No way. We just needed a little time to regroup and strategize a plan for getting Judge Biggs to listen to us. We tried to think like generals or chess players, although sometimes, I admit, we just had conversations like this one:Charlie: “I bet if the judge’s got a light inside him, like the Quakers say, it’s a bare-minimum light, like a microscopic bioluminescent shrimp at the bottom of the ocean.”Me: “A microscopic bioluminescent shrimp that’s been swallowed by a giant sea slug at the bottom of the ocean.”Charlie: “A single-celled bioluminescent bacterium stuck to the butt of the bioluminescent shrimp that’s been swallowed by a giant sea slug at the bottom of the ocean.”Etc.And then the Victory Voice published my letter, my thank-you note to the town of Victory.For days after the letter came out in the paper, our phone rang off the hook with nice, hugely embarrassing calls from friends, neighbors, teachers, relatives. My dad even somehow got hold of the letter and used the one short phone call he got that week to say that he loved me harder than rocks and older than stars and bigger than time.
