Wine Cigarettes Fireworks White flowers

Pg. 80 We made our way down to the soccer field, and she took me to edge of the field where the woods start... and after a while she stopped and said, "Dig".-And I said, "Dig?" and she said, "Dig." and we went on like that for a bit, and then I got on my knees and dug through the soft black dirt at the edge of the woods, and before I could get very far, my fingers scratched glass, and I dug around the glass until I pulled out a bottle of pink wine-- Strawberry Hill, it was called..."I have a fake ID," she said, "but it sucks.  So every time I go to the liquor store, I buy ten bottles of this, and some vodka for the Colonel."

Pg. 54- "Let's go smoke," he said. "You're out of cigarettes aren't you?" she asked without looking up. "Well. Yes.""Got five bucks?" she asked."Nope.""Pudge?" she asked."Yeah, all right." I fished a five out of my pocket, and Alaska handed me a pack of twenty Marlboro Lights.  I knew I'd smoke maybe five of them, but so long as I subsidized the Colonel's smoking, he couldn't really attack me for being another rich kid, a Weekday Warrior who just didn't happen to live in Birmingham.

Pg. 104- "Five," he said. "Four. Three. Two. One. Light it. Light it. Light it."  It was lit with a sizzle that reminded me of every July Fourth with my family.  We stood still for nanosecond, staring at the fuse, making sure it was lit.  And now, I thought. Now. Run, run, run run, run.  But my body didn't move until I heard Takumi shout-whisper, "Go, go, go, go, fucking go".

Pg. 164- "White tulips," I said, "Jake's white tulips. Why?"... "Once last year, she and Takumi and I were at the Smoking Hole, and there was this little white daisy on the bank of the creek, and all of the sudden she just jumped waist-deep into the water and waded across and grabbed it.  She put it behind her ear, and when I asked her about it, she told me that her parents always put white flowers in her hair when she was little".

Famous Last Words….

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.

~~ Humphrey Bogart, actor, d. January 14, 1957

I’m bored with it all.

~~ Winston Churchill, statesman, d. January 24,

1965

My God. What's happened?

~~ Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales, d. August 31, 1997

I must go in, the fog is rising.

~~ Emily Dickinson, poet, d. 1886

It is very beautiful over there.

~~ Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, d. October 18, 1931

All is lost. Monks, monks, monks!

~~ Henry VIII, King of England, d. 1547

Let's cool it brothers . . .

~~ Malcolm X, Black leader, d. 1966

I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record.

~~ Dylan Thomas, poet, d. 1953

Moose . . . Indian . . .

~~ Henry David Thoreau, writer, d. May 6, 1862

"That was a great game of golf, fellers."

~~ Bing Crosby, performer d. 1977

"Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough."

~~Karl Marx, philosopher d. 1883

“God, oh God, I’m so sorry.”

~~Alaska Young, student d. January 10/11, 2005

Labyrinth

-An intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to

find one's way or to reach the exit.-Often full of deception and suffering

Alaska’s account of mother’s death

“The day after my mom took me to the zoo where she liked the monkey and I like the bears, it was a Friday. I came home from school. She gave me a hug and told me to go do my homework in my room so I could watch TV later. I went into my room, and she sat down at the kitchen table, I guess, and then she screamed, and I ran out, and she had fallen over. She was lying on the floor, holding her head and jerking. And I freaked out. I should have called 911, but I just started screaming and crying until finally she stopped jerking, and I thought she had fallen asleep and that whatever had hurt didn’t hurt anymore. So I just sat there on the floor with her until my dad got home an hour later, and he’s screaming, ‘Why didn’t you call 911?’ and trying to giver her CPR, but by then she was plenty dead. Aneurysm. Worst day. I win. You drink.” (p.119)

Pudge’s realization of Alaska’s internal conflict

“It was the central moment of Alaska’s life. When she cried and told me that she fucked everything up, I knew what she meant now. And when she said she failed everyone, I knew whom she meant. It was the everything and the everyone of her life, and so I could not help but imagine it: I imagined a scrawny eight-year-old with dirty fingers, looking down at her mother convulsing. So she sat down with her dead-or-maybe-not mother, who I imagine was not breathing by then but wasn’t yet cold either. And in the time between dying and death, a little Alaska sat with her mother in silence. And then through the silence and my drunkenness, I caught a glimpse of her as she might have been. She must have come to feel so powerless, I thought, that the one thing she might have done-pick up the phone and call an ambulance- never even occurred to her. There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow-that, in short, we are all going.” (p.120)

Drinking and Driving Prevention Day

“D-Day”

FACT:

Every 15 minutes in the United States, someone dies because of a drunk driver.

Drunk Driving Commercial

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAP9Az11XzM&NR=1

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2WqyfYiuI&feature=related