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Julia Rietmulder-Stone
It was every morning, any morning. I a straight line between my inconvenient-boy-
friend's house and my inconvenient-place-of-
Was dn.v. ing the long drive from my boy- work - while simultaneously marveling at
o the sky and listening to Morning Edition.
fr.lend' sohuse to work. (I never pick conve- Another thing we all know is that there
is nothing sensational about Morning Edi-
tuent love.) On either side of my car the sky tion. And so, with a tone of voice as calm as
if she were reporting on the marvelous split-
Was solid, but above me, and straight ahead, sky above me, the woman filling in for Renee
Montagne - who was on assignment in Af-
ran a perfect seam, so that on one side of my ghanistan - said that in just a moment they
would have an update on the school shooting
c~r (other cars, too, because Iwas not alone on
t e road, but I can speak here only from my in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
O. Wn expene. nce, and one thing we all know I was in Pennsylvania, less than thirty
ISthat all of us drivers on the road that day
must have experienced something different) miles west of Lancaster County, had visited
Lancaster County often, usually to go outlet-
so t~at on one side of my car, the sky was blue shopping, but also, once, when I was young,
- hke, seriously blue, like the kind of blue
Wecan all picture but can't be expressed from to visit an Amish schoolhouse.
And it was in such an Amish schoolhouse,
one person to another.
. And that is where you, the reader, come the woman filling in for Renee Montagne in-
In~ ta pi.cture the bluest sky you can, even formed me, that a man had taken hostage a
~Ithout me providing you with some stun- dozen girls between the ages of six and thir-
teen, and shot them with an automatic hand-
~~g and clever metaphor, because another gun. Five girls were dead. More were in criti-
~ Ing we all know by now is that the image cal condition in area hospitals. The man, they
ISyours, that you create it just as fully, if not believed, was exacting revenge for something
that had happened to him twenty years ago.
more fully, than I, the writer, ever can. Idid the math. He was, they said, in his thir-
f So you are picturing blue sky on one side ties; twenty years ago he was in high school.
a the car _ it could be any car, but for your Another thing we all know is that for the
awkward teenagers of the world, high school
e~perience to most closely mirror mine, it is not the carefree and fabulous time Grease
S ould be an old car, solid but precariously so, would have us believe. I should add that I
ethcono~c.a I enough that at 75 miles an hour was an awkward and unpopular teenager.
Statistically speaking, most of us were prob-
e WInd makes enough noise that the radio ably awkward teenagers. I assume this man
~eeds to be turned all the way up if you are
~lhear anything. And the radio was turned
~ the way up, tuned to NPR, but that part
t~mes later, so for now just focus on picturing
e bluest blue sky on one side of the car.
P f And then, once you have that, picture a
t;: ~ct ~eavy gray sky - as gray a gray as was, too. .
It. .lue ISblue - on the other side of the car. And as I was listening, I passed the exit
iSunminent, of course, but not raining. Just for Route 30, which, if I took it far enough,
gr ay.
W II Was driving through this perfectly split would take me to Lancaster County. But that
ri~~ d,. stealing quick glances back at the sun morning I was going to work, which did not
c g In the blue part of the sky - back be- lie along Route 30, and so I kept driving.
liattulseb.I was dn.V. Ing mostly-south, but also a
The woman filling in for Renee Montagne
e It west because there is no road that runs
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