How and Why I Shaved My Head

Growing up, I can’t remember a time where I was particularly attached to my hair. It was LONG, thick, and there was A LOT of it. Washing and combing it demanded lots of prayer and fasting – from me and my mother. Instead of my hair being relaxed at the customary age of nine, I was introduced to the wonderful concept of a “hairdresser”, and this continued into my high school years. My mother was adamant that my hair wouldn’t be relaxed, and I never once fought her. Like I said, I wasn’t attached to my hair in the slightest. I never felt any need to straighten it to look “pretty”, or took any assumptions of me being “Coolie” or “mixed” as compliments. As far as I was concerned, hair was just hair, and there were other things more important.

As I got older, I began to get tired of hairdresser visits. The washing, combing, blow-drying and styling for HOURS at a time became a never-ending chore. Shelling out the money to do it was also another chore in itself. I envied my male friends, where all it took for them to look presentable was a trim and line up. In and out the barber the same morning or afternoon? Unbelievable! I never thought I’d ever experience something like that.

Sixth form, which turned out to be a traumatic experience, effectively resulted in me halting any university plans for the 2015-16 academic year. I wasn’t ready to make such a big step right after being put through an emotional wringer for two years. It was while I was doing “gap year things” - working, photographing, entering competitions and shows, that I began to contemplate cutting my hair in January 2016. After all, I’d be moving to a new city in a matter of months. I had no intention of managing so much hair on my own, and where exactly would I go to get it done?

I had initially thought to cut off two inches of hair. Those “two inches” became “just enough to leave an afro”. I realized, however, that my primary objective of not having to comb my hair wouldn’t be met in either case. It was then that I thought “why don’t I just shave my entire head? And bleach it blonde like Amber Rose? I’ve always loved how that blonde buzzcut looks on her”

I was scared of going bald, but not scared enough not to entertain the thought.

I never said explicitly that I was contemplating shaving my head. For the next four months, I asked my friends how they think I’d look if I went bald, and I got the most ridiculous responses:

“Your head is going to look bigger!”

“Your forehead is going to look bigger!”

“You’re going to look like a boy!”

“People will think you’re a lesbian!”

The response that disturbed me the most, was: “You won’t attract a man if you have short hair, because men find long hair more feminine than short hair”

Why does everything a woman does have to come back to whether a man will like it or not? I did this because I was tired of the upkeep that came with having long hair, and maybe I thought I’d look good bald. I didn’t keep my hair long just so someone’s son would like it. But I digress.

I was finally ready to cut my hair in May 2016, when I saw a man walking around the Total gas station in Liguanea with a star shaved out into his head. I told my brother in the car that I was shaving my head and bleaching it blonde. I even dubbed my mission to cut my hair as “Operation Amber Rose”. His thirteen-year-old plea to leave my hair long and dark, was no match for my resolve. Once I put my foot down, it’s not coming back up.  

My parents were a little more supportive of my decision to cut my hair, simply offering: “It’s your hair, do what you want with it”

Other than my immediate household and two close friends, no one knew I was cutting my hair. By this time, I had gotten my driver’s license, climbed the Blue Mountain peak, and had recently started a photography course. I decided my big chop would be at the end of June as a sort of reward for all that I had done so far. I never went to the hairdresser for over a month. I wonder what my classmates for that photography course thought?

My mother gave me her hairdresser’s number, and I made the appointment the second to last week in June. I even called twice and said exactly what I wanted. I can never forget the questions and incredulous looks I got when I showed up to the salon – with my camera and all, the Tuesday morning.

“You want all of this gone? Are you sure?”

“How much bleach do you want in your hair?”

“Does your mother know you’re doing this?”

“How old are you? Sixteen?”

“Is everything okay at home?”

Yes. Yes. Enough so that people will know I’m blonde from a distance. Yes. Twenty. Yes.  

I always thought I’d cry if I ever cut my hair, but I ended up laughing the whole time in the chair. It was only when I heard those scissors working, and saw my twists fall from my head onto the floor, that I realized the magnitude of what I had done. My jaw dropped open in a “hurry-up-and-finish-so-I-can-see-what-I-look-like!” kind of way. A shear was taken to my head after, and I quite liked how my newly short hair looked its natural colour – dark brown. For a moment, I almost said to leave it like that, but Operation Amber Rose wouldn’t be complete. I braved the bleach and dryer, and absolutely fell in love with the end result. The other women in the salon liked it too, commenting that the cut really fit me, and that I was brave for cutting roughly twenty inches of hair all at once.  

I took loads of pictures at the salon. I sent them to my friends and my mother, who sang nothing but praises on WhatsApp. I quietly dropped the rest of the pictures on almost every social media account I had when I got home. The responses I got, were anything BUT quiet. I got very positive feedback from everyone, after the initial shock of me having virtually no hair wore off. My father nearly walked out the door (as he walked through it!) when he came home and saw me that night. He later found the courage to come in, look at my hair up close, and decide that he liked it. The only person who didn’t like my cut was my brother, who called me all manner of names, including “sponge head” and “sweet corn” in the last two months I was at home.

Cutting my hair has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I love the freedom that short hair has given me. I don’t have to sleep in ridiculous-looking satin bonnets anymore, and I can swim without psyching myself up to comb my hair out later. All I do is use a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner, and oil my scalp as often as I want. I also get trimmed and lined up as my hair grows out. To any woman who’s thinking of doing a big chop: DO IT. Don’t be shallow in thinking that long, straight hair will make you a bombshell, or accepted. And if you do decide to take the plunge, I sincerely hope your decision will be as liberating and as fulfilling as mine was. Selah.

At the top, it’s just us ♫ (Pt. 4)

We began the descent from the peak at about 7:15 a.m. The pain I felt, when I put all of my weight on my knees to make that first step down, was like no other. However, it didn’t quite compare to the pain I felt when I realized I was going to have to do this for eight miles. Maintaining control and balance while walking downhill, is much more difficult than it sounds. When the “downhill” is as steep as the Blue Mountain hiking trail, the difficulty is ramped up exponentially. (See what I did there? Ramped up? I’m rib-crushingly hilarious. But I digress.)

My knees threatened to buckle with almost every step I took down. I stopped feeling my legs. The soles of my feet began to burn. I don’t really know how to get across how much pain I was in. What really made me seethe with anger, were some spring breakers from Stanford RUNNING DOWN the damn mountain like nothing, and the cadets who were probably back at Whitfield Hall having breakfast. The Nature Valley I sneaked on the bus the night before, seemed like a lifetime ago now. I had to stop to take off my socks, which were soaking wet at this point. They were believed to be contributing to the burn I was feeling on the soles of my feet. The socks came off, revealing RED, peeling soles. Hooray for flat feet!

That was the first of MANY extended stops, adding a lot of extra time to the journey back. On one stop, I decided to sit down and “rest my eyes” for five minutes. I had to be woken up and urged to keep moving. Yes, I fell asleep. Just a couple hours ago, I was over 2,000 feet above sea level. Mi couldn’t sleep fi a likkle five minutes as an interim reward? Mi did UPSET.  

What made me even more upset was pain I was in, which wouldn’t seem to subside. I used a big stick to help me walk, and take some pressure off my knees, for a good part of the descent. I essentially Grandma-ed it down the peak at twenty years old. I became more frustrated, and that much closer to tears with every rock I slipped and almost tripped on. But no. I may be a grandma, but I was determined to thug it out and get back to Whitfield Hall on time. Operation Thug-It-Out was thwarted, however, by one flat, smooth gray stone. My left ankle did a 270° on it. I managed to break my fall; else, it would have been Gangnam Style 2.0 for sure. Tears threatened again, but I let them fall this time. Fuck the thug façade.

I wiped my face with my grimy sweater sleeves and continued down. A big piece of tree bark on Jacob’s ladder suddenly looked like heaven.

“Hey! There’s a piece of tree bark that looks like you can sit on it!” said Lizzie.

I unceremoniously planted my tall, heavy ass on the tree bark, only for it to unceremoniously break and plant me on the ground. Lizzie was frightened, as was I, but I managed to get a laugh out of it. She kept apologizing, but I reassured her that it was more than cool, that those kinds of things happened to me all the time.

I had started to get increasingly nauseous the further we went down. My breaking point was when I started “throwing up”, and nothing was coming out! My stomach was totally empty. I couldn’t go any further. By now, I had views of the terraced coffee farms and banana plants, which meant I was fairly close to Whitfield Hall. If only I was fairly strong enough to get there. Lizzie and “Uncle Eaton”, who drove us up to Whitfield Hall in the old Ford Ranger, walked the rest of the way down to get it. (I think that was his name). Lizzie’s dad and I waited for him on the trail.

About half an hour passed. The pickup couldn’t make it all the way up the trail, simply because the trail was too steep. I had to be helped down the trail to it, feet burning, knees hurting. When I saw that Ford Ranger parked on the trail, it felt like CHRISTMAS. A vehicle! Seats! No more standing, walking, or JRAPPING! I was driven back to Whitfield Hall, where I could not even find the strength to get out and walk back to the house. If there’s anyone who deserves to be called a real MVP, it’s Elizabeth Lewis. She gave me a long overdue plate of boiled eggs, fried dumplings and corned beef through the pickup window! She apologized again when I politely said I didn’t eat corned beef, and I reassured her once more that it was perfectly fine. With how she stuck with me on the journeys up AND down, how could I have been rude?

She returned a few minutes later with the eggs and dumplings, minus the corned beef. Those boiled eggs and fried dumplings tasted like STEAK and mashed potatoes. That’s how hungry I was. I took my Lucozade out my bag, albeit not cold anymore, and had a party. After I ate, all I wanted to do was SHOWER, wash my hair, lie down, and SLEEP. The cadets loaded up and boarded the Hiace bus in record time. Lizzie and I were back in the Ford Ranger, with Uncle Earlan at the wheel. All of us were officially on our way back to Mavis Bank.

I didn’t flinch once on the steep, bumpy road going down. My eyes started to close, and I blacked out completely for the entire hour-long drive to Mavis Bank. Do you know how wiped out I have to be to sleep in a car now? I can undoubtedly say that was the best sleep of 2016, and 2016 d’even done yet. One of my university friends even said he’d love to experience that kind of sleep!

We arrived at Mavis Bank, so we could board a bigger bus to take us back to the house. Mi just let di A.C. wash me and sleep some more, although I didn’t sleep as deeply as I did on the way to Mavis Bank. You never really know how beautiful it is to be driven, until you start driving yourself. I was never so glad to see concrete and paved roads as I was that afternoon. Two hours later, everyone else was dropped off back at the house. I directed the driver to mine, not too far away. (”A so far unnu live?”) Bear in mind, my driveway looks frighteningly similar to Jacob’s ladder. I lifted my legs with my hands to get down the driveway, and through the gate, which was left ajar for me. Yes, exactly like SpongeBob in the “Prehibernation Week” episode, complete with wincing at the pain in every step.

I fished my house keys out my bag and let myself in. I was home by 2:30 p.m., just as my grandpa had said. I sprawled out for a good couple minutes and messaged everybody that I was back home, safe, and unable to feel my legs. I stripped everything off, took the longest, hottest shower in my twenty years of existence, and slept indefinitely.

My mother and brother got a kick out of watching me limp when I awoke in the evening. She even fixed me a plate of steaming hot curry chicken and white rice, bless her real-MVP heart. It was I who had the last laugh, though. I recovered within a day, and can now say that I made it to the top of the Blue Mountain peak! I went hard the whole night, cause I ain’t going back to do that climb, I promise! A bush nigga, that’s that life I don’t like!

At the top, it’s just us ♫ (Pt. 3)

We started off walking on a relatively flat path. Whitfield Hall looked exactly like the end of a Sopranos episode - one big, long cut to black. Even though I had to stop multiple times to tie my shoelaces, it was kind of nice – everybody walking close together singing songs. It was something I’ll remember for a very long time, right before Jacob’s ladder silenced our asses. I was huffing and puffing up miles of paved, almost VERTICAL concrete. Yes, it was THAT steep. No, I’m not kidding or exaggerating. To any amateur athletes reading this and looking for a challenge: climb Jacob’s ladder if yuh bad. You’ll be soldiers of the Lord in no time, to how you ago DEAD. I wanted to stop at the end of almost every place that was steep. Lizzie, who I walked with for the entire way up, did not give me an inch.

“Come on Rachael, we have to keep going.”
“Don’t put your hands on your hips or hold on to the straps on your backpack. You’ll get tired more quickly.”

She didn’t give me an inch, but what she gave me instead was patience and understanding. Even while walking up the path, watching Rachael, sipping on Gatorade. Hell, even when I exhaustedly and repeatedly asked “IT NUH DONE YET?!” Lizzie handled unfit, impatient me so nicely, and that’s another thing I’ll remember for quite some time. I’ll also remember the view of Mavis Bank at two in the morning. It was too dark and I was too winded to take a picture of the clouds and little dots of orange lights coming from the few houses on the hill. I’m not that good of a night photographer (yet) ;)

Sure enough, Jacob’s ladder finally finished. By now, the terrain had levelled off considerably, which I was glad for. I held Lizzie’s hand, counted in tens, and played songs in my head as ways to set a pace to walk to. It started raining well before we got to Portland Gap. Heavily. Popcaan was right, real thugs DON’T worry about pagans. They worry instead about a plastic-bag protected 550USD camera that isn’t theirs, in that weather! My destiny woulda done if that camera didn’t come back the same way it went up.

We arrived at Portland Gap, all eighteen of us soaking wet and accounted for. Most of us stopped to take a water break, as did I. My heart said Nature Valley, but my head said “finish this second bottle of water and plop your wet ass on the wet ground” I obliged my head for a little bit, then set off again to complete the journey. Besides, I couldn’t hold up the entire group to dig in my backpack for one granola bar, in the dark. I paid careful attention to a sign in the clearing, in my sodden, half-dead state. 1,675 feet scaled out of 2,256. Three-quarters of the way up! 

“Rest a di way cya so bad!” I thought.

It was in those last two miles that I felt the presence of Nicholas Fraser in every step I took, in every “we soon reach!” I heard.

“Why the fuck you lying? Why you always lying?”

I began to get very annoyed of being told not to stop because we were “almost there” There I was, on God’s coccyx, in the dark, wet cold – with no peak in sight! Who wouldn’t have gotten annoyed? I was tired, in pain, and regretting skipping that Nature Valley more and more. In a fit of frustration, I backed off my sweater, tied it around my waist with the sleeves, and hiked the hell out of those two miles uphill in the rain. I didn’t care about my hair. I didn’t care about catching a cold. What I cared about was getting to the peak, so I could REST and take my killer sunrise picture. I had just started to pick back up a normal pace, when I heard “SNAP!”

Would you look at that. All 177 centimetres of me immediately hit the ground. I tripped on a piece of tree bark. My already struggling show was flopped by a piece of tree bark. I managed to sit myself up, shaking. My ankles, knees and legs were all fine, thankfully. A flashlight was shone into my face.

“You’re shaking, and sweating. You’re dehydrated. You’re not supposed to be losing this much fluid in the cold.”

I was made to drink some Gatorade so I could get back some strength. It was while I was drinking the Gatorade, which had gotten fridge-cold in my backpack, that I realized the magnitude of what I had gotten myself into. What the hell was I doing in a place where mi nearly fuck mi ankle up AGAIN? A place cold enough to cool my drink in my bag? Why didn’t I opt to stay home, where I could be sleeping in a warm bed? 

What kept me going for the last quarter of a mile were numbers. Half an hour. Twenty minutes. Four hundred metres. One hundred metres. A very foggy day began to break, and I could see lilies on the trail! Lilies! A couple more steps, and…

I reached the top of the Blue Mountain peak on March 23, 2016, at 6:09 a.m!

I plopped my wet ass on the wet ground for a second time, and finally got to REST for more than five minutes. I eventually had to put my sweater back on, because that wind chill was no joke! What were extremities? One of the cadets mentioned something about waiting an hour and a half for the rest of us to arrive at the peak. I ignored him and sipped my Lucozade. I didn’t get my sunrise picture because it was too foggy, so I took a picture of the trig station instead. I should also mention that a French couple got engaged right behind me as soon as that picture of me was taken! 

We couldn’t stay for very long, because we were planning to have breakfast at Whitfield Hall, and to be back at Mavis Bank by noon. I thought I was over the worst, having conquered an eight-mile uphill walk. I figured walking downhill would be nothing, paying no attention to Nicholas Fraser’s voice through the lilies and trig station.

“Mmmmmohmygod…”

“MMMMMMOHMYGOD…”

April 24, 2015.

Today is the last day of classes for the current 13th grade at my high school. Some may have let go balloons with their friends, taken lots of pictures, and leave with nothing but fond memories of their time in sixth form. Some may feel like I did on the day of my own final assembly - angry, anxious, unhappy, and more than glad to get out. Leaving high school turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me, and I’m in a much better, happier place for it. I do, however, feel a smidgen of how I felt that day, today. I wrote this sort of graduation speech last year - as a way to get my feelings out, and as a response to every corny-ass “I’ll miss school!” post. Don’t try to change to suit anybody. Don’t act like you have it when you don’t.

I’d like to welcome everyone to this solemn and joyous occasion.

It has been a long seven years, but here I am, ready to stunt on you crying whores and boomflick from the patio roof. I don’t know how I got to this point by simply being a wasteman, but I didn’t do it by myself. Mi ago draw fi ALL a unnu file dem. Fuck unnu feel like?

To our teachers, thank you for taking out your marital problems on us. We, as well as you, knew it was your job to teach, but what you did to us went beyond destroying our educations. Mi nuh know a WEH unnu find time fi fling eight labs, two tests, and a module exam pon we inna di same week. Our grades went down on a Tuesday. We skipped three pages in a row. We had no motherfucking time to study on the weekend. The shit I’m talking actually IS too true. We should have gotten Xan’s in an Advil bottle upstairs on the sixth form block. We actually did need the pills. You put in absolutely no effort to recognize that we did other subjects, so we’re going to put in effort to find your houses with some baking trays and make you realize that WE AIN’T GOT NO SLEEP CAUSE OF Y’ALL! Y’ALL AIN’T GON’ SLEEP CAUSE OF US! Weh unnu think directory mek fa? Fi fun? You demanded breakdowns in the parking lot, whether or not we were perfectly emotionally stable. You set the bar unnecessarily high, so that not even ME coulda reach it, and for that, we’re eternally grateful.

To our parents, thank you for stressing us out in more ways than it’s possible to count. It’s not that we don’t love or appreciate you, we really do. It’s just sometimes, you can be just as clueless as we are about what WE want. You fell victim to the STEM trap, attempted to live vicariously through your prospective-medical-student children, and trivialized our feelings when we finally had enough of high school science and really couldn’t do it anymore. You say we need to start acting like adults, but keep on treating us like children. These are just a few of the thousands of ways you’ve confused us on our journey.

To our coaches and advisers, thank you for making school about more than just classwork. Through our extracurricular activities, we learned that natural selection has yet to peak in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade cohorts at the school. (#BringBackOurTimeManagement). It’s either Art homework, or your membership in this club, kiddies! We learned the importance of counting to ten in our heads when presented with yet ANOTHER flimsy excuse. Three grades of piano later, I myself have learned that I have more patience with 87 keys and sheet after sheet of music, than with people.

To our custodial staff, thank you for making us laugh and pleading us to take our educations seriously with your million and one stories. You knew better than anyone else what wastes we were. You actually deserve some kind of medal.

To our principal, vice principal, and all the office staff, thank you for enforcing hundreds of fuckery rules and playing with our feelings and documents. You successfully teamed up with our teachers to form SCHOOL STRESSORS: ADMIN IN DISGUISE! Will we be better off for it? Will we need therapy in the near future? Find out on the next episode of Dragonball Z!

As you can see, behind each of us, there must have been at least a dozen people breaking us down in at least a dozen ways. The best way we can show our gratitude is to get the fuck out of here, and go forward into the world with the intention of making high school a distant, repressed memory. We’ll pay that debt of gratitude forward.

Thank you.

At the top, it’s just us ♫ (Pt.2 )

We left for Mavis Bank close to 9:30 p.m. I felt pretty relaxed on the bus, chatting about what I planned to do with my life, and asking the same of other people. I became more wide-eyed with each person who fell asleep, enjoying the journey on an empty, artificially-lit Old Hope Road. Old Hope Road turned into Papine, then Hardware Gap, then Gordon Town. I stopped trying to figure out where I was after Gordon Town. It didn’t make any sense to determine whether or not some industrial plant looked familiar in the dead of night. It was like a movie, but a nuh me did a start di show!

One hour became two. Two hours became three. The bus stopped outside exactly one (working) streetlight, and a sign that read “Mavis Bank Police Station” beside it. We got off the bus, and waited for two more smaller vehicles that would take us up to Whitfield Hall. Some of us put on sweaters as soon as we disembarked, myself included. The cadets went ahead of us in an old Hiace minivan, while I folded myself into an old Ford Ranger with three other people. At fifteen minutes to midnight, Operation Get-to-Whitfield-Hall was fully underway.

If there ever was a time for sleeping, the drive to Whitfield Hall would certainly NOT be it. The roads leading up to there were some of the steepest and bumpiest I’d ever experienced. The turn I was asked to make on Tucker Avenue that morning, suddenly seemed like child’s play. I held on to the “oh shit!” handle for dear life, and silently thanked God for automatic transmission. Imagine if I had to learn to drive ANY manual vehicle, much less an old Ford Ranger. Ha!

We arrived at a rainy Whitfield Hall around half past midnight. I put my hoodie over my head, got out of the truck, and followed the rest of the group into a tiny house. The first room on entry was a small, dimly-lit kitchen. Old glass cupboards sat above a tiled counter-top on my right. A deep sink, and two vintage GE stoves lay to my left, complete with two gas lamps and a giant kettle sitting atop one of the stoves. I even saw a bakelite fridge! I also saw the LMN logo to my bottom right, since this was obviously a made-for-TV movie, and not real life.

The kitchen followed into some sort of living room on the left. Wooden table with a gas lamp in the centre of the room. Two easy chairs on either side of the table. Stained wooden floors. Whitewashed wooden walls. White muslin curtains floating in the breeze. Nope. Not a made-for-TV movie at all.

After all eighteen of us used the bathroom to the right, we assembled at the back of the house and counted ourselves out loud. The numbers we counted ourselves as, would be the numbers used to identify us in the group. We were told that our first major stop would be Portland Gap, and that it was roughly half an hour from where we were. I, lucky number thirteen, was blissfully ignorant to the fact that I should have doubled those thirty minutes, and the “walk” ahead. I put my hoodie back over my head, put my hands in my pockets, hitched my backpack on my back, and started to walk.

At the top, it’s just us ♫ (Pt. 1)

Let me just get straight to the point. I have a love-hate relationship with my gap year. I love that I’m finally able to explore what I’m really interested in, and having all this newly acquired free time! I hate however, not really knowing what to do with it, and not having anyone to spend it with. Here’s how unemployment led me to getting my driver’s license, and to the top of the Blue Mountain Peak.

I was two months unemployed with no job or volunteering prospects in sight. A photography course I was supposed to do got postponed twice, with no new start date. I failed my driving test on the first attempt. I hadn’t seen my friends since December. So of course, I was feeling more than a little despondent.

My grandpa was visiting from Grenada for a couple weeks, along with some cadets from the U.S. on spring break. The cadets were staying with some family friends of ours, while my grandpa went back and forth between there and my grandaunt’s. My grandpa, the cadets, and our family friends were all planning to hike to the highest point in Jamaica - the day of my second driving exam. Hearing my plight, my grandpa extended an invitation to me. I accepted the invitation - unknowingly, naively, and a little desperately. I felt like I had nothing to lose. I also felt it would be pretty badass to climb the peak the same day as finally being allowed to drive alone. Can someone say bragging rights?

Sure enough, March 22nd came around, and I passed! I celebrated Kanye-style for the better part of the morning: waiting till I got my license (right?), having a dream that I could make it to the top of the peak, and spending that on bottled water, Nature Valley bars, and Lucozade on my way home. It didn’t take long, however, for my mother and brother to kill my mountaineering dreams, and understandably so.

“YOU’RE climbing the peak? In the dark? Okay then…” proved to be a much gentler let-down than my brother’s “YOU a climb di peak? Yah go DEAD!”

Now, anyone who knows me, knows I have a strong propensity for injuring myself. I dropped a rock on my head at four. Gave myself second-degree burns with cup soup at five. Sprained my ankle doing Gangnam Style at sixteen. How would I fare over seven thousand feet above sea level? I was determined to prove my mother and brother wrong, but more determined to get out of the house and get a killer sunrise picture. I made sure to take a four-hour nap while I was at home in the afternoon. I packed my snacks and plastic-bag protected camera and phone into my backpack, ate dinner at my house, and met our family friends at theirs. This was around 6 p.m.

I met the cadets, and listened to other stories about climbing the peak - that it “wasn’t so bad”, that it was “doable”. It wasn’t until we were given a rundown of what we were to expect on the hike - and a Vitamin C tablet each to drink - that I realized what I had really gotten myself into.

“Now, this hike will not be easy, but it will be worth it. The walk up will be strenuous, and the walk down will be arduous.”

They wish I would go ahead and fuck my life up…

“When you’re walking down, try not to put all of your weight on your knees. The Vitamin C tablet you’re drinking is supposed to help cushion your joints”

CAN’T LET THEM GET TO ME

“You’re going to need a lot of upper body strength…”

AND EVEN THOUGH I ALWAYS FUCK MY LIFE UP

“Any questions?”

Only I can mention me. (and my unfit, flat-footed self)

I sneaked another Nature Valley bar into my bag when no one was looking. The bus to take us to Mavis Bank came about ten minutes after the scheduled 9 p.m. departure. We boarded and said a quick prayer before heading out. Most people fell asleep on the way. But not me - me who frighten fi any night outing. The Blue Mountains would fix my business, and I’d soon find out.