Excerpt Broken Wings

      Chapter 1

     Drab gray clouds covered the expansive horizon, obliterating the warmth of the sun. Like the delicate flora of nature covered by endless miles of sidewalks in some sprawling super city, the heavens above were suppressed behind a wall of lifeless color.

     Pamela Wells stood in her back door and surveyed the sulking skies above. “It’s an early spring sky,” she mumbled.

     Spring; thoughts of the season brought to mind frolicking bunnies and brightly colored birds preparing nests for much anticipated hatchlings. Everywhere animals would be shaking off their thick winter coats and embracing the start of a new reproductive cycle. But for Pamela, the warming breezes of the change in seasons were not always a welcomed event. She sighed as she turned her eyes to the expanse of land around her and contemplated the work that lay ahead. With the coming spring, Pamela knew all of her aches would return from their winter respite. But her pains were not limited to the constant throbbing in the various joints of her body; dark days brought an ache to her heart, as well. It was on such a day that she had met Robert, Bob to his friends. The memory of Robert Patrick dressed in his expensive tailored suit and designer Italian custom made shoes made Pamela laugh.

     She had been lying in her hospital bed, days after a bad car accident, when Bob walked into her room. He was fresh out of law school and in desperate need of clients. After reading about her accident in the newspaper, Bob hunted Pamela down and signed her on as his first client. One year later, they married in a lavish ceremony inside St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

    Pamela shook her head. “Eight years after that, Bob turned into an asshole,” she said as she gazed out at the barn behind her blue and white Acadian cottage. “Well, at least I got this place in the divorce,” she whispered.

     Meant as a get away from the urban overload of New Orleans, Bob bought the two-bedroom cottage on fifteen acres for Pamela as a wedding present. The wilds of St. Tammany Parish became her refuge when life as the wife of a prominent personal injury attorney had been too much for her. She moved into the cottage permanently almost six years ago when Bob unexpectedly announced that their marriage was over.    

     Out of nowhere, a wide raccoon with a slow, sauntering gait and a glint of childlike mischief in his masked eyes wandered up to Pamela. The raccoon stopped just below the three steps to Pamela’s back porch and stood on his hind haunches. He looked at her and warbled in the way a raccoon baby calls to his mother.

     “Good morning, Rodney,” Pamela said to the raccoon as she walked down the steps to greet the animal. “How are you today?” She bent over and rubbed behind the raccoon’s silver-tipped ears. Rodney fell on his back like a lump of whale blubber and proceeded to grab at the woman’s hands and direct them to the spots on his belly that needed immediate scratching.

     Pamela laughed and rubbed the animal’s wide stomach as Rodney wiggled with delight. The sudden screech of an owl from a nearby tree frightened the raccoon. He jumped to a standing position and eyed a tree close to the house, snorting loudly.

     Pamela patted the raccoon on his round bottom. “Relax, Rodney. You know Lester won’t hurt you.” She spied the owl up in the tree next to her bedroom window. “Lester, did you have a good night?”

     The owl screeched again, opened his large brown and white checked wings and flapped vigorously upon his tree branch.

     “Yes, I know you’re hungry, Lester,” Pamela said, nodding at the raptor. “But I have got baby squirrels to feed, and then there are cages to clean before you can have your ham and eggs.” 

      The sound of a car driving down the gravel road toward the cottage made Pamela divert her attention away from the impatient owl. She turned and faced the road, just as Rodney came up beside her and wrapped his child-like arms around her lower leg.

      A blue open-top Jeep Wrangler with wide off-road tires appeared from out of the brush at the end of her drive. Pamela observed the car with a feeling of trepidation sweeping through her. Strangers coming down the gravel road to her sanctuary were either delivering orphaned or injured wildlife to her care, or coming to deliver food and supplies to her wildlife sanctuary. But no one was ever unexpected at her facility, and uninvited strangers were never welcome. A cacophony of barking broke out from the direction of the front porch steps. The assorted stray dogs Pamela had collected through the years ran to greet the car as it came to a quick stop in front of the cottage. She walked toward the front of her home and watched tentatively as the dogs surrounded the Jeep. 

     A tall man with thick, dark brown hair and sunglasses stood up in the cab of the Jeep and peered down at her.

     “Hey there,” he said then glanced at a slip of paper in his hand. ”Is this Second Chance Wildlife Rehabilitation Center?” he asked in a deep voice.

     “Yes. Is there something I can do for you?” Pamela gave the man a curt nod of her head as the dogs around the car growled almost in unison. 

     “You want to call off the posse?” he said as he waved to the five dogs surrounding his Jeep.

     Pamela folded her arms over her chest. “First, tell me who you are, and what you’re doing out here?” she demanded as she tried to walk to the car, pulling Rodney along with her as he continued to cling to her leg.

     The stranger removed his sunglasses. “Your facility requested a service worker to come out and help clean cages, right?” He shrugged his wide shoulders at her. “I’m your service worker,” he declared.

     “The probation office sent you?” Pamela frowned. “But they called and told me you were supposed to come next Wednesday. Today’s Saturday.”

     “It’s my day off and my probation officer said it would be all right.” He made a move to step down from the Jeep, but the snarl of a tall, black Catahoula mix stopped him.

     “Quincy,” Pamela called out to the dog. “Go back to the porch.” She pointed to the porch at the front of the house. Quincy, along with the rest of his canine pack, obediently obliged and made their way slowly to the porch steps.

     Pamela waited for the dogs to settle down on the shady front porch before she looked back at her new service worker. “I’m Pamela Wells, the owner. Your probation officer told you what is expected around here? I don’t tolerate drinking, cursing or–”

     “Lewd or rude behavior,” the man said, interrupting her as he stepped down from the Jeep. “Yeah, I got the memo. Don’t worry, Ms. Wells, I will be like a choir boy in church while I am here.”

      “What’s your name?”

      “Daniel, Daniel Phillips.” He hung his sunglasses on the neck of his white T-shirt as he looked her up and down. “You don’t have a stable hand or someone to clean up around here?”

     Pamela noticed that his round, dark brown eyes appeared almost black and had a seductive quality to them. She nervously cast her eyes to the ground. “I’d have to pay for help. This facility runs on a shoestring budget already. To hire someone would break me. Besides, there’s not much to it.” She noticed his expensive-looking leather boots. “You ever worked with wild animals before?”
     Daniel laughed as he took a step closer to her. “Only the human kind. I deal with a lot of wild people at work.”

     Pamela glanced up at the man before her. He was dressed in old faded blue jeans and stood a good bit taller than she. He had a slender build, muscular arms, a broad chest, and long legs. His face was rectangular with a wide forehead and chiseled jaw. He did not look any older than his early thirties. A scar under his left eye made him appear more sinister than innocent, making Pamela suspect that this was not the first time Daniel Phillips had found himself under the direction of the courts and a probation officer.

     She quickly checked her disconcerting thoughts. “Where do you work?” she asked, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

      “Pat O’Brien’s in the Quarter. I’m a bartender there.”

      “You’re a bartender in the French Quarter?” Pamela asked, raising her brows at him.

     “Yeah, I’ve worked at a couple of places in the Quarter. The Voodoo Lounge on Decatur, Muriel’s on Jackson Square, and even did a few months at The Dungeon.” Daniel carefully examined the slender woman before him.

     Pamela found his dark eyes disturbing. She knew from experience that her slim figure and shoulder length dirty blond hair made her an easy target for a man’s overactive imagination. But it was the way Daniel looked at her that rattled her so. It was almost as if he were sizing up her potential as a meal rather than a quick roll in the sheets.

     He turned his eyes away from her and browsed the facility surrounding them. About a hundred yards from the rear of the house was an old battered blue barn with a few other smaller out buildings to the right of it. Located close to the barn, at the edge of the cleared property, were several tall wood-trimmed cages. Each cage was covered with wire, had a tin roof, and a water faucet attached right outside of the entrance. Majestic oaks were scattered about the property as well as next to the blue and white house. An open shed to the left of the property had a tractor, a white Ford pick-up truck, and two ATVs inside of it. 

     “You told my probation officer you needed someone to help out around here,” he said as his eyes continued to scan the property. 

     “Yes, with spring finally here we will be swamped with babies soon. I’ve already gotten quite a few baby squirrels. The cages you will be cleaning are where I wintered several different animals. They have all just recently been released.”
     “What kind of animals do you usually get here?” Daniel kept his eyes on the trees along the edge of the clearing beside the house.

     “Fox, rabbit, skunk, gray squirrel, fox squirrel, raccoon, opossum, bats, nutria, and an occasional river otter. But I have rehabbed chipmunks, beaver, a few owls, and once, a baby coyote.”

     “What about deer?”

     “As a permitted wildlife rehabber, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries does not want us working with deer. There has been an increase in a certain kind of wasting disease in the Louisiana deer population and most injured deer are put down, along with any fawns. Deer are also very hard to return to the wild once they have bonded with humans.”

     Daniel turned back at her. “So is this all there is to the place?”

     “Why? What did you expect?”

     He shrugged. “I don’t know, something like the Audubon Zoo maybe.”

     Pamela focused her gray eyes on his. “This is not a zoo,” she responded, indignantly. “It’s a wildlife rehabilitation facility. We care for orphaned and injured wildlife and do not keep animals for display to an indifferent public. If more people knew about what we do here, they would, hopefully, be less willing to support zoos and more apt to make donations to a cause that puts animals back into their natural habitat.” She gave the man another going over with her eyes as he stepped closer to her side. “What were you convicted of? I often have volunteers on the site and I want to make sure–”

     “I’m not a serial rapist, Ms. Wells,” Daniel proclaimed in a perturbed tone of voice. “I hit a guy in the bar where I work for roughing up his date. He filed charges and I was busted for assault and battery. My sentence was one hundred hours of community service. Satisfied?”

     “Did they throw in any anger management classes with that community service?” she quipped.

     Daniel smiled, cockily, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. “No, the judge didn’t seem to think I needed any.” He stared into her face for a moment as if trying to figure her out. “So am I to call you Ms. Wells the entire time I’m here, or will Pamela be all right with you?” he questioned.

     “Pamela is fine. We don’t stand on formality around here.” A loud sniff came from around Pamela’s feet. She looked down at the ground to see Rodney standing behind her legs, staring at the stranger.

     “One of the rehabilitated returned to the wild?” Daniel asked as he nodded to Rodney.

     Pamela leaned over and picked up the overweight ring-tailed creature from the ground. The animal cuddled against her chest and warily watched the man standing next to her.

     Pamela shifted the heavy animal in her arms. “This is Rodney. He was rescued from a hawk when he was about two weeks old. He’s over a year now and I can’t get him to leave. He thinks he is one of the dogs.”

     Daniel reached out to pet the raccoon, but the animal growled at him.

     “He doesn’t like strangers,” Pamela quickly added. “All of the animals in this facility are wild. Do not pet them or try to treat them like a cute and cuddly lap dog.”

     “And are there any more like him?” he asked as he motioned to the raccoon nuzzling up against Pamela’s neck.

     “A few. You’ll meet them later. For now, I’ll show you to the cages that need cleaning.” She turned away and started toward the row of cages and sheds located a short distance from the back of the house.

     Daniel directed his attention to the blue and white wooden cottage on his right. The home appeared clean and well taken care of. But on closer inspection some shingles on the roof had cracked and were falling away, and the paint covering the wooden boards along the side of the house had begun to bubble up and peel off. The house looked older, like many scattered around the countryside of Louisiana. It was an Acadian cottage that had been built when horse farms and cattle ranches had filled most of St. Tammany Parish. But such communities had long since given way to manicured subdivisions and posh country clubs as hurricane weary New Orleanians had left the city and taken over the lands north of Lake Pontchartrain.

     “How many acres have you got here?” he asked, following her.

     “Fifteen. There are another fifty acres behind this property that belongs to one of my patrons. So the animals have a large refuge to roam far away from any humans.”

     Daniel watched as the raccoon rested his head against the woman’s shoulder as she carried him. “Is there any money in this sort of thing?”

     Pamela stopped walking and turned to him. “There is no money here if that is what you’re asking. Everything is for the animals,” she said, scowling at him. “So if you are thinking you can steal from me, borrow equipment, or make a tidy profit from your time here, think again,” she curtly added.

     Daniel raised his hands up in submission. “Hey, don’t get all bent out of shape, Pamela. I was just wondering why anyone would go to this much trouble for a bunch of stray squirrels.”

     Pamela shook her head in disgust, leaned over, and rubbed her cheek against the raccoon’s fluffy face. “The cages are this way.”

     She quickly turned and started for the cages at the end of the clearing, leaving a wide-eyed Daniel to follow behind her.

Has Customer Service Become an Oxymoron?

     Today I found myself in the post office waiting to send some books off to reviewers when one of the clerks behind the desk picked up the phone and started shouting, yes shouting, into the phone for a supervisor, This gentleman did not do this once, but three separate times. After his third attempt at trying to track down someone in charge, the man in line next to me turned and mumbled, “Some customer service, huh?” 

     Now this is the post office and most Americans joke about the less than stellar service offered by many government affiliated organizations. But it got me thinking. Has the common courtesy of giving a customer service gone the way of the dodo bird? More and more people are complaining about customer service. Most of the time it isn’t even human customer service but a highly irritating automated system that sends you through a long litany of questions and keys to hit, and even then you still don’t get the help you need. We all know how eager companies are to get our business, especially in these tough economic times, but why does the service disappear after the act of sale. And how many of us have suffered through more bouts of abysmal service, or no service at all, than have had a caring interaction with someone who has actually helped solve our problem.

     After hurricane Katrina many of us in the New Orleans area experienced a rare opportunity of unified outstanding customer service. Not from our insurance companies, don’t even get me started on that, but from electric companies, mortgage companies, water companies, and just about anyone that billed on a monthly basis for their services. I have never experienced such kindness and concern from so many customer service representatives as I did after that storm. But why does it take a natural disaster for us to get the courtesy we deserve? Shouldn’t good customer service be just as important to any company as providing a good product? Or do they just not care about their service or their customers. Is the apathy of the business world toward its customers a reflection of society’s apathy toward its citizens?

     Perhaps we should all stop ranting about the poor quality of everyone else’s customer service and start looking at our own. How we treat other people is just as important as how companies treat us. And the companies that we buy from cannot change unless we change. Kindness starts from the inside out. One caring act will lead to another, and maybe one day, customer service will be a term that makes us smile, instead of cringe. And by the way, after all that shouting, the supervisor never did show up in that post office. I think next time I’ll use FedEx. 



Editing Hell and Vodka

     Recently I have been in editing hell for my next novel, Broken Wings. And after several sleepless nights, more trips to the online grammar boards than I care to remember, and a bottle of vodka, my manuscript is ready to be sent to the publisher to make its way out into the world. I only have one question. WHO IS THE IDIOT THAT CREATED ALL OF THESE STUPID RULES FOR WORDS?

     I mean come on, does it matter if your character goes out the door or out of the door, that you put a space before and after an ellipse, and that you place a hyphen in air-conditioning, but not air conditioner. What ever happened to creative freedom because it sure in hell is not alive and well in the literary world. You can write a story about a rabid squirrel that takes out half of Cincinnati, but God forbid you have him chew the head off of someone instead of off someone. No one taught me any of these rules in high school. Let’s face it, do any of us even remember what we learned in high school, inside of the classroom that is. And when you find a rule, there are about thirty different opinions from grammar experts on whether or not you are even to follow that rule. But the time I get off the Internet, and not off of the Internet, my head is swimming, hence the bottle of vodka.

     Do all of these rules really matter to the reader? If a story is good, really good, can a few slips of the keyboard be overlooked? Not according to many reviewers. Editing mistakes are for some reviewers the bane of their existence. But is there really a perfect manuscript out there? Maybe in another dimension, but definitely not in this one. I found references to Chaucer not correctly placing commas in his stories. If we have to go that far back into literature and attack someone we all grew up reading in high school, even if we don’t remember it, what does that say about the chance any author today has of getting the rules right. And what manual are you supposed to follow to get the rules right. I was taught the Chicago Manual of Style was the be all and end all for fiction writing, but not everyone agrees on that. There is no definitive reference guide used today and many editors vary in the references they do use. So who is right? Who is the ultimate judge of what is correct?

     I guess like most things in this business it is up to the reader to decide. And in the end I think the reader will choose a story that moves them. I never believed before this point in my life that a choice of career could lead to a psychological disorder, but after picking up the pen I find myself now suffering from an acute case of anal-retentive syndrome. And yes, you do spell it with a hyphen. That way you know you are anal-retentive. Because if you weren’t you wouldn’t care about the damned hyphen anyway.            

Today's Guest Rant is by author Victoria Watson

I don’t know about you but I always thought that if someone was good enough to pay you to do a job, you’d better at least try to do your best.

I never understand people who enter into occupations in which they have to deal with the public who then make no effort whatsoever to give the customer – i.e. the person who effectively pays their wages – a good experience.

I don’t just mean people who work in restaurants and shops but also people like receptionists, librarians and doctors (among many others). If you don’t want to serve the public, don’t work in customer service!

I am sick of going to a shop, a bank or a hospital where people obviously hate their jobs and, by proxy, hate you. I understand that people feel they are under-paid and over-worked, particularly with so many companies cutting back due to the recession but let’s look at the flip side: would these people prefer to be laid off? At least they have jobs!

When I was sixteen, I took on a weekend job in a shop. The boss I had there was firm but fair. She told us what she expected of us and we gave, in my opinion, great customer service. Some days we’d be rushed off our feet but I believe everyone who came to the shop, went away with a positive opinion of our company.

We were told to answer the telephone as quickly as possible, we were also to approach as many customers as possible just to let them know we were there if they needed any help. If there was a queue at the till, we had to stop what we were doing and serve the customers. Likewise, if we didn’t have the stock the customer wanted, we were expected to ring other branches, check the warehouse and do as much as we could to leave the customer satisfied.

However, what the great training I went through did was make me aware of how utterly terrible other people can be. My motto is “treat others how you wish to be treated” and therefore, whenever I deal with people, I try to empathise with them and put myself in their shoes. Why don’t other people?

I was in a shop today where every member of staff I encountered seemed bored or actively angry. I was coughed over (by a member of staff), ignored, had a changing room shut in front of me when I quite obviously wanted to use it, was shouted at and ended up queuing (and almost fainted) in a ten-minute queue while a girl filled shelves nearby.

What upsets me about our National Health Service is the service (or lack thereof) that I come up against whenever I have to use them. I was taken to A&E a year ago with terrible pain which turned out to be kidney stones. I sat in that waiting room for ten hours before being seen. I understand there may have been people who had worse issues than me but what I didn’t appreciate was the fact that nurses kept walking through the waiting room and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. When my mum lodged a complaint at 3am in the morning, a staff nurse sat with us and complained to us about the governmental cuts being imposed on the National Health Service and how much pressure it left them under. She told us that the walk through the waiting room was jokingly referred to as “The walk of shame”. This angered me: if it took an emergency call handler took a long time to answer the phone and then complained to the caller about cuts being imposed by the government, they’d be disciplined!

I’ve dealt with several medical receptionists and secretaries in the past few months and, bar one very helpful lady, I have encountered nothing but ignorance and rudeness.

We’re all suffering due to this recession; we’re all doing the work of several people and feeling the strain but this isn’t an excuse for antipathy. If you do the best you can, there’s no more than you can do but if you don’t put the full effort in simply because you can’t be bothered, you shouldn’t be in the job.

Is conversation becoming extinct?

     I was in Wal Mart the other day when I saw a young boy furiously texting away with his thumbs. I remember thinking at the time that wasn’t exactly what God had in mind when he created such an opposable digit. A few moments later, I noticed another boy walked up to this young man, also texting on his cell phone and asked, “You get my text?” The young man nodded without looking up from his phone and said, “Yeah, I’m texting you back.”

     Now someone please explain to me the purpose of that conversation. And why in the hell couldn’t these two boys just speak face-to-face to each other. Has the art of conversation been reduced to the incomprehensible shorthand one finds in a text? Are we so afraid to look another person in the eye that we have to hide behind technology in order to find our voice? The greatest leaders the world has ever known were masters of public speaking, but I’m sure if they had been given cell phones as a teenager they would never have left the safety of their living rooms. I have neighbors who live within fifty feet of each other’s front door and choose to Skype each other rather than stick their heads out of their windows and have a non-technologically based interaction. And when they do “talk” to each other, the conversation doesn’t follow the long observed norms of the weather, the family, or the dog’s recent confrontation with an enraged squirrel. No, they want to compare the newest apps for their smart phones, or debate the necessity of living in a tent for two weeks outside the local Apple store in order to be able to claim the title of “first phone sold.”

     Do we really need all of this technology and is it taking away from the fundamentals of being human? Teenagers are closer to the phones than their parents. Grown human beings spend more time locked away in their bedrooms surfing the net than interacting with their families. Everyday we are inundated with emails, texts, tweets, Google alerts, instant messages, cell phone calls, and video conferencing. How much more can our brains take before we turn into the technology we have placed above our family pet? I don’t think a man walking with an antenna out of his ear that connects to WiFi and has a hard drive capable of downloading Cleveland is what Darwin had in mind for us.

     When will we learn to put our humanity first and technology second, because we are not the emotionally bereft computers we so solemnly worship. Our emotions, our words, our interactions with others are what makes us unique as a species, and if we continue down this road we will be no more emotionally advanced than the rocks on the side of that road. So take that cell phone out of your ear, disconnect from the Internet, and grab your loved ones. Pretend you are a family unit, and do something that families have done together for decades before the invasion of all our technology. Go watch television.

Green-Eyed Monsters Need Not Apply

     I hate to admit it, but I have had bouts of jealousy. Hell, I am having one right now as I eye my neighbor’s perfectly manicured garden and want to rip out his brilliant assortment of rose bushes. But then in mid thought, as I have a picture in my mind of those rose bushes in my garden, I wonder why I am feeling this way. I don’t even like gardens and, having been born with the black thumb of death, anything I do bury in the dirt resembles more of a zombie plant rather than something remotely green and healthy. So why do I envy someone their success with roses? Then again, why do we envy anyone his or her success? Is it because it is in our nature to want to steal away the success of others and make it our own?

     The American Indians call raccoons the thieves of the animal world because they habitually seek to take anything they can find and claim it as their property. Now we are not raccoons, at least not all of us, but is their something deep inside of us at a genetic level that drives us to covet our neighbors belongings. Is it part of an undiscovered survival mechanism that psychologists have yet to identify with some abbreviation like ADHD? Perhaps envious as *&$# syndrome, or EASS. One more disorder that takes a lot of therapy, and a healthy dose of prescription medication, to discreetly control. And what about those Christian values we have all been raised on. I’ve seen people sitting in church turn pee green with envy when they spy a beautiful couple with their perfect angelic looking children, expensively tailored clothes, and glittering jewelry, walking to their private pew. We assume they must happy, right? They are better looking, richer, and have more than any of us. But is that necessarily true.

     Reality television must have taught us that even the Kardashians can have a bad hair day. So why since Cain first took a swing at Abel, have we been coveting our neighbor’s happiness? Have we not learned anything since we first had to cover our nakedness in the Garden of Eden? Granted, some individuals have mastered the ability to forgive and forget. Perhaps it’s their belief in a karmic retribution, rather than a Christian ideal, that motivates their exemplary attitude. I have witnessed the power of this universal truth. What you send out into the universe will eventually come back to bite you in the ass.

     As I stare at Mr. Green Thumb’s roses, I vow to try and temper my envy, and instead appreciate the fact that someone has achieved something that has made the world a better place to live. What you do for yourself, you do for all of us, because we are all connected. In a way, Mr. Green Thumb’s success is mine too. I should celebrate his efforts, and not negate them. But damn, I think as I stare at his bright crimson blooms, those roses would look much better in my garden.    

    

The comma: Are you kidding me?

I would love to get my hands on the sadistic grammarphile who first developed the comma. A piece of punctuation that resembles a sperm with scoliosis, the comma has more rules than the TSA, and is about as infuriating as going through one of their airport screenings. Why is the comma such a mystery? I have seen editors come to blows about how to use the infernal thing in a sentence. And if the comma is to suggest a pause, then why do we even put such markers in our reading. Who wants to pause? We are all in such a rush these days, so let’s just hit the gas, get through the damn sentence, and on to the next one. We don’t have commas on our roads, no matter how many people try to turn stop signs into pause signs, then why do we have them in literature. I mean they’re just words, right? Open to the subjective interpretation of the reader, and bound to garner praise as well as ridicule. Shouldn’t the placement of the comma be up to the discretion of the writer? I put a comma here, because I damn well feel like it. If congress can waste the country’s time and money debating on the whether or not redwood trees in California should be given legal citizenship, then why can’t writer’s be free to write without all of those commas getting in the way. Why is so much of what a writer does governed by rules? Then again, why is so much of life overseen by rules? Everywhere we turn these days there are more and more rules being touted by institutions, governments, businesses, and mothers. And who writes these rules? Who is the person that gets to say when you are old enough to drive, to marry, to have sex, to go to war, to drink, and to do just about anything that involves the use of your brain. Not all rules are meant to arbitrarily blanket a society filled with such a diverse array of peoples and cultures. We have built a world so constricted by the regulations of others, that we have forgotten how to please the individual inside of us. And to ignore who we are will invariably lead to the destruction of what we are. Society must learn to embrace the individual before it creates more rules that will eventually stifle every unique voice. I guess in many ways people are a lot like commas. Every now and then we should pause and appreciate all of the individuals that have enriched our lives up until that moment, before we move on to the next. A shame life doesn’t imitate literature sometimes. Imagine all of the wonderful characters we could have taken the time to cherish if only a comma had been there to remind us. Now don’t even get me started on the semi colon.