A Night in the Computer Lab: An Adventure of Benjamin Dobbs

Dear Reader,
It has come to my attention that interesting things happen to me. These events are so interesting, in fact, that, with only a small amount of exaggeration and re-arrangement, they can be turned into stories, better yet, adventures. Within them you find me...but not playing myself, no, that is left to Benjamin Dobbs. You will find me as the author.
And now that I have finished it I must warn you it is long and bland.

The day had gone by quickly, thank goodness. It hadn't been a bad day at all. In fact, if it had not gone by so quickly Benjamin should not, probably would not have minded. But there were several reasons that he had been peaceless for a good portion of the day. Waking up at seven in the morning after going to bed past twelve-thirty had not helped. He did not blame himself too much for his lack of sleep, though. He had stayed up to catch up on history reading so he could do well on the quiz this morning. He had just finished the three chapters -- some seventy or so pages of text -- but had not yet taken the online quizzes which most of the in-class quiz material was drawn from. So he bumbled about, not even awake enough to fall into things, and climbed back into bed, setting his watch for seven-thirty "just in case" he fell asleep while praying. There had not been a morning that week that he had not, except for the previous Sunday, when he had not taken a time to pray in the morning at all. He would stay alert anywhere from five to thirty seconds, and then he would be resting a still head on his hands, eyes closed. Another five to thirty seconds, and he would sit back up again, forcing his eyes back open, and try to remember what he had been praying about.

But this morning Benjamin did not have this problem for very long. He fell fast asleep again, waking up one minute till his alarm was due to sound.

He had been fairly alert taking the online quizzes, and in history he got an eighty. It was better than he had been doing, but he wished he had known the meager bit more needed to get him a hundred and actually help his eighty-three. After history he went straight to Mills, the science building, and entered the computer lab. Here he checked his email, Facebook, and blogs, for the second time that day. The first had been in the few moments the computer took to warm up before he took the quizzes. There was nothing important new, so he turned his attention to his assassin. His previous pursuer, an upperclassman femme-fatale, had been killed by watergun the day before. He had been happy about not having to play mouse to her cat any more -- she had at least four confirmed kills, and two sisters to help her track down targets. Her replacement was a freshman who Benjamin thought he vaguely recognized from her Great Scots photo. After working on his Physics lab writeup, due that day, he checked his three computerized social networks and headed upstairs to physics. He entered at one end of the building, having climbed the two floors on the outside stairwell from the computer labs on the bottom floor. Just before the hall reached the center of the building and turned stood two students. One was in his Physics class, and belonged there at nine-fifty-five, because she was in front of the lab that served as classroom, and class started at ten. The other did not belong there, because she was talking to the other girl as if they were friends, was not in Physics, and looked suspiciously like his new assassin. Not yet realizing the moment of the occasion, Benjamin decided to play it cool, and leaned against the wall, not approaching. The suspected killer, short and blonde with glasses that had not been present in the Great Scots photo, hugged the other and moved his way. Playing it cool dictated he walk nonchalantly back outside and leg it down the stairs and back to the computer lab to safety.

But Benjamin was a man of habit, and so he did not consider leaving his heavy bookbag, jacket, and certainly not the zip-open murse containing his sidearm behind him to give him more speed. Nor did he rush past Dr. Petcher on the stairs without calling hello. At this point, the adrenaline had kicked in, and Benjamin, instead of heading down another flight, the quickest way to the lab, decided he needed to use up as much time as possible -- if he could get into the classroom after ten-o-clock, he was safe. No assassinations could occur in class after the official starting time. So, with one glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that his pursuer was only halfway down the stairs, he jogged along the front of the building towards the main entrance in the center. Two rather large obstacles blocked his path. Both were students, and it took an "excuse me" and a bit of suggestive shoving to get them out of the way. The moments lost without thought to his pursuer were his worst and final mistake. He heard hard footsteps behind him, began to accelerate on past the main entrance towards Carter, still carrying his heavy load, and was shot down in a hail of di-hydrogen monoxide before he hit his full speed. As he came to a halt he calmly considered and rejected the possibility that the shots had hit his bookbag and not his body -- it took a direct hit for a kill. But he had felt water on his neck and shoulders, so he turned (dropping his bags now that it was no use) and, jovially extending his hand, introduced himself to his assassin, calling her by name.

They began to pull out their contracts. Killing people was so complicated. "We need a pen," noted Benjamin. "Here," he jogged over to his abandoned pack. "I have only pencils. Will they do?"
"Oh, sure. How did you know I had you?" she asked as they both pulled out their contracts.
"Oh," said Benjamin, and paused, partly to catch his breath, partly to try to think of something effective to say, "we have our ways," he finished, and signed in a surprisingly shaky hand, glad she was saying something to a passing friend rather than watching.

Then it was back to Physics to confess to his friend, hallmate, and the un-proclaimed heart of the Sutherland Alliance, that he had failed, died, endangered the next man in the chain, and was generally reprobate and a sad sight to see. Benjamin's friend was merciful, so Benjamin turned to the friend of his assassin and frowned. After a few poor attempts at teasing her for helping what turned out to be her teammate in soccer with a kill, he turned to the front and class began. He could hardly pay attention, and realized the experience of being assassinated, while it had felt unimportant at the time, had filled him with nervous energy. He thought of at least four ways he could have dramatically escaped, disarmed, and/or killed his pursuer.

After that he skipped chapel to study a little and go to lunch early. He had skipped two chapel's already that week. Normally there were only three in all, but this week there had been extra, because the college was having a conference on marriage and sex. Benjamin felt that today's, a Q and A separated along gender lines, would probably be the least beneficial and most likely to get a bit seedy. So, he checked his email, Facebook, and blogs on his roommate's computer, paced the room, reloaded his backpack with new books, and headed to the Mills computer lab again, where he worked on his physics writeup for about ten minutes before going to lunch. There he read some physics and watched previewers on tour as he waited for the Great Hall to open.

Driven to prayer by happening upon two people in conflict, he began his rather large meal. Within a few minutes the Great Hall was filled with girls. Apparently their chapel had let out earlier than the boy's. Benjamin joked with the girls who sat at his table that the previewers must be amazed that there really were a lot more girls than guys at Covenant. Eventually the boys did arrive, the wise directed the conversation away from the discussion in chapel, and Benjamin returned to his room to study.

After traveling through a misty period of room and hall events, including escorting a hallmate to class with drawn sidearm, he returned to the Mills computer lab to work on his Physics writeup. A friend from Physics was there. "You aren't in a good mood," he commented after Benjamin picked up a calculator when it slipped from its pertch on his desk. Benjamin helped him a little, worked on his own writeup a lot, and then left to go find something else to do. Another friend, an education major and frequenter of 508 greeted him in the hallway. "Are you having a bad day?" he asked. Benjamin supposed he might be.

Thankfully, he was back in the lab within a minute, driven by guilt, to look up the ESVbible-online and read a few chapters. He was quite distraught about his spiritual state, lacking fervor, and prayed fervently but not very long about it. Then he went next door to the computer science commons, across from his Calculus classroom, and fell asleep. He slept for about fifteen minutes, and then went into Calculus. The Flying Dutchman, as they called the good Doctor of Mathematics, was retiring at the end of the semester, and Benjamin, for one, liked him. He was quite a comedian when he wished to be. During class he made one bald comment, one joke about his old age, and told several stories about the Dutch, one of which involved singing an old Dutch song. The teaching portion of the class was not nearly so entertaining, but Benjamin paid moderately good attention, took lots of notes as usual, and then headed upstairs for science seminar in the physics commons. He got a coke from the fridge, a little bag of chewy fruit snacks with 100% daily value of vitamin C, smiled at all the upperclassmen and few freshmen in the room, and took his place on the floor with his back leaning against a table just as the week's speaker, one of the two Physics professors, prepared to begin.

It was agreed that the Physics department had been quite in touch to discuss dating the same week as the marriage seminar, and an hour of half-lifes, neutron bombardment, and six-day vs. six- "day " creation debate later, Benjamin went to finish his lab writeup. Unfortunately, there were still some problems with the graphs, so he emailed his partner and good friend, and went to work out before dinner. After a good shower, two email checks and a phone call to try to contact his partner, he went and ate, mostly just listening to the interesting discussion of Agatha Christy novels, which he enjoyed profusely. By the end of the meal, however, he had turned the conversation to Alfred Hitchcock, a subject he was more familiar with. It was chilly outside, so he soon returned to the room. There he checked his email, and, having no word, went upstairs to visit his lab partner. After some conversation, looking at pictures, and listening to music, they discussed the problem with the graphs, and Benjamin went back to finish his writeup. He copied some music from his roommate's computer to his thumb drive, put his headphones in their case, packed the books his would need for a night of studying, and headed out, taking the back way behind Founders, and ascending the steep hill to Mills. He used the auxiliary computer lab, beside the first, this time, because it was completely empty, and began to set up his things.

It soon became apparent that he had not brought his headphones, and it was a shame to have an evening of studying without headphones, so he ran hard back to Mac, got them off the dresser where he had left them, and ran back again, completely out of breath by the time he was done.

He emailed one of his dinner-fellows pictures of what she had done to the gun Benjamin's roommate had shot her with (she had crushed it with one hand, quite to pieces) and more pictures recounting how Benjamin's other roommate had glued it back together, black paint, white Sutherland S and all. It even fired, though it leaked like crazy.

Once he prepared the music -- a combination of Enya, the Village soundtrack, and music from the old computer game Crusader -- he set to work on the lab. The problem, as usual, was disorganized recording of data on his part. It took about two hours to figure it out and fix it. For breaks, he looked up cool pictures of spaceships, checked his email a dozen times, and completed his weekly PE writeup:

I was under minor stress this week. Dearth of sleep was the main one...
...My sleep schedule was difficult to maintain this week...

The best part was putting mild humor and inside jokes into the text.

Nutrition was probably my best area this week. I ate less food in the Great Hall than usual, as I was avoiding it because of assassins. I ate multiple meals, most of them lunches, in my room, and Friday night I ate Chinese off the mountain.

His other roommate's mother had been in town and they had invited him to dinner with them. He still had a good meal's worth leftover in the hall refridgerator -- or at least it had better still be there.

...I only ran for ten minutes Friday, outdoors across campus, including heavy inclines and stairs. (There wasn't any reason to let that sprint go to waste, and, counting running up the hill from the gym, back down it to return the pink towel he had accidentally walked out with, and back up the hill again the Mac, he had run ten minutes).

Finally, at about eleven, Benjamin finished the writeup, none the worse for wear, and commanded it to print. There was a dearth of printing, so he went to the printer and eyed it imperiously. It was complaining about an unexpected paper size, so he hit the large green button titled "go" and waited. After thinking for a while, it decided to go into a rest cycle, so he hit "go" again, and it went.

First it printed out an essay on physical education. Then it printed out a psychology outline. It continued with the entire schedule of Fall 2007 classes offered at Covenant. A paper on Bartok was next, followed by the definitions of words like Borazine and Thiacyanines. Finally, the crisp graphics of a Physics department lab writeup emerged facedown. But alas, it was a friend's. The next was Benjamin's however, and he snatched it up eagerly.

CENTRIPETAL FORCE

read the title.

Dr. Petcher
Box 625

That was going to be a problem. Benjamin was no Dr. Petcher (though his mailbox number was 625). It seemed he had forgotten to replace his Physics professor's humorous placeholder with his own name. It took only a moment to correct the error, but a check of the pages of the new printoff showed that, despite working all afternoon to fix it, he had still left two glaring errors on his graph. Congratulating himself on acquiring so much scratch paper, he printed off a third version, and took it upstairs to the Physics commons where it was to be turned in. The commons was locked for the weekend, of course, but that was all right because the date printed automatically on the paper -- he could prove he had completed it on time.

Returning to the lab, Benjamin crossed the third floor bridge, which looked down on the stairs and the first floor, and out of great panes of glass through the front and back of the building, off both sides of the mountain. To the front the blunt, broad, brick face of the chapel, shot through the center with a streak of stained glass, blocked most of the view of Chattanooga. To the back trees gave way to trees, to the quiet valley and lights, range upon range of mountains, and the dimming horizon where the sun had just gone down. Quite pleased with himself, Benjamin returned to the lab, deciding he ought to write about his exploits.

And so he did.

Timothy and the Grenobles, Part II

Dear Readers,

It is continued, but not yet finished. I do not apologize for putting it down, for tonight has become tomorrow, and I must sleep.

"Well, which way is it?" asked Lisa, for she was an educated young lady, and knew well-enough that the first part of getting somewhere is going in the right direction.
"Which ever way you go, so long as, at the end of it, you are home," they replied.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, the same way she always wanted to when she had to pretend there were numbers that were less than none.
"If I go that way, I will go home," she said, pointing over her shoulder into the woods, "but it will not be your home."
"How can it be yours and not ours?" they asked.
"Take off!" commanded Timothy, pointing at the boot of the Grenoble that stood beside him.
"We cannot," they replied. "We cannot take off our boots until we are home, and," they said, their voices dropping to the taut gust of a winter's wind through the trees, "we cannot go home until you do."
"Let's go home, Timothy," said Lisa, sadly, for she felt very sorry for the Grenobles, though she could not understand why they should have such difficulty.
"Take off!" He shouted, and, standing, he whacked at the boot. The Grenoble watched him silently.
"They say they can when we get home. It's almost dinnertime anyway. Let's go home."
"Take off at home?"
"Yes!"
"Come home!" he called to the Grenobles, and, as if he were sailing into a gale, he plunged into the woods.
A burst of wind followed him, as Lisa clambered up the bank. As she too plunged through the woods the wind twisted and rippled her dress, and she loved the cool breeze in the warm, damp air. Timothy stopped to watch a line of ants climb a highway set deep in a crack in the bark of a venerable pine and looked back to make sure his companions were following. Lisa checked as well, and saw, to her surprise, that the Grenobles were skipping, sprinting, twirling through the woods. One moment, they were walking soberly straight ahead. A burst of wind caught them; and with their arms held arched behind them like those of a ballerina, they too burst forward. The wind changed direction, dipping to the left, and the Grenobles swayed and dipped as well. The wind swirled, spinning Lisa's hair around her forehead, and the Grenobles twirled with it, limbs acting out the parts of eddies and currents. Timothy let out a cry of joy for he knew not what.
For when he looked at the Grenobles, he saw the wind.
Both Grenobles stopped, and Timothy began again his homeward romp. So still they stood, their limbs rustling for a moment longer than they moved, and so still was the wind, that Lisa turned to look over her shoulder at them.
"Have you remembered the way home?"
"We have found him," they replied in whispers. Then, all at once, they leapt forward, flying through the air, and, though she could barely see for the torrent of wind that stung her eyes, hurled leaves every direction at once, and threw her into a run towards home, she thought that their legs still stretched below them all the way to the ground, and they were running, but perhaps it was only the forest floor caught up in the wake of the wind beneath them.
She knew then that they were not mimicking the wind with their dance. The woods all about were still, until they moved. There was no rush in the distance. The wind mimicked them, or perhaps, stranger still, Lisa thought they could be making it themselves.
On she ran, and the sober thoughts in her mind and on her face melted when she heard Timothy squealing with delight as the wind caught him. She laughed as well, and her laugh was small and weak compared to the laughter of the Grenobles, for it was all the roar of the great gusts, the rustle of a thousand leaves, the singing of many great chords, none of which could be completely separated from another, and so could not so much be said to blend into as to be the same song.
So the Grenobles sang and so they danced their way through the woods.
Until, not nearly long enough and some time later, the two children ran laughing and breathless into a small glade, the last few bursts of a wind-storm sighing about them. They did not remember such a place -- where the trees grew thicker around, but thinner in number, and the new grass saluted the sky despite the leaves that laughed and lounged about their upright blades, and where the wind dipped down to mingle and chatter with a brook. The Grenobles arrived not long after the wind, and skipped their hands across its surface like stones before plunging their faces into it. They followed the brook, socializing with the water, until a drop in its path sent them somersaulting head over heels down into a pool. They fell with grace and beauty, spinning and twisting like a wind that has lost whatever course it was following, until they fell, limp-limbed, their bark streaked with rivulets of water, and were still at last.
Timothy had laughed a great deal more than Lisa when the Grenobles fell over the brook, for she was concerned they would be bruised by the fall, while Timothy had no doubt that anything so funny and exciting could hurt anyone.
"I've never been here before," said Lisa, concern shading her eyes. She cast her gaze back and forth, with each little gasp of air, and her lip quivered, for she did not like being lost at all.
Timothy stuck a finger in the water cautiously, roared at the cold, and ran up to a big, mossy old tree and caught it in an embrace, his arms not circling round a tenth of it.
"Aaaah!" he shouted, pushing with his feet, and Lisa, bound to pout if she was to be lost, scolded rather than laughed.
"You can't move that!" she said. For it looked very much as if Timothy were trying to pick the great tree up by the roots.
"Mmmmm!" He bit it fiercely.
There was a great splashing sound, and a burst of wind flew by. The Grenobles had leapt from their rest with a great flourish, and stood, now perfectly dry, before them, as a mist of water that they had flung off fell on Lisa and Timothy. Timothy turned at the sound and the gentlest of drumming on his back by the water, and leaned his face on the side of the tree to stare at them, whishing air in and out of his reddened cheeks, his eyes soft and tired.
"We are here," said one Grenoble.
Will you be home?" asked the other.
All was still.
"Home! Take off!" shouted Timothy, his eyes coming awake again, and Lisa jumped, startled. She did not know how, but she knew that whatever was happening was very important the Grenobles, more important than what had happened before.
"Is this your home?" she asked, looking around.
"We are here." They both said.
"Where is here?"
"Will you be home?"
"I most certainly would if you hadn't made us lost!" she cried.
"Then be home...look," and they walked, stiff and straight, no more than a rustle accompanying them, to the edge of the brook. There, was a pool. Though the water on either side leapt and danced, the center was still. Even more curious, Lisa saw, was that the water ran both ways away, and neither into the pool, as if it were the source of the whole rushing brook. Yet it lay as still as if it were ice, and through it the children could see, as if through clean yet gently swaying glass, a great well. It was the open trunk of a great tree, which reached almost to the surface, so that any ripple would expose the uppermost fingers of wood to the air. But nothing disturbed the water, and the well might as well have been a picture, but for the spring in its bottom. Playing with the water, rolling the current, rippling the inner walls of the trunk spun out a jet of water, Yet, as you, dear reader, I hope understand by now, the surface of the water was not disturbed. This truth struck the children just as often and odd as it has struck you.
"Staiws!" Timothy saw them, curving down around the inside of the trunk, carved wooden stairs, half-logs, so that only their tops were flat. Down and down they went until the blue of the water became too deep to distinguish the brown of the wood.
"What's down there?" cried Timothy, looking up perplexedly at the Grenobles.
"The spring."
"No, but, beneath it?" asked Lisa, looking up at them just as Timothy looked back down, sober-faced, to examine this "spring".
"We cannot go there, so it is no use saying," they replied.
Lisa stood up straight, crossed her arms, and pouted. "What is the matter?" she asked in her most fearsome voice -- a quiet, piercing one that began every word too quiet to hear and thrilled through it so that it resounded with crushing urgency at the end. Timothy almost fell into the pool at the sound of it, for it bode badly for him when she was angry. He took a few steps away, casting about for a hiding place, or hiding person. (A hiding person is just as good, if not better, than a hiding place, for, even if you are found with them, big sisters cannot take you away from a hiding person, so you can forget your big sister and play with their buttons while they hold you).
"Nothing," said the Grenobles.
"But there is something the matter! It is past our dinner! We need to go home. Come on, Timothy!"
Timothy wailed and ran behind his great tree.
"We need to go home," said the Grenobles.
"Then go! You're wind...like wind...go!"
"We need to go down the water," said one.
"We need you to stop the spring," said the other.
Once more Lisa knew they were in deadly earnest.
"Stop it?" Lisa pitied them. She could not leave them. Besides, Timothy, she could tell, did not want to be caught and brought home; he would be very difficult. So, "How?" she asked.
"Put finger in it!" laughed Timothy, and he bolted for the water. There was little he enjoyed so much as sticking his finger into the water-spout, feeling the water run faster to escape it, and chasing it about with his hand, trying to catch it and stop it. He never could, and that is not such a bad thing, for a game that is bliss to play should never be won, or it becomes tiresome.
"Timothy!"
Timothy shied away and sat down on the bank, a frown on his face. He did not like big sisters.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, trying to look important, and, walking a few feet downstream (she could not have walked any other way!) she took up a large, round-edged stone. Huffing with the weight, she brought it back and stood on the edge of the pool with it. She looked at the Grenobles on either side of her, and then at Timothy, sitting a little ways off. They all stared back at her, and, rather embarrassed, and glad there were no adults around to think she was silly, she mphed the stone into the water. It sank through the top of the pool, sending but a single ripple out to the edges, and fell ever so slowly, until, but a moment after it disappeared into the spring, the water stopped playing beneath the pool, and the pool, with a ripple like a spider's-web caught in the wind, sank and darted out through cracks in the trunk walls, different currents bumping into each other, like a school of fish, embarrassed to be intruding. The brook did not stop, however, but began around the top edges of the trunk, water pouring from the side of each splinter of wood outward, but not inward. Soon the well was empty, and Lisa could see that it went very far down indeed. Timothy stepped to the edge of the pool, and then onto the first step inside the trunk. He looked back at Lisa, half giggled, half gasped (for she frowned at him), and charged down the steps, moving more back and forth than he did forward and down.

Timothy and the Grenobles, Part I

Preface: (Aren't literary words fun?). Here is a story. It is a bedtime story. I made it up lying on the carpet, my hands beneath my head, staring at the ceiling. I told it to a little boy, and it put him fast to sleep. I am writing it now because I am too sleepy to do any schoolwork, and want to go to bed soon. I will not finish it tonight, but some other night I hope to. I wish everyone a good night.

It was a misty day in late April. The sun had winged its way to the heights, pierced the clouds for a few moments during naptime, and was now falling, out of sight, towards its rest behind the Johnson's garage. For Timothy, three years old, had divined its hiding place, and secretly planned to seek it out some night and wrestle it across the Johnson's driveway out into the street, where it would light the yard so that he would be able to play forever and not go to bed when he was supposed to.
But the sun was not his object this particular day. No, he was enjoying his after-naptime romp through the back woods, his sister Lisa trying her best to keep up with him, but failing, of course. For young boys, Timothy knew, were much more clever and agile than grown-up girls like Lisa. Why, she was all of nine years old already! He felt sorry for her, for soon she would not be able to show her age on her fingers, and what is the fun in being older if you cannot show it to people?
The sun was to the left, its warmth cutting through the mist in rays of water droplets, water-stained, moss-covered bark, and reflecting pools in leaves. The leaves squished and squelched beneath his feet and he squirmed his toes and nose and paused to examine his footing in the deep muck. Satisfied, he turned about, his wide body giving him ample balance, and saw Lisa moving with behemoth strides through the forest behind him. He giggled uproariously and dashed away into the woods, a broad smile on his mouth, leaning his weight forward like a ship's sail caught in the wind, and his grinning face was his own figurehead, his arms the rigging.
But ships do not have feet, and oceans rarely have roots, so the ship that was Timothy was, as a matter of course, surprised to tumble down into the leaves. Undaunted, he put himself back on his feet, examining himself soberly. He was somewhat dirtier than before. A leaf was stuck to the base of his hand by a clump of mud. A black-stained pine twig clung by a drop of dirt to his chin, and his shirt had several new stripes on it.
"Timothy! You'll get all dirty!" cried Lisa, her tone important and full of peril, for she thought to be dirty one of the worst things that anyone could be.
He laughed harder and ran on into the woods. There was nothing in these woods for quite a while -- he had heard his father say once that there was nothing until the next neighborhood, and Timothy expected that was quite a long way.
Now, running in the woods while someone is following you is a tricky game. Run too fast, and you might loose your sister, and never find her again, and that would be a shame. Run too slowly, and she may well catch you, scold you, clean you up, tickle you, or something of that nature. Of course, at some point you must let yourself be caught...but not until you're quite done with your romp. So Timothy had to check over his shoulder often to make sure Lisa was neither lost nor about to swoop him up with her great big strong arms. After going some ways on, he saw that she was falling behind. He turned around, flinging the leaf from his hand by his motion, and laughed loudly so that she would catch up. He saw her moving slowly from tree to tree, but she was going more in a circle than coming towards him, so he shouted "Wis-AAA!" and began bounding back towards her, slightly annoyed that she would abandon the game.
Lisa, meanwhile, tired of pretending to chase her baby brother, slowed to a walk and wistfully glanced at the treetops above her, humming tunes that only she could discern, and glancing into the distance occasionally to make sure she could still see Timothy. Soon he was almost out of sight, and she was day-dreaming about whatever it is big sisters daydream about (many of you, dear readers, may be big sisters yourselves, and I am sure you choose choice daydreams, but I cannot tell what they might be, as I can only speak for big and little brothers, and not for sisters at all). His call made her jump and forget her dream, and, feeling a little guilty for letting him get so far ahead as she now saw he was, she began to run towards him.
As Timothy came near to Lisa, she ducked behind a tree, and, amused to find that she had known better after all, and invented a new game where he chased her, crept up to it giggling, careful to step quietly so she would not hear his approach.
As Lisa caught up with Timothy, he hopped down out of sight into a creek-bed, and, stirred to greater haste at the thought of what he would look like if given a chance to enjoy himself in the muddy stream, Lisa hopped down to the bank. "Timothy!" she cried scoldingly as she spotted him, and then she stopped very abruptly and took several steps back, so that she bumped into the bank and sat down on it, dirtying her dress. "Oh!" She said sadly, examining it, and then turned back to the little creature that she had thought before to be Timothy. "Now, see what you have made me done?" she scolded.
Timothy let out a squeal, halfway between delighted and terrified, for he had grabbed not Lisa, but a branch, and the branch had gently drawn itself back from his chubby hands. The brother and sister saw each other -- the real each other, finally -- from where they stood, not more than a few moments' Timothy-run apart.
Lisa pursed her lips, folded her eyebrows, placed her hands behind her back (over the mud on her dress), and examined the creature that she had mistaken for Timothy. Timothy, meanwhile, sat down and stared at the one that he had mistaken for Lisa.
The two creatures were very similar, yet, especially in their faces, the brother and sister could tell them apart easily, though they would not be able to say why, similar to how two puppies may look just alike to a visitor, but are easy for their master to name. They were brownish-green creatures, and their skin looked like bark, but they did not crackle or crumble as they moved. The bark, indeed, seemed able to bend easily as far as it needed to. Leaves and moss clung to them, and they wore boots lined with thick wet dirt with an upper of leaves and a lower of their own bare feet. They were each about as tall as Lisa, each had two arms and two legs like Timothy, and they had faces. Their faces were strange, and made Timothy look very serious. They had no noses to speak of, and if they had mouths, Lisa could not see them. Timothy looked at the eyes of the one nearest him, and yawned. Its eyes, Lisa mused, were like acorns. Not green acorns, or dirty acorns, or scratched acorns, but the acorns that have fallen unbruised, and been washed clean in a pool of rainwater till they shine a perfect rich reddish burgundy that makes you think of smelling good living wood and knocking on knotholes in trees, and root-beer flavored candy. The eyes did not look deep, but they seemed to shine the color of wet, clean wood deep in the forest where the light cannot come and yet you feel perfectly cozy and at home, until, of course, some naughty leaf drips a drop of water down the back of your neck and makes you gasp. The creatures looked at them with their eyes, eyes that reminded Timothy of the blind dog that lived next door, and also of the eyes of his teddy bear.
"What are you?" asked Lisa politely.
"We are the Grenobles," they answered, and as they spoke Lisa saw their mouths, but once they were silent she could not find them again.
"Ha!" said Timothy. He was amused that little treeish people talked. He was of the age where he had not yet firmly decided anything about the world, and so did not know that he should be very startled to find such creatures.
Lisa, on the other hand, knew quite well that there should be no such thing, but was old enough to know that it is silly to deny what you see with your own two eyes. So, she smiled and said, "We're Hunters," for that was their father's and mother's name. "We live through the woods that way. Where do you live?"
"Will you help us find it?" they asked.
"Do you not know where your own home is?" she asked in pity and astonishment, thinking that they were lost.
"We would know better if you showed it to us," they replied.
"Ha!" said Timothy again.

Merry Christmas!

I am blessed beyond belief.
I'm sitting in a really nice house, my really nice family is getting up to start preparing a really nice Christmas celebration. I'm using my dad's really nice computer to write this, without any concern about bad things happening in my really nice neighborhood in my really nice town in my mostly awesome state in my comparatively unbelievably great country, in this modern world which has more wealth and amazing good things than any other ever has. I'm enrolled in a really nice college, have lots of really nice friends, a complete lack of enemies, really nice or otherwise. Outside the windows is an exquisitely beautiful world. God has blessed me so much in my life.
But that's not why I'm blessed beyond belief. I'm blessed because God sent His Son to Earth, and His Son came willingly, fully aware of why He was coming.
He came to die so that an ungrateful wretch of a person like me could escape the just punishment for what I have done. He deserves more honor and glory than I can ever give Him.
Thank God for sending Him! Thank God He came, because I am so proud of all the things He has given me, and so thankless for them, and so undeserving of them. I need a Saviour very much, and He fills that need perfectly.
His coming is good news for all people. He died for all who ever have, or do, or will believe in Him. He came because He loved us, not just to save us, but to adopt us into His family.
Truth is stranger and better than fiction.

History

Today at work I started up a conversation with an elderly customer. She was resting her legs, and was glad to talk. She is eighty-one, her last name is Loid (I believe that is the correct way to spell it), and she has lived in the Fayetteville area for a long time. She remembers when my boss was born and teases him about things he did when he was a toddler. This is not something many people can do.
Hearing her talk about the past was amazing; what affected me most was hearing about her husband. He was in the marines, third division, in World War II. He and the rest of his unit, two hundred plus men, fought at Iwo Jima, where only six survived (I'm not sure if she meant survived unwounded or survived, period). He died about five years ago.
I'm sure there are plenty of stories like this, but you don't hear them from these men's wives everyday.
I got paid during the course of the conversation, but I would have payed to have it.
And that's not only because she wished her hair were as curly as mine.
I have lots to say about grandparents and history, but I think I will leave most of it for another time. Let's just say that I would have thoroughly regretted not having the conversation I had today. I will probably never get a chance to hear that lady's wisdom and history again.