breaking down on the precipice

Last night, I almost died.

Calm down - I don't mean physically.  I wasn't in any danger...probably.  No, I mean that I came perilously close to leaving my identity behind.

Let me set the scene:  I spent the evening at a little party at a friend's apartment about 45 minutes from my home.  We had a fantastic time talking, eating, and playing party games.  The party wrapped up just before midnight, and we said our farewells and set out into the night.  My car was parked the furthest away, so everyone else drove off before I reached my car.

I approached my ride, and I was stricken by a sinking feeling.  I unlocked my door, and my fears were confirmed -- the interior lights failed to come on.  I lowered my eyes to the headlight switch, and there it was:  I had left my lights on.

I love my car; it's great.  A 2003 Honda Civic, it cost me $5,000 and has taken me 50,000 miles (to a total of 100,000) without giving me a single problem.  It's a tremendous value.  Except...the lights don't turn off automatically.  If I leave them on, they stay on, and the battery dies.  It's a challenge.

Usually  (about 3-4 times a year) that happens at work, but I'm lucky that the Public Safety department there has a car jumping service for staff.  This time,  though, I wasn't at work.

Oh,  and my phone's battery had died, too.

I stared at my phone for a few minutes.  I had no idea what to do in this situation.  Then I walked back to my friend's apartment to ask for a jump...but the apartment building was closed down.  And I didn't know her apartment number to buzz up.  And I didn't know which floor she lived on.

And, it turned out, she had left immediately after I had to head into the city.  But I didn't know that, so I spent a few minutes fruitlessly shouting up at her window.  Her neighbors were not pleased.

I weighed my options.  I couldn't just borrow somebody's phone to call a friend - it's not like I know anybody's number.  The only number I know is the wife's!  The rest of them, my phone remembers, when it's alive!

I could call the wife, but she was in another state last night, and it seemed ridiculous to bug her without exhausting my other options.

There were a few bars nearby, but they were enveloped with raucous shouting, which you should know is anathema to me.  I could no more approach them for help than I could feel sympathy for a starving manatee.

Just then, a police car drove past me.  I waved my arms, but it didn't notice me.  It was gone in a second, but following its path, my eyes fell upon a glowing tan-and-red Mecca in the darkness:  WaWa.  Where else would police officers hang out in the middle of the night?

And I was right!  I walked over and found a K-9 unit parked outside the WaWa.  He was showing off his dog, so I didn't want to bug him, but eventually he came over to see why the sad-looking weirdo was ogling his car.

I explained my situation, but he revealed that he can't give anyone a jump due to regulations meant to avoid shorting out the police car's sensitive electronics.  He did call a tow truck to give me a jump, thought it wound up costing me $75.  A lesson well learned.  

So where does the death come in?  Well, in those few bleak moments after the reality of my situation hit me, but before the police car drove past, it occurred to me that I would never have a better opportunity to abandon my old life and start fresh.  I could take what little cash I had in my wallet, catch a train into the city, buy a bus ticket to another city, and leave it all behind.

In the new city, I'm sure I'd have to stay at a homeless shelter for a while until I found a job that'd pay under the table.  From there, I could begin building a new identity.  I could create a whole new life for myself.  When would it ever be a better time to do that than with my car and phone dead in a strange place at midnight?

Spoiler:  I didn't abandon my life.  I don't even want to, but...sometimes we're driven to do things we don't want to do.  I was able to resist the urge this time, but maybe not always.  Maybe not forever.  But last night, at least, I decided to go on being me.

some good things last forever

In the game Super Mario 64, there is, at one point, an infinite staircase.

I don't want to tell you exactly how long I tried to climb it.

When you try to climb it, fittingly, the game music switches to a song that seems to ascend in pitch infinitely!

I was ten years old, and it was completely amazing, but it was part and parcel of a completely amazing game.  It's easy for little touches like that to go unnoticed and underappreciated when you're completely spoiled for revolutionary awesomeness.

Looking back, I'm able to understand and admire a lot better the craft that went into it.  The music is actually what's known as a Shepard tone.  You can hear a Shepard-Risset glissando here:


I'll spare you the details of what's happening here musically/physically (though feel free to read the Wikipedia page to enlighten yourself!); what really interests me is this excerpt from the Wikipedia page:

"The acoustical illusion can be constructed by creating a series of overlapping ascending or descending scales. Similar to the Penrose stairs optical illusion (as in M. C. Escher's lithograph Ascending and Descending) or a barber's pole"

I can't help but be excited when I come across synergies between the senses; the fact that different senses can trick our brains in the same way is evidence of the underlying unified interface parsing those senses.  At some level, our brains are translating all stimulus, no matter the source or sense, into a common data format.  Unlocking that format is the key to a perfect (or as perfect as possible) mind-machine interface, which is a necessary precursor to uploading our minds into a digital state and attaining some actual semblance of immortality.

Super Mario 64 is special because it managed to link two of those illusions together (although, admittedly, the staircase was actually infinite, and so not an illusion); there's an inherent beauty to any harmony between the visual and the auditory.  My theory is that this beauty exists because it frees our minds somewhat from having to do the work of reconciling jarringly different stimuli into a sensible pattern for us to understand.  Think of how uncomfortable it is to watch a movie where the sound is a split-second off from the video; understand that I mean the opposite of that, the pleasure induced when the sound and the image reflect and reinforce one another, rather than simply agreeing (the neutral state).

Are there other examples of this?  The first that comes to mind is Disney's Fantasia, and that certainly seems to have been their intent (especially with the latter part of Toccata and Fugue), but it's not like the music was created to reinforce the animation, since it was written decades or centuries earlier.  (That article is still totally worth reading, if only to learn how Disney totally revolutionized movie (and eventually home) theater audio.  Also, did you know it was the Philadelphia Orchestra that recorded the original score?)

While doing research for this post, I came across an article addressing the audio-visual synergies occurring in human speech.  Of course the visual is a component of speech, from the subtle:

I would have gone with Star Wars, but Ithorian communications take a lot longer to explain.

to the not-so-subtle:

So the process for speech (where you are watching the speaker) goes something like this:

1.  Light travels through space and is absorbed by the eyes, where the information is converted into signals which reach the brain as sight.
2.  Vibrations in air are detected by ear drums and converted into signals which reach the brain as sound.
3a.  The brain interprets the sight and makes an estimation of the speaker's mood, emphasis, and inflections (or subversions) of meaning (and, if properly trained, receives the motion of the speaker's lips as verbal information, too); at the same time...
3b.  The brain sifts through the incoming sound, identifying certain patterns as speech and matching them up with known languages, considers the overall tone and delivery of the speech, and makes an estimate of the intended meaning.
4.  The brain combines its estimates of the visual and auditory speech with its knowledge of the speaker's personality and history, the topic, and the intended audience, into a unified message, making decisions on any ambiguities.
5.  The brain reacts to its final understanding of the content of the message by taking into account the listener's entire personality, history, and mood.

That is an extremely simplified overview of the low-level process when just a few words are spoken by one person to another.  That's a lot of work for the brain to do just to hear somebody tell you she ate a pancake, and our brains hate doing work.  They take shortcuts whenever they can, and really like it when things are just apparent.

But this is all an aside; I think engaging the speech centers of our brains forces them to spin into too high of a gear to appreciate all the low-level goodness inherent in the synergies I was looking for.  I expect that particular synergy can't really form from any sound but that which we identify as music; this may be because music seems to be, at least partially, interpreted by our minds as language.  And, most amazingly at all, it turns out that your interpretation of the direction of Shepard tones may be directly linked to the tonal qualities of your native language.

Ascending or descending? Your native tongue will decide.

What does this mean?  It just may be that we've been following this Sisyphean staircase in the wrong direction all along.  Stop for a minute, take stock, and see if you're really getting anywhere, or if it's all just music in your head.

peer pressure as a way of life

I promised myself that I would finish my book this week.  With work and a party tomorrow and work and a wedding Saturday, it appears that I will have, once again, broken a promise to myself.

Part of the problem is that I have trouble getting any serious writing done unless I'm sitting at my desk at home.  Normally I'm not a very location-oriented person; the wife and I have had any number of discussions where she tries to get me to be interested in decor or furnishings, and it just doesn't happen.  It's place, not people, so it's really hard for me to care.  But there's something about the solitude and joy of sitting at the center of my carefully constructed world that unlocks my writing potential.  Well, my endurance potential, anyway; actual inspiration can strike at any time, and I just have to hope that I'm ready to record it.

(disclaimer:  "actual" inspiration may or may not actually be worth recording)

It's not as though I didn't have time to work on the book earlier in the week.  But I have a variety of competing demands on my time, and it's difficult for me to prioritize what I feel like doing.  So often I have friends clamoring for me to play this game, watch this show, read this book...all of which I really want to do.  And I try to do!  Balancing one friend's request over another's usually isn't that much of a challenge, but choosing to focus on my own plans, over someone else's plans for me...that takes a dedication I usually don't have.

Sometimes, I've come to see, you need to take a step back and identify just what it is you want out of a given situation.  How much of it is serving your own goals, and how much someone else's?  A lot of times, the two intersect, and that's wonderful.  But sometimes, you have to go a different way.  Sometimes there are even higher purposes to serve, but that's for the overachievers.  For me, it's a matter of identifying what I'm trying to accomplish, and trying to reorder my life towards that end.

That's all well and vague.  I'm really just trying to justify something that I'm doing tomorrow, something so utterly insignificant that it's not even worth going into detail on it.  Suffice it to say that it involves betrayal, and it'll be a whole lot of fun.

As for my book, there's always next week.  A poem for your troubles.

Shopping Mist

“And pick up lozenges,” she said,

This I must do or I am dead.

But I've no legend to this store,

Nor map, nor list for keeping score

Sure, I've walked these sparkling halls,

But zombie-like, a married thrall

So now’s the first I stand alone

Out of touch, bereft of phone!

With no one to decide my fate,

And hard cash to incinerate—

I’ll try these meats, that cheese, this gum!

And let the Devil take the sum,

I’ll sample fruits of paradise,

And bask before a stack of ice

I’ll linger in the candy aisle,

No one there to chide my smile

It’s the first that I've enjoyed it here,

No frowning face nor cause to fear

So I have my orders wrapped,

And hurry home – just to be slapped;

I've gotten caramel, milk and bread;

And other things she had not said,

I've picked up tea and oranges,

But don’t know what a lozenge is.

such a terrible racket

Today, I played tennis.  Tennis and I have kind of a weird history, though far from an interesting.  But interesting or not, that's what I'm writing today.

As a child, I was always fascinated with the tennis courts I saw at certain parks.  It looked like a lot of fun, though I didn't really understand what was happening or what the rules were.  Still, I would have fun standing outside of the courts, searching for overshot tennis balls and tossing them back in (perhaps after playing with them on my own for a bit).  Sometimes I could even find a ball when there was nobody playing tennis, and that would mean a toy to bring home for my dog!

Later, my mom got kid's tennis rackets for us, and we would go try to play from time to time.  However, since we always gave all the tennis balls to the dog to chew apart, we'd have to just hope that we could find a ball at the court.  Usually, luck was with us, and we hit the ball around wildly.  We didn't have any idea what the rules were, and we were far from good, but we enjoyed it all the same.

A few years after we got the rackets, I experienced the most profound change in my relationship with tennis that is ever likely to happen:  I started playing Mario Tennis.

The game that changed everything.

For the first time, I learned the rules of tennis.  I learned what a magical game it can be.  I learned the importance of teamwork, spin, positioning, and waiting for the right moment before returning.

Boo was my favorite character, so I didn't learn much about footwork.

But I fell in love with the game in a serious way.  The game I'm referring to here is Mario Tennis.  It was a lot more fun for me than actual tennis.  Needless to say, despite learning the rules finally, my actual tennis game suffered a lot in the following years.

I didn't really try to play tennis again until my family went on a trip to a ski resort in the exotic Pocono Mountains.  The ski lodge my mom chose was enormous, and, for some reason, almost entirely uninhabited.  My mom described the experience of staying there as "like The Shining," and I can't say she was wrong.  It was just endless hallway after endless hallway, and then I murdered everybody with an axe.

Before the murders, though, I played tennis in a vast, underground tennis court that they maintained for some reason.  It was an incredible experience primarily because the tennis court (for some reason) stretched about three times the length of regulation courts (78 feet according to the International Tennis Federation).  Also, it may have been underground, but the ceiling was very, very high up.  This meant we were able to hit the ball as hard as we wanted back and forth with absolutely no fear that it might go out of the arbitrarily-extended bounds.  It felt like being a superhero!  I mean...more than I normally feel like a superhero, which is quite a lot.

But in the end, my mom was too terrified by the twin girls who followed us everywhere we went in the hotel, and we never returned.  It's a shame; I'm sure they got lots of practice at tennis!

Eventually I went to college and made some friends.  Of those, a few of my Japanese friends made it a regular habit to play tennis.  I thought to myself "hey, I like tennis!" so I went to go play with them.

I got creamed.  It was an embarrassing experience through and through.  I saved face by...well, I never really was able save face with those guys.  I'm glad I had so much to begin with.

But I think they were so embarrassed for me that they completely forgot how incapable I was.  I think so because, when I went to Japan, I invited them to play tennis with me.  And they accepted!

A top-down view of my dorm in Japan.  That was one crummy tennis court.

And I got creamed, but in a much more fun way than I had anticipated.  Then the guy who did the most to destroy me sat down and serenaded us with his virtuoso piano skills for forty-five minutes.  Then he talked about how many more video games he plays than I do.  Tetsuya...you broke my heart that day.

So, despite having a tennis court literally in my backyard, I only played a few times while I was in Japan (honestly, I was much too busy playing GTA2, and getting engaged).  So by the time I returned to the United States, my game was much where I had left it.  Thankfully, my heart was where I'd left it, too, and the newest version of Mario Tennis had just been released!

A few years later, I tried playing tennis against the fianceé, and I creamed her.  It was a miserable experience for me, and an eye-opening one for her.  Apparently, in her family, tennis had always been something that was done more for the experience of watching a ball soar idly through the air than for any competitive purpose.  She could not adjust her mind to the concept of a person trying to hit the ball in a way that she would have trouble hitting it back.

Since that day, I've only really played against people who stood no chance.  Rather than inflating my ego, it's made me realize that there's a wide world I'm missing out on.  Plus, I no longer have a game system that can run Mario Tennis.  I need to get my fix somewhere.  Maybe there's room for me in that wide world.

Then again, when I played tennis against the wife and her aunt today, they were both so flummoxed with my powers that the wife remarked "you could have been a champion tennis player!"  I could have been a champion anything, I responded -- instead, I married you.

Game, set, and match.

flirting with the silver lady

I almost didn't write this post.  I wouldn't do that to you, but I was sorely tempted.

You see, I've been working a lot more than I'm used to working lately, and work has been much more stressful than usual to boot.  I'm not going to tell you the number of hours or anything -- one of you would probably just one-up me -- but it's far more than I'm comfortable with.  This has had a very specific impact on me, and that impact is primarily psychological.

My schedule is going back to normal soon, and that's good, because I'm essentially a complete wreck.  I think, at a couple points today, I started hallucinating.  Things that I was looking at flickered so that, just for an instant, I was looking at something completely different.  This has started happening in my memories, as well.  It's very unsettling!  Things are supposed to be the things that they are!

Last night, I stayed up very, very late -- not because I had anything interesting to do, but because I knew that the sooner I went to sleep, the sooner I'd have to go back to work.  It's not that I hate my job; I really enjoy it.  But it's entirely possible to have too much of something you enjoy.  That's worth considering.

So I stayed up late, and then I woke up very, very early; anything, I guess, to give myself a little extra time at home.  Again, not that I did anything meaningful with it.  At this point in my insanity spiral, I suppose I'm just desperate for time at home.

The insanity is really the problem.  It's the ceaseless chattering of a thousand voices, each pulling my attention to its own senseless pleas.  It's the constant buzz of underthought that diminishes my focus into a dull, purposeless meander.  It's the searing agony of my brain at war with itself, cannibalizing my positive feelings for fuel in its constant battle.

There are ways to manage madness.  There are techniques to compensate for it, to allow yourself to function normally when it might otherwise completely debilitate you.  There are reasons I can live hopefully, and sometimes achieve things.

Today, those reasons are meaningless.  Today started out as a hollow attempt at personhood, and it has degenerated into something much, much worse.  But, really, no worse than I've felt at various times in the past.

Still, "things have been worse" is nothing like a silver lining.  It's like...you see this stream, and you dip your hands into it, and you hear

I am so terrible so cruel so guilty I have committed so many crimes no I haven't but I will and then they will agree that I am what I thought I was and no worse than the majority of them but certainly no better and that may be but then why do I feel so guilty when I've done nothing really wrong and they all said so it doesn't make any sense why can't it just make sense why can't I just do something really, really bad so they can't tell me I'm wrong about being wrong anymore

That's pretty disturbing.

Luckily, I have found a balm for my malady.  There is some music (not all, but some) which acts as a palliative to my darker moods.  I don't know what it is; I hear those pure tones, and the woes just melt away.
The Weakerthans.

Sibelius.

My own music.

These are some of the ways I can try to put my brain back into its bottle, and regain some measure of control over my own thought processes.  And when I can't manage that, then oblivion seems preferable.  But I have no idea where to find it.

One more reason to hate sleep:  its succors are incomplete and temporary.  Tonight I may avoid it entirely.  This is a scholarly exercise, you know, and I plan to learn a lot.  Yeah, like this.

we who are about to press 'continue'...

If I'm going to manage a post a day for the rest of this month, I'm not going to be able to rely on my usual thoughtful shtick.  I'm going to have to do more than just talk about the things I think about -- I'm going to have to talk about some of the things I actually do.  And if that's what we've come to, there's no getting around bringing up something I spend a fair amount of time on:  games.

I play my fair share of games.  Computer games, board games, card games, mental games...you name it, I enjoy it.  It's rare that I play any individual game for too long; I like to mix it up constantly, to keep my mental powers challenged.  I try not to talk about games too much in this space, because I get the impression that most of you don't really play many.  I know how tedious it can be to listen to somebody talk about something in which you have no interest.

However, once in a while, a game (or game-related thing) comes along that's simply too fantastic not to talk about.  My favorite kind of games are those that give me godlike or imperial levels of power over vast dominions, where I can wreak havoc with the lives of my hapless peons like so many ants in an ant farm.  My second favorite kind of games are any in which I can compete directly with other people in a way that involves a minimum of luck.  I know what you're thinking:  that's a lot of games.  You're right!  But today I want to focus on a very specific subset -- fighting games.

There are lots of different kinds of fighting games.  The most popular ones you might have heard of would be Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Super Smash Bros (if you really consider that a fighter).  But my favorites are less popular ones, like Melty Blood, Immaterial and Missing Power, and Divekick.  Still, I enjoy them all -- as long as I have the chance to compete against other people, I can have a good time.

These are games that reward a keen spatial sense, quick reflexes, and a strongly competitive nature.  I don't really score too highly on either of those first two, but I'm competitive enough to make up for it.  And I can enjoy watching other people play while waiting for my turn, as well.  Who doesn't like to watch a competition, goad on the challengers, and give his best estimate of the outcome?

Yet, perhaps strangely, I've never been a big fan of traditional sports.  I don't know if it's just a latent aversion to things I viewed as mainstream when I was growing up (born hipster here), general distaste for physical activity for most of my life, or some other reason, but I've always had a hard time getting excited about sports.  When people ask me how I feel about some team's season, my responses are canned and generally pretty boring.  Usually it's some variation on the following:

1.  Oh, Philadelphia sports teams are always terrible.  Even when they're winning, they're just setting you up to lose next year.
2.  Yeah, I know the baseball team won that one year.  And you know what?  They didn't run the trains the next day for the parade, and I was late for class.  It was horrible and I hate them.
3.  Come on, you know the Eagles aren't going to the Super Bowl.  Don't kid yourself.

And, if that doesn't get them off my back, there's always

4.  Oh, actually, I'm a fan of hockey.  (I'm not, really, but this shuts most people up).

If somebody tries to talk about basketball, I just keep rolling my eyes until I pass out.  Usually it works.

Maybe it's a problem with our modern sports -- not enough deliberate violence for my brutal instincts.  Now, the Romans had the right idea, what with their gladiatorial combats.  That was a competition that had consequences.  Our modern sports are just playing at highly formalized war.  The Romans brought actual war into their sporting events, and it was awesome.

I understand why gladiatorial combat is gruesome and probably a bad idea in the modern age.  And that's why I'm drawn to fighting games -- all the glory, none of the guts.  And yeah, there's no consequences either, but at least you can sometimes watch a tiny cat-person fire lasers from his eyes into the face of a girl who's been possessed by a fire demon.  That's way better than a touchdown.

Today, I found out about a website called Salty Bet, where you can go to watch computer-controlled fighting game characters battle each other endlessly, and bet on it with fake money.  It is amazingly addicting -- especially so because it draws characters from nearly every fighting game ever, and then some.  Today I watched Grover battle an Evil Ronald McDonald.  It did not go so well for Grover.  Currently on the screen, a Scotsman is tossing cabers at an angelic space ninja while the Darkwing Duck theme plays in the background (let's get dangerous!).  There's really nothing like it!  And it's TOTALLY FREE!  How much money can you make?  Can you beat the odds?  Can I stop watching long enough to write another blog post?

Probably not.  Thanks for sticking with me so far.

starting proper

Way back in April when I started this blog, I waxed philosophical about the reason I had always found it relatively challenging to maintain an online writing presence.  I mentioned something then that's been on my mind lately:

"[When I'm blogging] I can't write for myself, as I might write poetry or a story -- if I were to do that in a blog format, I might as well be writing a diary."

I've been thinking about this idea of writing for myself.  I think that it means writing what I want to write, without worrying about what my audience might want to read.  But I'm not sure that's what I thought it meant back in April.

Whatever it meant, I've essentially ignored it in the course of keeping this blog.  The subject matter hasn't always been as diverse as I'd originally anticipated, but that doesn't bother me.  I've deliberately cast aside concern for what you might want to read, and it's been very freeing.  Does it limit my audience?  I don't care.  I write for the joy in it; if it brings joy to others, that's great.  But I can't ever be happy if I'm constantly checking my words to make sure they're in the proper shape for someone else to enjoy.

(Which isn't to say that I don't care that you read this.  It means a lot to me!  But I won't stop writing if you stop reading.  Sorry if you were under the impression that your attention was crucial to my self-worth.)

There's a certain sense of freedom that comes with writing whatever you want, and I'm going to need it.  For the month of September, I'm attempting to write a blog post every day.  They won't all be pages-long treatises on the metaphysical realities of the world, but I definitely don't want there to be any single-liners, either.  I expect that I'll be covering a broad swath of topics.  I expect that it'll be grueling.  I expect that it'll also be tremendous fun.  I'm doing this in concert with a friend of mine, Vicky, whose blog you can follow at http://laiv-wire.blogspot.com.  Hers is about crafts, mainly, and consequently is much less full of itself than my blog.  Enjoy.

Often, life serves us something other than what we planned for, or thought we wanted.  Today, my wife and I planned to go see a movie with my coworker and his wife.  However, when we reached the movie theater, it was sold out.  Instead, we went and got lunch; that lunch featured one of the most interesting, funny, and thoughtful conversations I've had in years, and it covered all sorts of subjects!  If we'd seen that movie, we never would have had that conversation.  I'm sure the movie would have been a great time, too...but a different sort of great time.  It's not worth dwelling on whether it would have been better or worse; there's no determining that.  But it is worth being thankful that, even when things don't go the way you expected (or hoped), there are other options.

You've read this far.  You deserve a treat.  Yes you do!  Yes you do!  So, the first scene of the play I'm writing, as yet unnamed:

(Scene:  A brightly lit hospital waiting area.  TODD sits in a chair next to his FATHER.)

TODD’S FATHER:  (praying) …full of grace.   Blessed art thou among women.  Blessed is the fruit of thy womb…

TODD:  Dad, what are you doing?

TODD’S FATHER:  It’s…it’s the Hail Mary, son.  It’s a prayer to the Holy Mother.

TODD:  Are you praying for Mom?

TODD’S FATHER:  Yes.  Why don’t you join me?

TODD:  I don’t want to.  I don’t like it when it hails.

(TODD’S FATHER starts crying.  TODD grows antsy.  He gets out of the chair and walks to a nearby door.  The door is shut in his face.)

TODD:  Dad…can I go to the bathroom?

TODD’S FATHER:  (still crying) Go ahead, son.  You know where it is.

TODD:  Dad...is mom going to be ok?

TODD’S FATHER:  I’m sure she’ll be fine if you come pray with me.

TODD:  Why don’t we go to the store and get her some medicine?

TODD’S FATHER:  Todd, come sit next to me.

(TODD sits.)

TODD’S FATHER:  Todd, do you remember the story I read you about the little boy who went to another world?

TODD:  Which one?

TODD’S FATHER:  The one…the one where he had to get medicine.  His dog was sick.  Remember?

TODD:  OH!  ‘Lonnie in Tippery!’

TODD’S FATHER:  Yes.  Do you remember how it ended?

TODD:  Lonnie couldn’t find the medicine.  His dog had to…go away.

TODD’S FATHER:  That’s right.  Your mom…she might have to go away, too.

TODD:  But…why don’t we just go to Tippery?

TODD’S FATHER:  We tried, Todd.  But like Lonnie…we couldn’t find it.

TODD:  (stands up) You didn’t ask me to help!  I can find it!  Lonnie didn’t get lost, there were too many things in his way and he gave up!  I won’t give--

(TODD’S FATHER reaches for TODD.  TODD steps back.)

TODD’S FATHER:  Todd, it’s too late.  Just sit with me and pray.  It’s all we can do.

TODD:  No!  I can find Tippery!  I know the way!

(TODD runs off.)