I suppose that I spent a quarter of a century trying to be anything but him - maybe a little less. Though with no land bridge between Southern California and Southeastern Oklahoma, I've been living off stories of his projects (the walkway that has been in the works since before I moved away), the farm (Patch Eyes might not recover from a run-in with an older bull), and his job (the only birthday cake he got this year was from his second hour students). I search every twanged word for some clue as to whether or not he misses me and I hope he searches my dwindling twang for the same. Perhaps I'll spend the next 25 years trying to catch up to him, albeit without the pregnancy-cum-marriage shotgun wedding, the resulting alcoholism, and the inability to let my children know what I think of them.