UP AGAINST THE WALL

Our son Austin is having a tough semester. He's hit that wall that everyone in college comes to eventually, when you finally step over the line that separates "What a Blast!" from "I'm So Ready to Be Finished." He's winding up his fourth year, but still has 2 semesters plus summer school to go, before he earns his computer engineering degree with a minor in German. He has also taken on a pretty demanding job at Hewlett Packard that sucks up all his free time, and which necessitated staying in College Station over spring break, instead of taking his usual trip to Corpus Christi. His roommate for the past four years is graduating this semester and leaving him behind, and to top it all off, he's having serious sleep problems and goes around feeling exhausted all the time. The one happy highlight in his life right now is his puppy Guinness.

His doctor had him sign up for a sleep study, but it was going to be a couple of weeks before they could get him in. Luckily they had a cancellation and called to offer him the spot on a recent Friday. The phone rang just after I had drifted off to sleep that night. It was a very distraught Austin, calling to say that he'd had to cancel his appointment because he'd been wandering the streets all night, looking for Guinness. He had taken her with him to hang out with some friends. When they were ready to go to dinner, they put her in the friends' back yard. When they returned, she was gone. I called John in Houston, to relay the news, then spent a sleepless night myself, trying to block out the picture of Guinness wandering down a busy highway in the dark, trying to find her way back home. Now I remember why I had made up my mind never to have any more pets. It's not that I don't love them. It's that I love them too much, and I never wanted to go through this kind of pain again.

John called Austin first thing the next morning, offering to put up money for a reward. I called just after that, offering to come keep him company while he waited for news. He had barely managed to utter the words "I just talked to Dad...." when I heard my cell phone ringing. With John at one ear, and Austin at the other, I heard the good news. However Guinness had managed to find her way out of that backyard, she had somehow managed to find her way back. Austin had heard the phone ringing while he was in the shower, and it was his friend calling to inform him that a very cute, but very tired puppy was sitting on his back patio when he got up. "Now if I can just dry off and get some clothes on," Austin told us "I will go get my baby!"