Rock the Baby - Episode 1

Sleeper

You can call me Ray. It’s what I call myself. My parents named me Jay, but in a cruel twist of fate I can’t pronounce the “J” sound correctly. I avoid it as much as possible. It was the last letter added to the English alphabet so I think we simply aren’t designed to say it. So I call myself Ray instead.

Some speech therapist that I went to in school told me that it’s a “voiced palatal-alveolar affricate” as if that made the problem easier to understand. She said I should put my tongue behind my upper teeth like I’m about to make a “T” sound, but then blow with a buzzing sound. My tongue kept slipping out and I gave her the raspberries. Every freakin’ time.

I’m writing in this notebook to document the beginning of the New World. Today is the first day in the New World. New Year’s day. New World’s day. Day one. Year one. Do over. Reboot.

No one is celebrating though. There were no New Year’s Eve parties last night. You see, we didn’t know the New World was starting today. We didn’t know the Old World was ending yesterday. But it did.

In the Old World I would be posting this on a blog I suppose. I was a blogger since I was in high school. Yeah, I got beat up a lot. But when I’m not reading something I’m writing something. There aren’t blogs any more. Nothing electronic works any more. I have this old notebook and a couple cheap ballpoint pens. And a yo-yo. I have a lot of time now to practice with the yo-yo.

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Please come back next week for Episode 2, Forward Pass.

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