Debris

Cobra has this magnetic, wonderful energy. Everything is BIG, which I imagine could be tiring, but we have coffee like once a month so everything's glitter canons and gossip. She came to the Saturday evening performance of my play last month. She bustled up to me at intermission, bright-eyed, "You went for the jugular!" She said and talked my mom's ear off about how much she wants a boyfriend and how no one goes for the jugular in writing anymore. In the talkback, she set the discussion ablaze piping in several times. People felt comfortable adding their findings. It was the best night of feedback for certain.

When I met with her a couple weeks ago I wanted to thank her for it. She had made fire. But when I brought up the talkback she sort of flushed and apologized for being so open and explosive that night. She had left embarrassed. "Why did I say so much? That wasn't my place." But from my perspective of the big picture, she was invaluable. You bring honesty, and you bring the party! I told her this and she was absolutely deflated by relief.

When I was a junior in high school my calculus teacher began a lesson and suddenly crumpled into sobs. Her son had been deployed to Iraq that morning. We all knew she didn't want to be there. She would have paid a lot of money to erase that image from our minds, but some of us needed to see it. This grown good smart woman wrecked by fear and war.