Lightening

There's an American professional distance runner named Lauren Fleshman and recently in an interview at the 2012 Olympic Trials she talked about how when things get tough for her in training or races she envisions a proud, beautiful lion. She visited a sports psychologist and that was something she learned. It's an image in her head she uses for motivation and strength and courage. That seems like a really important thing to have. So, I want to make my own majestic, shimmering powerful lion image and it's gonna happen after these words.

The image starts with a barren desert landscape out in the American Southwest at dawn. The chilled night air is about to be scorched by the blazing heat of the rising sun. In the middle of the whole scene is a baby, no more than 10 months old, lying face down in the sand. The baby awakens. Its first realization is that its left arm has been replaced by what looks like a fire hose connected to a clear plastic tube of pressurized apple sauce where its forearm should be. It's obviously a failed experiment carried out in an underground bunker hundreds of miles away. This baby has grown up fast. It's been left for dead, destined to be erased by the endless sea of sand.

It doesn't cry. It doesn't whimper. It doesn't make any noise or waste energy with extraneous adorable movements. The baby is all business. It carefully examines its altered appendage, patiently stroking the cold steel of the nozzle. It won't try to eat the apple sauce. The baby has much larger plans.

About an hour goes by and the temperature is rising faster and faster. The baby sits and listens. It hears  a faint mechanical sound growing louder and louder. It realizes there's a road about a hundred feet to its left and a car is fast approaching. The baby scrambles over to the hot asphalt and lies face up in the middle of road. Waiting.

The car approaches and stops. The driver is confused. He gets out of his car to examine the baby. As he crouches down, in complete disbelief, the baby springs and grabs the man by the collar and looks at him the way an owl looks at a field mouse before it plucks it off the ground with its razor sharp talons. The baby looks at the man in a way that says, "I want this more. Whatever you have. I want it more. Your car, your clothes, your money, your life. I want it more and therefore it is mine to keep." All the while, the baby has the pressurized baby food hose trained squarely between the man's eyes.

And that's the image. A hungry baby holding the life of an unfortunate man in the palm of his tiny baby hand through sheer freakish force of will and control of his even more freakish appendage.

I am fired UP right now!