Green

They lost the sun. They lost the son. There was a long night, a northern night. They knew the sun would not be back for some time. One morning, a bird taking flight surprised the man in the wolf mask, who was hunting and starving, both, all at once. The bird taking flight moved west, then south, and he followed it, taking with him his wife and those children who had survived the last winter. His wife took with her a fringed shawl, a small black urn, and a flowered cushion given to her by the visiting pastor’s wife. They followed the goose, they followed the snake, they followed the wolves down into the grey green land and the morning doves were plentiful, the trout easily caught and tender. The northern night, the sky with revolving lights, faded into purple evening, then stars like salt through a shaker, bright on dark. They lit a candle at sunset most nights, for a few minutes at least, but most nights they slept with the stars and woke with the pale thin lavendar spreading across the many greens, the sage, the olive, the pampas, the thin fine grass that grows in certain quiet meadows. Quail, dove and rabbits abundant now.

Scarecrow

I will tell you the story of the scarecrow’s birth. He was born in a small deer farm near where the road passes not far from the second hand tire store. He was born in Bull’s Blood Junction, so small a town that pizza was unknown and meat might be jerky, might be carrion, and might not be had at all. An old town, Bull’s Blood Junction. People said in Bull’s Blood the rain runs red, and every man, woman and child in Bull’s Blood is anemic. This was, of course, because of the scarecrow, his sad life, the cutting, the pain, the heartache, the rotting seeds. That scarecrow, who started out in life just a broomstick and a worn-out petticoat, didn’t scare much of anything until his first Halloween, when Red Duncan brought a pumpkin to the house, and a knife, and a fair amount of whisky.

The first slice in a pumpkin’s head is the worst. It’s like the eyes themselves have been slit open and the first thing they see is the slithering ooze of their own brain’s entrails swimming around behind their eyes. Then with a snap, Red pops out those eye holes and Crow is looking out, scared, into the sight of his own birth. Scarecrows don’t usually have hands, you may have noticed that, but they have the deepest craving for them. Red popped those eyeballs out and wiped Crow’s face with a dampened cloth, wiping away the sweat and the seeds that started running down those new cheeks. Red was a happy man that day, twisting the knife as Crow looked out, looking side to side and down as much as he could, for arms that could reach and hands that could grab. Red’s was enjoying his whisky, and gave Crow a belt about halfway through, as he was cutting a mouth that couldn’t decide whether it was laughing, crying, or snarling. In the background there was the sound of a chainsaw; Grey, Red’s cousin, was cutting wood for the coming winter months. In the kitchen, ma was lighting the woodstove and talking about pies. 

Crow listened, watched and waited for someone to give him a tongue, but no one did. With his nose, he smelled the woodsmoke and the piney air. Blue, Red’s brother, carried Crow’s head out to the field where the last of the corn lay fallow, and put him on top of the old broom stick in the petticoat that’s been there all summer, surrounded by crows laughing, stealing ears, rabbits snickering, stealing spinach, mice stealing grain, foxes stealing chickens.

Crow was born mad, put on this earth to scare nobody but man. That first fall and all through the winter, Crow watched. He watched the harvest moon, he watched the first frost, he sat up through the longest night, and he counted the stars night after night. A scarecrow with a broken heart needs arms, he said, needs legs, and needs a way to get on that sled on a cold winter night and leave. At the end of his first winter, he learned how to curse, and this put Bull’s Blood into a time of sorrow and need, until the day they gave him arms, legs, a hat, a pair of trousers, and a shirt. He waved goodbye as he rode away in a small wooden sleigh pulled by a sawhorse, over the horizon, to that next harvest moon.

The woodcarver’s wife

The man sits quietly on a short red stool. He holds a knife in one hand, a piece of hard wood in the other. He is carving. He stops periodically to smoke. He smokes different things: sometimes he smokes tobacco, sometimes ganja, sometimes an herbal mixture that soothes his lungs while lightly scarring them at the same time. An anesthetic smoke. His first choice is for tobacco mixed with ganja, a nice blend that elevates the spirits and focuses the mind, and in this state many beautiful wood carvings are made. He sells carvings. The man sells wood carvings to another man, who lives just far enough away and in just a big enough city to have an apartment in a high rise, with stairs and elevators that sometimes work, according to those who may know.

The man who lives in a high rise works in a coffee shop where there is internet. He works in an internet café, and from here he sells wood carvings to import export businesses. He makes some money doing this, and does not try to elicit information about bank accounts from old people in other countries, even though it is well known, according to the internet, that this is a quick and easy way to make moneys that may or may not be illegal, depending on the country of origin and the country of arrivals, and the regulations governing each.

So, the woodcarver sits quietly on a short red stool, making wood carvings that his business associate will sell for him. And because of this business relationship, he will eventually have enough money to go to a different internet café without his business associate. There he will see, with the help of his nephew (who guides the mouse through many incarnations) the grand scope and potential that makes sales a mighty elixer, a draft for the very thirsty. He sits in the internet café and rubs the mouse like a magic lantern and a genie appears.

“What may I do for you?” the genie says. Around his head and in a column to the right, popup ads try to distract the man on the short red stool, who pushes them away, ghosts that they are, and forces himself to focus on the genie.

“Genie,” he says, “I want tobacco and ganja and hard wood with nice grain, and a knife that will never dull, and a wife with no voice, and children who will make me rich. And I wish for riches, horses and palaces and cheeses and wines and mistresses, and I wish to have power over the religious men and the politicians.”

“Okeedokee,” says the genie. “That’s it, then, and have a nice day,” and he disappears into the dissipating fog of three wishes granted. The man on the short red stool stands up and looks around him. He is surrounded by wealth: beautiful fine grained wood, a knife more splendid, shining and sharp than anything he’s ever seen before in his life, a wife who places a heated cloth on his tired shoulders and leans against him: she smells of sandalwood and patchouli, and he is aware that his hardwood is harder than he’s ever known it to be. He blushes, and the sky is a hot blue with white sand and red light streaking across the sky where the carrier jets pass, where they will land and collect his goods, his wood carvings, grown larger now, complex, some as big as a city street, and he is overcome by visions.  Hours pass, then days and weeks.

One day, finding himself alone in the garden where the heavy fruit is ripe and the afternoon is sleepy, he steps outside of his house, his palace with the ornate hand-carved hard wood gates and he begins calling for his wife, over and over again, as the sun goes down.  She does not answer: without a voice, she does not pray; without a voice, she does not sing to the children; without a voice, she does not lean against him; without a voice, she does not lay the warm cloth on his tired back. After many hours or days or years of looking, he finds himself lying in the dark, waiting for sleep to take his wishes away.

Mothers, daughters, sisters – a Christmas story

I had a happy rooster once. He was bright and loud and disappeared one mid-winter day just before Christmas. This was long enough ago that when I look at my legs in my memory they are thin, with pale fine hair on light brown skin. Kid legs. I can see my kid legs and they are not here any more. I still have the tin tree ornament nena gave me to replace the happy rooster, though.

The vatos who inhabited my sister’s dreams in seventh grade dressed better than I did. Their hair was shiny, remember that, hita? My sister (who is actually my daughter but we didn’t tell her yet) kept pictures of all the boys she loved for about a year, and then she stopped. When you marry a bad boy, it’s better not to look back, is the way I always heard it. But later, when we are all comfortable again and certain things have been forgotten, we can get out the box of pictures. For years, she kept them in a cigar box, but she moved them into a metal dental tool box she got when she was dating that crazy periodontist. Hector Altamirano, moved here with his family from Mexico City when Hector was 6; his mom cleaned houses in a damn good neighborhood, got Hector the grades to get into the right schools, and next thing you know it’s rinse and spit and a piece of prime real estate in the Silver Lace neighborhood. When Hector and Zola broke up, she moved to San Antonio and opened an office as an investment banker. She knew as much as anyone else, was how she figured it.

One day when Zola was still too little to talk about family, she and I were lying together on the porch in front of my mother’s house. We had our heads together and we were looking inside of a wooden box with metal hinges. Inside the box was a mouse. The mouse was small, probably immature, with tiny white paws and smooth brown fur. We were lying on our stomachs, cracking the box open enough to let some light in. The mouse inside looked out, sneezed and trembled, wrung his mouse hands together. I think he’s praying, said Zola. No, I said, too logical and mature at 19 to let even a mouse have prayers. Is too, said Zola, and then she started to cry. Big baby tears. The hinged door fell open, baby Zola ran screaming and crying into the house. I followed her, and the mouse’s prayers were immediately answered.

At Christmas time, we alternated between Christmas trees, glitter, chunks of coal and runaway hysteria. Nena knew the importance of light in wintertime, especially in cold winters when nothing is enough. Especially in winters when we are moving from one secret place to another, and there is never enough to put deposits on all the utilities. Moving is damn expensive, really hard on the poor, but we are the ones who have to do it most often. Sometimes we played the midnight mover, packed our bags and left with rent owing. I can’t say I knew what else to do.

If you take a cold five year old, dress her in yellow pajamas, the kind with the feet in and printed ducks and geese all over, then wrap her in a sleeping bag in a cold room with an unlit fire, then you sneak out while she is sleeping and buy a fire log at the mini mart with the three dollars in change that you had been saving in a pickle jar, then you light the fire and wake the little girl up and she sees the old artificial tree with the scrubby plastic ornaments in the firelight at midnight and you tell her santa has come at last, she believes you, and you believe too, for a little while, until the child is asleep again, and you are holding her against your chest for warmth. For her, for you, for Christmas.

The mudgoblin’s box

Here is the box. Open it carefully. Some of  the names are unfamiliar. I’ve mixed them up and changed them, not to deceive or confuse, just to make them more true.  Some of the stories may be about me, or about you.  Take the box and make it your own.

Between reading this note from your abuelita and opening the box was a period of exactly seven years. Seven years of not knowing, seven years without a backwards glance. The box was hardly even dusty.

STORY THE FIRST – READ ME then come back for more.

Watermelon goblin

  

I put a chunk of Spam on a slice of bread. I put Miracle Whip on top of the Spam, sprinkle sugar on that, and cover it with another slice of bread. Then I press it down hard and wrap it tight in Saran Wrap. When I take it out at lunch time, it is warm and the sugar has melted into the Miracle Whip. This taste is like ham baked in brown sugar with pineapple. Only without the pineapple.  I always have a Fanta Orange with this sandwich, usually warm. Then I go back to work.

There is a roller coaster back there, behind that fence. You can’t see it now cause it’s in pieces. Last month the big circle part of the coaster hit a bad chunk with 12 cars and 27 people on it and the chunk hurled out two of them. The rest were okay. So it’s behind the fence right now for repairs.

Last night I’m at drumming circle with those belicana with the good smoke. I’m wearing shiny black shoes like church only they are not shiny long, mostly covered with dust. I dance til my shoes fall off and then I think this is like revival, like someone hit me in the head and the spirit of Jesus moved in and knocked me on my ass.

I look in the mirror this morning and I think I chipped a tooth. My tongue is worried about this a lot, but the rest of me says it is something to forget about. It’s a tooth, just a tooth, that’s what the rest of me is saying, like I got all my aunts and uncles and grandmothers sitting in the back of my head in tribunal. I decide it’s time to go home for awhile. Leave the roller coaster to someone with a better head for cheap vodka.

I’m hitchhiking now and it’s pretty hot but that doesn’t seem too bad. There’s a roadside stand about 20 miles from here with good frybread. Usually they got ice for the cokes, so I get off there and say goodbye thanks to the truck driver who brought me from Cañoncito to here. His name is Sigmund and he wants to talk about cigars, but I know what cigars mean to high-talking truck drivers, so I figure it’s time to just sit down on the side of the road with some beans and a warm piece of bread and a cold coke and think about the meaning of life.

As I’m thinking about the meaning of life, I see a lady come up to the stand and order one frybread, a bowl of green chile stew, and extra napkins please. She’s wearing sandals and I can see her toes ‘cause she’s standing maybe only two-three feet away from me. Her toenails are a light blue color, sky blue, with little white daisies on them. She looks at me looking at her feet and I smile at her, hey, being friendly. She smiles back, pretty nice. In a little while, her husband comes by and they ask where I’m going.

 Up north, I say, Four Corners.

 We can take you as far as Chaco, they say.

Ok, you’re on.

And I’m in the wagon with them, sitting in the back, admiring the air conditioning.

There’s a story everybody tells about a box that should never be opened, and in the story of course somebody always opens it and then things happen. This is a story told by all the people of the world, is what my grandmother always said. In some stories the box is made of gold, or pewter, or brass. In some it is made of woven rushes, or thin porcelain or wood. In my grandmother’s version, the box is made of mud, and inside the box lives a storyteller also made of mud. He is a mud goblin, with reaching hands and a large slobbering mouth. He shoves small children and the frail elderly into his mouth and his breath is like shit and sugar and bad foot smell all rolled into one. When children eat too much candy, it is the mudgoblin who comes after them in their sleep.

The mudgoblin does not live in the small mud box anymore; we all know that. The mudgoblin was let out who knows how long ago and today he lives with us, all of us. I see him sometimes on the western slope of the watermelon mountain. I see his open mouth and his shoveling hands and I see the lights of the city. You’ve seen them, sometimes the lights of the city that used to always be bright and singing, sometimes now they almost disappear in the mud and dust as the hobgoblin sits on the mountain side stirring up his appetite for small cars and big fat SUVs.

I make my sandwiches out of white bread, not brown, not fry bread or tortillas. Cheese doesn’t work too well on these, gets a little stinky when you been carrying it around in a sack all day.

When we get to the Chaco turnoff, the lady with the blue toenails and her husband let me off and drive down the long dirt road until they are out of sight. They leave a long breath of dust in the road behind them. I watch it for about an hour, eat my sandwich, and then walk a mile or so up the road before I get picked up by Ray Sandoval, the cousin of a friend of my uncle Jim. It’s a good ride all the way until nightfall, even though behind me I can still see the goblin dancing in the raised dust, and the blind spot where lights used to shine as the moon comes out. The edge of the road is disappearing, like a chunk of roller coaster, like a piece of a car flying through the night sky and landing metal-dead face-down, a sudden piece of quiet on the sand, still warm, still almost airborne.

Gordon

In a small fishing village on the coast of Baja California, there lived a young man. The young man’s name was Gordon, and he was a musician. He played the piccolo, the piano and the flute. He also played the harmonium, pipe organ, and the xylophone. He was incomparable on the guitar, the violin, and the cello. In fact, every instrument he touched he played as if he’d known it all his life.

 

Gordon was a talented young man. Coincidentally, he was also the most beautiful person who ever lived, with curly chestnut hair, eyes of sea green and skin the color of honey. Although he was a brilliant musician, when he played, the young women of his village hardly heard him at all. They were too busy staring at his honey-gold skin and dreaming of wrapping his chestnut hair around their fingers.

 

Gordon never noticed them at all, so intent was he on making and playing music. Gordon wanted to write a symphony composed of every instrument ever played since the beginning of all time. He collected exotic instruments – the didgeridoo, the kazoo, the shakade, the lute – and learned each one of them just as quick as that.

 

One day in the marketplace, an old woman in a faded blue caftan with a shawl on her head told him of an instrument that he did not yet have.

 

“It makes a sound,” she said, “somewhere between a whistle and a hum. With it you can render the sound of bees buzzing, and horses’ hooves, a baby crying, a pounding surf, the laughter of children, and then again the bees buzzing.”

 

“What is the name of this instrument?” asked Gordon, in quite a tizzy.

“I can’t tell you that,” said the old woman, and she winked at him a little wickedly or maybe a little crazily, it was hard to tell which.

 

“I will only tell you where you may find it. The rest is up to you.”  She leaned over and whispered into his ear. ”It is in Yakutz.”

 

Then she kissed him on his beautiful smooth lips, said “If only I was young . . .” and disappeared down an alley before he could say, “But where is Yakutz?”

 

Gordon decided then and there to go to Yakutz for this miraculous instrument that could the render the sound of bees buzzing, and horses’ hooves, a baby crying, a pounding surf, the laughter of children, and again the bees buzzing. He packed his bag (a striped Guatemalan bag that was deep and sturdy) and strapped it to his back.  As he left the town just at sunset, a wailing could be heard in the streets behind him as the women of the village realized that their handsome young man had left them without even as much as a glance from his gorgeous green eyes.

 

Young Gordon went to India and Peru and Paris and Beijing. He went to the Bahamas, Australia, the Yukon and the Sandwich Islands. Everywhere he went he asked “Where is Yakutz?” (which he could not find on any map anywhere). 

 

But everywhere he went the people he met were so stunned by his beauty that they would say anything to get him to stay with them. In Italy they called him “bellisimo.” In Guadalajara he was called “el guapo.”  In San Francisco they called him “honey,” and they called him all the time.

 

He worked his way around the world in a jiggery pattern (Gordon had a horrible sense of direction). Everywhere he stopped, he made his living playing exquisite music on exotic instruments. No one ever listened, though, because although he was a brilliant musician, his beauty eclipsed everything else. And everywhere he went, he asked every stranger about an instrument that could make the sound of bees buzzing, and then horses’ hooves, a baby crying, a pounding surf, the laughter of children, and then again the bees buzzing.

 

Gradually, Gordon became aware that he had a problem (he was beautiful and talented, but he was not quick). People were lying to him left and right, promising to take him to Yakutz (which more than once turned out to be a time share on one tropical beach or another) and then trying to seduce him instead. He became discouraged, and took himself to a small dude ranch in northern Utah, where he arranged to play the fiddle and teach clog dancing to pay for his room and board.

 

One evening he sat on a fencepost in an empty corral and played his fiddle with a sad heart. The corral was on a broad mesa with a view that went all the way to Wyoming (he assumed), and the moon was high and full. He heard coyotes howling not far away, and he thought they were crying with him. He wondered if the instrument he was seeking could make a sound like howling coyotes or belching frogs. He played even more sadly as he though of Yakutz.

 

Walking back along the moonlit trail to the dude ranch, young Gordon came upon an old woman walking slowly with a cane. She wore a babushka, and as he drew closer, Gordon saw that she was blind.

 

“You play the fiddle more brilliantly than anyone I’ve ever known,” said the old woman. “Except perhaps one, an old man I knew as a child who could play any musical instrument as if he’d done it all his life.”

 

Gordon thanked her, and they walked together in silence for a moment.

 

“You are a young man,” the old woman said at last. “What can possibly make you play so sadly?”

 

Gordon told her of his search for the one musical instrument he had yet to find, the one that could render the sound of bees buzzing, and horses’ hooves, a baby crying, a pounding surf, the laughter of children, and again the bees buzzing. He told her of his travels around the world, and of how sad he was that no one who saw his face would listen to him play or help him in his search.

 

The old woman listened without interrupting and then asked “Where did the old woman say you could find this wonderful instrument?”

 

Gordon told her, and the old woman said, in great excitement, “Why, I am from Yakutz! Let me take you there. What a fine time we will have!”

 

Gordon hesitated for a minute, thinking of past offers and hoping that the old woman’s Yakutz would not be another Club Med experience. Looking at her, though, he saw again that she was blind, and so they went to Yakutz together.

 

Yakutz is in Siberia, you know, and it is cold cold cold. The Yakuvitz keep warm with potatoes and vodka, with red-cheeked women and with music and dance.

 

How they danced in Yakutz! How they drank! Gordon was spun from dancer to dancer and his glass was filled again and again until he was as blind as the old woman, who sat in the corner with a potato in one hand and a glass of vodka in the other.

 

Late that night, Gordon lay on the floor with the room spinning wildly in a vodka dance around him. As the room settled and the Yakuvitz sank to the floor, where they slept, Gordon heard a sound. First he heard the sound of bees buzzing, and then horses’ hooves, a baby crying, a pounding surf, the laughter of children, and then at last again the bees buzzing, more faintly this time, as if they were buzzing away.

 

“What is that I hear?” said Gordon and he tried to get up on his knees, but he fell down again (because he was terribly drunk, to tell the truth).

 

“It is a Jew’s harp,” said a voice, and Gordon turned his head to see lying next to him a beautiful Russian girl, with red cheeks, flashing black eyes, big strong arms and the barest trace of a mustache on her upper lip. She smiled at him, and he stared back, entranced by the gap between her front teeth and the dimple on the left side of her face. She tried to sit up, but was just as drunk as he, and so they went to sleep, with their heads touching, on the floor underneath the table.

 

In the morning, the old woman introduced her granddaughter to Gordon, and was very pleased that they’d gotten to know each other on the floor underneath the table the night before. Her name was Valenka, and she hugged him with both her strong arms and gave him the Jew’s harp from a pocket under her apron.

 

Gordon put the Jew’s harp in his mouth and played. The cold morning air was filled with the sound of bees buzzing and horses’ hooves, and Gordon took the harp from his mouth and smiled bigger than he’d ever smiled before. Valenka smiled back, and Gordon realized that she was smiling at him and his Jew’s harp and his music, not at his most beautiful face, and he felt himself blush all the way to his toes.

 

That evening at sunset they were married. They played many an exotic instrument at the wedding feast and danced ’til the sun came up the next day. Afterwards they left Yakutz and traveled to Kyoto, where they’d heard a Zen master made a Jew’s harp of bamboo, and that with it one could make a sound like the beating of hummingbird wings. They didn’t know the name of the Zen master, but they were sure they could find him, if only they looked long enough.

 

©1995 Teresa Phillips. May not be used without permission.

The Mark of El Zorrillo

 

There’s the way, the truth, and the light beer in the cooler. The truth is that the teenager is still attached by an invisible umbilical, umbilical rage; inside the adolescent mind the naked baby picture is still always on display for all of the aunts, uncles, cousins, abuelitos, and everybody knows everything about me so why won’t you all just leave me alone?

Or at least so I gather from the thousands of myspace confessionals where they are all safely contained. In that vigorous and embarrassing cyber playpen, the acne is hidden, although excruciating social pain and suffering is on display on a strangely volitional level. I gave my 15-year-old a mood rug. It changes colors depending on who’s lying on it, who’s looking, who’s commenting on who’s looking at whoever is lying on it. He’s constantly changing the subject.

In Kuala Lumpur there are no skunks, there are no skunks in Malaka either, or in any Polynesian islands. The skunk is an American animal, altogether. The skunk is an American animal, related to the cat, who lives with us, not against us.

The skunk is not a Christian animal, the skunk in fact is opposed to all forms of organized religion and is more likely to express his discontent in the vicinity of churches and large families for whom religion is a loud or overt practice. Of particular note, the American skunk is especially offended by knuckle-dragging bible-thumpers, and has been known to both spray and leave graffiti on the fences and sidewalks of known fundamentalists.

Fundamentalism gnaws away at the insides of skunks, gives them indigestion and chronic rage. A skunk with indigestion and chronic rage is an animal to be avoided. And since skunks are indigenous to the Americas, and since they have so clear an aversion to certain religious types, and since relocating the skunks didn’t seem right, fair or possible, the fundamentalists were eventually told that they would have to leave, find a home where they would not offend these first Americans, and where they could practice the fine art of intolerance among animals whose glands were not quite as powerful or pervasive as those of the native American skunk.

The skunks came to every council meeting in every village, city, county and other governing body making their point until the fundamentalists got the message and packed their bags and their air fresheners and got on their arc and floated away. The skunks threw flowers at every ship in every port and had champagne to celebrate the improvement in air quality that came in with the sea breeze.

The skunks elected Natalie Snood to be president, first woman president ever in this mighty nation, and she, being the radical type, declared a renewal of the bill of rights and the constitution of the United States of America and a protection of her citizenry and they had a big party with big multicultural stew – haggis and hummis and mulligatawny and lutefisk and chimichangas and sashimi and little chewy bits of gristle from a small country that not many people know about, and everybody had a fabulous time. BB King played, and Taj Mahal, and Jellyroll Morton, and some of the ghosts of the Grateful Dead. The clouds piled up and there was a big rain, and the big rain soaked into the dry ground, and the kingdom was released, just like the fisher king story. Things began to grow healthy again instead of just big for the first time in who knows how long. Mr. Bag-O-Squash wandered from town to town delivering his zucchinis and his crooknecks and his little squash blossoms, which are delicious fried.

 The next crop to come along was crazy strong women, who could sing and demand and keep the peace, and men who could think and praise, and children who could listen and learn, and teenagers with pretty clear skin and the habit of giggling and exposing only the most charming of adolescent secrets – little dreams, the shapes of clouds, the incubating poetry of the very young – and then a fine strong crop of elders who acquired dignity and respect, and then the wee babies.

And while we’re at it the skunks started a national orchestra and a choir and theatre and art gallery and they put one in every single little village, and in every single big city, they put a bunch of them. Then the skunks started a greenish manufacturing plant for bicycles and trains, and since these are hippie skunks, they turned the freeways into fields and planted mile upon mile of tulips and day lilies and marigold and cosmos, and in the medians they grew corn and chile and watermelon and beans and potatoes and tea and rice. What a wonderful thing to have the skunks in charge, everyone said. They changed the national anthem and put up flags with pictures of Natalie Snood and then everyone went to our teenagers’ commencements, and gave them presents, and told them that the best times are about to begin.