I do not call for a prayer circle for just any old ailment. Susan Blunderdoss, our secretary here at UPLC, has an 18 yr old son, Jeremy, who is a senior at West Carroll High School. He is a gifted child and plays the tuba for the marching band.
Those of you who follow these pages closely know already of Jeremy's affliction, but for you new comers and slackers and those who got here by accident, I will give you a thumbnail to get you up to speed.
Jeremy seemed to be a normal child until he saw a program hosted by Carl Sagan when he was 10 yrs old where Dr. Sagan intimated that the earth was bombarded by billions and billions of meteors from outer space. Jeremy's affliction started immediately after that program. He would no longer walk in a strait line, he zigged and zagged and hesitated and often took two steps backwards then one right then three left in no particular pattern, which made taking him anywhere very challenging. He did this to avoid being struck by a meteorite.
Susan had him seen by all the regular child psychologists and even had him looked at at the UT Med Center in Memphis where they tried all kinds of medications on Jeremy, but none worked. The band, when it marched for football games and for competitions, made allowances for Jeremy and his solo marching always won highest accolades.
Now the problem. The near miss by the asteroid and the strike in Russia has set Jeremy back a notch. His mother says he will not get out of bed he just lies in his bed, tweeting his good byes to his school friends.
He has been in bed for the past three days and does not plan to get out of bed until the meteor with his name on it strikes him.
Susan corrected him and said meteors become meteorites after striking the earth, and tried everything to assure him he could not possibly be struck by a meteor. Jeremy is not buying it. He has stopped eating and drinking and more ominously, he has stopped charging his cellular phone. I do not think he can last long.
Susan came to me in tears this morning and I am the sort of fellow who can't just stand there, I have to do something. I have a plan which I will share with you in a moment, but this is where I will need your prayers to up the odds of it working.
I told Susan we must give Jeremy a taste of the thing he most dreads. We must give him his meteorite strike. I told her I would arrange everything including making the holes in the roof and get the small meteorite out of the collection at the University of Tennessee at Martin, then heat it up and place it in a sling shot and fire it at Jeremy while he is asleep and strike him in the leg, then when he wakes up and sees the smoldering object in his bed, Susan is to run in and turn the lights on and exclaim:
"Jeremy you have been hit by a meteorite, and Carl Sagan said the odds of being hit twice are astronomical", to pick a useful term.
We then hope Jeremy can lose his fear and go back to school and behave in a normal fashion.
I cannot think of another plan. Anybody ever deal with anything like this before?
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
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