The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Jazzy Latin music blared from the patio of some distant cafe as I dole­fully chomped on a free sample from Godiva Choco­lates. The overcast sky – and the wafting bit of bite on the edge of the breeze – did nothing to improve what seemed at the time like the worst day of my life.

I don’t want to talk about Knowledge Bowl State this year. First of all, I’m trying to avoid writing a column about something that an­other article in this week’s paper might discuss. Second of all, it still hurts.

Tiebreakers, I thought. Why do they call them “tie­breakers”? By my calcula­tions, they break an average of six hearts for every tie.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

After a meet - any meet, but especially State - I’m your quintessential dumb blonde. My brain gives out, and I straggle through the rest of the day running on hormones and Oreos. So what does a quintessential dumb blonde do when she’s in the pits?

She goes shopping.

I had dragged my family from Arlington High School to the Alderwood Center in Lynnwood, a sprawling mall complex. We split off and began rummaging through the stores.

An hour after walking into the mall, I wandered into a glittering formalwear shop. I didn’t delude myself that the thin envelope of spending cash in my purse was going to buy any of the gorgeous gowns in the win­dow, but try-ons were free.

I slipped into four or five gowns that afternoon. There was a very, very sparkly strapless purple dress with a sheath skirt. If there are two factors that turn me off of a dress, they’re strapless­ness and sheath skirts. A navy-colored gown with lime-green lining followed – hey, I thought, all the Seahawks fans will want to dance with me! – that was gorgeous but, alas, too big. A couple peach-colored gowns and a white one with a funky one-strap construc­tion were donned and shed before I tried on the last one - copper-colored, covered in sequin zigzags.

As I had been halfway expecting all along, they were all well out of my price range. I thanked the clerk for her help and walked out to the mall courtyard, where I acquired a free piece of chocolate and sat by an empty fountain listening to distant samba.

We could’ve had a tro­phy. Our first trophy. And it slipped right out of our grasp.

My mom stood about five feet away, chatting with the relative whose house we were going to invade for the remainder of the weekend. After a few seconds of terse conversation, she hung up and flipped around to face me.

“There was a mudslide right by Arlington,” she said. “Three people are dead.”

What?

Arlington, where I had just been this morning? Arlington, the city we’d pulled out of two hours ago? Arlington, where I’d felt like the saddest person on the face of the earth?

At that instant, as I swal­lowed my chocolate, every­thing snapped into perspec­tive.