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I always like a story that comes around full circle, especially when it all happens by chance. My favorite full circle story I have to tell starts when I was in high school. I was working at Sunday River, a ski resort in Bethel, Maine. I used to take my lunch breaks in the furthest room back in the lodge, so I could take a nap after eating my sandwich. One day I noticed a small childish piece of graffiti, LYNDSAY IS A FAG! I laughed and laughed at this simple remark. After all, it’s not often you hear of a girl referred to as a fag, and it’s even more rare to see that she is so flamboyant that it needs to be inked onto a wall in the back of a ski lodge. It instantly became my favorite piece of nonsensical graffiti, and I made sure to tell a lot of people about it.
Flash-forward seven years, I’m now working in the Tech Barn at MMW. It’s the first week of workshops, and the course managers are struggling to keep up. One rotund course manager comes into the barn for the first time. He begins to introduce himself, and tell us what he has been up to. He’s from Connecticut and about my age. He went to Gould Academy, a private school in Bethel. He’s an avid skier, and used to teach lessons at Sunday River. His name is Lyndsay and he’s wearing pink shorts.
No, it didn’t hit me until the next time I told the LYNDSAY IS A FAG story, but when it did, my perception of the graffiti made a lot more sense. What used to be a funny visual in my mind was now a long story of chance, and a great story to anyone who met Lyndsay that summer.

I was in my parents’ garage, with my father and his dog. I was fresh from my first semester at college and still practicing all the disgusting habits that I had learned there. I reached my hand up, index finger extended, and began rummaging around inside of my nose. I pulled out a booger, nothing too offensive. I flicked it to the ground, just as my father saw what I was doing.
“Hey, wipe that on the dog, like the rest of us.”