Tim O'brien's Book About Vietnam, The Things

We've Become A Nation Of Indoor Cats, He'd Said. A Nation Of Doubters, Worriers, Overthinkers. Thank God These Weren't The Kind Of Americans Who Settled This Country. They Were A Different Breed! They Crossed The Country In Wagons With Wooden Wheels! People Croaked Along The Way, And They Barely Stopped. Back Then, You Buried Your Dead And Kept Moving.

And What We Were Trying To Offer Every Day Was One-on-one Attention. The Goal Was To Have A One-to-one Ratio With Every One Of These Students.

My Head Was A Condemned Church With A Ceiling Of Bats, But I Swung From This Dark Mood To Euphoria When I Thought About Leaving.

How Had This Happened? Everyone In The World Knew More Than Us, About Everything, And This I Hated Then Found Hugely Comforting.

I Am A Freak In Secondhand Velour, A Leper Who Uses L'oreal Anti-sticky Mega Gel. I Am Rootless, Ripped From All Foundations, An Orphan Raising An Orphan And Wanting To Take Away Everything There Is And Replace It With Stuff I've Made.