Awkward Covers

I am holding a conversation with my mother in a parking lot, but I am late to get on a bus with my French class. My mother seems concerned for my safety, but I insist I must get on the bus or I will be left behind. I board the yellow school bus, showing my U-Pass to the driver. I take a seat near the front, and see that my mother has followed me on board. I stand up, glaring, and say quietly, "Mom. What are you doing on this bus?" and then louder, "Excuse me. What are you doing on this bus?" She finally gets that I am embarrassed and I don't want my classmates to know my mother wants to chaperon our field trip, so she says, "Oh, right... Ahem..." and turns to the bus driver and announces, "I am interested in psychology-gical... anthropology. I want to research- cite sources of the study of."
Meanwhile the bus driver has assumed she is crazy but starts driving anyway. We make a circle in the parking lot, but eventually my mom distracts the her so much that she veers off into a field, turns off the bus and everyone gets out.

I go to stay with a friend for the night, and when I go to shut the bedroom door, I am extremely embarrassed that the younger brother is awake. I think he is also frozen, although I can't recall how literally.
In the morning I get lost in the covers, and detach myself reluctantly.

At some later point I remember complaining to a friend in a cafe about my embarrassing experiences.

A man dressed as an asparagus spear nervously shuffles through his jokes written on the backs of carefully clipped coupons before his audition. He carefully stores them in a small carved wooden box before cautiously stepping out onto the ice.
Now from the view of Asparagus Man, I feel incredibly disappointed in myself as the winning couple skates around me, waving to adoring fans with affixed photogenic smiles.
Disappointment doesn't last long, because Asparagus Man climbs onto a stage with the encouragement of the crowd, crying with happiness, and steps into the waiting coffin, surrounded by cheering costumed creatures.

Another of Andrew's great ideas

I am downtown after school with my backpack and drawing portfolio. I have to go to the Opera, so I stop in a stuffy women's clothing store, where many women buy fancy flip-flops. The saleswomen are suspicious that I am mentally handicapped, and have escaped the care of my parents, so they call my dad to take me home. He arrives, awkward in his suspenders and cut-off polar fleece, and talks to me soothingly.
Eventually I give up trying to go to the Opera and end up heading south on I-5 in the backseat of Andrew's car. I talk to Kathryn, who is in the front seat, then Alex appears and we understand each other. Then Ariana appears between us and sings. I rummage around in a paper sack and pull out a plain bagel that as been slightly tainted with blueberry. Ariana asks, "Is that for me?" and I lie and say yes. I take the blueberry-tainted pepper bagel instead.
Andrew mutters something about a watershed, and veers off sharply to the left just before the tunnel, where there is an exit I've never seen before. Although this is somewhere on Capitol Hill, the exit is steep and overgrown with blackberries, and leads us to a snowy field. We all jolt around as he drives us into the middle of the field. I hear a strange noise. Creaking.
"Andrew!" I say, "This is a lake! Are you trying to kill us? Get us off of here!"
He doeesn't believe me, go I get out of the car and brush the snow off the surface. It just looks like ice and Andrew is not convinced. I decide to at least save my own ass and head for the shore. As I walk, my footsteps reveal a different surface. Examining it more closely, I discover it is dark wooden planks, similar to the flooring in Solstice. Everyone else approaches and enthusiastically brushes off a large area. Andrew says, "Look, they've reinforced the lake, it's safe!" Then he comes up with the idea to use our matching planks to reinforce the lake even further, so everyone pulls out a hammer and nails planks on top of the existing ones.
Deciding it would be a better use of my time to go to work, I walk over to the espresso machine on the south end of the lake. The order is a triple tall two percent caramel latte to go, but there's something wrong with the beans... someone has filled the grinder with hard candies. This seems like a really bad idea, but I figure someone knew what they were doing, so I pull the shots. They come out multi-colored, and then deflate to a sugary residue.