the library where I just dropped off eleven books that were just a few days late and one book that was due seventeen weeks ago but I didnât know about it until the library called me to ask me where the F it was so I had to search around the house like a maniac and finally found it under Holdenâs mattress. WTF, kid, itâs a book about ferrets, not a Playboy .
Hmmm, maybe Iâll take a longer route home. You know, because itâs the scenic route. Bwhahahahaha. There is no such thing as the scenic route in our town. Ohhhh, look at the beautiful sunset over DSW. Seriously, thatâs as pretty as it gets. Not that I havenât bought some seriously beautiful shoes there.
Anyways, no, there is another reason Iâm deciding to take the longer route home, but Iâm embarrassed to tell you. Iâm a little scared youâre gonna think Iâm a nutjob. Not that you donât already think that, but even more of a nutjob. Okay, wait, before I explain why I take the longer route home and embarrass myself, hereâs the backstory.
So a few years ago, I was at a playdate and my friend and I had this conversation.
BELLE: Did you hear about the boy in Springfield?
ME: No.
BELLE: At the hot dog place?
ME: Do I want to hear?
Nope, no, I do not want to hear. Because even though Iâm sitting there praying she says something like, âHe found a finger in his French friesâ or âHe got kicked out of the restaurant for pooping on the table,â Iâm pretty sure from the tone of her voice that this is going to be worse. Much worse.
BELLE: He choked on a hot dog.
ME: (silence)
BELLE: And died.
A million questions go through my head. Where were his parents? Had they cut the hot dog in half? Were the kids sitting at a different table and no one noticed? Did they just find him slumped over and then realize? Did they notice while it was happening and try to do the Heimlich? Did they sweep his mouth with their finger and push the hot dog farther into his throat? Did the mother scream? Did the whole restaurant notice this was going on? Was the boy afraid? Oh my God, how awful.
And for years, Iâve been thinking about it. I mean not incessantly every single day, but pretty much every time I cut a hot dog in half for my kiddos, I think about that boy and his poor, poor family.
Before I had kids, this kind of story would spontaneously combust in my mind a few minutes after I heard it, but nowadays, thereâs a little section of my brain where these stories stack up and haunt me. The boy who went to the public pool with his camp and drowned. The girl who was crushed by the bookshelf that fell on her. The two-year-old who went down for a nap and didnât wake up. I mean this kind of shit doesnât happen every day, but it gets talked about so much, you would think itâs not all that rare.
And then I heard the worst one of all. I flipped on my television one day (thank God the kids werenât around) and there it was. Newtown. Oh my God. Not OMG because this is way too serious for an acronym. Oh my God, oh my God, OH MY GOD. As I watched the news unfold, my heart broke into a thousand pieces for those families. I would say I canât imagine, but I can. I imagine it all the time. What that scene must have looked like with all those adorable little first graders. The thought of waiting for your kid to come out of the school, and waiting. And waiting.
Hold on a sec, I need to grab a tissue. Seriously, it is impossible for me to think about Newtown without getting teary-eyed.
And hereâs the thing. Itâs turned me into a crazy person. I mean the hot dog story made me start cutting my kidsâ hot dogs down the center, and the bookshelf kid made me bolt my one and only bookshelf to the wall even though itâs in the guest roomwhere the kids never go, and the two-year-old who never woke up made me watch the video monitor a little closer, but the
Murray Sperber
Stephen R. Lawhead
Herta Müller
Pedro G. Ferreira
R. T. Jordan
Mark Ellis
Chris Rylander
Jonathan Little
Tripp Ellis
Hilary Bailey