"You have to grow up and run The Marathon"

(to herself) (what does he mean? I don't understand...)

" I uh.... "

"NO Backtalk!!! You shut up or I'll kill you! I'll take this knife and stab you to death."

She sits down stares at her dinner plate very quietly.

"And I Don't Like Your Attitude!"

(my dad always says that. I don't have a clue in the world what he's talking about.)

Years Later:

"All A's except a D in German.... well that's OK. Now look, this is more important! You have to shake hands and look'em in the eye. And you have to do more running. Running! Do you hear me!!"

(I only look at the ground.... I guess I can do a glance at someone's eye...sometime. What's this running shit? I can't run, I don't have real legs. Only, no one can tell... why can't anyone see it?)

She sees her legs as sort of a blur. They look like two tentacles with flippers at the bottom to her.

(I sort of run in gym class, but very slowly and it hurts a lot. Everyone else has to do it and I don't want to have anyone really look at my weird ass leg things....)

More Years Later

(I figure I'll tell people I'm a mechanical engineer, even tho' I didn't take all the courses. They don't check on my actual degree, I guess saying "MIT" just snows them.)

"OK, You can take this desk. We might have computers in a year or two; now just secretaries and some senior scientists have computers."

"Well, you can draw and design and the analysis you do just blows me away"

(yeah, it's just HS level stuff, engineering handbook algebra and some words I've learned.)

"But more of your job should be running. You know, get the vendor over here and go out on the 10K course and get'em tired and make them give us what we want. And Thursday, on your trip, try and get their engineers and that manager to run a half marathon with you, or at least ten miles."

(Goddess, all that running! They should have hired a track star, not someone intellectual.... Heck, I never do it. I don't have legs.)

Well, I do have legs and used to really enjoy running until my knee got bad. There was other, interpersonal communications I could barely do pretty poorly. I always wished I could just do the stuff I was good at ......

Renee