“It is the duty of every citizen according to his
best capacities to give validity to his
convictions in political affairs.”

- Albert Einstein

Note: The following blog is a teensy bit late, due to the author being unavoidably detained by her various endeavors. If you are reading this, please pretend that it is Friday. Thank You!

I just learned something new about myself Wednesday. I like hockey. A lot.

Wednesday night I went to my very first Wild game. It was so exciting! You can just feel all the adrenaline pulsing in that ginormous place. It is sooo much more interesting than golf. You get to scream for your team when they score a goal, and you get to scream at the other team no matter what they do! And if that wasn’t enough to scream about, Bertuzzi was playing on the opposing team which got everyone even more riled up!

It was an awesome game. 6-zip? Oh, yeah, we beat their butts into the ice. And Bouchard’s penalty shot? Cloutier didn’t even see it coming. Sieve! Sieve! Sieve! What a way to kill their confidence! I wish that it could’ve lasted.

Let’s see… Wednesday’s game, I was there, and they won. Tonight, I wasn’t there, and they lost.

Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?

Anyway, I can’t wait to be able to go again. Screaming is way fun!

I go to school in Hastings, where there has recently been much talk about the murders of a couple: Peter and Patricia Niedere. Initially, I was a little curious; I mean, c’mon. It’s Hastings for crying out loud!

So, I knew that a couple was murdered by their son and one of his friends.

This morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, my dad slides the Strib over to me and asks me if I know that they arrested another kid involved with the murder; which in itself was strange because he didn’t know that I knew anything about it.

So I looked. The headline said “3rd teen is held in Hastings slayings”; and there were the pictures of three teenage boys.

The third face was familiar.

Oh, yeah, I recognized it. It was a face of a boy I had gone to kindergarten and 1st grade with. I checked the name to be sure. Jamie Patton? Yup. I practically had a fit on my dad, who was still a little skeptical. *sigh*. Okay. Turn the page. Skim through it a little ways. Here we go, the proof I was looking for: “…attended Calvin Christian School…” The school I went to in said grades. Oh. My. God.

How would it feel to wake up one morning to find that a little boy that you had ridden to school with, played games with, went to Dairy Queen with, that you haven’t heard from ever since you switched schools — is involved in a murder conspiracy? It would feel like a little piece of your world had just crumbled and hit the ground. Sheol! The year our school had Noah and the Ark as the school play, he and I were the two zebras together!! We were pretty close, especially considering that boys have cooties!

I know I’m not very closely connected at all, but at one time, he was a part of my life. I kinda wish I could’ve talked to him before this whole situation ever took place, if only just to find out what he’d been doing with his life before he basically chucked it out the window. I guess I’m a little confused but no one’s going to give me an explanation. Not that I really need one, money was involved, after all. Would he even remember me?

Today I dug out my sheet of kindergarten pictures, and there’s his picture, right next to mine.

Murderer? You wouldn’t think so.