Humble Mumble

I moved to Seattle eight years ago except nobody told me it was Seattle. It rains here all the damn time. There are no seasons in Norfolk just a perennial autumn-spring type thing where it never snows, but never stays hot consistently enough for the ocean water to get warm at the beach.

Larry always says it rains whenever he goes someplace new. He is kind of like the Zoloft ball from the depression commercial. He’s about as bald as the Zoloft thing now, maybe they have a few things in common.

When I flew to Florida this past November, it was my first time flying. I was nervous about the whole situation because flying in general seems dangerous. I’ve never been in situation where I had to fly, and post September 11th, I really felt as if even thinking about getting on a plane was suicidal. Then a co-worker in an attempt to dispel my fears on the plane issue laid the situation out in black and white. “It’s like a rollercoaster. Once you get on you give up control. You’re either going to fly safely or you will die.” I can’t say that the statement enamored me any to the prospect of getting on this plane. But I WAS GOING at this point. I had signed it over. You get on, you fret a bit, but you hope for the best. You believe you will live and it makes it bearable or you accept you may die and you go with that too.

I’ll believe he’ll be okay. He HAS TO BE. I just have to turn off the T.V.

So Larry is going to Iraq in June and I’m trying to apply the logic that he chose to do this. Just as I chose to get on the plane, I chose to come to ODU, I chose to wear pink today. I know that’s the fact of the matter, but PEOPLE it doesn’t make me feel any better. Are you really “choosing” to do something if life presents you no alternatives? Is it a choice then? It is a choice to be born into low-income?

I was about to go all political, but I feel kinda like a song lyric is more appropriate.

“Speeches only reaches those who already know about it,
This is how we go about it.” – Andre 3000, Outkast