Curve of the river

The best curve you know is the river, of course. You line up your kayak on the Broad River at the Swimming Hole rock. you have to come parallel with the rock on river right and let the fast curve take you over to the left, down into a beast of a hydraulic, paddling like a son of a bitch. You think you might tilt over and go under, but you keep paddling till you eddy out and pull into the channel between two flat rocks. You pop the skirt and hoist yourself up. The channel is narrow enough so you can lay your paddle across. That's where you can eat lunch because you've then done Flat Shoals and Swimming Hole Rock. Flat Shoals doesn't have much of a curve; it's ledges all across the river, but you've seen plenty of people come out of their boats, even though you always forget about that feature because the big stuff is farther down the river. The first one that gets your heart pumping, in fact, is the Swimming Hole.

After the Swimming Hole, only a couple of shoals keep you alert until you get to the island that divides the river. On river left is well, you don't really know what's on the left because you always go river right where The Slide is. The Slide--most refer to it as the waterfall, but it's not; it's nothing like Anniston Falls. The slide is only a Class II+, although today it might be a Class III. The river is way up from the two storms last night, at 48 inches. You've run it that high once before. It's not really dangerous, just pushy and challenging.

To get ready for The Slide, you paddle through a rock garden and come out to a pool. The big rock is to your right. A medium size rock juts out of the water  and usually, you line up between the big rock and the medium rock and paddle in a curve across to The Slide, coming to the lip at about a 45 degree angle. Today, though, you decide that you never get far enough left, so you head straight at The Slide and get as far left as you can. You tip over the edge and drop maybe four or five feet. There's a big rock exactly opposite  at the bottom where you have swamped before.

As you drop over The Slide, you see that Katie has come out of her kayak, but you stay up. The hole at the bottom is churning with white water and it tries to suck you over and under, but again, you paddle like a bitch and get through. Good thing, Katie loses her boat, so you have to hit the next ledge and go through a nice Class I+ to try to catch it. You go through one more, a tricky curve this time and get to the boat. You nudge it over across the eddy line to the shallows, but it gets away from you, and you have to follow it. At the next eddy, you catch it again and grab it. You know you're supposed to put the overturned prow up on your boat and flip it over. You did this last week when somebody else lost a boat, but this time Katie's boat is just too heavy to flip, and besides, your whitewater boat is tiny, with sharp edges. It's your favorite boat; you feel every bit of the river in it, but it's not that stable.

You paddle one-handed and hold Katie's boat with the other and get to the edge. She comes body-surfing down the river and you give her the boat. She can stand up and flip it over and that's The Slide.

The Rooster Tail is the last big feature and you think by far the most technical. It consists of three ledges. The first you approach along the edge of the river to the right and curve left again to hit the second ledge, a sharper drop and there are two large rocks you have to aim right for. If you judge wrong, you get slammed up against a rock peninsula at the bottom of the drop. Today, the water is almost over the peninsula and you think you maybe should come up against it to make sure Katie and Susan get over without trouble. You figure Susan will probably portage, but she doesn't. Katie comes over right after you and stays in perfectly, whooping as she drops. Then Karen, who also stays in. Susan is way back, so you go for the third ledge, the tricky one. Last week you went over too far right and didn't get the biggest drop, so you head toward the middle and drop fast, getting a huge chop and a face full of water. Your boat goes under the chop but smacks down and you come out. It's awesome.

Susan's coming now. you see her hat, but then here comes her boat without her, so she's gone in somewhere on the drops. Karen can't get to the boat. You paddle fast out into the middle of the river and get it. You miss landing it at the first set of rocks, but you push it up against the second set and pull your own kayak up, popping the skirt off again and getting out. It takes a while for Susan to come down. She walks because the Rooster Tail is just too fast and rocky to body surf. She waits. You get in the water and swim her boat up to where she stands. She's kept her paddle and gets in with no problem and paddles on.

The only other patch left that will require skill is under the bridge. It's an exciting wave train, like the Devil's Racecourse on the Chattahoochee, the Metro Hooch stretch. Today, though, a tricky little drop appears because of the high level and it catches you by surprise. It's like an unexpected treat and then you're under the bridge, angling your way through rocks and fighting the chop and Katie's right behind you.

After that, a flat-water paddle to the take out and the shuttle pulls up right as you do and the paddle's over. You and Karen and Susan and Katie have followed the big curve of the Broad and all the challenging little curves and drops it had today.  It was one of the best Broad paddles ever. You started to go to church today, but you paddled instead, so you bless the rocks, the river, and the rain.

The pleasure of someone else's clothes

I've always loved borrowed clothes. When I put on my sister's or my children's clothes, I feel  part of them blanketing me, encircling me with their personality. My favorite hiking fleece used to belong to a center back on Grayson High School's soccer team. He was my daughter Maggie's first real boyfriend. He was kind of a jerk, but he was handsome, a star athlete, and the new kid at school, so my daughter saw him as a challenge and dated him her senior year. Whenever  I wear Matt's Columbia fleece, I think of all the soccer matches I watched with my daughter, how she and he laughed together and fell in love for a minute, and how after they broke up, Matt still returned the coffee cup I left in his car because he knew it was my favorite. He wasn't unredeemable.

When my big sister went off to college in 1976, I used to sneak her peasant blouses out of her suitcase after she packed. It was a terrible thing to do; we had some of our worst fights about it, but we probably both understand now why I did it. Whenever I wore Kathy's clothes, I felt cool, like I was Linda Ronstadt or some groovy college girl. My thieving gesture was one of love, although I've learned better ways to express it.

I wore my grandfather's brown cardigan for a long time, too, after he died. It was the eighties and you could get away with wearing oversized sweaters and long skirts. The little alligator on the left front made me remember the times he took me with him golfing and let me drive the cart. My grandfather used to tell me stories no one else in the family would--it was the only way I knew my grandfather's brother-in-law shot himself, or that all five of his brothers were alcoholics. When I was very young, my grandfather bought me my first tennis racket and told me bedtime stories from The Odyssey. It hit me hard when he died. When he died, I kept his sweater and made it part of my wardrobe for a really long time. Papaw used to remind me of Ed MacMurray on My Three Sons. He was a good man with a good sweater, and  wearing it, I felt like a better person. .

Lily is the daughter who borrows my clothes, as long as they are gray or brown. She comes home without having packed properly, but she is a beautiful girl, I mean like model beautiful, so she can get away with drab shapeless clothing and still turn heads. Emily, though, has the most fun with borrowing, and we have a game we call "Closet." It's simple. She goes through my closet whenever she is here, and I give her whatever she picks out. I think I have only denied her one item ever, and only because it was brand new and I had not worn it yet.

There's such a symbolic pleasure in wearing other people's clothes. The wearing binds you to the original owner. It creates a circle. We used to have a routine on the street where my twins were born in Mississippi. My oldest daughter is Emily. Her clothes went to Ashley down the street, three years younger. Ashley's went to her little sister, Jessica, and Jessica's came to my twins, Maggie and Lily. Leftovers went to Goodwill, if they weren't worn out by then. I think If everyone shared clothes, maybe the world would be more united. Imagine all the people sharing all the world. Starting with maybe an old brown shapeless cardigan

Not quite a disaster

We decide to try to get Mother out of the house.  She has the gas logs blazing and it's probably 85 degrees in the room. It is a lovely sunny day in April in Meridian, Mississippi, and we convince her to go for a ride. Mother has a former student who has built a yoga center/spa/massage facility out in the country. Several of the student's siblings have houses around the land, so Mother is agreeable to go. It's clear she's making an effort; she's showered, she has put on the blouse Kathy bought her for early Mothers' Day, and she seems to be sober.

We think it's good for her to get out. It's been a long time since she went anywhere except to the liquor store or to Waffle House, and she ran into that with her car, which is one reason we're here. So we hope this will be a nice little outing. We think the isolation is making her condition only worse.

I know Mother has difficulty walking, so I stay close as we go from the front porch to the car. She's a little shaky, but she puts her hand on the back of my neck and balances lightly as she traverses the short distance. We get in the car. Mother says all she knows is that it is south.

Me: Down 45 south, like you're going to the coast?

Mother: No, not down 45. Just south.

We figure out that Jenna's place is somewhere near Lakeview Golf Course, so Kathy puts Lakeiew Golf Course in the GPS and it tells us to go down 19 South toward Butler, Alabama.

"That's not right," Mother says. Kathy listens to Siri.
"This is not the way."
"No, Mother, but it's a way. If you see anything that rings a bell, just tell me and I'll go that way."

We head down Highway 19 South anyway, which would take us to Butler, Alabama, if we kept going, but the GPS tells us to turn right on Log Creek Road.

"We're going to end up in Alabama," Mother says.

Kathy: Well, we're going to turn on Log Creek Road before we get there. Mother, you ought to come back to Atlanta with me. Now that tax season is over, Wesley's going to bring Channing out to see the house, and Andrew will be bringing Allison, whom I've never met."'

"Well, I have business I have to attend to. I have to pay my land taxes."

"You have to pay them? Well, Top could help you." (Top, Kathy's husband, is a CPA, specializing in corporate taxes).

"I have to pay them, and I have to talk to somebody about them."

"I know the bosy would love to see you."

No reply. We pass the golf course. 

Kathy: "This is a pretty road."

Mother: "We came the long way."

Kathy: "So Jenna's place is on down this road?"

Mother: "I know we go past the golf course."

We come to the end of the road. No Jenna's place.

Kathy: "So we should have passed it?"

Mother: "That was if we came the other way."

Kathy: "It's on the other side of the golf course?"

"No."

Kathy: "I'm going to go up here and turn around."

Mother: "No!"

Kathy: "But if it's on the same road..."

Mother: "I keep telling y'all I don't remember."

Kathy: "I'll turn around."

Mother: "No." So Kathy turns right. We see a property with rolling green hills, some newly constructed outbuildings, and a pasture.
Kathy: "I bet that's it."
Mother: "I wonder who lives on the Kimbrell farm now. That's Berry Ward's driveway, him and his wife."
We see a sign that says "Doc and Miss Hattie."
Mother: "They had a pasture and some horses."
Kathy keeps driving. We see another property with a closed gate.
Mother: "I don't believe we can get in."
Kathy: "I wouldn't drive down somebody's driveway; I just wanted to see it."
Mother: "Well, you can't."
We keep driving and pass an old white house with a white barn.
Kathy: "I love white barns. Whose house is that, do you know?"
Mother: "It's the Carney house."
Kathy: "Who are the Carneys?"
Mother: "I don't know how to tell you who they are."
Kathy wants to take a picture of the barn, so she pulls over and gets out. When she gets back in, she asks Mother, "Do you want me to turn around and go back to find Jenna's?"
Mother: "That's way out of the way."
Kathy: "I wonder how we missed it."
Mother: "We went the wrong way."
Kathy: "I'll go back."
Mother: "No!"
Kathy" "Why, if we missed it?"
Mother: "We went the wrong way. It was up there by the lakes. Just keep going." Kathy drives.
Kathy: "Mother, are you hungry?"
Mother: "No. I could eat."
We come out on a highway. It's 45 South.
Mother: "This is the way we should have come. Out 45 South and turn here."
We drive, back into town.
Kathy: "Mother, have you got a taste for anything?"
Mother: "No."
Now we are in the center of old Meridian, where I used to live, where my twins were born, and near the 1929 cottage that was my first house, and a block from where my best Meridian friend still lives.

Me: "Can we go down Poplar Springs Drive to see all the dogwoods?"
Kathy: "Would you like to go by your old house?"
Me: "Yes. That way I can see what's blooming in Jimmy's yard, too." We come to the fork where you go left to Poplar Springs Drive, right to drive down 24th Avenue past my old house and Jimmy's.

Mother: "You need to turn here if you're going down Poplar Springs Drive."
Kathy: "I know, but I was going to go this way to let Lee Ann see her old house."
We drive past my old house and Jimmy's house and turn right.
Mother: "Why are you going this way?"
Kathy: "I want to drive down Poplar Springs Drive for Lee Ann, but I wanted to start at the beginning."
Mother doesn't say anything, but it is clear she is irritated. I can tell by the set of her shoulders.

Kathy: "Can we pick up anything for you to eat later?"
Mother: "I'll let you know."
Kathy: "Would you like for us to pick you up something from that place you usually go in Broadmoor?"
Mother: "You can't, it's closed. You can't get anything today except fast food and McAlister's."
Kathy: "Would you like us to get you something from McAlister's?"
Mother: "I'll let you know later."
Kathy: "Well, we'll be happy to take you anywhere that's open to get you something."
Mother: "We'll see."
We get to Mother's house. Mother hands me the keys and tells me to go around back and unlock the door.  I go.

Kathy goes around around to the passenger side to help Mother get out of the car. Mother pulls herself up and grabs Kathy's hand, which hurts all the time from arthritis. Mother knows this. She clutches Kathy's hand with every  bit of strength she has. Kathy tells me later she did make sure Mother wasn't going to fall, but then she had to wrench her hand away. She says she thought she might pass out from the pain. She takes a whole lot of Ibuprofen on the way back to Atlanta.

When we get inside, Kathy notices an old oil painting Mother has left out in the carport. It is almost ruined and Kathy offers to have it restored for her. Mother says she doesn't want the painting. Kathy says, "Well, why don't I have it restored at my own expense and hang it in my house till you want it?" I know this is never happening, and sure enough, Mother ignores the question. The damaged painting stays leaned up against the wall.

Then Mother offers to let me dig up some of the white iris I admired. I get a spoon out of the sink and go out back, and I get enough in case Kathy wants some, too. We leave. I think the visit went pretty well, except for Mother's gripping Kathy's hand so hard. I'd really really like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I think she did it on purpose. It's probably best to take the iris, leave the painting, and call "not a disaster" a success. .

Superstition: when you believe in things that you can't understand

"One of the oldest sightings of a black panther [came] in 1958 near Rome, Georgia. A motorist reported that a huge black panther jumped on the side of his care and left muddy pawprints on the side of the automobile. Other reports in Georgia exist, some in the metro Atlanta area" (georgiamysteries.blogspot.com).

Apocryphal animal stories are among the most fascinating of tales. My babysitter used to talk of a wolf-like creature that came up on her son Melvin and frightened him half to death with eyes the size of silver dollars and a long red tongue lolling out. She told me she herself had seen a snake grab its tail in its mouth and roll like a hoop. I believed her implicitly. I think I still do, but suspect she suffered from a case of myopic gullibility.

I observed superstitions up until two weeks ago. My grandmother refused to open umbrellas in the house, knocked on wood, and threw salt over her shoulder. She kissed the hem of her skirt and made a wish when it was turned up. I thought my grandmother was a cool chick, and I followed suit.

My habit got more involved as I began to collect superstitions. I built a bottle tree at my mother's cabin on the creek to trap evil spirits and thought about painting my front door blue. I drove my children to the country in the middle of the night to wish on shooting stars. If anybody ever died in my home, I planned to cover the mirrors with a cloth. Morbid, you say? I say scholar of folklore. Just preserving Southern traditions.

One October night, my mother and I sat with a bottle of wine in front of a crackling fire at her cabin when she asked me if I really thought the bottles would trap evil spirits. I assumed she must be drunk because she has a college degree and taught English for 33 years. Of course I didn't think they caught evil spirits; I thought they caught the afternoon sunlight in a fetching way. I realized my mother actually believed that nonsense.

I told my sister and she said superstitious people are assholes, along with vegetarians and people who post about Donald Trump on Facebook. The last thing I wanted to be was an asshole. Right then I made a vow to quit with the salt and the hemlines.

Two black cats crossed my path this week and I didn't flinch. They weren't together, not two black cats out on a date, but two separate cats on two separate days. Otherwise,I might have turned the car around. As far as panthers in Georgia and snakes who roll around in circles, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. A live armadillo scuffled across the trail the other day in front of me. I never saw one not dead on the road before. I saw a 15-foot alligator swimming right by my kayak last year in Ocala, Florida.

I look forward to the day when I can toss a hat on a bed, though. Not there yet.

On Chartres Street

We had been to a Talking Heads concert at the Superdome in New Orleans when I got mugged on Chartres Street. The whole event was pretty civilized, just the type of crime you’d want to be involved in if you were a small-town girl from Mississippi trying to learn the streets of New Orleans. After the fact, I felt like my date was as much a villain as  the mugger and I kept the grudge against him a long time.

It was 1984 and "Burning Down the House" had just been released. My sometime boyfriend lived in an apartment on Chartres Street right off Jackson Square. He was an engineer and could afford French Quarter rent as well as concert tickets. We’d seen a bunch of bands—the Neville Brothers, Doug Kershaw, The Radiators, Men Without Hats--mostly New Orleans names, but good stuff. I was on the fence about Andy, but he was wooing me with music that fall.

 Moreover, on my tiny newspaper salary, I was living almost in Chalmette, a slummy, ugly neighborhood that got famous later for being decimated when Katrina hit. I feel like it probably didn't look that different afterward. Andy’s apartment was the opposite of my cheap townhouse. He had the exposed brick walls, the wrought iron, the Cajun grocery on the corner, and the river two blocks away. It was the New Orleans cachet I’d moved down for, so I let him woo me, even though I suspected he had a more serious girlfriend in Lake Charles. I’d gone through his mail once when he ran down to the Cajun grocery for cigarettes and found a letter from her, but I let him take me to concerts anyway. It's not like I'm proud of it.

The night I got mugged we were coming back from The Talking Heads (who were awesome, by the way), and I’d found a parking place right in front of Andy's apartment. It was the only time I ever did. I don't remember why he went in without me, but I was getting a bunch of stuff out of my car, so he gave me his extra key. I fumbled with the key at the gate that led into the courtyard. I noticed a shadow that wasn't a lamp post in my peripheral vision. I looked toward it. A tall thin black guy stood there watching me. I hadn't seen any movement. He must have been standing there the whole time, watching me park and unload my car.

I didn’t know then about a lot of things. I didn’t think about the wisdom of dating someone who would lay out $150 for concert tickets but leave you on a dark street alone. I should have. Andy had left me at a Halloween party earlier that year to go off and make out with some girl dressed like a gypsy. I blew it off because I wasn’t that invested in Andy and I’d had a couple of margaritas.

I looked at the guy looking at me and wondered what I should do. Andy's apartment was through a dark courtyard and up a flight of stairs on the side of the building. I thought about my options. Unlock the gate, try to close it and go for the apartment. Or stand there and wait for what was about to go down. I knew something was.

I also didn't know if I had to re-lock the gate once I got inside or if it locked automatically. If I went through the gate, I thought, chances were he would follow me and I would get raped, robbed and killed, my corpse left under the palm trees that lined the courtyard. If I kept standing there, I would at least be out in the light. I decided crime-ridden Chartres Street was the safer choice.

I jumped when the guy spoke. "Do you need some help?"  He was still staring at me. When I look back, I don’t know what that was about, but I think he might have been procrastinating. Maybe he didn't have much experience mugging people.  So I said no. It looked like both of us wanted to get this thing over with. He rushed at me and knocked me down, grabbing my purse and breaking the strap where it looped over my shoulder. I had put my money in my pocket for the concert. He got 35 cents and my lipstick. I got up, unlocked the gate and went in to tell Andy and call the police.

About half an hour later, the police called up to Andy's apartment and told me to come down and see a suspect. When we got back on Chartres, two policemen were wrestling a man on the opposite sidewalk. He was struggling, but they had his arms pinned behind his back. He wasn't the guy. I told them so and they left.  They didn't seem that invested either, and then it was all was over.

I never got all that wily; I didn't have to. I got married a few years later and raised my kids on a calm cul-de-sac in suburbia. But that night I started being more aware. Once I picked myself up from the sidewalk, I realized my car keys had been in my purse. I made Andy come outside with me while I popped the hood and took the rotor out of the distributor cap. That way the car wouldn't start if my purse-snatcher tried to drive it away later. It was the only smart thing I did that night, but as soon as it got light, I put the rotor back in and drove away from Chartres Street for good. 

So I ended up with a bruised elbow and lost 35 cents, some lipstick and Andy. Soon after, I took a job back in Mississippi as a public relations photographer and left my ugly apartment. Andy called to tell me his car had been broken into when someone smashed the window and stole his stereo and all his mix tapes. I didn't commiserate with him. I told him I was leaving and he wanted to take me to a Police concert in Baton Rouge as a goodbye present. I thought, "Really, Andy?" I felt like there would be a little irony in our going to see The Police together.

Because I didn't quite forgave him for not being there to protect me. I blamed him about as much as the guy who knocked me down, although I should have taken his measure the night he ditched me on Halloween for the gypsy girl. My mugging made me a little smarter about assessing a situation and predicting the outcome, so I told Andy not to bother getting tickets, and I left New Orleans.

Since then I've navigated other cities without mishap--New York, DC, Atlanta, San Juan. I heard Andy got married and his engineering job took him and his wife to London. I figure like me, he probably ended up raising kids on whatever the British equivalent of a cul-de-sac is. I’m not bitter. I do hope Andy doesn’t abandon his wife at parties to go make out with gypsies.  I hope when they go out in London, she never ends up taking the rotor out of their Mini-Cooper. I don't know if she was the Lake Charles one, but ’m sure she’s a nice girl. Maybe I’m just a little bitter but I can live with it.

Contrast: The more things change

The first paddle of the season is always euphoric. A winter of hiking generally curbs the craving for exercise; I love the strain of my hamstrings after a long hike on the Georgia AT, but nothing, simply nothing, compares to being on the river. It's the Broad River, outside of Danielsville, which ties for Beavertail Point in Michigan's UP for the closest place to heaven I can imagine.

Three or four years ago, I was with two of my daughters on the first weekend Broad River Outpost opened in March and it was chilly. That day I went in the river three times, while my daughters swished me aside and retrieved my kayak. I could have done it myself, but "We got it, Mom," they said. So I waited and shivered while they emptied my kayak and handed me back my paddle. That day I lost a camera, a shoe when my foot got entrapped, and probably a couple of water bottles.

But this is a different kind of paddle. For one thing, it's warm. I'm with a friend, or I think he is a friend. I'm not sure exactly what he is yet, but he is a lot of fun. He's never been kayaking on a river before and the Broad has some challenges. Today we've had a lot of rain and it's higher than I've ever run it. My friend loses it on the first feature and goes in, but he keeps his paddle. We manage to get to the rocks where he rights himself, and he stays in his boat on all the other rapids, including the four-foot drop and the Roostertail, which I think is the most furn and the hardest to navigate. I'm in my white water Pyrana for the first time on the Broad and it manages the rapids with ease, but it's tippy. I stay up. My dry bag keeps my phone and our lunch dry. I get to the take out with both shoes.

There's no huge difference in this paddle and the one three or four years ago, except I've paddled a lot more and have a better kayak. But those variables don't mean a lot. It depends on the rain and the river. I've run the Yellow River and the Broad and the Chattahoochee and the Cartecay over and over in the past few years.  Sometimes they were a cakewalk and sometimes they were terrifying. Once on the Yellow I thought I really might die in a Class IV hydraulic. I'm not constructing the river as a metaphor for life or anything; it's just a body of water, and it changes like everything else. But it's true that plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.

Rivers are eternal. Mark Twain knew it, as did Langston Hughes and James Dickey. I know a little about rivers myself now and the more I'm in the water, the more I learn to trust or at least accept it. Same river or different river, there's no better place on earth to be than in the water. The river always knows where to go.

The Clarity Pain Brings

When I pushed my hands into ice-cube-filled sink, I thought this is crazy. No one can do this. I wanted to jerk them out immediately. I asked the girl timing me what was the time to beat. She said Mr. Bird left his in for 25 minutes. I knew it was a lie.

I made it one minute, but it was hard. At about three I was pretty comfortable. I thought I'd just see how long I could go. The teacher said I could pull one hand out and then put it back in if one was easier than the other. I thought to myself you can go to hell with that pulling one hand out business.

 It was a science experiment and I have no idea still what they were trying to prove. I didn't care. I had just been sitting in a desk in my classroom planning a shower for Megan's wedding and thinking about tiramisu cupcakes when the teacher came in and asked it we wanted to help. So I said sure. I always agree to anything anybody asks me to do. I figure I can back out later if it doesn't work out.

So there I was with my hands in ice and once I was in, I was in. At four minutes, the students began to marvel. The timing girl said you're doing great. She said it a couple of times. I had sent my goal for five minutes, but when the timing girl told me five, I felt like I had a little left, so I decided on seven. At five and a half the finger I dislocated jumping down from a rocky ledge and getting it tangled in my hiking pole strap began to hurt like a bitch. It wasn't seven yet, so I ignored the weak finger.

The last minute was nearly unbearable, but I kept my hands in the ice. My finger felt like it was turning into rock, a rock about to explode. Janie leaned over my shoulder and said she's a competitor. And  she's goal-oriented. If you give her a challenge, she's not going to quit. I thought I was hiding it better.

Then I began to wonder why I was putting myself through this torment. There was no purpose. It was just to see if I could. So I did. When the girl got to seven minutes, I left them in for another seven seconds just for spite and then I pulled them out. They were swollen and red. The teacher said get a picture of the winner, so I guess they were lying about Mr. Bird after all. They took my picture and then a picture of my hands. It took about forty-five minutes for the feeling to come back, and I wondered how long it took to get frostbite. I thought take that, Jack London, you jerk.

Janie told the other teachers about my hands at lunch and I was embarrassed. Then I decided to own it. Yeah, I stuck my hands in ice for a pointless seven minutes and seven seconds. I can also run a Class IV rapid, had natural childbirth with twins and survived two alcoholic parents. That's why I did it. I am a badass. That's my clarity.

Your mad scrawl

Your handwriting makes me think you are insane. It is the handwriting Henry VIII might have had.  If David Berkowitz had ever sent me a letter himself, I would've glanced at the envelope and assumed it came from you. Those angular right-angled tails of your js and gs, the spiky K of your first initial--they are all so singularly bizarre. I wonder why you don't use orange ink. Or a gray the color of a spider's hair.

I have wide experience with deciphering illegibility. I can recognize the handwriting of a person with a learning disability in a heartbeat, but yours is not that. It's not exactly not that, either. You might have a learning disability, but something more ominous lurks in the curves of your capital s.

There is a term that students with IEPs use, dysgraphia. It just means bad handwriting to me. I have been in a conference with a parent who became enraged with a teacher who said he could not read the son's handwriting, as if it was a character flaw. Also, I am certain it is a character flaw. Everyone can learn penmanship, and if one declines to do so, that indicates laziness, narcissism, dysfunction and squalor. Your demeanor--and I mean yours, not just anyone's--can fool a lot of people, but the minute you scribble on a Post-it, you give yourself away. You would do better to email all with whom you must communicate, not that I want to abet you in masking your psychosis.

But enough. I don't want to think about your frightening handwriting any more. Visualizing the slopes and swirls makes me feel like Alice in Through the Looking Glass as she tried to follow the path that kept giving itself a shake and turning back to the same door. It is a volatile path, your  handwriting, and the door it leads to is madness. I used to sign the test papers they made me bring home with your flourish whenever I made a C. I shiver to think how perfectly I can emulate it.