dog-earred

I heard something about chapter books. They said that chapter books were a whole different ball game than books you could read in one go. Chapter books require you to dog-ear the page, (or use a book mark, for all the book-nazis out there) and promise to come back later. This was supposed to relate to people.
So I guess some people you can finish in one go. They are there for a day, or an hour, or a minute and then..........                ............
There are some people that you dog-ear, though. They promise to come back, you promise to come back. Like family, of course. Family sticks around and they usually crop up at least once in every chapter, if not more often than that, until the end of The Book. Friends stick around too, for a couple of chapters, usually. Sometimes it's for a 5-chapter block, or they just trickle in and out every 20 pages or so, and you're never quite sure when they might crop up again, and how they might be different.
Then there's the cameo appearances. The summer flings, the winter romance that ended with Christmas. They're the equivalent of the attractive guy you dated for a few months, and apparently served some sort of purpose in your life's story, but you're not sure why, because you never see him again after the first book in the series.
I think that's where this metaphor diverges from real life. Usually in the tangible world, the people you don't expect to ever see again, you see randomly, suddenly, and usually uncomfortably. The people that you expect to see again at Thanksgiving or at Friday's History Lecture are no-shows..... permanently. See, in chapter books, when a character is gone, they're gone! The cameo-appearances stay cameo. In chapter books, the protagonist sticks around, and you can count on the archetype of that wise old man to hold true. If you go back and look at your diary or whatever, it's pretty clear that's not how it works in life. The one-time people keep showing up, turning into two-and-three-time people, leaving you wondering if it's every truly possible to "never see someone again".  Sometimes the mentor figure isn't there, or they have to leave prematurely, leaving you wondering if there is such thing as consistency and dependability.
So really, chapter books are a risky business. Dog-earring a page is placing your trust and your heart on a line of text. There's the promise to come back, but that doesn't guarantee anything.

Why then, do we dog-ear the page?

Sandpaper

Caviat: I'd like to talk about college. Seem cliche? It is. Do I care? Only a little. I am in college, and that's what is affecting me right now, and so I'm going to talk about it, however self-interested that may sound. However, with some coaxing and a forgiving mind, this silly analogy could probably be read for all ages.

College life is a little like Sandpaper. Actually, it's quite a lot like sandpaper. They rub you down here. They rub off what you thought before. Almost daily you here words like "former misconception", and phrases like, "forget what they told you in school. This is what this particular phrase REALLY means." The expectations are rough, too; expectations from family, peers, teachers, etc. These expectations form the pressure that pushes the sandpaper hard into the skin of your spirit and drags it across. It's pretty harsh.
There's good sandpaper, though. I like to call good sandpaper the day-old stubble of a beard, or in lay terms, "5 o'clock shadow".  Mmmm. You with me, girls? That's the kind of sandpaper that can scratch an itch in your soul when it drags across the smooth surface of your own cheek.
Have you ever dragged a piece of sandpaper across human skin? I did once. It was with my dad's electrical sander. While it was whirring around in circles at dangerously high speeds, I ever so gently placed my fingertips to the spinning sandpaper, just for the experience. Friction is pretty incredible. There was no blood, but even the ghost of a touch to the sander took a layer of skin off of my fingers.
I can't imagine that having your immortal soul sanded is a pleasant experience. In fact, I feel fairly confident in stating that as a fact. It does not feel very good for the human spirit to be sanded down.

Query: Is it necessary?
This leads to other quandaries on the matter, such as: "If so, to what extent?" "How do we know when we've been 'sanded' enough?" "Is this a form of refinement, or torture, or both?" "Isn't there an easier way?" "Who decides when I'm finished?" "Why would we have to be sanded at all?" "Who thought up of this terrible sandpaper analogy anyway?", and on and on in a vicious cycle of age-old questions that have already been answered, but will forever be posed and reposed in various forms.
So maybe I do know the answer to sandpaper, (it's not 42, that's the meaning of life!) but that doesn't really stop the chafing.

My Bucket List

1. Every day, be more of the person that God would want me to be
2. Learn to fly
3. Discover someone lost to history
4. Open a life-changing chocolate shop
5. Take a bold stance on a controversial topic
6. See the Seven Wonders
7. Save someone's life
8. Solve a mystery
9. Visit the World Fair
10. Climb the Swiss alps in the spring
11. Spend a summer in Italy
12. Leave a mystery for posterity
13. Visit every spot that I have pinned on my travel board on pinterest
14. Learn a new language
15. See Hamlet at the Globe Theater
16. Grab a stranger by the tie and kiss him
17. Drop a penny off of the Eiffel Tower
18. Build a raft and float down the Mississippi River
19. Eat a piece of Pizza on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
20. Spend a night homeless
21. Visit an Iranian mosque
22. Go to Istanbul
23. Visit Tipp City, Ohio: The birthplace of "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too"
24. Join a roller derby team
25. Visit the Atlantic and Pacific ocean on the same day