LMP

Colds start out small; a little sniffy nose, tickley throat. Not a big deal. Then you have those symptoms for 2 weeks, so you think okay this cold will be gone soon. Then you get a headache and runny nose. After a week, you think winter would you let spring come already! You aren't sick enough to stay home from school, but you're still miserable at school. Then the cough comes, and you lose your voice at random times in the day. It hurts to swallow and you sometimes sound like a 80-year-old smoker. When your cold is at it's peak (at least you hope so) you forget you have announcements, so you run down to the other side of the school as fast as you can. When you get there you're out of breath and sound raspy and the whole school can hear it, yea! But then after the Wrestling game which you shivered and winced through, you go home and practice a high pitched instrument and stay up till 12 am doing Geometry. Oh the wonderful life of the average Junior High Schooler! *...

"I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It was by the fingerpost at the end of the village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, 'Goodbye, O my dear, dear friend!'      Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations   (p. 208)