Naivety side two

So here I am in Whitefish with some fifty Canadiens who are all having a jolly good time. One of them is curious to know why I laugh so much, at what I myself actually say sometimes. He describes it as being completely awkward as well as the opposite, so you know what good that does. At this point we're eating, drinking, and merrying at the Bulldog Saloon before we bed down before our first go at the mountain.

The next morning the skiing wasn't too shabby considering this shatty winter, but there aren't as many stories going on around you when 'it's just you and the mountain,' as they say.

It was that evening which really opened my eyes to this whole concept of swirling and sharing and intertwining storylines. We got back to hotel, and I have to bathe before we have our night on the town. So I begin to collect what's left of my clothes in the weekend pack. There's one garment which I notice to be particularly fitting. It's a simple tee from a theatre company back home which puts on an annual improv comedy show. There's one team per high school who may compete, they play games, and it's open to the public. I was the public back then, and I even got a tee shirt from the competition. I know that my friend from the previous evening would appreciate it's content. I take my shower, dress to impress, and join the party headed to dinner.

"Hey Joe, wait up! Check this out. Haha! Look what it says, 'I Crack Me Up.' You get it?"

"You know what, that is pretty funny, just you don't laugh at it."

"I already did back a the room." And now we're headed to grab some Mexican food then things start to get extra odd. The Mexican place is neighboring the Bulldog, and there's another bar behind it. I'm excited to watch some football, but no one else is because they're not from the US. They could talk to me about hockey for some time, but not American football. I ask the waiter if we can turn on the game, but he jokes that they don't watch that-type-of-football here before going to grab the remote. The Broncos are getting whooped by the Patriots at this point once we turn on the game, and everyone knows there's little use in the television being on. What else will we do, is what we're thinking? We decide that we'll go around in a circle and tell jokes, but before the session starts Diana speaks up and points over at the window exclaiming, "Wave at the penguins!" What the hell is going on here? That's what I ask the waiter when he comes back. He tells me it's some local tradition for when the penguins came down from the north, invading the Yeti land, there was a huge upheaval and the Yeti kind has been on this say for the past hundreds of years out to extinguish the penguins from the their property. Later there was a king and queen which entered the picture and have tried to bring peace between the two peoples. Neither have taken kindly to the extra politics. I think this is ridiculous, but it's not out of the question. The waiter leaves, but five minutes later [of which were uselessly filled with watching a beating of the Broncos] I look to my right to find a Yeti staring right in the eyes. I said 'Hi' I think, but I was probably confused with what's really going on. There's Canadians. There's Skiers. There's penguins. There's Yetis. There's locals. There's king and queens. There's me.

Our group heads to back bar after dinner and finds photo-ops with two dressed as aristocrats, the king and queen for the evening. After one photo we leave and outside we find three more Yetis, each enjoying a beer and cigarette. There's a lot more to the story too if there was a discernible storyline but instead I'm still on the outside looking in. I can only think..Where did these stories come from, and how were they brought about?