Platial | Who and What's Nearby
Platial | Who and What's Nearby
I'm looking for
near
0 People have been here:
Description:
When I was sixteen I got picked to go to New York on the Oddfellows and Rebekahs United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth. Up until that point I had never been anywhere that didn't share a border with Iowa. I'd been to Nebraska to visit my great grandma. I'd been to Missouri to clear brush off my grandparents' retirement land. I'd been to Minnesota for fishing and to visit cousins, and I'd been to Illinois once to buy a coon hound.
A busload of fifty-two Midwestern teenagers drove all the way to New York City, where we met up with four other busloads of teenagers from other parts of the US. Needless to say, I didn't want to waste a minute of my time on this adventure sleeping. On the way to New York, we slept in the bus a lot, but in New York we stayed in a hotel. We were there for three days and I probably didn't sleep more than a couple hours a night.
At one point I remember being in a hotel room with maybe a dozen other kids and a grown up for some kind of briefing about the ending ceremony and essay competition (I was a finalist and so had to read my little patriotic piece out loud during the ceremony). I probably hadn't stopped moving for sixteen hours straight and when I sat down on the floor of the room to listen, I literally almost could not keep my eyes open. My butt felt like it had grown roots into the carpet and I could barely move. I concentrated on keeping my eyes open and tried to listen. The woman who was going over all of this information kept making incredibly strange digressions. Talking about animals or my parents. I sat there watching her, and listening, and then I looked around and I realized that I was moving in and out of sleep, with my eyes open. She wasn't talking about Uncle Jim's corn field. Her speech and my dreams were just intertwining. I'd had this experience before watching television late at night. Piecing together a film half from dreaming it and half from watching, but this was the first time that I'd ever felt so lucid about it and I think that this was the first time I was asleep with my eyes wide open. Thank goodness I didn't say anything.
When I was sixteen I got picked to go to New York on the Oddfellows and Rebekahs United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth. Up until that point I had never been anywhere that didn't share a border with Iowa. I'd been to Nebraska to visit my great grandma. I'd been to Missouri to clear brush off my grandparents' retirement land. I'd been to Minnesota for fishing and to visit cousins, and I'd been to Illinois once to buy a coon hound.
A busload of fifty-two Midwestern teenagers drove all the way to New York City, where we met up with four other busloads of teenagers from other parts of the US. Needless to say, I didn't want to waste a minute of my time on this adventure sleeping. On the way to New York, we slept in the bus a lot, but in New York we stayed in a hotel. We were there for three days and I probably didn't sleep more than a couple hours a night.
At one point I remember being in a hotel room with maybe a dozen other kids and a grown up for some kind of briefing about the ending ceremony and essay competition (I was a finalist and so had to read my little patriotic piece out loud during the ceremony). I probably hadn't stopped moving for sixteen hours straight and when I sat down on the floor of the room to listen, I literally almost could not keep my eyes open. My butt felt like it had grown roots into the carpet and I could barely move. I concentrated on keeping my eyes open and tried to listen. The woman who was going over all of this information kept making incredibly strange digressions. Talking about animals or my parents. I sat there watching her, and listening, and then I looked around and I realized that I was moving in and out of sleep, with my eyes open. She wasn't talking about Uncle Jim's corn field. Her speech and my dreams were just intertwining. I'd had this experience before watching television late at night. Piecing together a film half from dreaming it and half from watching, but this was the first time that I'd ever felt so lucid about it and I think that this was the first time I was asleep with my eyes wide open. Thank goodness I didn't say anything.
Photos:
Watch Related Videos
View Related MapsMeet Relatives
