speak up

I was walking my sisters dog tonight after a wonderful dinner with mike and alexis to celebrates mikes 18th birthday, when suddenly, little silent fox-like kito starts barking at a mailbox across the street. This dog never barks.. and if he ever does its a little polite "yelp", but tonight he barked SO loud at that mailbox. It was late and dark so i guess he thought it was something else, but it was weird because he sounded like such a different dog.

Now i know dogs arent people.. and kito is stupid for barking at a mailbox, but theres this sort of theme, and something i felt like writing about as i heard kito's mean voice for the first time. I thought about bottled up emotions. earlier tonight i was rehearsing for the christmas eve service tomorrow, and gorge (pronounced in a spanish way.. hor-hey) our bongo-man got very upset. He has to be the nicest man I think i've met in a long time. last time i played for church he came up to me afterwards and said "great job!" and shook my hand really firmly. Gorge was very upset tonight because inbetween practicing songs he kept working on beats for the song and the guy in charge wouldnt let him continue.. sounds kind of petty but i picked up on the frustration and apparently he's been playing for the church band for months and has always felt left out. how do i know?

because gorge spoke up today for the first time.. he came out from behind his bongos with a thick latino-type accent saying "i know this is not what you intend for me to feel, but i feel very left out, if i want to do this i want to do it right and it seems like you all could care less about whether or not i am involved" the man had a point.. nobody was paying much attention to gorge lopez. it didnt have to be such a big deal, but it was.

so how does it all tie together? well... theres a lot of statistics (i learned from quiggs presentation today) showing that teenagers have a lot of problems and dont feel like they can talk about their problems to people, enough teenagers that one is commiting suicide every hour and 4 minutes. Everyone's had to swallow their pride a couple times, but after a while things build.. and the mailboxes in life look like monsters in the dark. I kind of liked that the dog went on barking and howling like a wolf, I'm glad gorge made his point tonight at rehearsal. Because if we have nothing else in life, we have a voice. and sometimes the power isnt so much in the exact words we choose as it is in the release of emotion when words are spoken alloud to another person.


Jo