It’s “one of those days.”

You know, the kind where the sky is dark newspaper gray, sort of dingy, like it would rub off o your hands if you touched it too much. Rain is coming down like it’s from an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. And sitting on my bed is my own personal Watson. Actually, that’s not exactly right – I’m probably the sidekick today.

“Come on, Vi,” my best friend nags, sprawled across my comforter and staring, wide-eyed, at the ceiling, “Let’s do something.”

Len has two unusual hobbies, thinking and doing. I say “unusual” because no one does either of these things quite like Len. Len will try almost anything at least once; in fact, I am beginning to suspect that this may be his goal. The spectrum of this “doing” encompasses almost everything, from knitting and baseball and rollercoasters and unicycling and cooking and everything in between. He gets a kick of out experiencing things. And when he isn’t doing, he’s thinking. I don’t mean just thinking to himself while walking along or sitting in class; I mean staring into space and tuning everything else out and really thinking.

But today, for Len, is a “doing” sort of day.

“You do realize it’s raining, right?” I say.

“I know.”

I let out a sigh. Rainy days make me lazy and tired, but Len is the only person I know who is more stubborn than me, and he’s just going to keep wearing me down until I agree to some crazy scheme. “Alright,” I concede, “what did you have in mind?”

This had probably not been considered until now. Len thinks for two seconds, and then, definitely, states, “Laser tag.”

“Okay.” That actually sounds pretty fun. The last time it rained, we hung out underneath the bridge trying to catch fish. Len caught a few little ones – he threw them back, obviously – and he came really close to catching this giant frog that we call “Goliath,” but all I caught was a really grody cold.

Len pulls out his cell phone. He was the first in our group of friends to get one; he has absolutely no sense of direction, which terrified his mother back in middle school.  “I’ll call Pants and Carly if you’ll call Gabriel.”

“What about Nate?”

Len raises is eyebrows. “Is that okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Len gives me a look, and I feel compelled to justify my response. “We didn’t even date for that long. Seriously. We’re still friends. Besides, we wouldn’t want to break up the group or anything.”

Len shrugs and returns his attention to dialing. His silence is maddening, so I lean over, hook an arm around his shoulders, and give him a killer noogie, the kind my brother taught me how to do when we were little.

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