Evening visitor

Yesterday was a bizarre day. I slept poorly after 4:40 am, finally falling back to sleep for a couple hours before getting up to sing and read at church. After we got home and had a quick bite, Tom's dad stopped by to talk "buckets". Tom and his dad are building a larger backhoe bucket. Thomas had welded one part, and Pop had cut another part. After Pop left and my brief exposure to how hot the day was getting, I collapsed for a two hour nap. I was just so hot and tired. A quick cool shower helped wake me up in the afternoon, but not enough to actually move freely about the planet. I read and made a few phone calls. I started thinking about preparing dinner. I waited for the breeze to start cooling. In a dirty pair of gym shorts and a tank top, I heard a car pull up. I called to Thomas that his dad had arrived, but in fact there was a teenage boy standing on the other side of the screen door. He was desperate. The uniform shirt gave him away, and I presumed he and the contents of the white van outside were headed for Philmont. He needed a bathroom, and I pointed him down the hall. I closed the bedroom door and carried on. Thomas came wide-eyed out of the office as the bathroom door closed. He had heard a male voice passing and was terribly confused and alert. I told him that Boy Scout from South Carolina stopped and needed to use a bathroom. It could only have been a dire situation, as the lack of any services or people in the area make taking a potty stop relatively easy for a boy along Hwy 21. Thomas went out and talked to the folks in the van while I continued on with starting some rice cooking. He was still outside when the young scout finally emerged from the bathroom. He seemed somewhat more relieved, though still awkwardly uncomfortable at having intruded on such circumstances. I told him it wasn't a big deal, seeing as there isn't much between Springer and Philmont along the highway. The part that made the whole thing most amusing: he was genuinely surprised I had heard of Philmont and told me that was actually where he was headed. I laughed. It would be pretty difficult for anyone around here not to know about Philmont, but then not to suspect the destination of a boy wearing a Boy Scout uniform less than 20 miles from Philmont on a highway that doesn't lead to much else....well, you see why it was so laughable and how small this boy's world still is. They were on their way, and Thomas went and turned the bathroom fan on.