Youth and Government and Blackberry Bushes

 

I woke up this morning with stiff arms. I don't recall having done anything terribly exerting yesterday. I spent most of it either in a car, at a table, or asleep, except for the two hours or so in the morning when I worked on removing blackberry plants in a park in Olympia. I wasn't even yanking them - I pruned off branch after branch after branch, then set them in a wheelbarrow and minced them with a pair of pruners. It didn't even ache at the time.

If I had been Joseph, another boy from the group, then I might have had reason to ache. Joseph didn't seem to have had much experience with weeds. He cleared a sizeable section of brambling hedge by holding a pair of loppers open and swinging it like a baseball bat amidst the Gordian tangle of spiky vines.

But I wasn't Joseph, and I wasn't swinging from the waist, and the pruners I used weren't heavy in the least.

So why did I wake up this morning with such stiff arms? Sometimes my forearms ache when I write for an extended period. But I didn't do much writing - I signed my name a few times, and jotted down brief notes concerning precedents for a certain fictitious litigary scenario. Nothing demanding in the least.

Or perhaps it was the bed I slept on the night before last, a queen in a Red Lion Hotel overlooking a saltysmelling lake. But if it had been the bed, I should have ached yesterday morning, not this morning.

So my stiff arms are as yet unexplained.

Was it from too much flipping through the hefty binder of mock bills that was given to all the participants at the Youth and Government leadership training program? Or shaking more hands in 48 hours as I have in the past six months? Or from excessive shrugging as person after person queried me as to how I, a first-year Y&G participant, wound up serving as a Supreme Court justice in the program's mock trial system?

Could be. The handshake theory would also explain why my right arm hurts a bit more than my left one.

Maybe it had something to do with my madcap flipping through reference books as I cram-studied for a certain test, or the long series of good-bye hugs I gave to newfound friends whose names were lost in the fast-paced blur of the weekend but whose friendly faces and warm welcomes will stay with me for the rest of my life.

It could also have something to do with the fact that I fueled myself throughout the whole event on fast food, protein bars, and decaf hibiscus tea. Maybe my body is simply protesting my poor recollection of the Food Pyramid.

Or - maybe - it's something else altogether.

Let's see: I got up extra early, crossed the Cascades, saw White Pass for the first time, read century-old case transcripts in Washington State's legal library, made friends, played games, and fell asleep late only to wake up early, make more friends, do more research, wrestle with blackberries, say goodbye to it all, and get home well after the sun had set.

Maybe - just maybe - I wore myself out to the extent that I went asleep almost instantly last night, unwittingly with my arms underneath my body.

Come to think of it, that makes a lot of sense.

 

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