~ ~ ~



The signs apparently meant to indicate what level of ground people must flee to in order to be safe. “Would one hit our house?” said Parker.

“No,” said his father.

“We don’t have to worry about tsunamis,” said Viv, and though she didn’t mean it that way, the implication was there already were enough things to worry about. Zan wondered if Viv was thinking the same thing, which was, If the bank takes the house, bring on that damned tsunami — but more likely Viv was just trying to strike from her children’s running list of horribles one more horror. “The ocean might come up into the canyon a bit,” said Zan, and Viv shot him a look: Oh, great. Tell them the tsunami’s going to come into the canyon. “Just a bit,” Zan hastily stressed. “Where the canyon begins.”

“Über cool,” said Parker. He’s at the age where it’s hard for Zan to tell the cool from the holocaustic; lately Parker and his friends call something “sick” when they mean it’s great. What does that say about the era? wonders Zan. How and when did something outstanding become “tight” and what connotations could it have to his twelve-year-old? When I was young, Zan remembers, things were “wicked.” Wicked was good and soon we were doing things that we thought were good that for centuries people thought were wicked. In our slang lies the future.


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