An Invisible Sign of My Own (page 123)

by JS on July 2, 2008

On Friday, listening to the now-familiar sound of retching in his room, I taught more subtraction to the second grade using word problems about the kids in the class: Ann DiLanno grew five heads in September and by October had only two heads. How many heads did she lose?

I have one head, Ann interrupted. I am not losing a single head.

I was fidgety because it was Friday, which meant tomorrow was Saturday, and after Saturday was Sunday, and that was two days of no work and all worry.

Aimee Bender’s novel — which I’m reading now — is about OCD and math. I guess that makes it a fitting subject for the page 123 meme.

If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Feel free to play along in the comments.

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..closest book is Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation…
(I’m not sure if sentences in quotes count as 1 sentence…feel free to edit to meet your interpretation of the rules, I counted quotes as one sentence…(works for the first one but less for the second set)

He told me his embrace of the Lord is “the greatest decision I ever made. I made it for eternity. In every speech I give I mention the Lord. I always end with, ‘In Jesus’ name, Amen.’ Now there are those who take me aside and say ‘Joe, maybe you ought to leave Jesus out.’ ‘No, sir!’ I tell ‘em.”

He simply can’t understand the shadings of modern life. President Clinton’s lawyers arguing about the meaning of his answers under oath triggered strong memories for Foss. “Folks now just don’t have an appreciation for what an oath means. When we took the oath when we were sworn into the Marines, it was a contract! That’s what we went out there to defend. I can still see my pals sitting around when we weren’t flying, guys like Casey Brandon and Danny Doyle, a couple of baseball players from Minnesota, talking about what we were going to do when we got back from the war. Well, they didn’t get back. I lost half my squadron. We all knew what an oath was about.”

Foss, for all of his strong feelings, isn’t a bitter old man.

by Kailden on July 11, 2008 at 9:00 am. #