Word & Words

Betsy Kendy, Claire and Randall Nathan’s granddaughter, is the Freshman Class member of the student council at The P. Michael Dickey High School in Winfast, in the “boot” corner of Periwinkle County.

The council has only one member from the frosh class, two sophomores, three juniors, and seven seniors, guaranteeing that the seniors can always win any vote.

The council had its first meeting to prepare for the coming year. School is not in session yet, and her parents were working, so Randall took her to the school and picked her up after the meeting in his un-restored 1947 Studebaker pickup truck.

“Good grief,” said Betsy, as she reached through the open window to grab the pliers that operate the door handle on her side of the truck. “What a bunch of trivia. All they wanted to talk about was what the cafeteria should have for lunch on Gary Bass Day. I said, ‘Duh. Fish, of course.’ They acted like they didn’t hear me, but then later they decided on fish.”

“Well, it sounds like you were successful, even if you didn’t get the credit,” Randall said.

“LOL! I should be so successful. They paid no attention to anything I suggested—a dance marathon to raise money for cancer kids, getting more electives and special lectures, educating voters on school funding. Nothing but which color to wear on William Luther White Day. Well, white, duh. We’re supposed to be training to be the leaders of tomorrow, and all we do is trivia.”

“That sounds about right, Betsy. All the leaders of today do is trivial, so you’re right on track.”

“Well, couldn’t you make the student council at least think about more important stuff?”

“Why me?” asked Randall.

“Well, you write this stuff, duh. You can put anything you want into it. Isn’t that the point of writing fiction, to make it come out the way you want?”

Betsy has been ahead of her classmates for a long time, and that’s not always a comfortable place to be. Randall recalled when she was a student at “Perry the Imp Pre-School ,” motto: “Every man his own plan. Every day a new way.” One day she said, “There’s this boy who rides his trike around and calls it a bike. I explained to him that ‘tri’ means three and ‘bi’ means two, so it had to be a tricycle, not a bicycle, but he kept calling it a bike, anyway.” She was three years old. Her mother said, “Well, honey, I guess your Latin is just better than his.”

“Fiction is no good, Betsy, if it’s not also true, if people can’t see their own stories in the story you’re telling. Even science fiction works only if it’s true, when people on Mars or in space have the same problems as people on earth.”

“Well, in a place like Periwinkle County, you should be able to make things come out the right way,” Betsy groused.

“Even the Bible doesn’t do that,” said Randall. “The Bible is meaningful to us because it’s true fiction. All of our stories are in there, not just the ones that come out right, but the heartbreaks and sorrows and trivia, too. That’s why the books of the Bible are the words of God. They are not “The Word of God,” even though we often say that.”

“What do you mean?

“Christ is The Word of God, not the Bible. It’s curious, why people mistake the Bible for Christ. ‘Christ’ means God’s word, God’s way of communicating to us. After all, Jesus doesn’t say that the Bible is the Word of God, but the Bible DOES say that Christ is the Word of God.”

“Are you just making this up?”

“Some people would think so. They get ‘true’ confused with ‘factual.’ But the Bible words, all of them, joy words and sorrow words both, are the words of our lives, so God speaks to us through them.”

“Well, couldn’t you at least get people to work on the important problems, instead of just blaming somebody else for them?”

“Betsy, there are some things even a fiction writer can’t do.”