'99% perspiration'

i wonder if i will ever be anyone's snowball.

when hansi, my first pet, died in elementary school, my third grade teacher didn't hug me or say she was sorry, or reassure me that everything was going to be alright.  she handed me a gold gilt-paged book with hundreds of blank pages and told me to write.

that book still sits on the bookshelf at my father's house, sharing space with a long line of twenty or thirty beat-up books.  there are hello kitty diaries with dime store locks, chronicling what we had for dinner when we visited omi and opa.  there are pink spirals detailing my annual hunt for the perfect first day of school outfits.  lined journals of pre-teen despair are flanked by angry adolescent composition books bursting with my white suburban version of anarchy.

with that gold gilt-paged present, introduced with her trademark donald duck caricature and a signature i tried to mimic at least 500 times, miss savage created and started the snowball - my snowball - rolling.

i hope i'm someone's snowball.