Chapter Three 3

Not getting it was taking its toll on Julie.

She slept the rest of the day.

When she finally awoke, it was just around midnight. Julie was hungry and her head still hurt.

And still, she didn’t get it.

Not that it mattered if she didn’t get it. It wasn’t her problem; it was theirs. They were the ones who really didn’t get it. They were the problem.

My problem, she thought, is that I’m hungry.

So she got up and went into the kitchen to find something to eat. But all she had in her pantry was a case of Doodley’s Sauerkraut.

And she certainly wasn’t that hungry.

So she ordered Chinese.

While she waited for her dinner to arrive, she went online to see what she could research about people not getting it.

She was surprised at what she found.

It seems that people have been not getting it for some time.

Ancient people didn’t think it was possible to create fire. They thought that fire existed only as a gift from the gods.

The King of Portugal didn’t get it when Columbus wanted to sail around the world on the king’s dime.

The King and Queen of Spain kind of got it.

But they were more interested in finding treasure than in knowing whether or not the world was round.

Nobody got it when Galileo claimed the earth revolved around the sun.

Although, Galileo got it later for trying to make everyone else get what he got.

And nobody got it when Thomas Edison said he could make a light bulb or record the human voice singing a song.

Until he made it happen.

Then we all got it.

The list of people who didn’t get it, like the result of so many online searches, went on and on and on.

While Julie ate her Kung Pao Chicken, she thought about how Mom and Dad didn’t get it when she was a teenager, and she wanted to drive her friends to the beach for the day, and they wouldn’t let her—but she did it anyway.

Or how they didn’t get it that she wanted to have a career in advertising instead of working in the family bookstore back in Wooster.

She wondered if they got it now that she was successful in her chosen field.

But if they didn’t, too bad.

It always was their problem.

She was certain that if she were going to get some guidance in figuring out this pain in her head, it wasn’t going to come from Mom or Dad.

And it certainly wasn’t going to fall from the sky like a gift from the gods.

Maybe she’d better make an appointment with Professor Rudolph for tomorrow.