Not quite the morning news

If I had to write a news story covering the events of the past seven days in my life, I'd be hard pressed to know what to put in the headline--the shrieks in the night, the sweets in my mouth, the boys in the sun, the boy with the gun...it felt like a lot but it really adds up to not much. But I'll start with the gun because it was by far the most bizarre thing to happen all week, even if I was an uninvolved bystander.

We were enjoying a potluck lunch in the church fellowship hall (coconut cake--yum!) when a sweet church lady heard a knocking on the door. She opened the door to find a local urchin, maybe 12 years old, whose first words were enigmatic: "Tell God I said hello." The church lady asked him if he wanted to come in and get some lunch but he said no, his mom didn't know where he was. As the kid turned to leave, the church lady saw the gun in a holster hanging at his waist.

What was a 12-year-old kid doing carrying a gun? Was it a real gun? What did he mean by "Tell God I said hello"? A good journalist would have sought answers to these questions and more, but the kid was gone before I even knew he'd been there and no answers were forthcoming.

The presence of a gun tends to overshadow other events, so probably no one is interested in hearing about the community production of Death of a Salesman, which made me cry, or the student production of Medea, which made me wonder how the main character could do all that shrieking without seriously damaging her vocal cords. Both productions were very well done but I got annoyed every time someone blamed Willy Loman's failures on his old age. I kept wanting to jump up and yell "63 isn't that old!"

In between all that gallivanting, I graded exams, prepped classes, interviewed three candidates for adjunct positions, served as a judge at a cookie-baking contest, chatted with artsy folks at a reception for a visiting artist, and attended a baseball game in the bright spring sunshine.

That warmth seems to have gone on hiatus, however, as tonight's forecast calls for snow. This morning as I drove to campus near 7 a.m., I was surprised to see a crew shell skimming along the surface of the river. Twenty-eight degrees outside with the sun barely glancing above the horizon and there were my students putting their muscles to work on the cold, dark river.

It's dark and cold and we're barely awake but still young people are pulling their weight to move the boat forward--that's the story I prefer to tell, but it's hard to put that in a headline when there's a mysterious gun drawing attention just outside the door.