent interest. I thought it was amazing because it's the perfect song for us at our point in life, and it perfectly describes how I often feel, both looking back and looking forward.

We also talked about random memories, frequently starting our sentences with "Remember the time when..." There were a few funny ones about me. I had a few funny ones about the stupid things I did when I was a kid and some ridiculous, immature things about me when I was young that I thought were perfectly sensible at the time. We shared our dating stories, our embarrassing moments in front of the classroom, and some of the most priceless memories we could muster ("Remember when Amber's hair got set on fire?"). I found out some amusing things about my friends that I never would have guessed.

And our resident Mary Sue, I swear, has dated almost everyone! I think reasoning for her nickname has been confirmed.

There was a moment where a girl we call Kitty said she knew I had a crush on someone that I was neglecting to mention. Eventually she revealed the name of a certain underclassman girl who was 6'2" that I once admitted to being attractive. It's not the same thing as having a crush. However, I admitted to "making it to first, maybe second base".

That got a huge reaction from everybody. Then I explained. "First is helping her with her homework wile wearing a bowtie. Second is doing all of her homework for her. Third is if I can actually teach her the material. Home plate is if I convert her into a Nerd."

"What game are you playing?" asked the Marine.

TRASNITION!

We decided to go out to the nearby soccer field and play soccer. It was a fun, intense game. We chose the student body president and the class president as captains, and SBP chose me as one of his first comrades. We didn't have much difficulty telling the teams apart at first because we were small teams.

The hotshots on the enemy lines were the team captain himself, the Valedictorian, a guy we call Aubie, Ferret, and my cousin. On our side, we had our team captain (who was an incredible goalie), Jason of the Argonauts, Kreegar, and possibly me. There was also Kitty, who hung around the enemy goal and conveniently scored several points.

It was an amazing game. I amazed myself, because suddenly I turned very aggressive. Normally I sit back and let other people be aggressive while pretending to myself that I'm not up to it, but I was surprised at how easily I could flip that switch.

Basically, wherever the ball went, I ran for it. Whenever a teammate had the ball, I got in the way of members of the opposing team or ran off to a place where they could pass the ball to me. While I was never the person who got the ball across the field, I was always there to take the ball away from the enemy and get it back to our team.

There was an instant where I was running at the ball and kicked as hard as I could, only the Valedictorian appeared out of nowhere and I ended up hurting my foot on his shin. It was the same leg I had been pulling earlier. I apologized for that the rest of the night, even though he shrugged it off.

There was also the moment when Aubie was chasing after the ball when it was kicked out of the main fray, and I raced him to it. We collided and went sprawling across the ground. He got up right away, but I ended up limping off the grounds.

Soon thereafter, Aubie tried skidding to kick the ball when it was right in front of our goalie. Our Goalie picked it up at the last moment and Aubie skidded straight in-between his legs. It was hilarious.

So we kept on playing, and several times I came close to hurting myself. By the time it was over, I was pretty sweaty.

Our team dominated over the other team, even when newcomers came over from the fire and constantly joined the other side. Eventually we distinguished between the two teams by establishing that our team was "shirts" and the enemy team was "Skins".

It was the ultimate tactical failure. The guys on the skins constantly looked back behind them instead of at the goal, trying to get a glimpse of the girls. Fortunately for me, I honestly didn't care, so I wasn't distracted either way.

There were a few more moments, a few times when I took a ball to the head, and several betrayals as Kitty joined the other team and scored goals for them!

Then the lights went out, and we were all ticked off.

But that was the best soccer game of my entire life.

TRANSITION!

There's a version of hide-and-seek called Sardines. Debating on this and Gray Wolf, we decided on the former. I had never heard of it, but the rules were explained to me. Basically, someone goes out, hides, and waits for people to find him or her. People who find the hidden person sit down and don't make a sound, not letting anyone know that they have seen the target. The game ends once everyone found the hidden person and sat down.

At first people were going to pick me. I hat put on a fairly dark shirt. And a bowtie. It would have been perfect.

But then Ferret and a guy we call Wobbler decided to go first, since I didn't fully understand the concept yet. I knew from the start that it was a bad idea, because these games only ever last one round.

Basically, my intuition proved right. Wobbler was wearing black. Ferret is black. It was so dark that we all immediately realized our error and gave up, since they literally could have been standing out in the open and we would have never found them. Plus, the territory we were operating in was about a square mile of area. In other words: if they didn't want to be found they wouldn't.

We walked about, checked under every tree, and called out their names. "Look guys, we made this too difficult. You have to at least say something."

Fortunately, the game did end after an hour because they did hide out in the middle of an open field. That was the only reason why we found them.

TRANSITION!

We spent some more time talking and hanging around the camp fire. I can't remember everything that happened. There was a point where Emma told me to start singing "Under the Sea". At first I felt awkward, but she sang along. There's a story behind why we sang that song, but that's for another day. Basically, we sang it together in class back in middle school and had a blast.

Finally, I gave up on staying awake. Emma, my cousin, and a few other good friends had gone asleep. I got out my blanket, used my sweaty soccer shirt as a pillow, and went to sleep on the concrete.

Apparently there were some things that I missed out on between 3:30 and 7:00 AM, but I didn't really care. I still had the most awesome night I've had in a long, long time.

I wish I had done this more.

TRANSITION!

My concluding thoughts are thus:

While it was not an intellectually productive experience, it has a certain emotional appeal to it that's difficult to explain. I typically prefer sophisticated experiences, but I think I'll have to accept reality and compromise with its way of establishing good social connections. It was a chaotic experience, and had little to do with my interests, but I was accepted in part for who I was. It was great that for a moment I could forget about judging myself by my academics, citizenship, and accomplishments, and rather by how much I could enjoy my friends.

Your Honor,

Emperor Kraggh