Planking was the sport in those days......great athletes of the day could plank for hours at a time with only 2 ribs making contact with the corner of a stone wall; hours without falling.  Margo and Marcus actually met at a plank-in.  She was well known around Plattsburg for her incline planks, where she could balance on a corner with her head 2 feet lower than her feet.  People would even come over from Burlington to watch her and bring her laurels made of cedar boughs.  Cedar was a tree of the old world and only a few survived.  Marcus had never seen anyone so beautiful.  He became obsessed.  He could plank too, but he knew he would never have moves like her.  When he finally got the nerve up to tell her that he hadn't stopped thinking of her at least once an hour for the past year, at least twice, no, twenty times every hour, no words came out of his mouth.  Does she think I'm crazy?  Why can't she just know?  She knows.  Why can't she just come tell me that she knows!

Magic Scones

Nobody knew what it was like to have webbed feet!  I was caught in the space in between proud and embarrassed, in between considering myself a powerful mutant and a timid freak.  I did use my webbed feet to my advantage in all of my apocalypse dreams, swimming across Lake Champlain pulling a raft of friends and supplies, finding safety in the mountains of New York.  But, being real, I was too embarrassed to join my high school swim team, so I just passive-agressively made fun of them to make myself feel better.  It was only for finding my love of baking that I was saved.  Baking, you say!  What high-schooler gets into baking?  I was also obsessed with growing shrubs.  What kinds of shrubs you ask?  Shrubs with berries of all types!  Currants, elderberries, blueberries, and more.  Of course, I filled my baked goods with the berries, and more.  It was just a hobby for several years until I noticed  and unususal increase in the number of friends that were stopping by to sample and even take home some of my baked goods.  I allowed myself to be flattered for a while, but eventually the attention became more that I could attribute to chance.  Why was everybody so crazy about the choke cherries that I was suing?  Was there something unique about my blueberries?  Why did i often find people laying on their backs and giggling in my back yard after eating my berries.  Could there be a amgic nutrient in the soil that feeds my plants?  Could my plants have pants?