“the computer dog”

read the cardboard lawn sign, and I laughed. What a weird concept for a small business! Like… maybe this guy has a dog, and it’s the mascot for his computer-fixing side hustle? Then I got a little closer and realized it actually said, “The Computer Doc.” 

How funny, I thought. You switch one letter, and the entire meaning changes.

You might think that on a long solo pilgrimage, you experience profound thoughts about, like, god or human nature or something. Sometimes that’s true. But other times, you conduct a comprehensive exploration of all the alphabetic permutations of the phrase “The Computer Dog.”

Highlights:

• the computer fog (it’s a virus)

• the computer hog (he just keeps all the computers that come in)

• the computer hug (for when your computer’s feeling down)

• the computer dom (for when your computer’s feeling horny)

• the computer dot (uh, I believe the term is “pixel”)

Computer dox, that’s malaria medicine for your computer. Computer doy, a holdover from the ’90s, like, computer doy, you don’t know what’s wrong with your computer? Computer doz… puts your computer right to sleep.

Then I glanced up and thought, Hey, a lake!

*

Freedom is skipping stones on a beach while everyone else is at work.

*

I leaned under a birch tree in someone’s front yard. I had no home, so the world was my home. And in that moment, my home was rolling farmland and beech forests, the glittering surface of Owasco Lake, and a cascade of spade-shaped leaves overhead, serrate edges rimmed in golden sunlight.

If gold is valuable because it’s rare, than what about this?