What Doesn’t Kill You, Sometimes Still Hurts

My mom has the Original Bug Zapper. It looks like a blue plastic racket you’d play badminton with, but the netting is tightly woven metal and there’s a button on the handle that appears to do nothing until you swat at a bug. If you hit the bug while holding that button, the bug will sparkle, zap, and die from 2300 volts of electricity. It’s a very convenient tool, especially since I attract insects.

Sitting on the front porch swing, I held up the bug zapper and wondered how badly the zap actually hurts.

I often wonder how badly something will hurt. Every time I go to the doctor, teach a new class, make a new friend, travel to a new place, I always wonder what kind of pain will result. Doctors have needles, students sometimes hate the class, friends can betray you, and new places have untold dangers. With my approaching residency for my MFA program, I’m facing these same fears and wondering how badly it will hurt. But with all things, you don’t know until you try; so I held up the racket, pressed the button, and…put the racket back down.

“I’m very tempted to hold the button and touch the metal netting on this bug zapper, just to see how badly it would hurt,” I texted Greg.

“Do it,” he replied.

“I can’t do it. I keep holding my finger up to zap and then cowering.”

“Conquer it,” he said.

I pressed the button. No, I couldn’t do it. Yes, just do it. No. I couldn’t. What if it sucked my finger into the metal coils and sent a shock to my heart, haulting palpitations? What if it went to my brain and fried it? What if it scorched the tip of my finger?

As I contemplated all possible outcomes, I saw my mom strolling by, busily tending to her yard work.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“What.” She didn’t stop to look at me.

“Have you ever touched this zapper to see how badly it would hurt?”

“No.”

“I’m very tempted to find out,” I told her. I held it up to prove I might actually touch it, hoping she’d fuss and tell me to act my age.

“Well, do it, honey,” she said.

Obviously she doesn’t care if I get electrocuted. Finding no human encouragement, I pulled out my phone and Googled, “Will 2300v kill you?” Ironically, Google provided many links on the Original Bug Zapper, including YouTube videos instructing viewers on the safety and effectiveness of the product.

I figured that however badly it hurt, it wouldn’t kill me.

I hit the button and tapped the metal.

Nothing.

At first, I thought maybe it doesn’t work on humans, but in case a glitch occured, I tried again.

Nothing.

Ha! No pain at all! So I held the button and clapped on the metal with my fingertips.

Then it zapped. A spark flew from my middle finger, and I almost threw the racket. My heart raced. I wasn’t dead, and it didn’t hurt too badly. Just a zap. Not a big deal at all. I reasoned that maybe my coming residency would turn out this way, too–a zap that hurt for moment but ended with the satisfaction of conquering another fear.

“It felt like a bite,” I told Greg.

“LOL!” he wrote back. “Now get out the tazer.”

“No, jerk,” I told him. Good grief, I’m not that brave.

Adventures of a Swashbuckling Bootlegger

Wearing a medical boot has it’s ups and downs. Whenever I goof up, I can point to my booted leg to implore forgiveness. In stores, people let me pass them in line and offer me places to sit, and I’m saving money because I can’t drive with it on. But whenever I go out, children stare and point in fear, as if I’ll kick them. If someone throws me in a body of water, I’ll likely drown, and of course hopscotch is now out of the question. But as a writer, I choose to appreciate all experiences, good and bad, because they’re all stories waiting to be written. I may as well have fun with them.

“Could you please make the boot as fashionable as possible?” I asked the physical therapist.

He chuckled. “Well, it can be any color you want,” he said.

“Really?”

“Well, yeah, a blackish color–” He smiled. “Yeah, they’re all black.”

I never wear black, but with a boot big enough to fit a small Sasquatch, I figured matching would be impossible anyway and I’d wear whatever I want with it.

While he booted me up, I contemplated the inevitable attention I’d attract and dreaded telling anyone the boring truth–that I went for a stroll with a pregnant lady and got chronic shin splints that progressed to tibial stress fractures. How pathetic. So I decided to tell the first story that popped in my head for each person who asked, “What happened?”

“I was picking up my superhero suit, but only the boot came in.”

“An old lady in Walmart hit me with her cart, twice.

“My officemate is abusive.”

“I was playing tackle ball and missed.”

“Sarah kicked me.”

Soon, none of my stories sounded any better than the truth, and sometime after the fiftieth tale, I started saying, “It’s a fracture,” and let them concoct their own stories for how it happened.

“Kick your dog?” a man in the bank asked.

“Yes, both of the them,” I answered. (I don’t own a pet.)

“Not getting enough attention?” someone else asked.

“None is ever enough,” I said. “Too bad I didn’t fracture both.”

“Setting a new trend?” another well-sayer asked.

“Always,” I said. “By August, everyone will be single-booted.”

Even my own mother joined the game when she picked me up from the airport and said, “Hop in, bootlegger.”

And today while she and I were shopping, an elderly lady said, “Hey, did you know your shoes don’t match?”

I looked at my feet, horrified, and said, “Mom! Why didn’t you tell me!”

The game keeps me from complaining about it being cumbersome and uncomfortable. When I’m in it, I feel like a toddler who squirms and grouches in his binding carseat, eager to be out. The doctor told me I have minimum four to twelve weeks in this thing, and today marks the beginning of the third week without any noticeable improvement.

But beginning the third week means that I only have two to ten weeks left of bootlegging adventures, gathering ideas for another story and exercising my wit against other’s comments to make someone or myself laugh. Who cares if I am pathetic in this thing? After all, Mark Twain said, “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.”

It Started in Starbucks

“Are you doing anything tonight?” Sarah stood just outside my office doorway, her hands holding both ends of a pencil as she angled herself toward the hall.

“I don’t have any plans,” I said.

“Would you like to meet at Starbucks tonight? We can edit each other’s essays for the seminar?”

No, I didn’t want to go. I figured pity probably provoked her to ask since she knew an MFA program had just denied my application. She’d called minutes after I’d read the rejection letter and subjected herself to my poorly composed emotions, but I couldn’t feel comforted by her. She had also received a letter, one of acceptance. Failure finds no comfort from the lips of success.

It had to be pity. Sarah hadn’t invited me to do anything in the past four years of the eight we’d known each other. We hadn’t hung out together since our college senior class party, and I can’t even remember now if she’d invited me along or if I’d imposed my presence upon her. Either way, our only interaction had been passing hello’s in the halls of the English department where we both teach. So no, I didn’t want to go or have her read my essay, but seeing her in this unfamiliar role voicing this novel request urged me to say, “Yeah sure; sounds good.”

I dreaded the Starbucks meeting all afternoon, feeling my gut tighten every time I pictured Sarah reading my essay. I imagined her thinking, “Yeah, no wonder that university rejected you. This is garbage!”

Sarah was a commercial writing major, which in my mind set her writing skills on levels far beyond my feeble English-major attempts. She teaches most of the upper-level writing classes, while I teach only one. She has a neatly compiled portfolio, while I have a blog. She’s probably writing the next Pulitzer prize winner, while I’m still jotting ideas in a pamphlet-sized journal. And she got accepted, while I did not.

When I arrived at Starbucks that night, I found her sitting at a small table with several drafts of her essay. I determined to stay for only one hour and planted myself across from her at a small table.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I accidentally fell asleep on the couch.”

She waved it off as I pulled out a stack of papers to grade. Hoping she’d forget about reading it, I pushed my essay to the side and started grading while she penciled edits on her already-perfect essay. I’d heard her tell someone that she’d included this essay in her portfolio for the MFA program–obviously it was good enough as it was. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me to read it; I couldn’t emotionally handle the inevitable comparison I’d draw between my writing and hers, knowing I’d fall short.

“Did you have a good day?” I asked without looking up, just to break the awkward silence.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was fine. You?”

“Yup.” I wiggled my foot in nervous rotations. “I’m tired. I was at Megan’s for dinner and fell asleep on the couch.” I always chatter mindlessly when I’m nervous, determined to make awkward circumstances more uncomfortable. For the next few minutes, I heard myself intermittently rambling and giggling through jumbled sentences like a sophisticated Tickle-me Elmo doll until she asked the dreaded question.

“Is this your essay?” She lifted the paper and fixed her eyes on its inadequate pages.

I tensed. “Yeah.”

I felt like the kid at the science fair with the sloppy solar system whose planets won’t stay glued in place. Pretending to grade, I kept my head lowered and periodically glanced at her face for signs of contempt or possible sneering; but she remained stoic and unreadable while I tormented myself over what she must be thinking, especially when she started penciling on the draft. I crossed, uncrossed, and recrossed my legs, then cracked my knuckles and bounced my foot. I flicked at the lid of my pen and chewed on my lip. Thinking I’d go insane, I searched for anything to preoccupy my tortured mind when I noticed her essay again.

I read the title: My Little Box.

I had to read it. She had to be expecting me to.

“Is this your essay?” I was so unprepared to ask that question that my voice stuck in the back of my throat like a Muppet character.

“Mm-hm,” she said.

From her tone and the look in her eyes, I wondered briefly if she felt as insecure as I did or if just the Kermit-the-Frog voice had startled her.

Something enchanting occurred while I read her essay. Her simple descriptions of herself on the beach as “a freckle-faced terror” chasing sand crabs and the poetic images of her seeing the ocean for the first time entranced me, warping time into a peaceful lapse in which all felt normal and right. Her little box in which she couldn’t recreate the ocean mirrored her little box of unmet expectations, but if all expectations met actualization, she wrote, we’d have no dreams, no spontaneity, no impetus.

“This is how I want to write.” I handed back her draft.

“What?” Her voice sounded incredulous.

“You are the kind of writer I imagine myself to be,” I said. Then I tapped my essay. “This is just what I happen to be at the moment.”

“No, this is who you are,” she said.

“This is who I am,” I thought, “a loser.” I was a bunny with an Easter basket next to the goose that lays golden eggs.

“Our styles are just different,” she said. “Yours is more about characters and are more humorous; mine is more meditative.”

“Meditative sounds so much more purposeful than humorous,” I said.

“You can’t change who you are,” she said. “Where would we be if Lucille Ball had wanted to be Audrey Hepburn?”

I glared. “I’d rather be Audrey. No wonder I wasn’t accepted for the MFA program.”

Sarah frowned. “It’s just one school. You should apply to others. What makes that school superior to the rest?”

“I don’t know.”

Sarah’s eyes seemed to look into my very being, as if she could see my battered spirit and wanted to medicate it. Still caught in my moment of enchantment, I heard myself spending the next hour and half unloading my semester of griefs, failures, and disappointments while she listened with the intensity of a lifelong friend, commenting, encouraging, and even sharing her own thoughts and concerns. The conversation flowed so easily that I’d forgotten the novelty of this moment until Sarah announced that she had to get home.

The next morning, I lay in bed, the sun yellowing my white blankets while I tried to quell the intense insecurity gripping my nervous system. I empathized with every drunken man whoever found himself sharing his deepest darkest secrets to an apathetic audience. Sarah’s essay had intoxicated me with beauty and caused me to spill my thoughts and feelings against my right mind. But unlike a drunk, I remembered nearly every word of the evening and regretted none of it. Truth and beauty never cause regret, only vulnerability.

I had many brief, disjointed memories of Sarah from college years. She joined my sister and me for dinner every Thursday. We would sit on a bench behind the campus Commons and discuss future plans. We met up for our senior rooftop dinner special. How had we graduated and gone four years with so little interaction? Several nights later, I asked her, and we spent the next couple weeks playing priest-and-sinner with our many ugly confessions to each other.

“I’ve been miserable for the past four years,” she told me, “because of you. I hated knowing you were in that office down the hall, everything I’m not and able to teach all the classes I teach better than I do.”

“You’re crazy,” I said. “I’ve always been so self-conscious of my writing compared to yours and jealous of the classes you get to teach.”

Sarah said that we’ll probably always be rivals, at least in our writing; and since I applied to another MFA program and got accepted, we now have another level of competition. But I don’t think it’s the malicious sort of rivalry that wants the other to fail. It’s the kind that makes us believe no matter how successful we are, the other will always be better. That’s the magic of friendship: two people seeing more in each other than is actually there and believing it earnestly.

The rest of our story is as cliche as every other friendship tale you’ve ever heard, a universal narrative of rivalry and restoration. I want to write it all, but some of life’s best moments become trite when put into words. I only hope I never forget the picture of Sarah standing just outside my office, angled toward the hall, ready to run away if I’d rejected her Starbucks invitation. It makes me wonder how many friendships I’ve missed because I was too busy to accept or wasn’t brave enough to be the one standing in the doorway.

Sentiment Muddles My Thinking

Four years ago, I entered my first classroom and met my first English students (actually, first I walked into the wrong classroom, but I eventually got there). Over a hundred freshman sat in those three sections of EN 101, a hundred young adults who taught me how to teach with every question, failure, and success we experienced together. Today, many of those same students completed their programs and commenced whatever adventure life will bring them next.

In the fifteen-minute walk from my apartment to campus, I tried to remember each of those students, but I stopped myself from really seeing any of them. I passed graduates draped in regalia as I entered the building backstage to robe up, but I avoided eye contact with any of them, keeping my head lowered as I trekked to the auditorium.

“Did you get a program?” my friend asked. “Here.” She handed me a thin booklet with the graduates’ names inside.

“Thanks,” I said. I opened it to look for the names of my students but couldn’t make myself read any of them.

“Hey!” A student called to me.

I turned and saw Abbie, one of my students who often calls out my name whenever she sees me.

“I love you!” she said.

Her words fell naturally and childlike, but they caught me too off guard.

“I–I love you, too, Abbie. Have a good summer,” I said. Knowing my response was as forced as a pulled tooth, I resumed my trek without looking at her again.

Sitting on stage during the graduation ceremony, I watched the auspicious graduates march into the auditorium, ready to receive diplomas, awards, and recognition of their hard work, and felt as if someone had injected my spirit with anesthetic.

I love you, too.

My words haunted me. Did I? Did I really love them?

As the students shuffled up the stairs to the platform, I mentally heard a final scene from one of my favorite Disney movies, Mary Poppins. In that scene, Jane and Michael tearfully beg Mary Poppins not to leave them.

“Don’t you love us?” Jane asks.

“And where would that leave me,” Mary Poppins replies, “if I loved all the children I said goodbye to?”

Instantly, I knew exactly where that would leave her–on a stage overlooking precious faces she may never see again and feeling the loss of it.

Forgiven

Looking back, if Cassie had let me in the pew first, none of this would’ve happened. I tried to go in first like always, but she complained and Mom listened.

“Don’t push your sister,” she told me, holding my shoulder to keep me in the aisle. “Sit by your father.”

I comforted myself that, because Cassie did go in first, she had to sit next to Madeline, the only ten-year-old in school who still wet her pants.

We’d got to church kind of late. They were singing the first hymn, and I guess my parents wanted us seated quickly in the back to avoid the stares. Slumping in my seat, I crossed my arms and tapped the pew in front of me with my scuffed dress shoes, kicking progressively harder until Dad gripped my knee and lowered his brows. His lips tightened, and I knew to stop.

“Sit up straight, Simon.” He whispered so harshly I could smell his cinnamon gum. I squirmed an inch or two higher, a motion that somewhat assured him of my obeisance.

Pastor gave some announcements about a fall picnic with a hay maze for the kids, and I heard Cassie loudly ask Mom if she could go. Mom shushed her and said, “We’ll see.”

Leaning forward, I saw Cassie whimper for being silenced and then smile with Mom’s almost affirmative answer. Normally I wouldn’t care, but because she’d stolen my seat, I hoped Mom wouldn’t let her go. Quickly, I slipped out my tongue toward her and sat back.

“If the ushers will come forward,” Pastor said, “we’ll take our offering. Brother Steve, will you lead us in prayer?”

While Brother Steve prayed, the ladies pulled cash from their wallets and men fished coins from their pockets. Dad dropped two quarters in my hand. I pinched them between my thumb and index finger and scraped them together. Dad took them from me, and Brother Steve said, “Amen.” The ushers began their slow trek down the aisle, sending and fetching offering plates while Pastor’s wife sang a special.

Sometime during the chorus, I heard the back doors open. I turned to see who else was late, but Dad tapped my leg again and told me not to stare. Fortunately, the tardy man hobbled by my pew and sat in the one in front of me. I had a perfect view of his profile. Apart from the sparse, fuzzy gray hair that curled around his long head, every feature of this frail man drooped like leaves loosely clinging to a late-autumn tree. Wrinkled and frayed, dandruff dusted his brown plaid suit coat, and a gray scarf lay limply around his neck, holding little lint balls like a cobweb holds bits of dirt. With a long, knobby finger, he scratched and pulled on his large, hairy earlobe. He did this every few seconds, and I watched intently each time. Once after he’d scratched, I saw him empty stale flesh from his fingernails and then rub his hands along his trousers. I was a ten-year-old boy who squished bugs with my bare feet and once threw a cake of cow dung at my sister, and even I found this man repulsive. I knew that Pastor would make all the church visit and shake hands right before the sermon, but I determined not to touch that disgusting hand.

“Thank you for that special, Gina,” Pastor said. “Let’s all shake hands and fellowship while the pianist plays ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.’”

Everyone stood, and the cacophonous chorus of greetings began. Dad shook my hand first, and Cassie would have next if I hadn’t turned around when she looked at me. Mr. Barns behind me gave my arm a friendly sock. “Morning, Simon! Good week at school?”

“Yeah, it was all right.”

“Those fourth grade division problems too hard?”

“No, I like math.”

He was turning away as I answered, so I figured he didn’t hear me. Shoving my hands deeply into my pockets, I stood with my head bowed, still avoiding Cassie’s attempts at talking to me. Then I saw that long, bony hand appear under my nose. I looked up. The droopy man’s saggy pale eyes stared his empty palm, waiting for me to fill it. But I wouldn’t. My arms fixed themselves to my sides, and my fingers forms fists in my pockets. The hand wouldn’t go away. I hated that hand! I saw nothing but those awful fingers. I wished they’d go away!

Then I saw someone else’s hand fill the void.

“Simon’s grumpy today, Mr. Conan,” my Dad said. He used both hands to give the man’s a hardy shake, as if the second were sacrificing for the one I refused.

I dared to look up at my dad and immediately wished I hadn’t. His eyes didn’t scold; they condemned. I looked at Mr. Conan; he didn’t smile or speak. In the eternity of that minute, fear choked me so that I couldn’t spit out even the weakest apology, regardless of sincerity.

The congregation joined in the chorus of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” but I heard only a muffled blend of voices through the beat of my drumming heart. I knew I’d be spanked or served some other punishment later, and I dreaded it. I wished Dad could just do it now and get it over with. That was my only anxiety. I wasn’t sorry. I still wouldn’t shake his hand if given the opportunity to redeem myself; I’d simply have kept my back turned so that I’d have never seen the hand and Dad wouldn’t have seen me refuse it.

We sat when the song ended, and I fished my orange New Testament from my pocket, only to put it aside when Pastor turned to Jeremiah. I felt as if half my life passed during that sermon, like waiting in the doctor’s office for a vaccine. No form of amusement could draw my mind from pending doom or make me unaware of the endlessly droning second hand of my watch. Once I wanted to cry from impatience! My mind focused so much on my turmoil that I never noticed the Pastor close in prayer. I stood in a trance when the congregation sang the closing him.

“Simon, Mrs. Porter has a box of hand-me-downs for Cassie,” Mom said as people shuffled from the auditorium. “It’s in the fellowship hall. You’ll see it.”

I looked at Dad who visited with Mr. Barns, and almost asked if he’d spank me then and get it over with. I looked at Cassie who feigned adulthood in conversation with Mom and Mrs. Porter instead of playing hide-and-seek with the other kids. I never saw Mr. Conan or even thought to look for him.

“Hurry, Simon, we’re leaving soon,” Mom said when she saw I hadn’t budged.

Sighing, I turned and scuffed my shoes down the aisle and out of the auditorium to the fellowship hall. The lights were dim, and stacked chairs and tables cluttered the area. I didn’t see a box anywhere. Instead of searching for it, I attacked a stack of chairs, kicking the metal fiercely so that each clang and bang exhibited the frustration I’d held all morning. I stopped and jumped back when a body scurried from behind the chairs.

Madeline must’ve been playing hide-and-seek and I’d frightened her from hiding. Apparently, I’d scared her so badly that she wet herself right there. It streamed down her leg and puddled by her right foot.

I was still looking at the puddle when the overhead lights came on, a man limped past me to the kitchen area, and another grabbed my shoulder.

“What’s going on in here? What was all the raucous?” It was a deacon, whose name I didn’t know.

“I–I–all the kids are playing hide-and-seek.” I felt my face burn.

“Certainly a lot of noise for a game like that.” He noticed then the puddle beneath Madeline, and I could tell he felt embarrassed for the teary-eyed girl who hadn’t spoken.

The other man who’d entered the room with him returned with paper towels. My breath stopped as Mr. Conan knelt and sopped the urine as if it were spilled water.

“Looks like you’ve got this covered,” the deacon said as he left.

“Don’t tell my mom,” Madeline said. Her voice quivered, but she never cried–just watched the old man wipe her mess and head back to the kitchen.

“Sorry, Madeline,” I said.

Before she could respond, if she were going to, another child called for her. “Madeline, you were supposed to hide! Come on, we’re playing again!” Madeline ran after the other children without speaking or looking back.

Mr. Conan hobbled back toward me. As he walked, I wondered what he thought. Did he know that I’d caused Madeline to mess herself? Did he know I’d been kicking the church chairs? Would he tell my parents? I could’ve run, but I didn’t. Looking back, I think I wanted whatever form of punishment this man would give me, not because I wanted to get it over with, but because I knew I deserved it.
He stood less than a yard from me, looking down with those saggy blue eyes. He extended his right hand–the hand that had cleaned Madeline’s mess–the hand I had refused. I still couldn’t shake it.

He held it there, and I saw my hand slowly fill it. It was large and rough and firm. He pressed my fingers with a tighter shake, and I felt a forgiveness that I hadn’t asked for and that he’d never said. I didn’t completely understand what had happened then, but looking back, if Cassie hadn’t gone in first, I’d have missed a second sermon that day.

Feeling Felicity

A year ago, Krissy introduced me to the man who became her husband. This year, she showed me her baby–on a sonogram. It was a girl.

“At my last doctor appointment, the doctor could hardly get a heartbeat because the baby moved around so much!” Krissy had told me earlier. “The doctor said it’s definitely a happy baby! It’ll be fitting if it’s a girl, because we’d name her Felicity, which mean happiness.”

Judging from the screen, Felicity definitely appeared to be a happy baby. Her jaw chomped up and down as if she were chewing gum and giving us the latest news. We heard her rapid heartbeat. We saw her stretch her legs and push out her arms like a ballerina.

“Krissy, I hope she looks and acts just like you!” my dad said.

“I don’t,” Clayton said. “She’ll get away with everything!”

That my sister is having a baby hadn’t been real to me until that moment. I felt my breath catch as I imagined Krissy a mommy.

We were young teenagers when Krissy adopted Rascal, a fat fuzzy kitten who rightfully earned his name. Rascal is fully black except for the white on his chest, some toes, whiskers, and spot above his right eye.

He never liked me.

Krissy has several reasons why, but I don’t agree with most of them. She said that cats are intelligent and require intelligent conversation. I don’t understand why my “Hi, kitty kitty! You’re a fatty!” is less intelligent than her “He’s Mommy’s little chunky monkey!”

She claims I physically abused him as a kitten. Looking back, I can see how shaking him every time he meowed to teach him vibrato could be considered abuse, but I was a young imaginative musician, determined to have a prodigy cat. I had his best interest in mind.

She also claims that I didn’t play with him correctly. “His favorite game is ‘attack,’” she said. I am not willing to play that game, but apparently my teasing him with a broom wasn’t acceptable, either.

Regardless of my wrongs, nothing warranted his sabotages throughout my life. Before Mom condemned him to the garage for his rascally behavior, he would lurk around corners, waiting for me to walk by so he could wrap his paws around my ankle and sink his fangs into my flesh. When I kicked him off, Krissy would cry.

“Don’t hurt my little angel!”

“He is a ferocious beast.”

“No, he’s not. He just thinks he’s a lion and wants to play ‘attack’ with you.”

Last year, Mom mailed me a jean jacket that had been hanging around the house for years. One cool fall evening, I pulled on the jacket and went grocery shopping with Autumn.

“Man, my car stinks,” I said during the drive to Publix. “Do you smell that?”

“Um, no.”

The smell followed me around the store. “Autumn, I think it’s me. Do I stink?”

“That is an odd question to ask–especially in public,” she said.

“Well, I definitely smell something.” It was a distinct something, and I searched my olfactory memory bank to place it. I remembered: I’d smelled it on my bed, next to my bed, and by my bookshelf. I called Krissy as soon as I got to my apartment.

“Did Rascal ever pee on that jean jacket Mom sent?”

“Oh, yeah, I think he did,” she said casually, as if this were normal. “But I washed it.”

“It stinks. I stink.”

“You must be dirty.”

“Your dumb cat is dirty!”

“He’s not dumb! He’s just a baby! If you’d been nicer to him when he was a kitten, he’d be nice to you now. He must’ve known Mom would send that jacket to you.”

He was not a baby. That cat was over ten years old.

“You’ll have to get Krissy to spank her,” Dad told Clayton.

“Have you seen Krissy’s idea of spanking or training her cat?” Mom said.

They all laughed, and Krissy smiled and replied, “I’ll discipline my baby.”

Krissy and Clayton left for California the next day. Since they had to be settled before the New Year for Clayton’s job, they packed up and hauled out early Wednesday morning. I woke up early enough for us to do our hair and make up together.

“You’re ugly,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’re fat.”

“You’re mean. Why do you treat me this way?”

“Because I hate you.”

We’d repeated that dialogue to each other so often that it’s more comforting than a hug. We hardly talked after that. Dad brought Krissy a pancake, but I turned down his offer, feeling too sad to stomach anything.

Dad led us in a prayer of health and safety for Krissy, Clayton, and Felicity, and then we began the horrible departing.

Krissy never looked me in the eye.

“Take care of my little niece.” I rubbed her belly.

“I will.”

We hugged, quickly but softly.

“I love you.”

“I don’t love you.”

“Whatever, loser.”

I walked her to the truck, sensing the cold sting me through my clothes and sniffing to keep my nose from running. Frost clung to the truck and dusted the yard as fog hovered over the fields. We watched them drive slowly away to be swallowed in the heavy skyline.

“You know she had to play it hard so she wouldn’t lose it,” Dad told me.

“I know.” If we’d quoted are typical Fox and the Hound line, “We’ll always be friends–forever,” or even gained eye contact, we’d have lost it.

Later that evening, Mom sent me to the garage to fetch food from the freezer. Searching for the frozen chicken, I felt a body brush against my leg.

Krissy had told me she couldn’t take Rascal with her. I shut the freezer and bent to pat his head. He purred. Soon I found myself squatted, stroking him from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail while he purred and gurgled.

“So what, are we friends now?” I asked him. “You’re not going to bite my hand off?”

He continued purring, sliding his nose under my hand and rubbing his cheek against me.

I wondered if he knew to miss her. He couldn’t possibly miss her as much as I did. Again, the present plagued me and the future frightened me. One is too volatile, the other too uncertain. Only the past is absolute, and trust is a difficult verb. I’d never spent a Christmas away from her, and I didn’t want to start now.

“Just think,” Krissy had told our parents, “next Christmas we’ll all be together, and you’ll have your little grandbaby to play with.”

I supposed there would be good things ahead.

“I miss her, too,” I told Rascal. I grabbed some kitty treats from his cookie jar and let his rough tongue pull them from my palm. He chomped them happily. “This is why you’re a little chunky monkey,” I told him.

Yes, good things were ahead, and times full of Felicity.

Patches

“Red lights are only as long as you don’t need them to be.” Tabi grumbled when the light turned green after only seconds. She tossed the map to her sister, popped a mint into her mouth, and continued driving, annoyed that once again she was lost. “That map is useless. There are no farms on this road.”

“You do this every time,” Kae said.

“Not every time.”

“Almost every time.” Kae propped her head on her arm against the window. “Remember last time you took that so-called shortcut to the airport? A five-minute ride turned into an hour!”

“I can’t help that the dumb highway had an off-ramp but no on-ramp. You should be mad at the county for having a stupid road system.”

Kae snorted. “Whatever. I just want to pick a pumpkin.”

Tabi pursed her lips, stifling a complaint. She knew that Kae loved fall, and so did she. Every October, they invaded their grandfather’s pumpkin patch back home in Ohio, stepping over damp vines and weeding through large green leaves to pick the most perfect pumpkins; then they’d name them. Although she still enjoyed fall, Tabi hadn’t been pumpkin hunting for two years, not with college demanding time for more important things; now she balked over Kae’s determination to carry on this tradition when she joined Tabi at college.

“There is no fall in Alabama,” Tabi said, turning on another road. “The leaves don’t change color and no one grows pumpkins.”

“I’m sure someone does.”

Tabi sighed. They both had homework to do and money to save, but they were wasting time and gas to look for some Podunk pumpkin patch. “Walmart sells pumpkins.”

“We’re not getting a pumpkin from Walmart.”

“It’s better than being lost on this ugly, nameless road. Have you been looking out the window? These pine trees are hideous. They should be housing buzzards.”

Kae stared out her window but didn’t seem to notice or care about the trees. “We didn’t have to go.”

“You know you’d be sad if we didn’t get a stupid pumpkin.”

“I’m sad because you don’t want to do anything with me anymore.”

As they approached another stop, Tabi swallowed the last of her mint and wished her last words could disappear with it. “I do want to do things with you, Sis.”

“Whatever. Just get us unlost and back to campus. I don’t want a pumpkin anymore.”

Pulling ignorantly onto another back road, Tabi heard Kae sniffing softly in short successions. She tried to think of something to say, but every sentence she mentally composed seemed contrived and insensitive. Being a junior, Tabi had been busy lately with her excessive homework, part-time job, and friends who demanded her time; but that didn’t mean she’d stopped caring about her sister. Her pierced conscience implored her to relate this demanding schedule to her sister, but Tabi hated excuses and told herself that Kae was just too needy.

“We could try the other side of town.” Tabi tried to appease her conscience.

“No. It would take too long. It’s already getting dark.” Kae swiped her jacket sleeve across her cheek.

“Doesn’t matter. We can go.”

“No. Just get us back.”

“At least being lost lets us spend time together.”

“Whatever! Don’t pretend to want to hang out now.” She pulled her legs onto the seat of the car and hugged her knees to her chest, her face turned from Tabi.

Tabi felt her breath catch. No amount of I-love-you’s or I’m-sorry’s could penetrate the wall Kae was constructing. Words fail when they have no actions to support them.

The last of the sun’s rusty rays shone between the ugly, half-barren pines as Tabi pulled into a local produce market.

“We need directions,” she told Kae.

The moist gravel crunched under their feet as they traipsed across the parking lot, Kae a few steps behind. Bells jingled when they opened the door.

“Man, it stinks in here,” Tabi said. “Like garlic and manure.”

“It smells like that organic food store back home.” Kae wrinkled her nose. “Remember Bushman’s?”

“You’re right!” Tabi laughed.

The door shut behind them as they meandered through the organic produce and jars of wild honey and jellies organized in high wooden crates and on homemade shelves lining the walls.

“The people who shopped there were so creepy!” Kae said.

“I know! Well, not creepy. Just different.”

“Can I help you find something?” asked a woman in green tights and a short, earthy dress. Her long, oily hair curtained her oval jaw, and her discolored teeth matched the dark circles beneath her droopy eyes.

“Uh–actually, we just need directions,” Tabi said.

“Where to?” The woman’s voice remained low, as if her spindly body were too weak to raise it any higher.

“We live off the interstate heading west, but I can’t find the interstate.”

The woman coughed phlegm from her throat before muttering a verbal map of lefts and rights.

“Thank you so much!” Tabi turned to leave, but stopped. “Do you have any pumpkins for sale?”

“No. We usually get them at the end of the month.”

“Okay. Thanks again!”

“You’re welcome,” the woman said, beginning another hack.

Tabi gently clasped Kae’s elbow and led her back through the jingling doorway to the car.

“Okay,” Kae said as she buckled up, “now she was definitely the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Bushman’s must’ve sent her down here.” Tabi backed up and steered the car onto the road.

Kae laughed. “I guess there are strange people everywhere.”

“They probably think we’re strange.”

“We are strange.” Kae kicked off her shoes and sat indian-style in the seat, pressing the radio button as she nestled in for the ride back. “We name our pumpkins.”

Tabi laughed. “I guess we are.” She smiled at memories of their obvious quirkiness, but the smile dulled with her sudden need to make more of those memories.

“I really am sorry about earlier,” she said over the lyrics of a Sinatra remix.

“It’s okay.” Kae dropped the offense and sang along with Frank contentedly.

The sun had disappeared, and the full moon and faded stars now solaced the darkness. Tabi felt like that sky, dark and brooding over busy schedules and failing relationships, while her sister sat by reflecting the light of loyalty and perseverance. Within twenty minutes, they were approaching the campus, but Tabi drove by it.

“Hey, you missed the entrance,” Kae said, turning off the radio.

“Nope.”

“Where are you going?”

“You’ll see.”

“I don’t want to go to Walmart for a pumpkin.”

“I know.” Tabi fought her lips from smiling. “We’re not going to Walmart.”

Kae tapped her fingers on her knees, eager to discover her sister’s secret. She smiled curiously when Tabi flipped on the blinker and turned into a café. “You want coffee?”

“You’ll see.”

They parked and scooted out of the car, stretching the cramps from their legs. Tabi led them inside to the counter decked with fall decor.

“What can I get for you?” a young barista asked.

“Two tall pumpkin spice lattes, please.” She smiled at her sister. “And two pumpkin scones.” After pulling her credit card from her pocket, she patted a decoration on the counter. “And how much would you take for this pumpkin?”

Oh Snap

When my sister started planning her wedding at the end
of spring, I started planning a spectacular summer adventure for us as our last
sisterly fling before matrimony prohibited such activities.

But I needed more money saved.

I knew I’d missed the deadline to apply for summer work,
but I figured there was no harm in asking if there were anything still open in
the office where I’d worked part-time as a writer.

“So, if I applied to work here this summer,” I asked my
boss, “do you think they’d hire me?”

“Well, I definitely have work for you, so you can try
and see what happens.” He was shuffling some papers on his desk, but paused and
asked, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm, “You aren’t a photographer, are you?”

“Well, I took Photo I in college!” I said and laughed
innocently.

“Really?” He paused again. “What would you think about
being the summer photographer for the school?”

“Are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I’m just a hobbyist. I’m really not that good.”

“At this point, I’d almost take anyone who can push a
camera button.” He chuckled. “Well, not really, but would you really do it?”

At that point, I was willing to take almost any job. “I’d
do it, as long as you know I’m not the best at it!” I laughed again. “And I
need the second and third weeks of August off, because I’m planning one final
adventure with my sister before she gets married.”

Not a week later, I got a note in my school mailbox,
informing me of my summer work responsibilities—six hours a day, five days a
week, for seven weeks, and I got those two weeks in August off.

Unfortunately, Krissy’s wedding got bumped up to early
July instead of mid-October, thus cancelling our fun summer adventure, which
was the only reason I needed the summer job anyway. I was very disappointed,
but figured saving money was still a good idea.

I’d never been more aware of myself than I was as a
photographer. My first photoshoot was taking pictures of a speaker in a dimly lit
auditorium. Wherever I stood and snapped the camera, heads would turn with
glaring eyes. I felt like I was clashing cymbals in a library.

The day after this debut shoot, my boss called me to his
office.

“These are really blurry and washed out,” he said. “What
did you have your settings on?”

I told him.

“Greg told me he heard a lot of shutter at the service
last night.”

Oh goodness.

“Let’s talk about the relationship between your ISO,
shutter, and aperture.”

Sounds like a boring conversation.

“Ok,” I said, feeling low.

“Why don’t you go back and delete all the unusable ones
off the server?” he said when he finished counseling me on shutter
relationships. “And don’t worry about it. It was your first night.”

I sat at my desk and shot Greg an email. “What settings
should I do for a sports event so that the action doesn’t blur?”

“Go high,” he wrote back, along with other helpful tips.

It didn’t work. When sports camps started, campers arms
morphed into fans of flesh-colored light, balls become shooting stars, and
some faces completely disappeared. All the while, awkward teenage boys watched
me, dribbling freshly-pumped basketballs and looks of disdain.

While taking pictures of an outdoor summer camp, I
sweated worse than ever before in my life. It was Florida, close to 100 degrees,
with killer humidity. Salty sweat beads dripped into my eyes and rolled down my
back. It was so bright outside I could hardly tell if my pictures were turning
out. I felt nauseated from the heat and the stench of sweaty campers and camp
leaders around me, and felt even worse when, walking alone across one of the
camp fields, I could smell myself.

By mid July, I couldn’t wait for summer to be over.

“Can you get some pictures of the fountain on campus?”
Aaron asked me in the office one afternoon. “The center shooter is supposed to
shoot higher than the rest, and we want to get it while the crape myrtles are
blooming.”

I got plenty of pictures with the fountain and the crape
myrtles, but none with the center shooter shooting higher.

“Can you try again?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“You’ll have to call maintenance or someone to get it
shooting higher.”

Nothing is worse than calling anyone. “Ok. I will.”

I called, but no one seemed to understand what I wanted;
and as soon as I got down to the fountain, a large dark cloud spread across
campus and poured out half the Gulf of Mexico.

My pictures of children’s day camp were somewhat better,
but only because children don’t mind posing—staying still—so that shutter speed
doesn’t matter quite as much.

Taking pictures of college summer workers was not so
great.

“May I take your picture?” I asked a couple one
afternoon.

“Ignore her and she’ll go away,” the girl told her
boyfriend as if I couldn’t hear.

He looked at me and shrugged, helplessly.

“What are you supposed to be?” another girl asked me. “Some
cool new photographer?”

“I am new,” I told her, “and if I’m cool, too, that works!
Haha!” Loser.

And the worst photo shoot was of an academic camp—pre-medicine.

“You chose the perfect day to take pictures!” the camp
leader said excitedly. She tied her apron. “We’re dissecting pig uteruses and
pulling out the fetuses!”

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and emailed Greg. “Please
tell me I don’t have to take picture of campers dissecting a pig uterus.”

“Aaron said we wouldn’t use any of the pig,” he wrote
back. “Just get campers wearing their surgical garb and holding tools and
whatever. Get angles of them dissecting without showing the pig.”

“This is the worst experience of my life.”

“Heh. Just don’t get splattered.”

“I hate you for using the word splattered.”

When the camp leaders drained the fluid from the plastic
bag holding the uterus, I quickly turned and told myself it were fake.

It’s not real.

I’m not going to throw up.

It’s all good.

It’s not good.

I’m going to be ill.

What is that smell?

If anything splatters
me, I’m going home.

I think I snapped a dozen shots before a camper held up
the first fetus and squealed, “Aw! It’s so cute! It really looks like a piglet!”

Did you think it’d be a cow? Pigs normally reproduce
piglets. I’m going to hurl.

“Are you ok?” the camp leader asked me.

“Uh huh,” I said. “Is this an exit door?”

“What’s that splattered on your shirt?” Aaron asked when
I walked in the office.

“Shut up.”

About a week before my summer work would end, I looked
through files of hundreds of pictures I’d taken. Some were pretty good. Greg
and Aaron coached me on some good angles and better camera settings. But I was
discouraged to see that many of my pictures never improved. I’d done all of
this for a summer adventure that would never happen.

That weekend, I went shopping with Greg and his wife
Sara at outlets two hours out of town. While Greg wandered through the men’s
suits, Sara and I meandered around some graphic T’s.

“Hey, you should get this one!” she said, pointing to a
gray T-shirt.

I held it up to see a sketch of a camera with the
caption Oh Snap!

“Oh my word, I have to get this to commemorate my
summer!” I said. “This is perfect!”

I spent fifteen dollars on the shirt—more than I would
ever typically pay for a T-shirt, but I figured it was cheaper than a summer
adventure. And the more I’ve thought about it now, the more I realize that in
working to pay for a summer adventure, all the while I’d been having many.

Promises

For her sixteenth birthday, I joined Bonnie and her family for a picnic at the park. Her parents rented a rowboat, a paddleboat, and a canoe. Bonnie and I started with the paddleboat.

“Let’s peddle as fast as we can and see how far we get!” I said.

We peddled like Lance Armstrong for about three minutes.

We slowed down and peddled for a few more minutes until we stopped in the middle of furthest end of the lake, gasping for breath, the dock barely visible.

“How are we going to get back?” I asked. My leg muscles were burning.

“Peddle.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yup.”

We figured we could rest a while and slowly peddle back.

“Did you two tire out?” Bonnie’s sister Liz asked as she and Janette rowed by. “Want to switch boats? You can exercise your arms and give your legs a break.”

We agreed to meet them at the dock and groaned with each peddle back.

“This will be so much better,” Bonnie said as we embarked the rowboat.

“Definitely,” I said.

We each clasped a paddle and practiced synchronizing our strokes; then we lowered them into the water and paddled like Olympians, hard and long. Sometimes my paddle missed the water; sometimes hers threw water in the boat. However ungraceful we were, we were dedicated paddlers who obviously hadn’t learned from the paddleboat experience.

“Bonnie,” I said when my arms began to ache.

“Yeah?”

“We should slow down so we don’t get exhausted again.”

“Good idea.”

We slowed.

“Bonnie?”

“What?”

“I don’t think we’re moving.”

We stopped and stared at the dock, confused by its nearness.

“Girls! Girls!” a man called from the bank. “Unhook your rowboat from the dock!”

We quit and went to the swing set.                                                                                     

Our friendship had begun three years earlier during a sleepover. We spent hours on an old computer in the basement, playing the first PC version of the classic board game, Clue. She was always Miss Scarlet, I was always Colonel Mustard, and she always won.

Throughout our teen years, we spent as much time as possible together. We’d use excuses such as “We have to practice our violin duet!” (we rarely practiced a song together more than once in a whole weekend) and “It’s a holiday!” (we claimed holidays that aren’t even American).

I’ve often wondered what’s kept us friends for so long. In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis maintains that a relationship is almost always built upon mutual interest; when the interest dies, the relationship often dies with it. Sometimes, it seems that Bonnie and I have no mutual interests anymore. I teach English in Florida; she teaches music in North Carolina. She’s married; I’m single. She’s a runner; I’m a writer. Last summer, she mentioned these things on our road trip from Florida to North Carolina.

“I never thought our friendship would last this long,” she said.

“I always wondered,” I said. “What do you think holds it together?”

“Maybe just that we’ve been through so much together. We were friends with us when no one else would be friends with us!”

I laughed because I knew she was alluding to what we term our “ugly stage”—the stage of quirky fashion, strange hairstyles, and all-around teen awkwardness.

 “Good thing we had each other!” I said. “Who’d have known we’d be best friends twelve years ago when you were beating me at Clue?”

“I always cheated.”

“What!” This was a definite blow to my sentimental moment.

She chortled. “Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you!”

“Yeah.”

We rode silently for a minute.

“Are we still friends?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

We didn’t finish our friendship analysis then, so I brought it up again when I visited her last week.

“It still amazes me that we’ve been friends so long,” I said.

“It doesn’t amaze me anymore,” she surprised me by saying. “I have no doubt we’ll still be friends when we’re old grandmas. I think our friendship is so strong because we’ve survived so many changes in life together. We’ve changed. Our lives have changed. But our friendship hasn’t.”

Our friendship hasn’t changed. It’s always been marked by embarrassing situations—too many to write in one blog and, as Bonnie recently told me, too many to remember. It’s always been marked by growth as we helped each other through our awkward teen years, encouraged each other through college, and now help each other figure out this crazy era of adulthood. And like she said, it’s always been marked by change—a word I tend to despise.

I wish Bonnie and I could always live in the same city, always plan birthdays together, and always experience embarrassing moments together; and I wish the same of every friendship I’ve made since this first wonderful one with her. But Bonnie is right: it’s the changes we go through that give us strength and make our relationships beautiful.

As a friend recently told me, stagnancy is worse. Change may be scary, but it promises great things.   

Passport

“I want to go to England.” Every year, I make the wish and blow out my birthday candles. Well, most of them, which could be why the wish has yet to come true.

While whatever sparked this wish now eludes me, its effects on my adolescent growth and development could warrant a life-changing-event essay. Every summer of my childhood, I’d sit on the coarse Northeastern sand and stare longingly across the Atlantic, squinting my eyes to see more clearly.

“What are you looking at so hard?” my mom once asked.

“Oh, just England.”

“You can’t see England from here,” she said.

“I can, Mom. It’s that hazy line in the distance.”

“That’s the horizon, dear.”

Of course I didn’t believe her, but later I learned that the hazy line across from me in Maryland was Spain–not England.

My wish followed me into adulthood, manifesting itself in the picture of London in my bedroom, the three renditions of Big Ben in my living room, a decorative book that looks like the British flag in my dining room, and a canvas-covered dresser with London written all over it in my entryway.

About a year ago, I figured, what am I waiting for? A fairy godmother to come grant my wish? Why not just go? Visiting England should be a necessary credential for an English teacher. I could probably write the whole trip off on my taxes!

As if I’d written an antagonist into my thoughts, I then heard an ugly voice declare, “No, you can’t. You are bound to the United States’ soil. You don’t have a passport.”

Being a true Twenty-first Century American, I immediately consulted Google.
I typed how do I get a passport into the search and clicked the first suggested link. After two hours of reading, filling in information, and gathering legal documents, I printed all the required pages, slid them into an envelope, and drove to the post office.

“You need to set up an appointment,” the lady behind the desk said.

“An appointment for what?” I asked.

“You need to meet with someone to go over your paperwork and give it the stamp of approval before mailing it off.”

“Oh, do you have any time to do it today?”

She shook her head. “We only do appointments on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between eight and four thirty.”

I felt my breath catch. Maybe my incompetent candle blowing had cursed me. “I work from eight to five on those days,” I said.

“Then you can go downtown to the clerk of court. They take walk-ins. And don’t forget to get your picture taken.”

I hadn’t thought of the picture. Since I’m severely directionally challenged and despise getting my picture taken, I left with a less-than-virtuous attitude.

CVS Pharmacy was the only place I knew of that takes pictures for passports, so I stopped there first.

“Hi, I need to get my picture taken for a passport,” I told the middle-aged woman stocking shelves.

She wore a silver velvet jogging suit, had her bleached hair pulled in a sloppy pony tail, and spoke in deep, raspy tones. “Jodie!” She attempted to call, but her voice hardly rose above a harsh whisper. “Jodie!”

When no one responded, she lost patience and motioned for me to follow her to the front corner of the store where she retrieved a cheap digital camera from behind the desk. Then she pulled down a small white screen in front of a lipstick display.

“Stand there,” she said.

I stood in front of the screen. “Should I smi–”

She snapped the picture before I could finished the question.

“Jodie!” she tried again.

After many failed attempts at bringing up my picture at the photo kiosk, she finally paged Jodie, who came immediately. Being much more competent and cheerful, Jodie had my picture printed quickly.

“Great,” I thought when I looked at it. “It looks like a mug shot.”

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled onto Government Street in search of the clerk of court. I drove up and down the road for another ten minutes before I spotted a quaint house with a sign saying, “St. Joseph’s Parish.” After parking in a wide lot by the house, I trekked over an uneven sidewalk that led to a small porch and I knocked softly, hoping I weren’t invading private property. Within seconds a woman opened the door enough to reveal half her short, stocky body draped in a cotton jumper. Hanging from a gold chain around her neck rested gold-rimmed glasses, which she slowly unfolded and placed upon her long nose. Since I assumed she was St. Joseph’s secretary, I fearlessly professed my woes.

“I’m so lost!” I said.

She raised her hand to her chest with alarm, and immediately I worried that she’d mistaken me for spiritually lost, rather than directionally.

“I just need a passport,” I said, “from the clerk of court.”

Without saying a word, she pointed to the building behind me.

“Thanks.” I muttered.

“And you can park somewhere else,” she said. The door shut with her last word.

Fortunately, the building across the street had free parking along the curb.
Two policeman guarded the inside foyer of the governmental structure and required all who entered to set their bags on a belt and walk through an airport-style scanner. I set the scanner alarm off, got frisked, and was then told I was in the wrong building.

“It’s that building over there through that intersection,” a policeman told me.

I crossed the street, entered the building, set off its scanner alarm, and got frisked again before another policeman directed me down a long, winding hallway where I entered some large double-doors.

“I’m here to get a passport,” I told the lady at the desk. “Here’s my stuff.”

The apparently exhausted and overfed lady read through my information quickly and said, “You aren’t going to Europe.”

Were my life a musical, the director would’ve cued Beethoven’s 5th.

“What?” My voice squawked from lack of sufficient oxygen.

“You’re supposed to show intent to travel.”

“I did,” I explained. “I wrote that I want to go to London on the form.”

“Yes, but you don’t show intent to travel.”

“But of course I intend to travel. That’s why I’m getting a passport.”

“Look, honey, according to this form, you need to show intent to leave the country within two weeks.”

At this point, I almost became asthmatic. “Does everyone leave the country two weeks after applying for a passport?”

The lady’s jaw tightened and I think she silently counted to ten. “No.”

“Then why—”

“Because of the form.”

“I filled out the wrong one?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“This is a rush passport. We can send it off, but you may have problems. They may not issue you a passport.”

I didn’t understand any of this, probably because my brain cells were dying from suffocation. “So—I filled out the wrong form.”

She must’ve counted again because I waited a while for an answer. “No. You paid for a rush passport. It’s the same form.”

“So—what’s going to happen?”

“You may or may not be issued a passport. Do you still want me send your paperwork in? You can’t get a refund either way.”

I made a hurried, nervous decision. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”

I left and worried for the next two weeks that the entire ordeal was a scam—the internet, the post office, CVS–and the clerk of court was probably a terrorist currently stealing my identity.

“Well, let her have it,” I said. “Maybe she’ll actually get to London.”

Fortunately, my passport actually arrived two weeks later, and I all but kissed it.

“It’s not like I can go anytime soon. And passports are good for ten years,” I told my friend. “It’s just comforting to know I could go, if I wanted to.”

She looked at it and frowned. “Your picture looks like a mug shot.”

Although another year has passed, I still haven’t visited that hazy line in the distance. But last month when I blew out my birthday candles–well, half of them–I didn’t wish for England. Why waste a wish? I know I’ll go someday before the next nine years expire. This year, I moved to the next item on my list and wished for… Well, that’s another story.