I went to the kitchen and to my surprise Josephine was now a boy of about 6'11" who looked and sounded exactly like Joseph Gribble from King of the Hill. He was sitting a desk writing furiously and muttering to himself. I left the kitchen, went back to the family room, and asked Anthony what was going on. "These kids today," he grumbled, "as soon as they hit 9 months they think that they can just grow up and turn into boys!" He explained that Josephine now insisted on being called 'Joseph' and that he was constantly coming up with far-fetched scientific hypotheses. Just then Joseph burst in from the kitchen holding up a yellow legal pad covered with crazy scribblings.
Joseph had surmised that there was a new species of metallic subterranean birds that migrated each year from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Blue Mountains of India. I had never heard of the Blue Mountains, but Joseph revealed a map showing a rectangular mountain range covering much of eastern India. Joseph passionately argued that if he were correct, this discovery would advance science by at least ten years. During his argument I kept seeing the same five second clip over and over again in my head of a bronze hummingbird poking up through the dirt and then darting off. Finally Anthony cut him off. "Fine. We'll all go to India. But if you don't find any metal birds, you have to go back to being a baby girl."On the flight to India they showed "Footloose," but it wasn't at all how I remembered it - it was a disaster movie. I got really engrossed in the movie because I had this strange feeling that it was somehow important.
When we landed in India, Joseph went off alone to look for the metallic birds. Anthony, John McElderry (a friend from Ann Arbor) and I all went for a walk through what looked like a Brazilian favela. I told them that after graduation I wanted to go on a third mission [the dream Brian had already been on two missions, I guess], but I was going to play hardball with the church and tell them that I would only serve for six months and I would only go to Campinas, Brazil. Anthony and John both thought this was a terrible idea and told me that I should get a job instead.
Just then we passed by a mall (called "ZCMI India") and I went inside and got a job in the food court. However, this wasn't a fast-food place - it was a nice sit-down restaurant whose best-selling item was chocolate cake with meatballs inside and spaghetti on the top. Like the Mall of America, ZCMI India had an indoor theme park adjacent to the food court. Desiree stopped by my restaurant to say hi before heading over to the roller coaster. I watched from afar as her car started to inch its way up the first hill, which was so steep that it was practically perpendicular to the ground. My eyes followed Desiree's car as it ascended when suddenly a meteor shot down through the sky.
Panic erupted in the food court as soon as the meteor appeared and everyone evacuated except for those trapped on the roller coaster. The meteor crashed smack into the top of the first hill and ripped up the track, but the cars kept slowly climbing higher and higher towards their inevitable doom.
I felt oddly serene as I watched the scene of destruction unfold. I knew exactly how to save everyone: this was the exact scenario I had seen in the disaster movie version of "Footloose" on the airplane. I ran to the control panel, pulled the same lever I had seen in the movie, and the cars screeched to a halt. Desiree and the other passengers were able to climb down the wreckage of the roller coaster to safety.
