• ⇤
• ⇽
• ≡
• ⇾
• ⇥

my cousin's important speech

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

I went to the family Thanksgiving dinner, today, out in Oakville. While on our usual after-dinner walk (this time, down to the lake from the Oakvillains new place, where I managed a beautiful 20-metre stone skip), my 19-year-old cousin told me that he had a speech prepared for later on. When he mentioned it later on, I leapt up, turned off the enormous television, and asked for everybody's attention.

This didn't sit too well with my cousin. It turned out that his speech wasn't something prepared for school, as I'd expected, but was about his plans to leave normal daytime school for the last time. It seemed a difficult speech to deliver, but he pulled it off well and gave some articulate, well-argued reasons. He'd clearly given it quite a lot of thought, and had a plan for pursuing his high school diploma in adult daytime classes next semester.

I wish him well.