It’s been a rough week for reading. Both forms of school (the classes I teach and the classes I’m taking online) are taking up my time, Virginia Woolf isn’t the easiest read in the world, and there have been some … occurrences that have put everyone on edge and have me feeling on the verge of panic a lot more often than usual.

Earlier this week a victim of bullying brought a gun to a school in my district and, when confronted by his bully, shot the other student in the torso. The student had a history of being bullied — it’s likely why he brought the gun in the first place; he wanted to protect himself.

I am sorry for nearly everyone involved. The student who thought he had no other choice than to resort to bringing a gun to school; the student who didn’t wake up that morning thinking he’d end up in intensive care; all the other students who had to deal with the terror and uncertainty of a lockdown; and all the parents and families who joined the ranks of thousands of Americans who have faced similar horrors, who have gotten in their car and rushed to school to pick up a child they hope, hope, hope is okay.

Not Feeling So “Peppy”

My high school has been blessedly free of gun violence, but it’s easy to see that everyone is thinking about it. We get reminders to keep our doors locked and never, never, never open them for people we don’t know. There’s been an increased presence of school resource officers as a just-in-case measure, but seeing three guys in body armor outside a pep rally doesn’t make anybody feel better.

At the football game last Friday, a rumor spread through the crowd that someone had come with a weapon, which caused people to run away in fear. No one was hurt and the rumors turned out to be baseless, but it goes to show how worried people are.

I always try to tell students that it is gun violence in schools is a tragedy, but it is a relatively rare tragedy and that they shouldn’t dwell on it. But, well. When the guy you’re standing next to gets struck by lightning, it’s hard not to keep your eyes on the clouds.

The Man, the Mythulu

In an attempt not to focus on all the horrible things that are happening: Sarah and I went out to get “sushi” on Friday — put in “quotes” because we had California Rolls and a bunch of other deep fried cream cheese cylinders that Americans call “sushi” — and had a few bottles of hot sake for good measure. (I’m not knocking this cuisine. It’s delicious, but only very charitably referred to as “sushi.”)

When we got home, we played some Mythulu.

If you aren’t familiar, Mythulu is a card game that helps you generate ideas for stories. You have a deck of cards that are split into six categories — Traits, Elements, Habitats, Characters, Textures, and Relationships — that represent tropes in storytelling, which you can draw in certain combinations to create new ideas.

For example, you might draw “Sky,” “Ash,” and “Memory.” You put those three together to get a roving cloud of ash, perhaps spread from a crematorium smokestack, that implants memories of the dead into anyone who is overtaken by the cloud.

There are no wrong ideas. You just draw the cards and let your imagination run wild. These cards are FANTASTIC for developing story ideas or parts of a story. Sarah and I often play it when we’ve had a few drinks; not because we’re actively working on a writing project together, rather just because it’s fun to talk about.

We decided we’d draw cards to create a monster that we could use in a fantasy story.

As we were drawing, we brainstormed what we thought the cards meant.

“It’s a creature, right? And it lives in the ground. It grows really slowly and … and here’s the thing … when people see it, they want to take care of it. Like, like it release a chemical or something that triggers maternal instinct.“

“People want to take it home and look after it.”

“Right! They want to take it home and feed it and love it and they’ll often times just sit and look at it. That’s how magical it is. People put this monster in their house and just look at it and adore it and want to keep it alive.”

“It tricks them. It bamboozles them.”

“Yeah! It plays the long con. It’s completely helpless unless it can find someone to take it home and give it everything it needs. But … but the people who are being conned, they don’t even mind it.”

“They’re excited! They’re excited to have it. They tell all their friends about it and go on the internet to do research about how to best take care of this little monster. They take pictures of it and share them.”

“And it never stops! For their whole life, these poor suckers are dedicated to caring for this monster that’s latched onto their lives. Some people even have more than one. They fill their whole house up with them, and taking care of these damned things becomes their entire existence!“

We’d been drinking, so it took us a little longer than it should have to realize that we were describing houseplants. In our attempt to create a new, fantastical monster, we created ferns.