A good friend's dad died today and someone stole my frozen dinner leaving me to survive tonight on a skimpy serving of veggies.
But I want to talk about Country Day School. That's the eden of a preschool/kindergarten I attended for two years near Austin. We considered it country then, but now you'll find its abandoned buildings down the road from Westlake High School (Country Day moved about a mile away).
Every day we could count on hiking along trails rife with Indian arrowheads and more-recent rifle shells, climbing into a nonfunctional milk truck and fighting to drive, getting juice and cookies before naptime, being kids.
This week a woman I've had very minor contact with in the last year asked me my name and we realized we'd attended Country Day at the same time. She'd also gone to my elementary school, junior high and, for a year, my high school. I had no idea who she was.
Why? Partly because she was one year behind me, but mainly because in the fourth grade she got cancer. The first sign was blood dripping from her nose and then her eye started looking funny. Soon she had to have a tumor--and that eye--removed. Her life was never the same.
She's working on a book about her experience and showed me the opening chapter. It's a compelling tale of survival. After all, she's got one good eye and an imagination.
Back at Country Day she and I also had to endure the coldest swimming pool in the history of mankind (or at least that's the way I remember it). That and stabbing cloves into apples to make air fresheners ought to count for something.
By the way, what comes around goes around, dinner thief! Just ask the woman with one eye who never gave up and is still smiling today. I hope the thief is hungry for many tomorrows to come. And, by the way, you owe me $4.
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