I grew up in Alaska.  People ask all the time what that was like, and I will let you in on a little secret…..Alaska is actually tropic.  We aren’t allowed to tell people that it’s tropical, simply because we don’t want it to become overcrowded like the Bahamas,  or the Virgin Islands.  So we tell stories to deter people from ever wanting to visit.  “So, what was it like living in Alaska?”  “Oh, it’s cold…..really really cold….and there are wild animals EVERYWHERE.  And some days…..the sun doesn’t even come up.”  It sounds like stories that you would tell a child to scare them into doing their homework. 

There was this girl that I met at a local Christian school here in Fredericksburg  but I am not going to tell you which Fredericksburg Christian School to protect her identity.  She came up to me when I was visiting, and asked “aren’t you from Ireland?”  I said, “no, Alaska.”  “Oh”, she said, “I knew it was some other country.”  So, I started hanging out with her, cause she made me feel smart. 

One day, she started to tell me a story, but her cell phone rang.  After she concluded her conversation on the cell phone, she said to me, ‘now what was I going to say?’  I shrugged my shoulders.  So playfully she said, ‘if you really loved me, you would know what I was about to say”, so I poked her right in the forehead.  As she looked at me in bewilderment, I said ‘if you really loved me, you would have known I was going to poke you, and you would have ducked.”

(That's actually a true story......I haven't seen her since the trial).