Professional

"Tuck up," she says, "we're going to get hit with the sprinklers."

I turn in the sleeping bag and pull the edges up, tucking them under my feet. Through the holes in the mesh I can see the wood-chips on the ground about 8 feet below me, although I can't feel the mesh through the sleeping bag.

We must be quite a sight: three college students and one graduate camped on a children's playground. We could see the lights from the road and hear the cars shuffle past. Most of the noise came from the unevenness of the road.

Drummer was sprawled across a bridge between two of the sections, Jesh had yet to settle down but was enjoying running along the tops of the structures in the dark. Tiffany was curled up next to me. I could almost see the smile on her face in the dark.

At dawn we awoke to a rosy sunrise and two dogs running in the park. The husband and wife walking them had obviously seen us and were skirting the entire structure. My bare feet could feel the grain of the rivulets which made up the structure surface and my blue plaid PJ pants ruffled slightly in the morning breeze. Oh well, this isn't going to get a whole lot weirder no matter what I do...

"Hello!" I called, "Good morning to you both!"

The husband looked a little baffled and puzzled on how to respond but the wife grinned widely and waved to us.

"Can I pet your dogs?" I asked.

"Of course," the wife answered.

In seconds I was down the fire pole and across the mulch into the grass which licked the hems of my pants as I ran, leaving them wet with dew.

"What are you doing up there?" the wife asked as I arrived.

"Camping out," I smiled as I worked to extract a bright green tennis ball from the mouth of an excited golden retriever.

"Why?" her husband asked.

"I don't know," I replied, winding up and chucking the ball as far as I could. The golden retriever streaked out in pursuit, front and back legs together in a bounding gate, "Why not I guess?"

"I know how that is," the woman said turning to me, "you wouldn't believe the half of the crazy stuff I did in college."

The husband's eyebrows crashed together like waves for a moment before he raised one in puzzled alarm and looked at his wife.

***

They weren't in front of the iron gates of the school we had selected. They weren't in the subway station. They weren't picking up their cell phones. They weren't anywhere I could figure out.

The day was cold enough to see your breath, and I was wrapped tightly in a baby blue coat. An equally bright and clashing orange piece of poster board with the words "Free Hugs" written on it in foot high all capitol black letters was rolled up in my hands.

This had seemed a simply grand idea in a group, but standing alone I felt nothing short of absurd on that street corner. I stood alone for nearly half an hour, sign half unfurled in one hand, looking somewhat dejected.

"You're giving out free hugs?" a voice asked me. It belonged to a girl who was probably still in highschool. Black lipstick, black skirt, dyed black hair, some sort of intricate black shoes, and even the obligatory hot topic spiked bracelet made me feel like I had just met the walking personification of people who need to prove their uniqueness by all acting the same.

"Uh...yeah," I said non-commitally.

"I love that video," she grinned, "can I have one?"

"Uh...yeah!" I said a bit more brightly.

I'm never going to be able to explain what exactly happened in that moment when the girl who I was so busy looking down on came up and hugged me, but like so many other endeavors in life, the first step was the hardest and the expression of confidence is often what makes you succeed. I held my sign high above my head, grinning at incoming pedestrian traffic. The people came in streams, they would see one person hug me, and then another person would follow suit, but at no point did interest hold strongly enough to form a line.

"You're doing a psych project?" a man asked tenitively, pointing back to the gates behind me.

"No, just for fun."

"Oh," there was a long pause before he produced a rather nice camera from his coat and extended his hand once more toward the intricate iron gates, "I go there. I need an art project. Can I photograph you?"

A street preformer came up to me at one point and said that everybody walking from my direction was smiling, hugged me, and left. I hugged the photographer, but sadly I never got to see the result of his project (if you're out there Mr Photographer Man, I'm rather curious how that turned out), as a matter of fact I'll never find out if I made much of a difference to anybody that day, and honestly I don't expect I did. It was, however, one of the most heartwarming and rewarding experiences I have ever participated in. People in groups are miserable creatures, but from time to time if you can manage to take them and yourself our of the daily environment you'll find something in them which makes you both smile. It was also really healthy of me to get over my self-consciousness about the absurdity of it all and just enjoy myself.

***

The big lab with the best toys in it, naturally, is the one which I must share with a variety of characters. One of them is standing in front of me wearing a suit.

"You have to wear shoes in here,"

I want to ask him why, but I already know why, and its not something he's likely to say out loud. There is no heavy machinery here, no serious danger, Florian just believes its unprofessional to not wear shoes at work. Nothing has changed since I started doing this more than two years ago, Florian is just new and believes he can help me by teaching me to grow up. Maybe he can.

I find this interesting. Personally I define "being unprofessional" as "not doing a good job," but in reality the act of "being professional" in this day and age seems to have taken on a significant amount of unrelated baggage. I understand that sometimes we need to put our best foot forward to impress guests and potential sponsors, but why must we keep up this facade with one another? Why are we trained to be so fearful of the judgement of total strangers we will never see again and will have no impact on our lives, and of our own teammates who are suppose to be our allies? Perhaps this insistance on stupid and trivial childish behavior is stupid, but this other option of a culture just slays me.

***

"Punch buggy green, no punch back," I tap Corey on the shoulder. Corey is a professional, both in my eyes and in Florian's, and ten years my senior. If I am where he is when I am his age I will be very proud. He looks at me for a moment slightly bewildered, then smiles and shakes his head.

"Pika, are you ever going to grow up?"

"I was considering maybe starting on that in like 10 years..."