Learning To Love You More

ASSIGNMENTS:

REPORTS:



my mom and dad always made us stay with each of our grandparents for 2 weeks every summer. my father's mother lived on a farm in oregon, missouri, so we hung out with our cousins a lot. i was about 9 or 10. Êmy cousin bobby was my best summer friend, because he was always stealing his grandmother's car keys and we would drive all over her huge yard and run the car into the trees. one time we decided to build a treehouse, and so we got out the circular saw and started building. we'd just finished cutting the wood for the deck, and bobby thought it would be funny to trip me, so i fell into the still-running circular saw. everything was a weird blur. i ran for the house and into the kitchen, and for some reason i flung my arm around and blood spattered all over the white cabinets. they took me to the town doctor, and even though you could see the bone on my right ring finger, the doctor just put a butterfly bandage on it. i still don't have much feeling there. my dad is the only guy he grew up with that went to college. for that reason, he's the only one that has all his limbs and digits intact. all those farmer guys fall asleep on the machinery and get in accidents. my cousin bobby lost his left eye in a machine shop accident when he was 28. i visit him every once in a while. he's always at this bar that used to be a bank--it's called the mint. whenever i ask him to, bobby rolls his glass eye on the bar for me.