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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - MAJOR DEATH ISSUES AND CHERRIES

Two summers ago I attended a month-long publishing program in Denver, Colorado. I went thinking I'd learn some valuable publishing tools, see some mountains, and acclimatize myself to higher altitudes. It turned out to be the most uncomfortable month of my life. But I can't blame Denver, even if it is really boring and weirdly clean, because I'm a cheapo who refused to pay $1,000 to live in a shitty, badly lit dorm room with a complete stranger. Instead, I opted to live with an old lady who had major death issues.

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Each day was filled with boring classes and getting to know each other picnics. Fine, I signed up for that. But the complete awkwardness of being around somebody else's grandma morning and night is hell. I'd come down for breakfast and she'd force pie and ice cream on me. I'd say, "Oh, no thanks, Dorothy." But then she'd put it in the microwave, place it front of me, and stand there, waiting.

I'd offer to help her around the house on the weekends because I really wanted to get out of paying the rent. So there I found myself in the dead of July, sitting on the top of a ladder in her backyard, an old plastic milk jug tied around my neck, picking fruit out of a tree while she sat inside watching reruns and eating ice cream. Picking fruit is pretty simple, but how about when you're really sweaty and you have altitude sickness and you have to climb up and down the ladder to move it a few inches every ten minutes just to pick some fruit out of a tree to go into another one of those pies you don't want to eat for breakfast? Another time I scrubbed the kitchen floors on all fours because Dorothy has bad knees and is lazy. She sat on a chair and told me how I was scrubbing wrong. At the end of the trip I still had to pay her $400 and my mom made me send her a thank you note.

The only two days I actually had fun was when my best friend came to visit. He brought weed and his mom's van. For the next two days we'd set out to hike a mountain, only to realize we'd just conquered a small hill at its base. At night, we'd go to the store and buy

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high gravity beer

and an apple. Then we'd drink the former, make a bowl out of the latter and smoke it in his mom's car, and pass out watching TV in his hotel room.

The morning of my flight

back home to Atlanta

, I woke up feeling good. Nothing could kill my mood. And then Dorothy spoke. She spent the entire drive to the airport talking about death and how I should really get my will made up because hey, these things happen. She grew a chip on her shoulder since her husband had a gardening accident (she didn't say of what variety) and died a few years back. Apparently she'd been dealing with a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit about getting multiple death certificates to prove to whomever that yes, her husband was, in fact, dead. And then she's like, while we're talking about death, why not talk about abortion too? And President Bush. And then back again to the subject of dying unexpectedly. Oh, here's the airport. Thanks, Dorothy.

SHANIA TWAINT