No Strings Attached
The concert was that night (THAT NIGHT!), so I ran upstairs to change. I hoped to find something trendy, something that would let everyone at the concert know that this nine-year-old could ball.
The concert was that night (THAT NIGHT!), so I ran upstairs to change. I hoped to find something trendy, something that would let everyone at the concert know that this nine-year-old could ball.
This is also the first time I ever took ibuprofen.
You have to choose a direction every single day and hope you’ve chosen right.
First, you’ll notice that the world isn’t just orange push-ups and Math Blasters on CD-ROM. Then, you’ll notice that there are people with Flip Glosses, hair straighteners, and boyfriends.
But to return to reality, the sweet normality of home becomes sweetest after absence. The familiar is defined by exposure to the foreign and new.
Gather the large stock pot (it’s in the basement), a pillowcase from the linen closet, sugar from the pantry, the glass mixing bowl, and a yellow packet of yeast from the refrigerator door.
And I realized these are the first things: not medals or adventures, but the cinch of laces around a foot and reliable slide of mud and bitter perfume of sweat rising like smoke off shoulders.
I’ve developed this existential dread of that First Failure, but I can do something about that. I can have as many First Failures as I have Streaks, if I want to.
“Merdarth, general of the Dark Lord’s army, stood, terrified, before the Orb.”
One reason is that we can get insight into human behavior by comparing what people should do in this situation (if they want to maximize winning probability) to what they actually do.