Today I'm Going to Get It Right

Ninety-five-year-old Ralph Stone is looking out the window of his room in The Wise Acres Home For Old Wise Guys. He is working up a "pity me" routine to use on his daughter so she'll let him break out and get his own apartment again. Today, he thinks, I'm going to get it right.

Sixty-three-year-old Carol Flanagan is imagining that she is in the rose garden of The American Sisters Hotel in Assisi. It's better than being in a bed in the hospice. She is much too young to die; she has too much still to do, and too many people depend upon her. She's going to die, anyway. That's not in her control. Nothing is in her control, not even her bladder. But, yes, there's one thing still in her control. Her attitude. She's going to give her children and grandchihldren the gifts of hope and memory today. She might not even have a whole day, but today she is going to get it right.

Forty-seven-year-old Roxanne Behrman is not going to let her mother-in-law push her buttons today. She is going to take her to the appointment with the eye doctor and then anyplace else she wants to go. She's losing a day of work and nobody is going to appreciate what she has to go through with that old... no, she's not going to let her get to her today. Today she's going to get it right.

Thirty-six-year-old Garret Straza is not even going to think it about it today. He hasn't placed a bet since last Saturday, or maybe Sunday, but all week he's been thinking about it more and more. He knows the bet starts in the brain. If he can keep those thoughts out of his brain, he's got a chance. Just like a drug addict "can't use successfully," he can't gamble without it getting out of hand. It starts getting away from him the moment he allows the thought into his brain. Today, he's going to think other thoughts. Today he's going to get it right.

Twenty-eight-year-old James Rudzinski is going to finish his dissertation today. He just needs the final chapter. That final chapter has been waiting for three years, and every day he intends to write it, but... today he's going to get it right.

Sixteen-year-old Chase Hallowell is going to ask Ashleigh Logsdon to go to the Monster Festival at the Beau Jangles Art Theatre with him. He's scared to death. He's never asked any girl for a date before, and certainly not a member of The Student Council. Oh, God, how can I... but he slings his backpack on and squares his shoulders and marches out the door. Today he is going to get it right.

Three-year-old Clara Wembley is going to become a lawyer. She has heard of Harvard Law School, when the TV is on, and she thought she might go there, but she doesn't like beets. So she's decided on The Charlie Brown Pre-School, where her brother, Marp, went. They have a picture on the wall of Linus holding onto his blankie, the way a boy should. Since she can't get justice any other way for the theft of her blankie by Shingles, the dog, on Christmas Eve, she will sue his tail off. She is going to wrest justice, and her blankie, from the jaws of mangy injustice. Today she is going to get it right.

Pastor Patty is writing a sermon. She has to preach to an unrealistic old man and a dying woman and a desperate daughter-in-law and an addict and a procrastinator and a love-sick teen and a calculating toddler and... How in the... but today, she is going to get it right.