A life less comfortable

Once upon a time I attended a tiny two room school in Gazeley, England.  There was big class and little class.  I was there from the time I was 5 until I was 8.  I stayed in little class the entire time.  It was our village primary school.  We had a headmaster and a couple of teachers and the cooks in the lunch room.  The cooks wore the most amazing multi-hued platform shoes (it was the 1970s).  Our Headmaster, Mr Bouldrey, was a tall thin man of Ichabod Crane proportions.  He was spindly and had a chronic scowl on his pinched face.  He was not kind.  He did not like me.  He was the villain in my school world.  If he had a theme song it would be dark and ominous with creepy minor chord undertones. I seemed to be the focus of his hatred towards all things American.  "Since when did the Americans decide to replace the letter 't' for the letter 'd' in the word 'water'?" He sneered in my general direction one day whilst my m...

I was up late the other night scrolling through netflix looking for something worthwhile to watch and I came upon the movie, Ragamuffin, about the life of Rich Mullins.  I had always wanted to see that movie ever since I heard they were making it but being out of the country and somewhat out of the loop I missed it.  I quickly cued it up and settled down to watch.  By 2 am I was weeping as the credits rolled. I have always loved Rich Mullin's music and his songs and voice are linked indelibly in my mind with my dad.  When I was a senior in high school my dad was going through his second course of treatment for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  It had been discovered the year before in the forth and final stage.  His first round of chemo seemed to kick it and we rejoiced.  However it was during our family vacation to an upscale dude ranch of sorts that I knew it was back. We were out to dinner and Dad's voice was weaker than I remembered it being the week befor...