Go, Go Gadget

     This flashfiction story was adapted from a flashfic play we were assigned in Pop Market, where we then all cold-read our scripts. Dr. Dial-Driver's reaction - "Okay, a tragedy, that's fine.But - Damn! Why'd you have to kill the dog??!!"  I also played a 91-year-old grandmother with dementia that day. It was a super depressing start to the morning, when all of us seniors were already depressed because it was Thursday, which meant another dose of the soul-draining Capstone course. And usually we like Pop Market.

     "Not the smartest dog in the world," Ted said, looking skeptically at the puppy his wife of five weeks was holding. "But not all of them need to be."
     "I think he's adorable!" Melanie declared. "We can't let him..." her voice trailed off into the breeze, knowing that the owner would send the unwanted puppies to the local pound if they went unclaimed by Wednesday.

     "And so that's how we ended up with Gadget. Since then he's torn up shoes, shredded the couch, and angered our landlord by peeing on her purse," Ted mused aloud, remembering the day they'd taken him home, and all the chaos in the years since
     "Yes, he had done all that, and more. But there's also been the comfort he gave when your dad died, Or how he keeps me company while I'm grading papers. But now...here we are -" Melanie's voice choked up.

     "Do we have to go in?" Ted's question was barely audible.
     "Nnnyee-sss," Melanie groaned.
     "Damn."
     "We'll be okay," she comforted, not believing it in the least.
     "I know." Long pause. "I just don't believe you right now."
     "Me neither."
     But they got out of the car and removed Gadget's crate from the backseat, slowly walking into the building.
     "Welcome to Wilson Veterinary Clinic. How may I help you?" The receptionist's name tag said her name was Mia.
     Ted and Melanie looked at each other for guidance.
     "It's...we....the poor guy -" she gestured at Gadget's crate.
     "He's....almost -"
     "All right," Mia's tone was soothing but disinterested. "Dr. Cassidy will be in in a few minutes. Take as much time as you need."
     The couple sat themselves uncertainly in two of the waiting room chairs, glancing around at the other patients. Mia turned back to the computer screen and began typing again. When it's time for an animal, especially a pet, to be put down it's always so hard. I may pretend I don't care, or the owners must see it that way, but I wouldn't be able to function working here if I could let myself be too empathetic.
     Dr. Cassidy poked his head into the doorway. "Ted? Melanie?"
     "(That's us, yeah,)" they mumbled indistinctly, moving towards the doorway.
     "This is Gadget, huh?" the vet addressed the occupant of the crate. Mute nods from the people. "You've had a long and distinguished career, Inspector," Dr. Cassidy bit his lip, hesitating. "If y'all want -"
     "Thanks - but - we'll stay here," Melanie managed to answer the vet's question. She knelt down to get eye-level with the crate, her forehead resting against the bars. They felt stable, but everything was swimming and blurry. "Thank you, buddy. We'll miss you - so, so much."

     "Go - go - goodbye, Gadget," Ted choked. Melanie put a hand on his arm, and together they turned away from the freshly-dug grave.

The Dark Side of Football

     The second essay for Topics of Advanced Comp was on a critical issue. The Super Bowl was that weekend, so I figured, "Concussions and safety in general in football is certainly a critical issue!" So that's what I wrote about. It scored an 85, which I thought was acceptable, though disappointing.

     The fiftieth edition of the Super Bowl was won by the Denver Broncos on Sunday night, and an estimated 94 million Americans watched the contest, according to CinemaBlend’s Conner Schwerdtfeger. For this reason, an appropriate and timely topic seemed to be focusing on the health risks which can come from football. We draw comparisons between the players on the field and the gladiators of Roman times, forgetting one very important detail: Those gladiators usually died. And even though it is a much slower process for football players, they are getting killed, too.

     Much of the storyline from the early seasons of the high school TV drama Friday Night Lights deals with the aftermath of quarterback Jason Street’s paralysis in the middle of a game closing the first episode.  As head coach Eric Taylor prays in a closing voiceover, “Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile….It is these times, and this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves” (“Pilot”). Over the last several years, the mainstream sports media have turned a much more critical eye on this issue of safety, which has caused many fans to carefully reconsider their positions on the game in general, as well as how to discuss game action. An example of this can be seen in the differences between the introductory videos of the Electronic Arts video games Madden NFL 2000 and Madden NFL 12, both of which are easily found multiple places on YouTube. Almost in its entirety, the opening highlight reel in Madden 2000 was composed of vicious, violent and frightening tackles – thirty-five shots out of the montage’s forty-five total images were of near-decapitations. By Madden ’12, though, many of the shots were of the pageantry surrounding the kickoff(airplane flyover, cheerleaders, etc), and then the editing of the onfield action was extremely stylized, only vaguely resembling a depiction of a game.

     In Brian M. Ingrassia’s history The Rise of Gridiron University, he writes that social scientists of the early twentieth century such as Edward A. Ross and Francis A. Walker helped popularize football by claiming it developed “moral as well as physical tone” as it created young men with “courage, coolness, steadiness of nerve, quickness of apprehension, resourcefulness, self-knowledge and self-reliance” as players subverted their individual wills to achieve a common goal (93, 95). John Sayle Watterson’s book College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy relates in detail how the game we know as football came to be what we recognize today. Originally it was a corrupted version of rugby played by eastern colleges, mainly those that we now call part of the Ivy League. Games were more or less organized mob scenes, and occasionally massacres. Due to so many players dying either on the field itself or in relation to injuries suffered while playing, the rules of the game were drastically rewritten, thanks to the considerable influence of President Theodore Roosevelt. Some of these rule changes created for safety purposes were the forward pass, a system of penalties, and the notion of having to earn ten yards for a first down. It took a while for all of these changes to have their intended effect, but eventually serious injury or death became the rare and horrible exception (64-69, 118-119).

     One of the modern issues our society worries about concerning football is concussions, or more specifically, chronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE), which is a degenerative brain disease likely caused by excessive repeated trauma to the neural regions; it was found in a Boson University study that 87 of 91 subjects showed symptoms of CTE, according to Ian O’Connor’s ESPN.com editorial lamenting the death of flamboyant former Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler.  O’Connor also states that Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pioneer of CTE research, estimates that 90% of all NFL players have CTE, while a Fox Sports article quotes him as suspecting that O.J. Simpson also suffers from the condition. Omalu was recently in the spotlight thanks to the film Concussion, starring Will Smith as Omalu. But what exactly is a concussion? According to the Sports Injuries Sourcebook, “any change in mental status or function qualifies as a concussion” (218). This is typically caused by a sudden sharp blow to the head, as it comes from the Latin word concutere, meaning “to shake violently.” The result is that the sufferer gets confused about his/her environment (WebMD). Since children’s brains are still developing, they jostle around more, which puts them at great risk for receiving concussions. Some, though not all, symptoms of this could be dizziness, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision or altered emotional behavior (Sports Injuries 218). They may be classified as either Grade 1(mildest; patient remains conscious at all times and is merely dazed), Grade 2(worse; patient still remains conscious, but remains out of it and has difficulty answering simple questions correctly), or Grade 3(by far the worst; patient is knocked out) (Sports Injuries Sourcebook 219-20).

     In an editorial for the American Heart Association’s publication Circulation, Gary J. Balady and Jonathan A. Drezner report that 83% percent of linemen are susceptible to developing either hypertension or prehypertension, which could result in a premature death due to cardiovascular disease.

     While the highest-profile levels of anxiety about the health risks that come with playing football will naturally be towards the professionals, they represent only a miniscule fraction of those playing football in America. There are thousands of college teams, high school squads and youth football teams. This gambling away of present health for the slender chance at cashing in on a fortune can be devastating if the player loses. Kathleen E. Bachynski and Daniel S. Goldberg report in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics that two-thirds of Washington State high school players stayed in games after an occurrence of a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion (“Youth Sports” 329). This Russian roulette with one’s health is well-chronicled in H.G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights(which was the inspiration for the TV show) in the case of Boobie Miles, who was primed to be the star running back of the 1988 Odessa Permian Panthers. Instead, he shredded his knee in a preseason scrimmage, which dashed his dreams of attending a Division I school (53-57, 66-69). He is now an overweight diabetic with a prison record living in a trailer with his girlfriend and a lot of child-support payments to his ex-wife, according to Bissinger’s follow-up article for the ESPN-affiliated Atlantic-esque pop-culture-oriented Grantland website, entitled “Where Is Boobie Miles?”, which was actually an excerpt of his sequel After Friday Night Lights.  

     Which takes us back to wondering, is it ethical to allow young men to throw away their health in order to satisfy the public’s need for a spectacle in order to avoid doing household chores? There are many other reasons for fans to follow football, of course, perhaps keeping track of their alma mater, or sportwriters and broadcasters following their assigned beats. The Romans were skilled warriors; which is why they left such a mark on Western civilization. There is a football stadium in California known as the Coliseum; which is an obvious tribute to the earlier Roman Colosseum. We stage our fights in this arena, replacing the sand with painted grass, and we may call players “gladiators”; which comes from the Latin word gladius, meaning “sword.” There’s something we forget often, though: most of the time, those gladiators in the Colosseum were killed. And so are football players; it’s just a slower process. CTE is just one of many swords ending their run. Bachynski and Goldberg write that “the most affected population when it comes to brain injuries is also the most vulnerable,” as developing adolescents have weaker neck muscles and still-developing brains, together with the possibility of not being able to fully recognize and understand the responsibilities which come from playing sports like football (“Youth Sports” 324). Think of Boobie Miles or Jason Street. Can we condone this slow slaughter of future generations by tolerating it now? These are tough, introspective questions, which must be answered on a personal case-by-case basis.

     In our state, the shorthand way the rest of the country remembers where we are is because of the crimson and cream of the University of Oklahoma Sooners. Football is taken extremely seriously at a local level; just look at rivalries such as Jenks-Tulsa Union, Checotah-Eufaula or Henryetta-Morris. But as much energy is invested in the Sooner State, down south in Texas it’s even bigger, with the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Longhorns, TCU Horned Frogs, Baylor Bears, Texas A&M Aggies, and many other high-profile squads. On a high school level, the competition is even fiercer; due to the sheer size of Texas, there are 704 public schools that currently make the playoffs, according to Tuesday Morning Quarterback columnist Gregg Easterbrook (“Friday Night Bloat”). That represents a lot of the competitive tension which kept the TV version of FNL humming, as audiences followed the Dillon Panthers’ quests for that gold ball trophy. But as Easterbrook points out, that also results in that many more chances for injury. To win a title, a Texas high school squad must play through 16 games – the equivalent of a full NFL season. Again, these are high school students. They are still developing physically, mentally and emotionally, and must do ordinary things like schoolwork as well. They are not professionals; it isn’t their sole job to win football games. This seems troubling. But at the end of the day, as FNL’s Coach Taylor said to close the pilot, “We all are vulnerable, and we will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. But we must carry this in our hearts: That what we have is special, that it can be taken from us, and that when it is taken from us, we will be tested.” Is it hard to imagine the landscape of the Midwest, Texas and the South without football? Yes. But that might perhaps serve a greater good, if it prevents injuries such as these from occurring. However this story of football’s place in modern society turns out, it should be interesting to watch from the bleachers.  

Works Cited

Bachynski, Kathleen E. and Daniel S. Goldberg. “Youth Sports & Public Health: Framing Risks of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in American Football and Ice Hockey.” Journal of Law, Medicie & Ethics 42.3 (2014) 323-33. CINAHL with Full Text. Web. 8 February 2016.

Balady, Gary J. and Jonathan A. Drezner. Circulation. 128.5 (July 2013) American College of Cardiology Foundation and American Heart Association. 477-80. MEDLINE. Web. 8 February 2016.

Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990. Print.

------------------. “Where is Boobie Miles Now?” Grantland. ESPN. 30 April 2012. Web. 4 February 2016.

“Concussion (Traumatic Brain Injury).” WebMD. WebMD. N.d. Web. 4 February 2016.

DR_C. “Madden 2000 Intro.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 12 August 2009. Web. 4 February 2016.

Easterbrook, Gregg. “High School Football’s Friday Night Bloat.” Tuesday Morning Quarterback. New York Times. 24 November 2015. Web. 4 February 2016.

Ingrassia, Brian M. The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Print.

O’Connor, Ian. “Another CTE case, another reason football needs dramatic change.” ESPN.com. ESPN. 4 February 2016. Web. 4 February 2016.

“Pilot.” Friday Night Lights. (1.01) Writ. Peter Berg. Dir. Peter Berg. Netflix.

Saraf, Sid. “OJ Simpson likely suffers from CTE, says Concussion doctor.” FoxSports.com. Fox Sports. 29 January 2016. Web. 4 February 2016.

Schwerdtfeger, Conner. “The Super Bowl Ratings Were Apparently Huge, Of Course.” CinemaBlend. Gateway Media. 8 February 2016. Web. 9 February 2016.

Sports Injuries Sourcebook: Basic Consumer Health Information about Sprains and Strains, Fractures, Growth Plate Injuries, Overtraining Injuries, and Injuries to the Head, Face, Shoulders, Elbows, Hands, Spinal Column, Knees, Ankles, and Feet, and with Facts about Heat-related Illness, Steroids and Sport Supplements, Protective Equipment, Diagnostic Procedures, Treatment Options and Rehabilitation, Along with a Glossary of Related Terms and a Directory of Resources for Additional Help and Information. Third edition. Ed. Sandra J. Judd. Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 2007. Print.

Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Print.

Ya boy MiMz. “Madden NFL 12 – Opening Introduction.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 29 August 2011. Web. 4 February 2016.

Flashback Assignment

     This was an assignment for Dr. Mackie's Fiction Writing course, we were supposed to practice using a flashback in this flashfiction story.  I wrote this during the Super Bowl, thus the content (and somewhat the attitude) of this piece.

            So I didn’t really watch the Super Bowl this year. Again. I mean, I sorta did – but really for the commercials(which were disappointing, for the most part). It’s been that way for a while. And though I would have horrified my eight-year-old self by not watching, I still felt obligated to go to the Super Bowl party when Mike and Kasey invited me over.

            “C’mon, Pete! Everybody else from the office is coming over. It’ll be fun.”

            “Sure, okay….I like snacks.”

            I understand the game, of course. It’s different that when I cared about it, but still recognizable. Offenses still score, special teams is overlooked, and defenses knock the crap out of people. That’s really why I didn’t want to watch.

            It was in high school, during the rivalry game down in Henryetta. It was late in the second quarter, just before halftime. The Knights were leading our Eagles 8-6, and Morris had the ball on our 47 yard line. Second down, six yards to go. Our quarterback took the snap, handed off to my brother Nathan. He ran to the left, gaining about four yards before getting crushed by two black-and-gold jerseys. You could hear the hit, it was that hard. And then an unnatural snapping noise… The stadium got instantly quiet; it was spooky. They called out the ambulance and rushed him off to St. Francis in Tulsa. Dad went with him in the ambulance, Mom went in our car. They forgot I was there; heck, I forgot I was there. The second half took an eternity to finish, we ended up winning, I think I read in the paper. I wandered past the bleachers on the visitors’ side of the stadium and sat staring into space past the darkened baseball diamond. My girlfriend Samantha and her dad Keith just sat there with me for a while. It was a companionable silence. I rode back to Morris with her family; Mrs. Allan put Sammy’s little siblings to bed, and then Keith, Sammy and I headed to the hospital, where we spent the night half-dozing in alarm in the cold, unforgiving waiting room.

            Nathan’s leg was shattered, his hip was cracked, and he’s had no feeling in his foot ever since because of the nerve damage. He can walk again, but it's halting; and it expends a ton of energy. We’ve talked about football occasionally; he wishes he could have played again. I asked him why, and he just explained it away by pulling up Garth Brooks’ song “Rodeo,” saying it was same kind of thing. I don’t quite understand that. But then, I never really wanted to play.

            I was 14 then, so it must be about eleven years ago…crazy how time passes. It feels like last night, sometimes. But I guess it was just one of those landmark moments of growing up…they just have a ton of impact, and hit you extra hard. If I was better with words I could explain it better. Anyway, that’s why I don’t care much for the game. If somebody asked why, then I’d try to explain, but the only thing people do is give you a funny look. And it was good to see Peyton Manning win another Super Bowl, I guess. Now, is it time for the NASCAR season to kick off in Daytona?.   

Remembering the Challenger Explosion

     (Originally posted to Another Lover of the Blade.)

     Thursday marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Challenger explosion. I was really surprised(and disappointed) that I couldn't find any TV specials about it. (Scowling particuarly hard in the direction of the History Channel.) This YouTube video archived the live news feed of the explosion. That night, President Ronald Reagan gave the following speech, written by Peggy Noonan. (Emphasis mine.)

  "...Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all the people of our country. This is, truly, a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight - we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, and overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gergory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. Wemourn their loss as a nation together. The families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we are thinking of you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge, and I will meet it with joy.' 
     "They had a hunger to explore the universe and to discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century: it's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States Space Program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we've forgotten that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
     "And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff: I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew were pulling us into the future, and we will continue to follow. 
     "I've always had great faith in, and respect for, our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program, we don't keep secrets and cover things up, we do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change any of it in a minute. We will continue our quest in space; there will be more shuttle flights, and more shuttle crews, and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue. 
     "I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and every woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission, and tell them: 'Your dedication and professionalism had moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.' 
     "There's a coincidence today, on this day 390 years ago the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Canada. In his lifetime, the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He was raised by the sea, lived on the sea, and he was buried by it.' Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew, their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

     This is an amazing speech. The world has gotten so cynical, I'm ashamed to say that I wonder exactly how much of this was heartfelt and how much was acting. But that doesn't matter, because it works either way. It had been a long time since the country had had a disaster of this scale(JFK's death, probably?); and we were hurting. We needed to hear this message, to calm our nerves and assure us the world would keep spinning. The language he used is extremely plain and everyday; even the multisyllable words are common and simple, like "coincidence" and "Challenger". It's easy to understand. And it's comforting. Inspiring, even. (The cynical part of me wonders what are we inspired about, like it does during the Olympics.)
     But that paragraph speaking straight to the kids - that's one of the greatest parts of this speech. Mom was one of those kids watching; I was watching fifteen years later when 9/11 happened. Resgan just explained what happened, like Mr. Rogers advised, and he didn't hide that he didn't understand it all yet, either.
     But as a nation, we mourned. Together. This happened in the aftermath of 9/11, but grief brings people together far closer than anything else does. It's comforting, somehow, particularly in these times we live in now, to realize that it's possible for an entire country to be weeping in response to an event. Maybe that's just because we're constantly at each other's throats about race violence or gay rights or abortion or any of the other things ripping the nation apart right now.
     "They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge, and I will meet it with joy.'" (Looking at you, Leslie Knope.) That might be one of the most perfect and inspirational epitaphs you could ask for.
     Think about it.
     Don't you want to have someone say that about you when you're gone?
     I just shook my head at the part where he said "we don't keep secrets and cover things up, we do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change any of it in a minute." We don't do that any longer. Maybe we never did. But a lot of things change in thirty years, and a lot of that freedom, that feeling of invincibility, has gotten lost somewhere along the way. And it's really sad.
     That final phrase is amazing. "...and they slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God." "Surly" means "ill-humored or ill-tempered" according to my copy of the Webster New American Handy College Dictionary, which is a great way of looking at this life, because it's just so true. And while Dale Hinshaw from Philip Gulley's Harmony novels might be a weirdo who could've come straight from Pawnee, he has good intentions, most of the time. But anyway, he said once that being faced with sickness was bound to turn our thoughts to the eternal. This is especially true in times of massive tragedy like this.

     I don't know, I've always said pop-culturally I belonged to the 80's. So that might have played a part in the solemnity that was the anniversary, why I couldn't concentrate on school. Or maybe it's just my love of history. One of the most amazing sights at the Newseum while on Youth Tour in D.C. June 2011 was the local paper right after the disaster from Christa McAuliffe's hometown. The scale of the event had something to do with it; cell phones and the internet didn't exist yet. But I read somewhere that 85 percent of the country knew what happened within one hour. It just needed to be talked about. 

The front page of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor from Tuesday, January 28, 1986. Concord was the hometown of civilian astronaut Christa McAuliffe, a teacher at the high school.

ABC's of College

     For a Poetry Writing assignment; I was bored and I've been reading a history of Sesame Street. So here's the ABC's of College. Hope y'all enjoy.

     A is for Academic Jargon, which can be difficult to understand. And Assignments, and also All-Nighters, where you attempt to understand that Academic Jargon. “A” is also used in Avoiding Other People, or Acting.

     B is for Broke, which all students are. And also for BuzzFeed, huge time-waster/refuge from pressing work to do.

     C stands for COFFEE!!!!!!!! (Everyone knows that.) Because of the Chaos of Classes. And Cussing. (Which helps in dealing with Classmates.)

     D means Deadlines, AKA “Get something turned in or else.”

     E is for Education. Duh. And Essays. And Escape, which is what a lot of Essays are about. Not to mention Exhaustion or Energy Drinks.

     F means Financial Aid. It also might mean Football at a lot of schools, or Friends.

    G is for Graduation….eventually.

    H is for Homework, for obvious reasons. Hope, too; which can be in very small supply. Homecoming is usually celebrated by many folks.

    I is for the Internet, for equally obvious reasons.

    J is for Jail, which is what school can feel like sometimes. And it could also be Journalism, which isn’t taught much anymore.

   K stands for Knowledge, the main goal behind education; in theory.

   L is for Loans. (These are evil. Avoid them at all costs.) And Laundry. This is just a pain, but kind of necessary to daily life. Libraries are useful, though.

   M is for Money. Pretty much what everything revolves around. And MLA, which is how most Essays ought to be written. Microwaves are pretty useful, too.  

   N is for Netflix, to procrastinate appropriately.

   O is for Oreos. Because of…

   P, which is simple: PANIC. And Pancakes, Prayer, Poetry, Pixar, Pandora and Pizza.  

   Q means Questions; namely “What am I doing here?” and “How is this concept relevant to real life?”

   R is for Roommates, which might lead to our next letter…

   S is for STRESS. So much Stress. And Sickness, Spotify and Superheroes. (Time is measured in Semesters.)

   T means Tears. Because of Tiredness, among a lot of other things. So you watch TV to cope with Deadlines.

   U stands for University.

   V is for Volleyball; the best way to relax for an hour or so from distressing Homework. It can occasionally be a good way to meet people.

   W is for Weekends, where you either avoid studying or catch up on all the stuff you’re behind in.

   X is for eXistential Crisis, which (it’s debatable) might be a requirement for being an English major, or being a college student at all.

   Y is for Yawning. There is a lot of that after being forced to do an All-Nighter. College also takes YEARS.

    Z is for Zonked. It’s hard to find words beginning with “Z”, though Ziplock Bags are highly important, to keep Leftovers in.

A Month of Small-Town News to Gossip About

     This was one of my favorite practice poems for Poetry Writing homework. I was kind of aiming at a Garth Brooks-like story in tone with this villanelle, which I think I came close to. I wrote it based on a list of randomly-generated words: "Mandolins, Garth Brooks, basketball, rectangles, waffles, the Fourth of July and grief." It was written near midnight; thus joining the hypothetical poetry collection "2 AM Poems" the class joked about(since most of the homework was done at the last second).
     I don't like this title, if I revise this one I'll change it, but it started out without any title, and there would be at least a full month of gossip generated in this town.

It was right about the Fourth of July,

that night where Garth Brooks came to the nearby town,

when Chloe’s best friend died…

Our basketball town gathered to cry

at the funeral of one of our own;

It was right about Fourth of July.

With the condolences said, the rumors spread like

waffle syrup artificially dyed brown

when Chloe’s best friend died.

Casey’s mandolin left – his hands, strong and spry

wouldn’t play to celebrate graduation.

It was right about the Fourth of July

That wreck was discovered out by the junior high,

causing the sheriff and law to frown 

when Chloe’s best friend died.

They say he was callin’ Baton Rouge; she was never charged with a crime

while the thunder rolled and farmers’ wheat drowned.

It was right about the Fourth of July

when Chloe’s best friend died…

Language of Manipulation in Euridipes' "Medea"

      Third essay for Dr. Dial-Driver's Lit Traditions course at Rogers State University.

     Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. This is the type of phrase that has passed into public domain, more or less, and no one knows exactly where it originated. But whoever that was who coined the phrase, he might have been thinking about the character of Medea, the namesake and dominating force of one of Greek playwright Euridipes’ most well-known works. In her article for The American Journal of Philology, Melissa Mueller states that “Medea is a character that is adept at speaking many languages”. I will try to emphasize the importance of Medea’s use of persuasion and manipulation which brings about her revenge.

            To begin, some backstory is necessary, courtesy of the Medea preface in Penguin’s collection of Greek Tragedy: In the land of Thessaly, Pelias overthrew his brother Aeson to assume the kingship of the city of Iolchus, although mercifully sparing his brother’s life. Aeson’s son Jason is sent away for schooling from a centaur, returning to Thessaly some years later. An oracle had spoken to Pelias in the meantime, warning him to beware of a man wearing only one sandal. Jason lost a sandal while helping an elderly woman cross a river on his way to Iolchus, which was how Pelias knew that his nephew had returned; he volunteered to abdicate the throne, but only if Jason sucessfully gathered the Golden Fleece. So he sailed with the Argonauts, had many adventures, and eventually met a young princess/witch named Medea in the land of Colchis who fell in love with Jason and helped him retrieve the Golden Fleece. On returning to Iolchus, Medea’s sorcery tricked Pelias’s daughters into murdering their father via a faked rejuvenation potion Because of this element of foul play, the couple was banished and took up residence in Corinth with their two young sons (131-33).

      After living there apparently for some time, Jason has determined to wed the princess of Corinth in order to raise his future descendants’ standing within the city, as he reasons in lines 913-17. This greatly angers Medea; and so she sets out to break his heart. And since she is an extremely persuasive woman, as well as ruthless, this is an extremely frightening spectacle. She gives a long speech from lines 222-62 on Jason’s cruelties and laments the state of women in Greek society, which Mueller describes as “presenting herself as a woman like any other, but with fewer resources” (471). The Chorus, representing the women of the city, loyally declares in lines 412-13 that “deceit is men’s device now, men’s oaths are gods’ dishonor.” Writing about two thousand years later, William Shakespeare says much the same thing in Balthasar’s song in Much Ado About Nothing, as “Men were deceivers ever/One foot in sea, and one on shore/To one thing constant never” (II.3.61-63).  Creon banishes Medea from Corinth because he is afraid of her (287-91), and she responds by playing up the fact that she is a woman – and furthermore, a woman without male protection – and so would be considered helpless (304-08). In his Classical Philology article, Brad Levett comments that this “is a characteristic that aligns well with Greek assumptions concerning the deceptive nature of women” (54). And since the average Athenian was expected to be persuaded when it was beneficial or likely right (Levett 57), Aegeus agrees to safeguard Medea in Athens if she provides him with children (712-22). So in this exchange she adopts a businesslike, masculine attitude in order to gain a sanctuary. In lines 868-93, Medea gives a long monologue to Jason seeming to apologize for her earlier furious behavior, but this manipulative speech really just sets up her devious gift-giving to Creon’s daughter.01

As Simon Goldhill notes in his introduction to Penguin’s Greek Tragedy, “every scene in the play involves Medea persuading someone” (xxvii). Shakespeare’s Much Ado prominently features Beatrice, another talkative female caught in a societal situation she cannot remedy.  She rails at men’s reluctance to avenge the honor of women under their charge, ending with “I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving” (IV.1.320-21). Unlike Beatrice’s wish that Claudio die, Medea prefers that Jason should live, in order that his heart may be ripped out of his chest as he suffers humiliations galore, to paraphrase Rob Reiner’s movie The Princess Bride. Goldhill says that Medea “is female but speaks and acts as a man, indeed like a hero, an Achilles wholly committed to honor and revenge” (xxviii). Because these murders occur indirectly, that adds exponentially to Jason’s grief, as he will be forever tormented by what-ifs and brooding over what might have been done differently.

      One of her final lines is comes at line 1363, where she says “My pain is a fair price to wipe away your smile”. The line from “understandable vengeance” to “inhuman monstrosity” has obviously been crossed somewhere along the line, which is unsettling. Goldhill writes that her “bizarre and extreme feminine character” make her a problem for every character she meets, and also for audience to deal with (xxviii). Maybe what she represents - besides the obvious example of taking a concept way farther than recommended – is to serve a warning against trusting the motives of others at face value, or even simply the fact that life is unexpected. The Chorus closes with “Many the fates which Zeus in Olympus dispenses; many matters the gods bring to surprising ends. The things we thought would happen do not happen; the unforeseen the gods make possible, and such is the conclusion of this story” (1415-19).         

Works Cited

Euridipes. Medea. 431 B.C. Trans. Philip Vellacott. 137-182. Greek Tragedy. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.

Goldhill, Simon. “Introduction”. Greek Tragedy. xiii-xxxiii. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.

Levett, Brad. “Verbal Autonomy and Verbal Restraint in Euripides’ Medea.” Classical Philology 105.1 (Jan 2010): 54-68. JSTOR. Web. 21 October 2015.

Mueller, Melissa. “The Language of Reciprocity in Euridipes’ Medea.” The American Journal of Philology 122.4 (Winter 2001): 471-504. JSTOR. Web. 21 October 2015.

“Preface to Medea.” Greek Tragedy. 131-135. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. 1599? William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. Stephen Orgel and A.R. Braunmuller. 371-400. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Print. 

Sestina Homework

     This was for Poetry Writing during the fall 2015 semester at Rogers State University. One of our homework assignments this week was to practice a sestina, which has six stanzas of six lines each, plus a three-line epilogue, and the end-words all have to be same, just mixed up in a prescribed manner. The six end-words Dr. Mackie gave us were "blue", "forest", "understanding", "misanthropic", "calm" and "sunshine". The tone of this poem probably came from hearing from a guy I know that his wife just died suddenly a few days before. Guess I was somehow putting myself in his shoes while writing this.

 People say to me, “Forrest,

You’ve been feeling blue

Because you ain’t got no understanding

For folk’s feelings. In fact, you’re misanthropic!”

Is it my fault that my mind is somewhat calm

Only on days when it’s without sunshine?

Radio’s playing Johnny Cash’s “You Are My Sunshine”,

I can’t even – white-girl talk – so I bolt, hearing that “Run, Forrest…

You better run!” The weather’s too calm;

Sky going to the dark side, navy blue.

These thunderstorms, I swear, are misanthropic.

What a word, eh? Passes most all understanding.

Like baseball, for instance. Always had trouble understanding

How folks can spend all day in the hot sunshine

Watching players stand still for three hours. I’d say the misanthropic

One was Abner Doubleday. I’d rather be in the forest

With no traces of Dodger or Mariner blue

Caps; the wild things nap, their routines calm.

Lisa was always so calm.

And popular, and kind, and understanding;

That’s what people said. She fixed up our place all in baby blue…

On our way back from a Sunday sunshined

Baseball game we wrecked outside the forest…

I’m an introvert and grieving, not misanthropic.

How do you even spell “misanthropic”?

It’s a Jeopardy word; they always seem so calm

Questioning answers like “What is the Amazon rainforest?”

To “Alex the parrot hails from here; he could help ours with understanding

The difficult tongue-twisters.” $800, question: “What is sunshine?”

I wouldn’t be bad at this game, final-round scrawling on the screen of blue

My answer-question, for why I seem blue.

I wagered $11,200 on “What is misanthropic?”

And then the alarm goes off and there’s the sunshine

Bright through the window. Time for work. I leave, calm

As I can fake, to help patients today by appearing understanding

And coming home to the empty crib that should’ve been Forrest’s.

I’ll retreat into the calm forest

Where whatever my misanthropic understanding

Of human blues will be eased by the warm sunshine.

Copper

     This is an obituary for Copper the red heeler. Originally appeared on Another Lover of the Blade.

    "You'd think I'd be used to it by now, wouldn't ya?

     Seems like I ought to be...and in some ways, just numbed to the pain...but...no, not really, I'm not. 

     It hasn't been the best week ever. In fact, it's been a hard, unpleasant one. Sick with a horrible sinus infection all weekend, so I sort of stumbled through a bare minimum of homework. Had a psych quiz Monday, that went okay. Then a psych test Wednesday, nutrition quiz in the afternoon, still wasn't feeling completely well, had to write an essay - one of those self-reflection type essays - by Thursday morning, it was finished on Wednesday night, and I didn't really like it at all. Course, I don't like those where you have to talk about yourself. But it was better to have something to turn in on time than nothing, right? 

     Playing catch-up all week to get the stuff I should have done earlier while I was sick...it's tiring. And not much fun. And a little overwhelming. Tuesday was a bad night. Overslept Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, which is a very bad way to start the day. It was pouring rain all Wednesday morning into the afternoon, which is right where I'm in the middle of it. Killed several wasps this week. 

     I think I've been to church about three times in the last two months. I don't like that. But I've either been sick, or had a ton of immediate homework, or something else, and well, there you are. Don't like Halloween much, though I did actually dress up for about an hour. (MacGyver.) 

     Friday was a beautiful Oklahoma fall day, one of the rare times you can slip out of "distressed college student" mode and just be able to marvel and appreciate the trees and colors and sunshine. Nobody showed up for an extra-credit nutrition assignment of walking two miles, so I went down to Morgan's and got some snacks, a mile-and-a-half trip. Came back home yesterday afternoon, found a new Lucy Maud Montgomery book to read, played music with Courtney, heard about her trip, petted the goats, etc. Did laundry today(Saturday), watched Amy, got a little bit of homework done. And said goodbye to Copper. 

     I was reading a book in the living room, possibly a Thoene book or Mitford, on the night of Sept 13, 2010, sprawled out sideways on the blue chair. (I know the date because I mentioned this in my journal that I kept then.) I hear this bark. And it doesn't stop. So eventually I tune into it, don't recognize the tone. It isn't Sunny, and not Sport. Not Skeet, either, or any of the neighborhood dogs. Dad looks out the window. "It's a dog." Someone sets some food and water out on the porch. "Come here, dog! We've got some food for you!" The dog retreats farther down the sidewalk.
     "You try it, Wes." I crouch down, set the bowls on the weathered boards. "It's all right, it's okay. We've got some food here, you came to a good place. You knew that, didn't you?" The dog scurries into the far corner from the door, but still, that's on the porch. She wags her tail slightly, thwapping it on the wall. (During the Depression, hobos had this special sign that they made on houses designating the good places, I think animals have a similar system, and ours is marked as such.)
     The red heeler's hurt leg eventually heals, she sticks around and becomes Copper, sort of fills the void left by Eclipse and all the cats. She was a little of everything - watchdog toward the UPS man, barking menacingly and scaring him to death; friendly to Mrs. Perry or whoever else might be visiting. Once in a while she'd kill a chicken, but it was usually one of the neighbors'. She would placidly endure Amy tugging on her ears and tail, or getting right up in her face while trying to eat. She was always hanging around somewhere near the porch to bark the Welcoming Committee Song and wag her entire body happily. She'd sometimes eat up the leftover scraps from dinner, but she was a picky eater. Didn't like dog food much at all.
     Always there to cheer you up when you looked like you needed it. If you were worried with school or whatever, a happy thumping tail could be heard as she made her way over to wherever you were, slipping her nose under your hand and gently smiling. She really didn't like me going off to college. Always would leap up excitedly and give me a bear(dog?) hug and lick me all over with kisses whenever I came back to visit.

    She got hit by something on Hwy. 16 either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, we wondered where she was. Finally searching in the evening, we found her, with a broken leg, head slightly burned...I was watching Amy, keeping her distracted. There wasn't anything possible to do, though...other than try to say goodbye, and "thank you", and weep bitterly.

     I know, life isn't fair. And I know she was only a dog. But dogs are family. Most pet-animals are. But now, to be dogless in the space of four months... Completely dogless, surrounded by people and ice-cold concrete and thinking way too much. And when I'm still trying to deal with Sunny being gone...I just...I don't know what to do. How do you cope?" 

Sunny

     This is an obituary of my treasured beagle/Lhaso Apso, Sunny. Like most of these other posts, it originally appeared on Another Lover of the Blade. 

     "You know the previous post? The one right below this one you're reading now, about how awful a week, and so far the month of July, has been?

     It hasn't gotten better. At all.

     My dog Sunny died yesterday afternoon(Thursday).
     So I stood on the back porch in the pouring rain thinking back over the memories of our lives and all the lessons she helped me find out, wondering "Now what?"
      I mean, what do you do when you lose someone you've known since you were nine, talked you through hard times, deaths of family members, offered advice when needed, listened to whatever's going on... Without a dog to listen, what do you do in times like that? How do you cope? Who do you talk to?

     This story begins somewhere in late May of 2002, we're all gathered at the town house in Westville to celebrate mine and my aunt's birthdays. Mom goes running to Harps for something or other, milk, maybe, and as soon as she gets back grabs Dad and shoots back out of the driveway. When they come back, they go find Mimi and hold a whispered conversation. After we open the presents, somebody says we need to come outside. So we go through the kitchen into the garage and - right there, in a little box with a newspaper carpet - was a puppy! A little, fuzzy, cute-looking, honey-colored beagle puppy!
     Well, half beagle. The other half was Lhasa Apso. (I've NEVER been able to spell that.) That still remains one of the strangest pedigrees I've ever heard of.
     I've always liked small-to-medium-sized dogs, probably because I'm kind of a smaller-sized person. And Wishbone was a Jack Russell, and who doesn't want a Wishbone of their own? (Or a Buddy, for that matter?) But, anyway, I loved beagles especially, after seeing Inspector Gadgetafter the first garage sale we had in Morris, I sort of fell in love with Penny's beagle Brain. And Sport, well, he was good, but he was big. And he was more of Mom's dog more than anyone else's.
     So there were these puppies at Harps, about eight weeks old, that were half beagle and half Lhasa Apso. The only Lhasa Apsos I knew were Taz and Ty Rae next door, who were always yapping whenever I'd play ball in the backyard. Anyway, Mom and Dad picked out the most beagle-ish-looking one for me.
     I decided to name her Sunshine, calling her Sunny most of the time. I was one of the happiest boys in the world, first a basketball goal for my eighth birthday, and then a puppy for my ninth.

      She was a mischievous puppy. Always digging holes and escaping the yard, then trotting triumphantly around the neighborhood. If I could fit my sneaker into a hole in the chain-link fence, she could and did escape from there. A place where an armadillo punched a gap through gave me particular trouble. So I'm very good at plugging holes in fences now with whatever's handy; rocks, sticks, cement blocks, overturned wagons, etc. Other than that, she joined the neighborhood's Dog Club quickly and fit in seamlessly. She also developed her camouflaging abilities, hiding in plain sight in the dead grass. She was very good at that. 
     Her name didn't really match her personality; she was always a little gloomy, complaining or worrying about something. Like owner like pet, maybe? Very rarely was she "happy", but contented, more or less, and when things were well, her joyfullness was something to see, radiating a warm glow of happiness out to reach whoever was nearby.
     The next year we got Shadow, a large ball of fun-loving energy, the half Lab/half Airedale was the only dog I've ever successfully taught how to play fetch. He became second-in-rank pretty quickly, just because of his size, and so Sunny settled resignedly into the role of the pack's omega dog. 

     Well, we moved across the county to Beggs about a year and a half later, and the next summer she had her first litter of puppies on the day of Ronald Reagan's funeral. There were nine of them, all given weather-related names: Avalanche, Cloudy, Eclipse, Hailey, Hurricane, Sunset, Thunderbolt, Windy and Pawprint. Courtney named Pawprint, because he had a large black paw-mark on the side of his white coat. He only lived about three days, before we could name the rest. Three puppies were stillborn, so they remain nameless.
     I was freaking out, so was Sunny, it was STRESSFUL!
     Cloudy, Eclipse and Pawprint were black-and-white, Cloudy fit his name well, he was sorta dull and drab. Eclipse was sweet, but otherwise pretty average, too. Thunderbolt and Hurricane were solid brown, the color of a slightly-melted Hershey's on a sunny day. Thunderbolt, named after the famous TV star in 101 Dalmatians, was very much a rough-and-tumble kind of guy, a leader, very bossy. Hurricane was one of the runts, he was kind of timid, and he got picked on often. The siblings he got along with best were Hailey and Windy. They were Shadow's; with his mostly-black-with-brown-trim coloring. Hailey was the smallest of any of them, even Hurricane was bigger, but she was spunky. She'd always be willing to play or fight with anybody, and got into lots of arguments with Sunset. She got her name from Hailey's Comet, which I think I was studying about then. Windy was one of the largest puppies, and by far the most lethargic. She just never did anything, and she smelled terrible. I think she had some kind of disability(yes, I think dogs can have special needs). Avalanche was certainly overshadowed by his twin, he was always second-best at most games. Sunset was the oldest, and so she had all those qualities that go with it. She was tops at everything or near it, skilled not only at her Playing Games classes and nosing her way to the front of the food line, but also other important subjects such as Listening to People, Cuddling and Looking Cute. She even did decently well in Intro to Fetch. And she and Avalanche  had that classic beagle calico coat, splotches of light and dark brown on a white base coat. 
     My favorites of this litter were Sunset and Hailey, it was incredibly hard to see them leave. Of course Sunset was the first pup chosen, and then Hurricane and Avalanche. Hailey was close behind them to finding her Mys, and so we took the rest to Wal-Mart one day, in order to find homes for them. It was hot that day. The rest found homes, Windy getting chosen last. Except for Eclipse. She was one of the pups in the running to stay, her main rivals for this honor were Sunset, Avalanche and Hailey. And then when they were chosen by other people, she was picked to stay and grow up as the fourth member of the dog pack.

     Several years went by, and it was time for Sunny to have another litter, this bunch was born near my birthday. This time their names were delayed by the fact that Dad and I were in Kansas City. We'd already used a weather theme; and flowers were reserved for cats; as was Pixar characters. So we went with candy.  These puppies were Fastbreak, Hershey, Kit Kat, Snickers, M&M, Milky Way, Overload, Payday, Rolo, Snickers and Twix. They were tolerated grumpily by Sport, Shadow was sort of an uncle to the ones that weren't his. Klipsey, a young teenager by now, was the ditzy babysitter most of the time. "Mom, I'll watch the kids if you'll give me a raise on my food allowance!"
     Fastbreak, Milky Way and Overload were all solid brown like Hurricane and Thunderbolt were, the calicoed pups were Kit Kat, Snickers, Payday and Twix, and Shadow's were Hershey, M&M and Rolo.   
     Most of them weren't as full-of-personality as the first litter, and it wasn't as easy to tell them all apart. Rolo was fat, like the candy, and stationary. Fastbreak was named after the then-new Reese's Fastbreak bar, Overload was a Reese's-like candy found only at QuikTrip with cookies set on top of the peanut butter cups.
      Kit Kat and Snickers were the top dogs, I guess, taking the roles passed to them by Avalanche and Sunset. I had this dream once, just after they'd all been taken, that I'm coming around the house headed for the barn, and Snickers is leading this charge of puppies towards me. And then I could suddenly see out of my right eye. Always sort of wished that dream really happened.

     And besides being a sort-of-grouchy mother, Sunny was a very good listener. Whether it was moving, or trying to cope with deaths or whatever, she was always there to help things get straightened out.
     This grief....it's like when Mimi died. Grandmothers are wonderful people, and their love is only matched by dogs'. You can talk about just about anything with them. And the hurt in the empty space once they go, it never fully heals. And not just when Mimi died, either. Dado, too. And to a definitely lesser extent, Nina, Grandma Bates or Grandma Joy.
     Not even just people, animals' deaths sting, too. When the puppies were gone, Shadow was shot, Klipsey run over, Sport died, Jenny arrested, Pepper's owner was found, the disappearances of Ann, Dan and Georgie.
     The long list of wonderful cats, each special in their own way. Meowie, Princess, Daisy, Minnie, Creek, Cricket, Firefly, Buzz, Milo, Dodge, Cadillac, Tulip, Dot, Lady, Liesel, Brigitta, Duchess, Skittles, Benjy, Maggie, Meg, the others I can't quite remember.
     Dixie the paint horse sold at the auction, the deaths of Rocky and Swiftdust the guinea pigs,  Libby the goat hanging herself. Stormy, Lucy, Lizzie and Patty the goats moving.

     Dealing with the remodeling, all that chaos; or talking about the frustrations of finding a place in the church, in the youth group, with the homeschool group, problems about girls, things going on in friends' lives needing prayer, she'd listen. Life is confusing, and a good dog can do wonders. It's also hard, and they help cheer us up, remind us that they still love us, even if things aren't going right.
     When Trevor or Amy was on the way or being born, or we were considering adopting that Russian girl with spina bifida, or those times of deep loneliness, when friends were scarce and the younger kids were all doing something together, wondering what life would be like if the baby between Courtney and I had lived, always thought of it as a sister named Lindsay. She would've been about a year younger than me.
     Helping with when I was working on a new story and some point wasn't resolving itself right, or the plot suddenly ran dead, or which characters could be introduced to make the story better. Pondering the amazing work of Pixar, or the people behind Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies. Jan Karon's beautifully-done town of Mitford, the characters found in the Anne of Green Gables series,The Princess Bride, Charlotte's Web, The Book of Virtues, going through the Chronicles of Narnia for the zillionth time.
     With the choir, and then drama, all the musicals and plays, that were really pointless by themselves, but incredibly important at the time and key in my growing up.
     When I was drowning in red tape, trying to attempt to learn to drive, what life could be if that was possible, how much easier in some ways it would be. As one example, that's sort of why I haven't really been in a relationship but that once. I could get an actual job anyplace when things were slow at the paper, go hang out with friends any time. Things like that. All the mess of trying to figure out what I wanted to study in college, the forms that needed filling out ASAP, applying to a few colleges, the endless questioning of well-meaning people, figuring out which college to attend, the agony of life this past year in a spiritually vacant bubble.
     All the weird injuries; my breaking a finger playing basketball or a toe running into a cardboard box, Dad falling off a ladder and hurting his ribs, or the roof and tearing up his shoulder, Caleb and Trevor splitting their heads open on furniture. 
     I was scared to death just before heading to camp, and nervous about Youth Tour, unsure about graduation, petrified of college. Sunny helped calm me down, told me I'd get through them.

      She was lying there by my feet providing comfort and encouragement when typing or writing an article, hiding under my bed when there were storms or Mom was going to get her in trouble for something. She didn't completely understand my wanting to learn to play guitar, but was there to say something good all the times when I wanted to fire Abby Lee into the wall and give up.
     She took up chronicling local events for her weekly gossip column in the Fenceville Weekly News, of course, I had to help her type, since dogs don't have thumbs, but she dictated. It was also good practice for me.

     So...I'm still not doing too well. And all too soon I have to go back to (shudders) college. Without Sunny as backup, or Skeet. Copper understands college a little better than they did, but they knew me so well. Things seem messy and complicated already, before all this, now - What on Earth am I supposed to do now, Lord? What could I possibly be learning? How can I go on to face whatever's coming? God seems kind of far away right now, His promises I'm having trouble clinging to. That sounds horrible to say, but...animals are usually easier to get along with than people. And grief is hard, when it's someone you love.
     I know she was just a dog. But, at the same time, you have to realize: She was a dog, and everything that goes with that. She was my dog. There's only one or two dogs who ever are tasked with that crucial task of raising a boy. One of the quotes from The Little Rascals that's always stuck with me, besides the all the obvious lines, is when Stymie tells Alfalfa, "All I know is, you only make a once-in-a-lifetime buddy, once in a lifetime." 

     Amanda messaged me late last night, kind of a "bearing one another's burdens" sort of thing.  That was good. Ravi, too, and Steven and Jamie and Shelly and several other people also expressed their condolences. It isn't much, but at the same time, it means everything. Kind of like after the fire, or with Mrs. Boyer's card, or a volleyball game being played when needed. One of those evidences of God's mercy and faithfulness when otherwise it's very dark.
     Things will, very slowly, begin to get better at some point. Eventually the ache will be tucked away, the gushing wound mostly stitched shut. But that time isn't here just yet.

     Love you, Sunny. Miss you so, so much."