The distraction worked, and two hours later Jeanie pulled into her parents driveway. She shut the car off and sat in the silence for a few minutes. Her parent’s house. She had moved out six years ago, and hadn’t been back for more than a weekend in all that time. Everything seemed just as she left it, the quite house at the end of its street. In the distance a lone dog barked, and Jeanie wondered for the first time if coming home would really solve anything. She slumped against the car and looked up to the night sky.
Jeanie Part 2
The officer turned and walked away, slowly shaking his head.
Jeanie forced herself to crank the window back up, and with eyes glazed over she pulled back onto the highway. She tried to realize what she had just said. That sob story had been building up inside of her for days. But what was that last part?
Her eyes glanced up to the mirror and down to the speedometer. Pregnant. She hadn’t thought of that before. A deep dread filled her as she thought about it. Of all the things, that was the last thing she needed. But what if?
Her eyes drifted off at the thought and she started counting days. But the count got too high and she pulled off the highway in search of something to drink, something to distract.
How Do You Respond to Public Harrassment?
Today a girl at work was talking about MTV’s The Real World and said they put those people on TV so we can look at them and judge them, talk about whether their hair is ugly and how they made a stupid decision. She said this in defense to a roommate’s comment that she’s judgmental. I couldn’t help but laugh.
Today as I was riding my bike across the Robert’s Street Bridge to the parking lot where I park my truck, I saw something I wished I could stop. Several hundred feet ahead of me a high school aged boy was riding his bike along the sidewalk. People are always walking along this sidewalk towards the cheaper parking lots on the other side of the bridge. Every time this kid passed a woman he reached out and pinched her butt. Most of the women jumped in shock and fear, and the kid rode on, snickering to himself. The women continued on to their cars, looking flustered and upset. I wanted to yell at this kid. I wanted to catch up to him and do something. If I was close enough to him I don’t know what I would have done, but I would have done something. I’ve never felt so powerless before. By the time I reached my truck I was very tempted to peel out after the little hoodlum and run him down. I just don’t understand some people.
Everybody Likes the Hobbit
Sometimes while driving multiple hours on end I like to write stories in my head. That’s what the little story about Jeanie from yesterday was about. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take the time to continue her tale. But for now you must forgive me, I have other stories to tell. I finished reading the Hobbit tonight, and am most eager to continue with the Lord of the Rings series. All summer long I’ve been taking books to work and reading them during my lunch break while I eat. More people responded to the Hobbit than any other book put together.
Flooded Basement
This past weekend my fiance and I took one of our many trips to her hometown of Green Bay. Friday night it rained and I woke up in a flooded basement. Nothing like waking up and find that you’re a refugee.
NASCAR Driver Kenny Irwin Dies
And on to graver news. On Friday morning Kenny Irwin was killed in a race car accident in New Hampshire. To most of you that probably doesn’t mean anything, and I admit that it doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. Now don’t misquote me, of course it means something. We all lower our heads and slowly shake them in sincere sympathy. But honestly the world is too large for one stranger’s death to have much effect.
Jeanie Part 1
Her name was Jeanie, and I love her. Of course she didn’t know it. Nobody ever does. It was early autumn and leaves should have been bright reds and yellows, glorious oranges like the sunset. But they weren’t. They were brown and green or somewhere in between. The sky was even gray to match, and nothing seemed right. But that’s the way things were going. Jeanie’s little two door Toyota flew along the country highway about as fast as it could go, but not quite as fast as Jeanie wanted to get home.
Freaks & Geeks Marathon
I usually don’t promote a lot of TV shows and stuff like that in my ponderings, but today I’m going to make an exception. This Saturday, July 8 at 8 PM (Eastern) NBC is having a three hour ‘Freaks and Geeks’ marathon. If you haven’t seen this show, it’s a comedy/drama about the freaks and geeks in a Michigan high school in 1980. It’s one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a while, and NBC cancelled it before the season was out. They’re showing the unaired episodes Saturday. The show has some of the most realistic dialogue and situations on TV. It captures high school really well, and not just the jock and cheerleader view.
That’s it for tonight. I’ll be back Sunday.
The Joy of Reading
Lately I’ve been finding a lot of joy in reading. I’m crossing items of my summer reading list every week, and taking the time to read magazines online as often as I can. I love reading odd little well written articles about all sorts of stuff. Today I read about New Orleans becoming the next Atlantis and the Pentagon’s secret war with drug cartels in Columbia. Fascinating stuff that really doesn’t affect my life. As I was walking home thinking about some of these things, I realized that some people just don’t care. They don’t like to read, and filling their minds with odd bits of information isn’t a good use of time.
I pity these people. Wouldn’t it be better if everyone in the world could be so knowledge hungry, like me? Of course, I’m not that na
July 4, 2000
I watched a movie today and realized the plot wasn’t anything new or original. The plot was threadbare and worn, the characters could be found in any neighborhood Goodwill store, and the jokes were copied straight out of a joke book–and one full of puns, too. It’s not that it was a bad movie, it’s just that it wasn’t original. They told the same old story in a new and somewhat interesting way. They found a creative angle and rehashed the same old same old. Throw in a few nods to other movies in your genre and you’ve got yourself a film. If that’s all it takes, I could become a movie writer. Or so I told myself as I sat there in the dark listening to old women laugh.
This morning (okay, it was really this afternoon) while I was in the shower I came up with an interesting idea for a horror story. Of course it isn’t really a horror story and I usually don’t write those, but that’s okay. That’s what people would think it is, so you just have to go with it. Sometimes I wonder why my imagination is so overactive, and other times I’m thankful it is. I just wish it would be book-size overactive.
Today is July 4. As I write this fireworks are exploding to celebrate the independence of our country. Sometimes I wonder if we not only gained our independence from the British but from each other as well.