Be thou my vision

After flooding the internet yesterday and today with various messages to the child prommising that everything would soon be ok and that the child would find happiness within several days, I was finally able to speak with the child and found that several situations had changed for the child since we last spoke. First and foremost, I found that the child was able to talk relatively normally, which was a great improvement over what she had been able to manage over the past several days. As I conversed with the child I found that I could understand virtually everything the child said and that the child seemed to have cleared the phlegm out of her throat almost completely.

Now, having said that, I will state that as soon as I mentioned the newfound clarity of her voice and the hope that I harbored that she had recovered from her ailments, the child was happy to offer a few wayward coughs, a strong clearing of the throat and a recovered tonal quality which suggested that the presence of a large pile of mucusy surplus was retaking residence in her esophagus. Once again, the imposition of a measured amount of sympathy on my part and the child was back to near her normal verbal clarity.

Secondly, the child admitted that she was presently involved in the process of printing her paper for her seminar course and would, thereafter, turn same in to her professor. I took this as a good thing, but the child was ready, no, happy to warn me that she will thereafter have to complete a practice of the oral presentation of her seminar paper tomorrow, which, of course, let me know that the worst part of this class, at least, in the mind of the child, involves the oral presentation which awaits her after Thanksgiving.

Apparently, this oral offering involves the verbal presentation of her research paper, for which she has been preparing for several months, in the presence of numerous convicted felons, Hollywood hangers-on, the board of pardons and paroles for the State of South Carolina, and most of her former elementary school teachers. As I understand it, all of these inquisitors will be privy to a dossier on the child, prepared by the FBI and CIA, and elucidating all her failings. I further understand that the participants will also be outfitted with surveillance glasses which will allow the inquisitors to see every little detail having to do with the child. I think the heat will be turned up in the room to a level extremely uncomfortable to normal humans and most chimpanzees. I am sure questions will also be raised upon the completion of her presentation. Always questions.

After the practice of her presentation is completed, the child will not be able to return home until she is able to attend and complete two classes in other departments of the college, which classes will meet on Monday afternoon. These classes are a mere trifle compared to the irritation involved in completing the requirements of her seminar course; however, the fact that the child must attend these classes at all, during a week dedicated to thanksgiving, family and feasting, places the child and her trusty Volvo in the road between Clinton, South Carolina and Griffin, Georgia, at a time in which the child will have to fight traffic as if she were a member of King Arthur's round table and were facing a scaly third-cousin of Puff the Magic Dragon. And let it be said that this dragon will not hold sealing wax, jacks, small rubber balls or other things which a young child might find amusing, but instead will offer the wayward knight, just a young child after all, with the heat and flame of his awesome breath and leave same gasping for air and wishing for the sweet scent one might expect to find in the early Spring somewhere in the mountains of Austria. The extent to which the child will suffer is difficult to estimate at this time or even comprehend. The South Carolina Department of Transportation and its Georgia counterpart offer no information which might provide some glimpse of the horror or the length of time these horrors might continue.

As you can see, there are many paths upon which the child must lay the bottoms of her feet until she is able to leave the brutal world of modern college education and seat herself in my Toyota Solara for transport to the beachs of Northwest Florida, a good plate of fresh oysters and a tall glass of beer (pivo, if you will). I tried to assure the child that there is respite around the corner, but her world is bleak and black at this point and offers no succor. I fear she may wither. I offer the poetry of Keats ("La Belle Dame Sans Merci")as exemplification of her condition.