Thanksgiving weekend

Having helped elect a new president, partied at the mid-year conference, sung in Korea, received my drivers license, and visited Kyoto, I was just about ready for November to end. There was still one more weekend to go, though, and there was adventure.

Thursday and Friday I went to my elementary school, since the high schoolers were taking end-of-term exams. As usual, I had tons of fun running around playing with the kids, forging ahead with my Japanese studying, and talking with the teachers. Friday, we all got together at Joey's for a barbecue. I drove up with Mike, Joe and Rose came up together, and Gavin went separately.

Joey's an awesome griller. He makes great chicken and even better burgers. Kim brought homemade flour tortillas, and Joey grilled up some chicken with some sauté vegetables and guacamole dip. We didn't get everything prepared until close to 10, but it was heavenly.

A few Japanese guys Joey knows came over. While they were out on the balcony, Rose, Kim, Joe, and I played Catch Phrase. Rose and Kim left after a while. Mike and Joey started playing beer pong, while Gavin lay down on the floor and fell asleep.

I was reading before bedding down for the night, and Joe was hanging out and watching beer pong. Bored, he started hanging from the doorway. The doorway itself jutted out about an inch from the wall, affording that much of a handhold. Joe's rather small, so he managed just fine. He even managed to pull his whole body up to the top of the doorway, parallel to the floor. It was an awesome Spider-Man pose.

One of the other guys tried it, but didn't get far before falling on his butt. A second guy gave it a shot, and got pulled up pretty far before slipping. Landing on his feet, he gave it another go. This time he got all the way parallel with the floor before slipping. He fell flat on his back and head.

I'd never seen someone black out before. It scared the hell out of me. He literally didn't move at all: he just lay there, his breathing shallow. We thought at first he might have been messing with us, but quickly discounted that. He came to after a minute or so, but his eyes were twitching and he couldn't speak very well.

When he did start speaking coherently a few minutes later, he swore he couldn't remember who we were or where we were. This slowly faded, but he couldn't remember what had happened to him. Around this time we noticed the blood on the back of his head. Not surprisingly, he'd opened up a gash on the back of his head, and we spent a while cleaning him up.

Back on his feet, gradually collecting himself, he wanted to go out to a bar. We tried our best to talk him out of it, considering he'd suffered a concussion half an hour before, but he insisted. One of the other guys went with him. In addition to being shaken up like the rest of us, Joe felt awful about it, thinking it was his fault. He can't help being Spider-Man, though.

The guy ended up recovering just fine. (They came back about 15 minutes after leaving for the bar.) I got up early the next morning and read until everyone else woke up. On the ride back down, Mike and I talked a lot, which we haven't had a chance to do for a while. He told me about