First excerpt of a thing I wanted to do before I am no longer young

That sentiment is alien to you. You know “faith” and “redemption” as phrases, not forces, and even where you live, which Mrs. Dunwoody in sophomore geography incessantly urges referred to the Northern Plains – which Mrs. Dunwoody is no one’s favorite but at least she doesn’t make you do the Macarena like Mrs. Wendell, who kids say is a lesbian, does in Spanish II – but anyway, the Northern Plains, the square states that your dad likes to call God’s Country – even here you are not alone in having a hard time believing that faith and redemptive power are anything more than husks that house concepts people rely on to make conjectures about things that elicit a need to talk and dampen the fear that they have nothing to say. Mr. Gordon will seem the exception to you then, in how calm and certain and steady he seems about it.

HOLY, AMERICA!