mara

“I am a dragon. And this is my hoard.”

“You… don’t look like a dragon.”

“Well, hardly anyone does, these days. Times have changed, we have too. The scales and tails thing worked with the dinosaurs, but we learned quite quickly that… that wasn’t going to fly with you people.”

“You were around all the way back to the dinosaurs?”

“Well, not like… me personally. How old do you think I am?”

“… There’s no safe answer to that.”

“No.”

“So… when you say this is your hoard…?”

“All dragons have them. Some stick to the old gold and jewels thing, but that’s so cliche these days. Most of us like our hoards to be a little bit more sophisticated than ‘shiny.’“

“Like what?”

“I have known dragons to collect snowflakes from the first fall of the year over dozens of centuries. I know dragons that collect petals of flowers left on the graves of loved ones. Dragons that keep and care for soft toys and comfort items, left behind as children grow up. Dragons that guard happy memories and shards of sunlight, kept safe for rainy days. And me, I keep a sanctuary of words. A bastion of language, of poetry. Of written music and achingly beautiful prose. I am the Guardian of this monument to linguistic majesty. I collect stories of love and life and death and mourning and joy. There is nothing more beautiful in all the world, no coin or gem or sliver of starlight more fantastic than a well-told tale. A story is this world’s truest treasure, and what better chest for it than a book?”

“Wow. So these things… really mean a lot to you, huh?”

“More than anything in this world.”

“So… I probably can’t borrow your copies of Discworld, can I?”

If you want to learn more about him, there’s a great documentary on him called Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin

gerb was my high school physics teacher. (gerb is short for mr. gerber.) when we were learning about radiation and whatnot, and we touched on radiation poisoning, gerb decided to tell us a story.

when gerb was in high school, he worked in a supermarket. a cashier. there was this one little old lady, mrs. cassopolis, who was a regular. mrs. cassopolis firmly believed that the lasers used to scan her food items would give her radiation poisoning. they tried to explain that’s not a thing. but old cass wouldn’t hear a word of it.

the employees had to punch in every. last. grocery. item. MANUALLY.

and this woman would buy cartfulls of food every week, like any good grandma trying to feed her five children and eighteen grandchildren every time they come for a Sunday visit. so pretty soon, the employees figured out a strategy to get her on her way and get on with their lives.

one or more employees would distract old cass while the cashier would scan all the items he could as fast as humanly possible while she wasn’t paying attention.

now this supermarket had a rewards program for its most efficient workers. the computer would track how quickly the cashiers scanned items, and how many total they scanned in one day, that kind of thing. so one day, gerb’s boss came to him and said “uh,”

“you scanned three hundred items in six minutes last Tuesday during your shift” and gerb says “i recall” “that’s about four times faster than anything i’ve ever seen” and gerb says “yea ok” “jeremy what happened?”

and gerb says

Norwegians consume 9% of all Pepsi max produced

Norwegians eat the second most tacos in the world, just after Mexico

Norwegians drink the second most coffee in the world, just after USA

Norwegians read the second most comic books in the world, just after japan

One time when he was 18, he was fishing and found a baby salamander someone had tried and failed to use as bait. It had a huge gash in its side and didn’t look like it would make it. He put it in the bucket he was going to put fish in and took it home, then performed “surgery” on the little guy to mend the gash. It couldn’t move, so my dad fed it and nursed it back to health until the gash was healed. Since he’d taken it in as a baby, it wasn’t equipped to stay alive in the wild, so he kept it in a giant aquarium next to his bed. It stayed alive until my sister was born six years later.

His dad took him deer hunting once when he was in middle school. They hunted all day and never saw a single deer. At the end of the day as the sun was setting, they found one, and my dad yelled at my grandpa not to shoot it because it didn’t deserve to die. He hasn’t been deer hunting since.

Two people I used to be best friends with don’t have stable parents. My dad takes them out for lunch and out fishing regularly, and even though I am not friends with either of them anymore, he still makes time for them as if they were his own kids.

Sometimes I catch him crying at videos of dogs on the internet.

One time he was crying and I asked him what was wrong and he gave me a hug and said there isn’t always a reason. I’ve held on to that.

He told me that if (if) he dies, he wants to die by being drowned in a horde of puppies because otherwise, what’s the point?

He makes sure to say “I love you” to my mom and me every day, because he once told me he never once heard it from his parents as a kid.

Saw my mom looking at a bird, so he found out what kind of bird it was and drew a picture of it for her.

Heard me crying after a hard day and brought me a box of milk duds, because even though I’m lactose intolerant, it was an occasion on which they were needed.

Pirates use this innate fear to their advantage to protect themselves from mermaids, hence the iconic beards and hat: