“The taste is
our eleven secret herbs and spices.”
George
Hormel* #quote
Today my friend
Jessica will be coming over today. We'll probably be playing a game
calling a game called Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, an
adventure game where you go through dungeons and various lands
adventurer-style. There are items you find and use to solve the
puzzles, for example the boomerangs or magic gloves of strength to
lift boulders. Though with the more dangerous items, the fire wand or
bombs being the primary ones, we usually hurt ourselves a lot before
we manage to solve the puzzle. We'd make terrible adventurers. At
least we got using the swords down. Simply put the pointy end in the
monster. Actually no, to tell you the truth we actually hit each
other with our swords too.
The One
Constant
People navigate
through landmarks. The mental map of the world existed as dead forest
with each understood landmark as a tall, living tree with many leaves
of their own unique colors of information to provide reference and
direction.
In the area of
Sunset High things always changed. The school hit a mix of people of
various classes, middle, low and very high, due to the unique spot
where it lay in the city. It remodeled often over the years as the
richer families donated to it frequently. Same thing to the park
adjacent to the school.
One thing
stayed a constant landmark for everyone in the school. An old vending
machine. The machine was bought at the founding of the school. It sat
in a middle area of the school where all the odd hallways come
together and the back doors along with front doors of several areas
of the school appear. The sort of area where an architect compromises
design to make everything else perfect. The vending machine allowed
everyone to find their bearings both in this odd spot, and being the
only constant over all the remodels, often it became the universal
way to give directions even to new students.
Though the
remodels made the school look new, the vending machine reminded
people how old the school was. The fifty year old machine still
reliably clunked out it's beverages, though it had a long history of
support. Before the school received any remodels during the early
years of the school the teachers repaired the machine themselves. The
shop teachers worked on it, or teachers called in family to help with
it. The art teachers restored the paint on it themselves, though it
still looked aged after a good painting since they couldn't quite get
that factory look.
A foolish
freshman scrawled some graffiti on the vending machine. Some seniors
caught him in the act and he found himself in a special brand of
trouble. It took the art teacher an hour to paint over the graffiti.
After eighty
years of loyal service the machine's mechanisms failed beyond repair.
However they didn't replace it in any of the remodels, or place
another machine next to it. A simple, tiny “out of order sticker”
went over the coin slot and they kept it there through all the
following remodels. It kept being a guide for everyone until the day
the school closed.
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