Broken Mind

The street is absolutely packed. At first I was darting between the openings in it only to find that I had inadvertently dodged through several groups taking photos. Slowing down I begin skirting these events only to be caught by the photographer of one.

"Excuse me, can you take a photo of us?"

"Of course," I respond taking the camera. I hold the viewfinder up near my face and watch the last face slide into the camera.

It occurs to me that I can outrun any of these people who I am photographing, especially in a crowd. People stretch out nearly too tightly packed to move for blocks and blocks. There are easily a million people here, and almost no cops. I could take this camera and pawn it for about 100 dollars, and there would be effectively no consequences. There is literally nothing stopping me.

"Say cheese!" I smile and click a picture. "Alright, hold on, let me get a second one for you."

"You're so sweet!" the camera owner grins as I hand it back to him.

***

"Yeah I slept on the grass here my first night here before my dorm opened," he shrugged.

"Yeah, there's like no security here. You want to climb that tower?"

"What?"

"You know," I pointed to the top of the nearest clock tower, "see what's at the top."

"There's something wrong with you."

I laugh and put one hand on the back of my head and laugh, running my fingers through my hair nervously, "Oh, well I wouldn't say..."

"Those people you hang out with have broken your mind. All you see now are ways to break society."

***

When I was 17 I considered retroactively getting myself a second birth certificate under a fake name. I was going to say I was 14 (I looked young enough). With a second certificate I could get a new passport and driver's license, and from there I figured I could get anything else I wanted. I'd take the exam to get a GED, and then I wouldn't need to attend a second high school to be a credible person. It was going to be a whole second me, just in case I screwed up and really wanted to start over.

It was also because I realized how absurdly easy it would be at a young age such as that to legally speaking become two or more people. Until you are 18 there is little to no record of your existence, and few consequences for messing around are fairly small. I knew it was a very bad idea, but I was just itching to do it, just because I knew I could.

***

$57.67, got one two three of these...

I flip the checks over to sign them, then copy the amounts onto the deposit slip.

Why is a check secure? Does anybody check my handwriting? I have friends who sign their credit card receipts with stick figures and dicks and nobody ever seems to notice that. Does anybody even know what my handwriting or signature even look like? How could somebody tell if I forge it?

This thought brings me to the front of the check. How hard would it be to make a fake birth certificate, show it to the DMV to get them to print you a fake driver's license, use it to open a fake bank account, scan and photoshop the checks, print a whole series of them, and write yourself 100 dollar checks until they start bouncing. There's no real security in checks, and everything I'd need to print fake ones is on a single check.

***

"This country need stricter gun control," she says.

"Why,"

"Because people can't be trusted."

We already trust people on a very basic level. Our society is drastically insecure, and all that really keeps it going is a combination of the ignorance of some and the good faith of others to not dismantle it brick by brick despite the abundant chances around us.

***

I'm holding two silver dentist-tool like implements. The pick has a smooth handle which narrows to bulb out again into a small circle on the end. The torque bar was a thin piece of metal which was twisted into an L.

"These," Colo says, "are what I started with."

"What now?"

"Now you practice."

In the short time between Magpie's graduation and the beginning of my internship that year I learned to melt through a whole stack of masterlocks. I think if people realized how little was put into these locks they would not have such faith in them.

***

The crowds of people flow and ebb like an ocean and lap against the stairwells between wharfs. I duck from the crowd and run up a stacked pallet to jump onto the side rail of the stairway, swing over it, and then onto the back of the fence. Somebody shouts "hey" at me but I'm back into the crowd before anybody can catch me.

Funny, that fence is locked with a masterlock.

Treating the Dead

"Billy Jean...is not my lover..."

I can hear the stereo from my second story apartment. The end fades out and a series of voices announces to an overlapped background "This is Kiss," "Kiss," "Kiss!"

I guess now that he is dead he's popular enough for mainstream radio again, if only for a short time.

I think there is a huge societal misconception about the purpose of funerals and tributes. Funerals are not for the dead.

I don't see how the dead could possibly care. Consider all the possibilities: if the person is in heaven they are too busy with that eternal bliss to really care about what how many people are lined up around their coffin, if the person in in hell they have much larger concerns, and if there is nothing in the world after this, or if the person is reincarnated etc then the person will have no way to know at all what's going on. No matter how you cut it the dead are not impacted by their funerals. This is why funerals are not for the dead, they are for the people left behind.

There are three ways funerals impact the living. The first is the sadness that the deceased are no longer about and that we will miss that person.

The second is that funerals and death in general represent a frightening reminder to people of their own mortality and the frailness of all that they hold dear. This has a lot of implications and lead to a lot of actions which can mostly be summed up with the words "people suck."

The third effect is most interesting to me. Its the tendency of people to sit and cry and feel bad about not telling the deceased how much he meant during life. People wish that whatever petty argument had been could have been put aside. They wish they had told the now-deceased how much they loved him, and how much he mattered to them. They cry, then they go home, and make the same mistake with the rest of their loved ones.

We, as a society, do not tell people we love them when we do. We tell them about American Idol, shoe sales, and sports scores but when was the last time you told a close friend how much you appreciate that person? Even when we do it tends to be a passing cliche sort of thing: we tell people on their birthdays because its the thing to do, or we say it as a nice way to explain that we're hanging up the phone now.

This issue is marginally less severe with family and unmarried significant others. The people who we never managed to say "I love you" to are our best friends it seems, even though it definately isn't any less true than it is for your siblings.

So, go tell them. I'm pretty sure if you can sum up the guts to do it, you'll make your friend's day. Go tell them now, so you have no regrets someday when you lose them.

Grown Up Grown Ups

Nothing has so thoroughly impressed upon me how severely pathetic humankind is as the experience of working in a cube farm.

I worked in IT. This meant that I was in a unique position. On the one hand I was removed from the food chain of status symbols, and on the other I was frequently the personal bitch of whoever called the help line.

I worked in basically a three cube by four cube space that had become the IT office. This was my first "real" job where I was paid by somebody else, wasn't a camp counselor, and wasn't selling things door to door. Calling me naive was an understatement.

There was a woman who was lurking near my peripheral vision as I worked my first day. After five minutes or so I felt nervous, and after about ten I started thinking I must be doing something wrong.

"Um, can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Rob."

"Well he's not here right now, but I'm the new intern, can I help?"

"Well, I was wondering if you could move me up the list."

"The list?"

"Of who gets a new monitor. I really need one, it would help increase my productivity."

If there even was such a list I was pretty skeptical that begging moved you anywhere you wanted to go on it, but mostly I was skeptical why a woman so invested in her workplace productivity was lurking for prolonged periods outside my office.

As spring break progressed I became increasingly aware of the hierarchy of the approximately 400 person office. The best thing was to have a big office, followed by a small office, followed by a window cube, followed by a large cube, followed by a phone with caller ID, followed by an LCD monitor, followed by a big CRT. There were subrankings of various sizes of monitors. All higher rankings automatically got the stuff the lower rankings had. Accounting seemed to be the people everybody else looked down on to feel better. It was probably the only place I knew where people in 2007 would fight over the size of their CRTs.

***

"So, what can I do?"

"We need to replace some phones." My boss pointed gave me a box of nice new phones with all the gadgets you would never really need to use and a list of persons to deliver them to. All of them were delivered to large offices where important old men sat. Oddly enough these old phones seemed rather nice, and an odd thing to be replacing when I had seen far rattier phones while walking around accounting. It was not long before I had filled the box with the replaced phones, which I brought back to my boss.

"What should I do with these?"

My boss presented me with another list. "Give these people those phones." This list consisted of people in smaller offices with the odd window cube thrown in. Their rejected phones went to the double cubes, which went to the single cubes, all the way down the poor man in accounting who grinned at his new ratty 1980's attrosity like a five year old at christmas.

This was my life: monitors, cube moves, new phones, all had to be brought down the food chain item by item to preserve the hiarchy of power. My primary purpose was to push the little cart around delivering the goodies nobody in their right mind should actually care about from place to place.

***

I dimly remember the pre-hippy days. I remember that my daycare was called "Mother's Day Out," and that I use to beg to spend as much time there as possible. I remember that there was a small slide in the corner, and under the slide was a box-like structure with round holes in each side. This was my fort, and from this place I would sometimes quietly curl up and watch the goings on in the play area with my toy squirrel.

"What are you doing?" some girl called. I remember that she wore a white flowered shirt, and that she was a lot bigger than me.

"This is my space, and I like it."

"Oh yeah?" The girl stomped up the slide adjacent to the box and sat atop my hideaway, swinging her feet across my vision, "Well this is my spot, and its better."

***

"And," the old man asked as I ran cords and adjusted the computer system, "is this a good phone?"

"Same one I have in my office, I think its pretty nice."

"Hrm..."

The man leaned back in his chair, "Well, I suppose IT knows how to get the good things don't they?" I chuckled politely. He watched me for a moment before leaning forward to ask, "Is this better than my old phone?"

I had no idea what the factual answer was but I knew what I was suppose to say, "Oh yes, its one of the nicest phones in the building."

***

"Uggggggggggh," Playlist rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"So my brother bought some new shades using my ebay account. They were Oakley brand, but when we got them we found out they were in fact 'Oakey' brand and he didn't really like them...so he went to resell them. The new buyer also got upset that they're 'Oakey' brand but it turns out they really are Oakleys its just they write the official logo funny..."

***

We're obsessed with stupid status symbols we have invented to make ourselves feel superior to others. I guess I'm not shocked by that, but I am impressed that we don't even know what the symbols are suppose to be anymore.

***

"Shit!"

Michael grins at Mandela and leans over and says the word as loud as he dares, which isn't very loud in fourth grade.

"You can't SAY that."

"Yes I can."

"Teacher's going to hear you!"

"Not unless you rat, are you a rat?"

Mandela crossed her arms and hugged them to herself, "Bet you don't even know what it means!"

Michael scowls at her. Its evident she's right and that he's lost face for it.

***

"Alright so if we leverage rapid prototyping with our available resources for sensor fusion..."

"Which sensors?"

"What?"

"I...can we try that again in plain English? I'm not understanding what you intend to do."

"So...if we..." the voice trails off and I'm faced with an eerily familiar scowl.

***

"Mmmm mmmm," the lady next to me at the lunch table in the cafeteria says, "that woman is a BITCH."

"Oh you can't talk like that," says the other stranger, "Do you know who she is?"

"Girl, I don't CARE who she is, and I don't care who her friends are. I got higher friends than her. I ain't afraid of her."

***

Everybody always seemed big to me, but Laura was big to everybody. She towered over Mime and me. I was too foolish to be afraid of her, but Mime was quite busy with alternately being terrified and adoring this girl.

"She has an older brother," I remember Mime telling me, "He's very old, like 12. He shows her the movie Batman and has lots of teenager friends."

I remember not being adiquately impressed by these attributes in Mime's mind, much to her dismay. "Look, she's the coolest kid, you'd better be nice."

Now the three of us were standing talking, Laura leering over us as usual, "You don't have an older brother," she said to me, "who makes you cool?"

***

I'm texting back and forth with my sister. She just got in another fight with mom.

"Yeah sometimes that happens. Try to stay cool."
"I cant i ask her one thing and then she starts telling me CRAP about wat i said along time ago and it pisses me off :("
"Don't blame you. Still just stay cool or you'll give her some ammo to throw back at you later."
"Ok i will try its just that she talks about herself ALOT."
"Yeah. You will kinda notice very few grown ups ever actually grew up."
"Hahahaha you got that right :)"

Little Dog Syndrome

I hate little dogs. As far as I'm concerned nothing under 25 pounds is actually a dog, its simply an overgrown rat with a bad attitude.

I'm standing on the grass outside one of Gamma unit and one is being walked past. If it was a real dog and behaving that way it would be in fact walking the owner. It snarls and leaps at every available opportunity, and half way through each leap the leash stops it short with a jerk. As forcing individuals to learn from the consequences of their actions is completely out of style the leash is even a non-choke shoulder harness for the dog, leaving it free to repeat this behavior every few steps.

"Don't come near," the owner says, "He doesn't like people."

Yes, because that's the appropriate solution to the fact that your dog would tear my throat out if it could, just ask me not to go near it. Telling people to "just not go near it" wouldn't fly with OSHA, any zoning ordinance and most courts of law...but somehow it is ok for your dog. You're willing to walk around and pick up your dog's shit every few feet but you won't teach it manners?

***

I seem to be specializing in the white trash ambiance these days. Couches and chairs line grass between the units in front of Gamma and a half dozen college students pick their way among them. A different lady walks by, but the only reason I can tell is because this one has two dogs in tow instead of one. The border collie walks relatively calmly while the little dog is still jerking like a crash test dummy against the impact of his harness.

"May I pet him?" I ask pointing to the larger dog.

The lady nods through chomps of bubble gum, "yeah but not the little one, he doesn't like people."

As I approach the little dog makes a dash for my shins and the owner wordlessly scoops him up. The larger one temporarily rocks back onto his hind legs like it might put his front paws on my stomach.

"GINGER!" The word from the owner is sharp an angry as she flicks the leash. Its a real leash as well, not a chest harness, and the flick puts a small amount of tension on the animal's neck. Ginger sits meekly and waits to be petted. The smaller dog in the owner's arms is still going ballistic.

I think this is a pretty good representation of what is happening in general. The owner could teach both of her dogs self-control, good manners and discipline, or she could simply control the small dog from doing any sort of significant damage. The border collie, however, was probably too big to be brute forced by a small woman into behaving and so she took the time to teach it proper manners.

***

When I was a small child I remember being told to walk close to my mother, and, in circumstances which included extreme shininess, told to walk holding her hand. This was sufficient to keep me from getting lost or being run over by a car.

I'm walking through the farmer's market now. A small child keeps letting go of his mother's hand in front of me and dashing at various stands.

"Ugh," the mother sighs, "that's it! You're going in the stroller."

I find it odd that physically restraining a small child is an acceptable substitute for teaching him manners, but our society has somehow decided it is. In addition to strollers I have also witnessed a variety of leash products for children. Most of these are backpacks with a long handy string on them but a few are complete harnesses which are designed to be difficult for a child to remove.

I wonder what will become of these children when they grow too large for physical restraints to be a feasible control tactic.

***

I had wanted to take karate for a long time but my mother considered it far too violent. However, with the number of kids who were attempting to beat up my brother it was becoming increasingly clear that he needed a way to take care of himself. In 6th grade I was permitted to go to Taekwando lessons with the explicit understanding that I was there for the purpose of taking care of my brother until he was able to take care of himself, and that nothing I learned was to be ever used except to stop bullies from hurting me.

I was forbidden to ever spar under any circumstances by my mother, even in the dojo under sensei's supervision.

About two months later my mother was very angry with me. I have no memory of why she was mad, only that she was, and that she was going to slap me across the face for it. I remember watching her wind up and realizing I did not feel like being hit at that moment, and that furthermore I did not have to let her. I found myself standing with my arm extended in an upper block, her face speechless and red as she found her hand was harmlessly a good foot above my head. I don't think I have ever seen my mother so angry. I backed down at this point and silently let her hit me a few times because I was far more afraid of the anger than her hand. I think she mostly did it to prove that she could. After that she never hit me again.

This is the problem of raising your children by physical intimidation and control. Even if you have no ethical qualms around it whatsoever it is grossly impractical. Your child will eventually grow to be as strong as you.

***

I'm sitting on a bench on the edge of a street amid a large cluster of cafes. I see parents jogging by with children in the strollers. Is it just me or are children staying in strollers until older ages now? I think I have seen some rather industrial models with children as old as seven or eight in them. Was my parent's generation raised like this?

***

The small child bellowed unintelligibly through heaving sobs and tears. The whole restaurant was completely silent and aghast, and alternating between staring at the family and trying not to stare.

I sat there, across from my coworkers, and realized that I was going on my 10th week or so in Hong Kong and that this was the first time I had heard a child throw a screaming tantrum in a public place since I arrived.

I only spent 2 hours on the Newark layover but I witnessed 3 meltdowns.

***

I suppose when it all boils down I don't hate little dogs at all. I hate their owners.

Good Morning Alpha

Ugh, whose alarm is that?

I wake up in a room effectively lined from wall to wall with air mattresses. Mine is in the middle because Pacem's and Bhop's are the same height and they have no interest in rolling into one another. I wander out into the kitchen to find Phil in his boxers.

"Hey Pika,"

"What,"

"Can I have some of your Nutella?"

"Yeah."

Down the hall speakers are screaming. "You drive me crazy! I just can't sleep. I'm so excited..."

Numbers is standing at the door of his and Roo's room. The sudden opening of the door has made Roo's morning music choice apparent to the whole household.

If I was a man I might have considered rushing a fraternity but sorority life never appealed to me. We got a guitar last night, which brings this atmosphere as close as I ever think it will be to living in a frat house.

***

"We don't like that word," my project partner informs me. Its sophomore year of college, and he is glaring at me over the rims of rather square glasses, purple polo shirt with the collar popped. I'm waiting on the Dave Mathews Band reference.

"Its very offensive," he informs me.

"What?"

"Frat. I mean...you wouldn't call your country your cunt would you?"

"What?"

"Then don't call my fraternity a frat."

"Wouldn't I...call my country my count?"

***

Phil may like the taste of this stuff, but he's the only one. Pacem, Numbers, Sempai, and I are sitting in a circle with shotglasses and a can of the yellow can of energy drink in the middle. Numbers and Sempai brought back five cases of it since it was free, and we have become progressively more desperate in our attempts to get rid of it over time.

"Alright," Numbers says, "We're going to drink a can of this together."

"Why did you get five glasses?" Pacem asks

Sempai nods, "We can fix this...hey Roo!"

We can hear the voice from across the house, "What?"

"Come do shots with us?"

"Sweet!"

Roo rounds the corner grinning like a kid at Christmas until he sees the can of brawndo. "Aww hell no, this stuff is plutonium. I'll be pissing green for a week."

The scientist in me is intrigued, "Does it really make you piss green?"

"Yeah," Sempai returns.

"I think your kidneys just scream 'fuck that shit' outright."

Roo chickens out after the first shot, and I have a little bit of trouble with my second. Numbers takes four like a champ and we line the can up on the windowsill an array that makes the white trash in each and every one of us proud.

There are fourteen shots in a can of brawndo for the record.

***

"Womanizer womanizer womanizer oh!" screams the laptop.

"Is that...coming from the bathroom?" Pacem asks.

"Its Roo," Numbers answers, as if this explains everything.

In some senses it does. At the very least the echos off the tile explain why the whole house seems to be a speaker by this point.

Numbers sits down on an adjacent couch with a paper towel and two strawberry pop tarts. He nods in my direction and holds one up, "Breakfast of champions."

"Oh man," Roo says, coming out of the shower, "You know what Sunday is going to be?"

We all turn to look at him. We all know the answer but still somewhat don't believe it.

"Omlettes and porn!"

While I'm not exactly one to turn down free food, I'm also not eager to sit around with my six male housemates and watch porn together.

"Don't worry," he Roo says comfortingly, "I make great omelettes."

Meet Gadget

Gadget's the politician where I'm the warrior. When I originally wrote the exam which became part of the interview process for software it included phrases such as "to see where you lied on your application." Gadget somehow made it look professional again.

***

"Where are you going?" Gadget asked over his cereal.

"Warped Tour!"

"Your pinky wouldn't fit in a compact parking space anymore."

"Its just a bruise."

"You need to go to the hospital."

Turns out the tickle fight with Pacem the day before had earned me two broken bones I had not even noticed. God only knows how my hand would have healed if I hadn't gone and had them fixed up. I bought Gadget a Cold Stone Sundae for it.

***

"And she burned it to the ground."

The high school intern's eyes look like they're about to fall out of his head. I'm a bit too busy chewing my sandwich to correct Gadget, so I don't for a moment, and simply enjoy the total look of bewilderment.

I guess calling Gadget the constant counterbalance to my immaturity isn't a fair statement either.

"The whole high school?"

"Do you think I could make something like that up?"

***

"You're scary!" The new high school intern said.

I can't tell if the kid is serious or not. On the one hand I can't imagine ever saying that to any of my bosses, especially not if it was true. On the other hand it is something I have seen my sister say and mean, is this part of her generation?

"Ah," I said, "Well, I haven't done anything mean yet as far as I can tell...is there something I'm doing which is making you uncomfortable?"

"You're SCARY."

Ah, she must think this is funny then. I look up to find her edging toward the door. This is going to be a long summer.

Gadget turns around in his chair and grins like a madman.

"She's horrible!" he shouts, "You have no idea! She beats us when we work too slowly!" The girl's eyes widen in a pattern which is sadly quite familiar.

"RUN!" he screams, "RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN."

The girl bolts from the room and Gadget dissolves into a fit of giggles on his desk. I watch the door hang in the air for a moment before it bumps shut in the breeze.

"Man, you are going to get me in so much trouble."

***

"I want a flaming homophobe to be in this program next year."

I sigh, "No you don't."

"Yes I do. I want him to come in all angry...and slowly convince him to change his ways and accept everybody..."

"You want to live in a Disney movie is what you're saying."

"Is that...really so bad?"

***

This is the thing I love most about Gadget. While he is fully aware and respectful of the fact that humans are complicated, he has enough sense of humor about himself and the world to reduce all of us to cardboard cutouts and imagine the lot of us cavorting through some campy Disney film. At first you feel insulted by it, but over time you see that his caricture of you is mostly positive, and more than a little based on reality. You just need to get over yourself enough to admit it.

***

"Pika," Gadget says, "you're a five year old boy and I'm going to prove it."

A good chunk of the program is laying exhausted in the grass of the parade grounds. My head is on my at-the-time boyfriend's stomach as I turn the frisbee over in my hands. All of us are looking at the sky, enjoying the tips of the grass blades which obscure our perripheral vision.

"Shoot," I say.

"Pika, I'm getting you a TIE fighter for your birthday."

Even if I hadn't sat up immediately the excitement in my voice is a dead giveaway, "Really?"

For whatever its worth, he was good for his word. It was probably one of the coolest presents I ever got.

***

Some people find a sense of wonder in the world. Gadget, in some senses, makes his own.

***

He stands at the top of the fire escape outside the window of my larger lab, fishing through his pockets. Gadget opens his palms, and picks through the findings. Pocketing the majority of these results he takes the remainder and flips them, one by one, off his thumb and out the side of the building, as if calling a coin toss with somebody only he sees. All I can pick out are a few slices of copper as they flicker through the sky.

"I figure," he smiles, "that somebody's got to keep the lucky penny supply going."

Food

"Don't be shy, don't walk by, once you try you can not deny, you have to buy..."

A smiling Indian man is gesturing to a row of foil squares. I can see where one piece of the foil keeps getting folded back and forth to expose the contents as its created a permanent crease.

"Spicy or mild?"

Pacem stands next to me, one hand above his eyes blocking the sun, "Spicy."

***

"Mild," Tie-dye says two years ago, almost to the day.

For a person who moves around a lot a familiar haunt is an odd place.

"Can't believe this place is so good."

***

"American,"

It might as well be my name I guess in Hong Kong.

"American, buy."

An excited man is pointing to a box of strawberries. At first I think they are some bizarre albino form but around the edges I can see the beginnings of them turning pink.

"America!"

"Uhhh..."

"...no like?"

"These...are not...they aren't ripe."

"Ripe?"

"Good."

Wrong thing to say. The man's face scrunches up and now he's shouting, "NOT GOOD? I SELL GOOD!"

Seemed like a good time to leave.

Over the next few weeks it became increasingly apparent that strawberries were in fact just the thing to be selling to your local Gweilo. All of them were the same pasty white mess. I even broke down and bought a small container to see if I was just being biased against some local variant. They were nasty. It wasn't until a few days later I caught sight of an advertisement in an ice cream shop. The banner ran from end to end of the shop stall top, featuring a bright pick background and another pair of albino strawberries.

This was ideal?

***

Yellow.

I'm sitting next to Ginger facing a nine inch pie dish that's heaped over with scrambled eggs. Both of our eyes are fixed on the dish.

My uncle smiles, "You don't see them like that in your grocery store do you?"

The three roadtrippers looked at each other somewhat nervously. Obviously there was something wrong with my uncle's chickens, but nobody wanted to really say anything.

They were probably the best scrambled eggs I have ever eaten.

***

Gummy bears, Tillamook cheese sandwich on rye, and a Kiwi Strawberry Snapple. Same lunch as the day before, and the day before. Costco bulk made high school lunches simple.

***

Something was up with the soda fountain in the Subway in the Newark Liberty International Airport. The same thing was up with the bottle I bought in the cafeteria, and the Starbursts I found on my dresser. I cracked open a Snapple and it tasted so nasty I was unable to finish it. In high school I had considered drinking one of these the day nearly the hilight of my meal.

"High Fructose Corn Syrup," he said.

"It...tastes so fake..."

I'd spent a good portion of my time in Hong Kong eagerly awaiting the day I would return to my preservatives and partially hydroginated veggitable oil, only to find out I'd been away long enough that nothing back here seemed quite right either.

***

I find it so odd that our society is slowly becoming conscious about what we eat but it doesn't seem to be that anybody has any idea of what food actually even tastes like anymore.

Leash

"I can't imagine it."

"No seriously," I insisted, "this kid use to party hard. He taught me how to shotgun a beer..."

A voice in the front seat laughed, "talk about a role reversal."

"I still can't imagine it."

"Well, its the truth."

"Why doesn't he do it anymore?"

"Well," a voice to my left joined in, "he has a girlfriend now, bet she's keeping him on a shorter leash."

I found myself wrinkling up my face at the thought as I crawl out of the car from the middle seat and follow my friends into the store, "That's so dumb, why would you consent to that? Doesn't she trust him? Why can't he just do his own thing..."

"Maybe she doesn't party and she's alienated by him having something she can't."

"She doesn't have to go if she doesn't like it..."

"Or maybe she just tells him no."

"I don't know why you'd consent to that..."

"Well, she IS pretty hot."

I'm at a loss here. Who am I to judge the hotness of other women? I'm not the target audience..."

"Really?" I try, "hot enough to be worth THAT?"

"Well I don't know," he says, "besides, these things are somewhat necessary you know? You can't really have a relationship without some form of..."

"No way,"

"Wait, you mean like leather leashes and kinky stuff?" another voice asks.

"She's worth it too," the first voice continues, somewhat unaware of the second, "I'd..."

"Shut up," Gadget interrupts. He doesn't want to leave the box of wires and chips he is sorting through but he very obviously doesn't want to be near us.

"What Gadget? You embarrassed by us?"

"No," he says, "you're just all very rude and loud."

***

I've got one hand out, fingers brushing the labels on the boxes of keyboards and capacitors as I walk past. I'm such a stereotype, but the simple tactile input is soothing. Rounding a corner of boxes I nearly slam into Gadget, still lost in thought. He looks at me like he's expecting me to say something now.

"I found a box of big capacitors," I inform him, "they come in bags for a dollar. You want to blow some stuff up with them?"

Gadget smiles and I show him the bin. A few seconds later we are picking our way to another part of the store for him to show me his greatest find: a small blue case with handles like a suitcase. Inside is space and a rack for mounting about 2U of server.

"Its times like this," I say, "where the part of me inside that's a little kid kills me. I just want to climb up and jump from storage shelf to storage shelf."

Gadget smiles, "Yeah, me too." Sometimes I wish he did not work for me so we could be better friends. He understands most everything about me except my outlook on romantic relationships.

"You think that's true?" I asked, "About leashes in all relationships?"

Gadget becomes absorbed in the clasps on one of the boxes.

***

"Good," Crash said, "I didn't like him."

"I don't care what you thought of us."

"Aww, come on Pikachu. He was no good for you! He wanted to control you, see? But Pikachu is wild and free, no man will ever tame her..."

***

"It's me or the team."

I'm appalled. "How can you say that? I'm changing these kid's lives, you have no idea."

"You're wearing yourself out and you're cranky at everybody. I never see you anymore."

"We'll work out a compromise..."

We did, briefly, but it wasn't really the same after that. You can't really take back an ultimatum. The day he told me he was breaking up with me he cried. For some reason I didn't, although I did later when he wasn't around.

***

I'm standing on a roof now in California, cell phone in hand.

"Its me or your work," the voice on the other end says.

Different voice, different day, same situation. I didn't even hesitate this time, "Guess I'm single then."

"I...I didn't mean that...we'll...work it out..."

***

They say fall is most beautiful in New England, but the Midwest has a charm to it too.

"You always said you wouldn't change for me, that you were 'take it or leave it.'"

"I meant...about big stuff...my volunteer work...or my job... the little stuff, I mean, who cares? That stuff is so easy..."

"No."

Maybe I overdid it.

***

I'm so glad we took the effort to clean this couch properly. I'm sprawled across it, face down, pretty much exhausted from my day, barely moving. Pacem sits on an adjacent couch. A few seconds ago he was absorbed by the game but now its commercials.

"You think that its true? That mutual leashes are a part of every relationship?

Pacem acts quite absorbed in the Honda commercial.

"You've seen this fucking commercial a hundred times."

"I can watch it again."

I hush up to ask politely, still somewhat sulking like a spoiled child, "Answer it, please."

Pacem sighs. He'll make a good doctor someday. He's very good at telling people things they don't want to hear.

"Yeah Pika, its in a little of every relationship. I think its just a fact of life."

Pericles the Driver

Ten till

I'm standing in my blue interview shirt again, this time by the main entrance of campus and the math building. There is a black car idling silently by the admissions building.

Five till

The morning is so damp it feels like it might rain, or like it is actually constantly misting from the sky. The clouds overhead make the sky dark and prolong the illusion of night.

Time

A man steps out of the car in a suit and stands by the driver's side looking around. At this point I decide to come over and ask him if he's lost. He looks too important to be driving somebody like me, and in the off chance that he is here for some official school business I wouldn't want to offend him. He says he is waiting for a passenger. I tell him my name and that I'm waiting for a ride. Turns out he was the one.

I size up the car. This was my first time any sort of driver had come to pick me up. I'd ridden in cabs before, but the general rule to that is to just pile yourself in the back seat, or in Hong Kong anywhere you would fit. I notice that the front passenger seat is pushed up nearly into the dashboard and folded down, so I assumed I'm suppose to sit directly behind it to take advantage of the leg room offered. I walk up to that side of the car and reach for the door.

The driver stands there looking at me briefly for a moment and then extends his hand. The meaning is clear, Stop. I stand there, quietly wondering if I have offended him, as he walks around the car to stand next to me by the door. He opens it with a slight nod of the head and I get in.

"Thank you Ms. Chu," he says without the slightest hint of sarcasm and shuts the door.

Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

The driver got in his door and turned the ignition. I had no idea what to do.

"Thanks to you too!" I manage to piece together as cheerfully as possible. The driver's eyes flickered up to the mirror looking a little puzzled. So, I guess that wasn't right.

"Its my pleasure, Ms. Chu."

Ms. Chu? The words seem foreign.

"You...can call me Pika if you like."

"Well it is my pleasure, Pika."

"What's your name?"

"Pericles."

"That's an awesome name, like the ancient Greek right?"

Pericles gives me his first genuine smile, "You have heard of him?"

"Athenian statesman? Founder of democracy?"

Pericles is grinning pretty widely by now, "You know, not a lot of people get that."

I laughed a little, "Well I'm a nerd. That a family name?"

"Nope, my mom just thought it sounded cool."

There was a brief comfortable silence. This time he broke it.

"So what are you going to General Dynamics for?"

"An interview."

"Really? I don't drive many interviewees, especially not this distance. You special?"

I hate that question. There's no easy way to answer it without sounding like an egotistical prick or seeming like you are fishing for compliments. "I guess they think so."

The phone rang. It was the next interview I was going to have, asking me if I could confirm a time later that week. I explained that I was away from my desk for the day asked them to email me.

Pericles grinned again, "That your next interview after this one?"

I didn't know what to say so I looked up at him blankly. Pericles smiled, "Don't worry, its the smart thing to do."

"You won't tell them?"

Pericles laughed, "No, I'm not an employee. Even if I tried they wouldn't listen to me." He adjusted the collar of his suit for a quick moment with one hand and then delicately placed it back on the wheel. It seemed a practiced motion which he meant to use to express professionalism. "Most people," he said, continuing this strange series of motions which clearly had some sort of significance which was beyond my grasp, "don't think of me as a professional because I do not have the same sort of job that they do. Some of them barely regard me as a person. They talk in front of me like a dog, like I can not understand them. You would be amazed at some of the things that have been discussed in my car."

I was quiet because there did not seem to be anything to say to that.

"So who do you drive normally?"

"Rich people," he responds, "guests for most of the major tech companies around here, and airport pickups / drop-offs for the more important employees of the same companies."

"Huh." I wasn't really confused but it seemed like the right time to make some sort of noise to indicate I was still listening.

"I have one couple who I drive a lot, the wife mostly. They have no need to work anymore so they just travel the world."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"What do they do?"

"Well they ran out of normal places they go so now they go on expeditions...they go live in the desert for a few months with the peasants...you know...get the experience."

"Sounds neat, or like a tourist trap."

"Really? I think it sounds lame. Even if you are getting the real deal you're paying a ton of money, enough to live any way in the world you want, to live like a third world peasant. Its the ultimate proof, the grass is always greener on the other side."

Nothing Will Save You from Basic Arithmatic

Nothing made me lose so much faith in the quality of television than being quarantined to my house for approximately three months in high school. For the first time the place where I slept was the same place where a television was kept. I remember laying there, neither awake nor asleep, channel flipping.

A blond woman with a great deal of hair product was sitting on a shiny polished desk in front of what was probably suppose to be a soothing blue background. On the desk were five diet cokes and a medium McDonald's fry. She sat and explained that "many dieters would never dream of eating the medium fry while on a diet but that they will happily drink a diet coke a day and still think they are following their diet. Mathematically they add up to the same thing..."

I remember being really puzzled. Why is this news?

***

Now its my sophomore year of college. I'm standing in a Bank of America branch trying to untangle my accounts cross-state when an advertisement catches my eye. Why do banks advertise for themselves inside their branches? Aren't I already here because I use them? Its not like I could even walk into a random bank to deposit my checks or get an account fixed even if I wanted to.

"Bank of America introduces new 'keep the change' program to help YOU save!"

Eternally a sucker for free money, I ask the teller to explain the system to me. He says that for the first few months of this system every time you make a debit card purchase the charge is rounded up to the nearest dollar and moved to your savings account from your checking. For a brief time (a month or so) Bank of America will match these deposits doubling your money. That much sounded quite nice. After that, the teller explained, Bank of America will continue to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and move the remaining money from your checking to your savings account.

"Why?" I asked.

"To help you save money!"

How MORONIC is that? You will incrementally hide my own money from me so I don't know it exists and I'll save it?

***

Magpie is looking to buy a house. Sometimes when we are going someplace in the car he shows me neighborhoods he is considering. We, with gleeful political incorrectness, call the number of satellite televisions to visibly broken things on the exterior of a house the "ghettoness ratio." It is what we consider the fundamental measure of how likely the average poor person in that areas is to stay poor. That 100+ dollar bill a month is slowly killing that family's budget because they have not realized that it is not the cost of the bill presented to you that matters so much as the cost of the bill over the time span it covers.

You could make your exhaust work right on your car if you could just cut that 100+ dollar satellite bill for six months. Once that is fixed your car will get better milage per gallon, put that money you don't spend on gas into energy efficient light bulbs. Most states are beginning to heavily subsidize them anyway and now you're saving money on your power bills. Now you're saving money in three places, and savings will continue to pay off so long as you mantain that lifestyle.

But what is more important? 200 channels of television. I bet you don't even watch half of them. The road to actual financial independance, and not just the laywers on the radio who want to erase your debt so you can dig yourself back in again, isn't that far away if you could just suck it up, turn off the TV, and do it.

***

There is something apparently fundamentally missing here, and that is the ability of the American population in general to budget, to understand that conservation of mass exists outside of a textbook. You can make all the congressional and bank bail-out jokes you want but I'd like to see you put down that daily latte while you do it. Your latte at $3.99 5 days a week for 50 working weeks a year costs you $997.50 a year or, if you insist on blowing it, easily a hawaiian vacation. Is a $70 dollar a month cell phone plan with data instead of the $40 dollar voice and text one really worth it? That's another 360 dollars you could have. Do you buy a $5 dollar lunch every day at work? Materials to pack a lunch cost about $1. That's another approximately 1000 dollars you could have every year, want to go to Hawaii a second time with that? Unless you are fabulously rich I can't see how this is something to just shrug off, and even if you are, fucking blow your money with a little bit of style at least. 10 minutes a day you don't have to spend making yourself a sandwich? What sort of vacation is that. You probably blow about 10 minutes a day on commercials if you watch a single half hour of television.

***

"She's on the Atkins diet," he said.

My mentor, Rokelbee, rolled his eyes.

"No you have heard of that one haven't you? It really works. It was proven..."

"They have been saying that on every new diet fad that has ever come out in my entire life. It will be gone in two years, you wait and see. There are no subsitutes for eating right, for getting exercize, and for common sense. That is just how the world works."

Scavengers

White two-person couch for sale. It has seen considerable wear but is still perfectly acceptable by college apartment standards...

I look over the listing for probably the fifth or sixth time. Its a sick part of me that really needs to to prove that I'm a different sort of moron from the other morons on craigslist. I'm the sort who can spell all the words describing precisely what item of trash I am overcharging you for.

I hit send and copy the ad to facebook. One down. All thats left now is the dresser, bookshelves, table, pots, pans, blender, cooking knives, desk, bed...

An IM window pops up, and the same conversation plays out again,

Friend: you're selling all your stuff?
Pika: Yeah, I'll lose less money if I just sell it all than if I pay first to store it then to ship it
Friend: Where are you going?
Pika: back to my old job for 3 months
Friend: and after that?
Pika: not sure

Its an odd feeling to walk around your home, take stock of your possessions, and try to determine which are worth carrying with you onto a plane, and what the rest is worth.

"Its just, when you buy furniture you tell yourself 'That's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need, whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled.'"

I'm pretty ashamed to be nervous, and I'm pretty ashamed to have any sort of attachment these material possessions in that I am a little sad to see them go.

Its the next day now. Three men are standing around the white ratty old couch, considering it. I find their presence bizarre. I did not expect this to actually work.

"That's a pretty nice dresser," a different voice says at a different time today. This one belongs to a young woman standing in my home in denim shorts and flip flops with a friend. She's making light condescending conversation between noisy chomps on her bubble gum. I can tell she doesn't care much, she has already evaluated the beaten up T-shirt and shorts I'm wearing as PJs, my lack of makeup, and the fact that my room is strewn with computer guts, and decided I'm not really very worthwhile as a person.

They had already loudly informed me they attended the local liberal arts school. A lot of kids here do that, as if this will excuse them if they say something stupid later.

"So you went up the hill?" she asks, pointing at the wall of the room nearest to my former university.

"Yeah"

"What did you study?"

I stand there a split second with a momentary brain jam. What sounds light, and makes easy conversation?

"Computer Science. What do you guys study?"

"Oh," the girls giggle and look at each other, then inform me again that they attend the local liberal arts school. I wasn't previously aware that precluded having a major. There is a pause before the girl with the gum pointed to my dresser.

"Where did you get it?"

I consider for a moment trying to explain snapping my cell phone shut in the warm sunlight as I sat on top of this dresser on some city side road. The free sign formerly attached to the dresser was in my hands and my feet bare swung over the edge in the summer breeze, making little thunk thunk noises as they bounced against the wood which made up the back. I put my cell phone back in my pocket and just lay there on top of the dresser on the sidewalk enjoying the sunshine until my friends came to help me move it. I wonder if the sight of a grown woman doing that amused passers by.

I had originally planned to strip the ugly white paint off it and re-stain the exterior. The inside of the shelves showed the piece was made of nice quality wood that somebody had covered over in a bad paint job. However, the paint job was botched enough that removing it would make it look funny and I resigned to sell it for something less than the original target of $150 because of that.

Where did you get it?

The girl's bubblegum clicks loudly and I snap back to reality.

"Around," I shrugged. It doesn't matter that my answer doesn't make sense because the girl did not honestly care what I had to say. This is the art of small talk. You should hear some of the absurd things I say when people's minds go on autopilot and try to have these idle meaningless chats with me. God knows they never do. The girl just hands me my money and walks off with her new furniture.

I look at the 20's in my wallet and I wonder how far this money will go toward re-buying new replacement belongings when the time comes for me to have them again. I realize I have no grasp for what my belongings are actually worth. I know what replacement ones cost new in a store, I know what competitors would sell the items I sold for, and I have a pretty good estimation of what people will pay for them, but I have no real grasp to their actual value. This is because I took them from a curb where they had no value. My discussions with buyers have given the items a potential value. Sometimes the illusion is strong enough for money to change hands. If, instead of having a discussion, I was to put them back on the street they would have no value again.

I took one microeconomics course in college. I should have taken more. I remember being taught that items are worth precisely whatever people will pay for them but it had never previously struck me quite on this level.

I wander around my home. When was the last time I bought something? I got a laptop for 200 dollars in December. I paid money to get a desk, a table and some cooking supplies the April prior to that.

For the past few years I have lived a very simple life in the anxious anticipation of a real job which would afford me new clothes (which are the one thing I have not mastered salvaging) and the privilege of turning the thermostat as high as I dared in the winter. I cook most of my food from scratch on a rotating meal plan with some friends. The time spent making meals on your night from scratch is offset by not having to cook more than 1/3rd of the time. We make most things ourselves when we need them: shelves, desks, whatever.

I live a very comfortable life. My house is full of belongings. All of them are scavenged from the streets or dumpsters. Nobody can tell, as a matter of fact I did not realize I was living almost purely off of other people's trash until today. Sometimes I polish it up and sell it, and sometimes I live using the object for a few years before I sell it.

I realize now that I never realized how good I had it, that I enjoy this lifestyle, and that if I had paid a little more attention to things here and there that I could have easily lived with both of those things which I wished for and lacked.

There's an email in my inbox from a news reporter who met Magpie and me at a swapmeet where Magpie was selling some very high power RF equipment scraps. He pulled them with some friends from an item they bought on craigslist. If they sell a single piece of the item it will cover the cost he bought the whole thing and leave us lots of scrap to, in the worst case play with, and in the best case sell as well. He already has interested buyers for two chunks. The reporter is fascinated.

The fact of the matter is, I live a very good quality of life due to other people's trash, both using it and making a profit off it.

I walk up to the edge of Magpie's room, head full of thoughts, rounding the corner lean against the doorjam. Magpie is happily typing away at his keyboard on a large home-made desk which covers much of that corner of the room. He faces three identical LCD monitors which he does his work on: all of them taken from dumpsters with bad power supplies and repaired. A fourth monitor which was unrepairable hangs from his ceiling facing down as a work lamp. If there is anybody who epitomizes this lifestyle, it would be him. Magpie bought his car off craigslist for a very small sum. We spend long weekends wandering the junk yard pulling out scraps to bring home. You can call us nuts, you can tell us that our time is worth money and we're not actually saving anything, but I am not sure I will believe it anymore. For one thing all of us work on salary. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that if we were not living like this we'd be buying stupid expensive gizmos to play with and clogging our homes with them instead of ripping things from the trash and making them useful.

Its hard to explain how I live. I guess Atom summed it up best when he called us "The Techno-Amish." Instead of getting together for a barn-raising, notes go out over the IRC channel for an event to replace Ginger's brake lines. We carpool up to the swap meets, many people split the costs of projects. This life would be nearly impossible to live this life outside a community such as this.

My mind flickers back to the image of the girl in the flip flops and the bubble gum before she left with her new belongings. Chomp.

"The shelf is light. I'm not big and the third floor apartment..."

"My new apartment is on the 3rd floor too!"

Sometimes I feel like I don't even know how to hold a conversation anymore.

There is a slight pause before she says, "You planned pretty far ahead when you bought this stuff I guess then."

I smile politely.

A week later I'm hauling down the freeway riding shotgun in a 10 foot UHAUL with the California sun on my face.

Tha-bump.

The UHAUL bounces over a pothole and everything in the back shifts. Among other things it contains four couches, a desk, and a dresser.

"Not a bad haul," I say, looking at the driver.

Supplies grins, mindful of the steering wheel in his hands.

My phone lights up with a text from Pacem, "Pika, you're a star. I'm buying you drinks."

In the first day we got that load and a second load which contained a leather couch, two tables, five chairs (three leather), a small end table, and a nice footrest that matched the couch and the chairs. All it cost was the 130 dollars it cost to rent the UHAUL. Saturday we plan to go out again, after all, we do have to furnish four houses for free.

Really though, not a bad haul at all.

Jake the Cab Driver

Its another blue interview shirt day. There is a light drizzle outside as I pick my way carefully to the cab between the puddles. The HR woman who was coordinating my visit walks out with me and leans in the window of the mini-van. She's one of those people who you meet and instantly genuinely like, although something about her simultaneously unnerves me. She is well meaning, but distinctly alien.

"Hey," she says, "This is Pika, and I just found out she hasn't seen the city yet. She's got some time before her flight, do you think you could give her a little tour? It would be nice for her to be able to see the city before having to choose if she wants to live in it."

The cab driver seemed to be in his mid fifties. He wore a red plaid shirt and a big smile. "Yeah," he said, "Absolutely." He turned to me, "Hold on a second then," and cleared out the front seat so I could ride shotgun instead of the normal ceremonial position of the same side but sitting in the back.

"Jake," he said, extended a big red hand for me to shake as he drove toward the security gate. He looked almost sunburned even though up at college it was barely spring.

"Pika," I grinned taking his hand.

The gates clattered open and Jake pulled the vehicle out. "Well, they seem to like you," he smiled. I decided I liked Jake.

"Yeah, but I think they might be trying to put me on a defense contractor job instead of one of their commercial ones."

"You don't want that?"

"No,"

"I can respect that."

Its a sad thing that I'm left with the ability to speak candidly to a cab driver but not to my interviewer. I know my interviewer will never ask the cab driver what I said. The truth is that these people have been totally forgotten, like most persons in the service industry have. Nobody looks at them like people anymore. I personally think they are the best sort of people and normally always try to make an effort to talk to them. Partly it is always entertaining to hear what they have to say. On another level I think it really makes their day to just have a few minutes when some asshole isn't condescending to them for no good reason.

Jake's from a family of three. He has been in the industry of transporting things and people all his life. When he was young he and his brothers ran a bicycle delivery service.

I looked at him thinking he had to be nuts. He was definitely not old enough to remember a time when cars were not prevalent enough for bicycles to be a competitive way to do things.

"No seriously," he said. "This city suffers from gridlock. A bicycle can pick its way along the streets between the isles of cars at a good 10 miles an hour, and can take all sorts of shortcuts a car can't. Besides that, bicycles are cheaper to repair and you don't have to pay to fuel them. They don't require insurance, and they represent a lot less overhead."

"Oh," I said, feeling thoroughly schooled.

Jake smiled. I guess he was use to people initially laughing the idea off. "My older brother ran the business," he said. "He started out with just the three of us. He was a brilliant business man you know. He bought all one-speed bikes."

"One speed..." I was confused again.

Jake had a million little stories about this, how the one-speed bikes saved on repair costs and time, how they gave kids the option to use their own bicycles, repair them themselves, and earn a little more on each delivery for doing so, how he and his brothers had purchased all the christmas presents in the family one year, how as the organization grew he found himself more and more overseeing overhead, how at that time his hands perpetually smelled like chain grease from repairing huge fleets of bicycles.

As we drove along Jake gave a narrated tour of the city. I was actually floored. I have never heard such a well-given tour. The man's knowledge of the French and Indian War blew mine out of the water. If nothing else he knew how to pronounce all the Indian tribes.

"I'm really lucky," he grinned, "I love this stuff and study it for fun, but its not every day I get an audience." We were both grinning and happy.

"I'll take you to the strip district," he said, "I bet that is exactly your kind of place."

I sort of wondered what initial impression I had given him to make him think anything called 'the strip district' was my sort of place. In reality the strip district was the name for a large international district full of foods that I couldn't pronounce but dearly wanted to try and people selling massive amounts of junk on the streets. He had completely hit the nail on the head.

We drove passing steep inclines which were navigated by cable cars. Jake explained how they use to balance the wagons on one side, horses and all with the cable car coming down full of other stuff. This reduced the effort and meant that 1800's technology could easily move the cars up and down a mountain. We drove among tall reflective main buildings and quiet market squares. I was fascinated. No wonder HR was so eager to give me a tour. I'd happily live in this city.

"So," I gestured to the car, "What happened to it? The bicycle delivery system?"

"Oh, I decided to retire into easier work," he pointed at the interior of the van. "My older brother is still doing it though, even deliveries. He's absolutely ripped, looks a good 10 years younger than me. He comes over and gives us all crap about being so much older than us and yet looking so much younger. You know how brothers are."

I grinned, "What about your younger brother?"

"He's doing a lot better. He was going down a hill pretty fast once when some asshole decided to open a big van door on him. The front wheel got jammed under the door and he went up over the handle bars, whole body upside down against the open door. Broke his lower back in two places. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet the doctors say he'd be dead. He's really lucky though, he still walks and everything. He can't do manual labor anymore though."

I was aghast. "What happened to the driver of the van?"

"He tried to leave the scene with my brother just laying there, claiming he didn't notice. Somebody got his plate and traced him back, but its claimed that he did it by accident so there is not a lot we can do. They settled it out of court recently but, not for a whole lot, but my brother appreciates the closure of having it finally be done. We all realized it really isn't worth getting upset over. No amount of punishment on that driver will make my brother's back better again."

I was amazed by his maturity in this situation. There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say so I was very quiet.

Jake looked at me and smiled, "That's the way these things go sometimes kid."