I think that social networking websites induce cowardice.

Instead of going out into the world and actually making friends, or putting on your boxing gloves and confronting our enemies in the flesh, we hide behind the comfort of our computer screens, made up names, Photoshop-ed pictures and stupid smiley faces.

For example, I am currently checking how many likes my Facebook status has landed so far, instead of rushing over to the next-door neighbor's house to inform them that, yes, in fact, their little brat's screaming is disturbing my peaceful life, and would they do something about it, or should I be doing the parenting for them.

An intense family meeting had me wondering why I don't practice Roman Catholicism anymore.

Now I have it all figured out.

I do not live for any god.

I live for myself.

And the joys and tribulations following this decision, will be all my own.

So I was very hungover this morning and was kneeling by the toilet bowl, looking at my small pond of sick and thinking about how guessing what a person had for dinner by their puke contents could actually make a great game, when I received a text from my father saying he and my mother were on the way to my apartment.

So I washed my face, flushed the toilet, and started cleaning and cooking up a storm. Things I rarely do when in my normal, sober state. Things I never do drunk.

Forget Aspirin. Your parents dropping by for a surprise visit is the best hangover cure.

Be still my beating heart.

Is what I have been telling my heart the past twelve hours.

I just had five bottles of light beer last night but dammit, this hangover is telling an entirely different story.

The morning afters are getting worse.

I'm getting too old.

Herring

Quite unfortunate, the thing about centipedes.

I mean, every time I see one and provided that it has not crept up in a really surprising way like that time a really big one walked across my arm while I was on a bus, my killer instincts would go on overdrive and I would always find a way to have a sharp object on hand faster than you can say "Bob" and I'd just start chopping the little thing up.

I know what centipedes are capable of.

When I was nine, I was roused from sleep by an agonizing pain in my hand. I knew a centipede was the culprit as I saw it dashing about the blankets probably figuring out that I had woken up and might be starving for revenge. The pain was so terrible that I had to knock at my parent's room. I remember knocking softly and trying to stifle my sobs so I wouldn't wake up anyone else. I remember my mother putting some kind of ointment on the bite wound and singing me to sleep. I remember spending the night in their room. I remember the pain.

Still, I don't always feel like it's fair to invoke death penalty on a possibly innocent centipede that just happened to pass by at the wrong place and the wrong time simply because we have found it guilty by association. If a harsh judgment is handed out even before any fault is done, where then, is the justice in that?

Then I think about how terrible the justice system already is for us people, and that is when I realize that centipedes never really had a chance.

Quite unfortunate, the thing about centipedes.

"Teacher Ariane"

"Do you have a god?"

Was the first thing my eight year old client asked me last Wednesday. He was wondering if I believed in a god because he had observed that I was the only teacher who never prayed before sessions.

I'm not sensitive about discussing religion, but such discussions usually take place after three bottles of beer and five shots of tequila; never at three in the afternoon, never at work, and never with the kids. Needless to say, I was caught speechless.

I didn't think it would have mattered to him if I told him that I'm not really "that" kind of teacher (the kind who teaches Calculus at school and whom no one listens to because everyone knows people don't really graph functions in real life), nor did I think it would have mattered if I explained to him that praying is to a Catholic school as an alma mater hymn is to a regular school.

Instead, I just asked him, "What kind of god do you think is there?"

There was an unforgettable confidence about him when he answered, "Oh you know, the old god. He can't walk so he just stays in the skies. And when people don't pray, he gets sad."

He looked at me with this cute, critical look of his and asked, "Do you know how to pray, Teacher Ariane?"

I remember giving him a sort of nod and a sort of shrug answer. This caused quite a confusion which lead to his declaring, "Here, I'll teach you."

So that was how our Wednesday session turned out, with the "Teacher" getting schooled on practicing a religion.

As for the original, provocative question of whether I had a god, I decided to go about it the way I did last Christmas when he was blabbing about Santa Claus and I had disclosed his North Pole address.

I wish he'd never have to grow up.

I was glueing the outer sides of my midsoles when I accidentally glued my finger to my left shoe. Guess I will forever be a part of that shoe, and the shoe will forever be a part of me.

Just like true love.

Impossible is nothing.