One day we were having chicken for dinner, and the pan was sitting on the counter and cooling. I was in my room doing homework and the dog was next to me, my sisters were in their rooms doing the same. My dad was outside and my mom was in the bathroom. When she comes to check on the chicken and other food, she calls us all down to ask if we took the chicken. I come downstairs and look at the pan to see that all of the chicken is gone. You can just see the outlines of the pieces in the juice. The dog didn't get it because he was with me. There were no drips of juice on the counter or the floor. Nothing.

We wound up ordering out that night.

My dog has a tendency to bark at the front door. I open it to show him no one is there but he continues to bark and growl.


At Thanksgiving dinner last year, we all went over to my aunt's house. One of the guests was my my little three year old cousin. My grandfather died in 1998, and she was born in 2000. So there we are, eating dinner and my grandmother goes on talking about the "then-potential" war in Iraq and gets onto talking about her deceased husband and what he did during WWII. My little cousin then asked her mother, "Who is that behind her?" She then continued to describe my grandfather standing behind my grandma at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. A man she had never seen before in her life. A man who doesn't have any pictures hanging on our walls for her to see.