Floridian: Elizabeth Bedell: First place ($200 prize)

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Elizabeth Bedell: First place ($200 prize)

By ELIZABETH BEDELL
Published June 26, 2005

[Times photo: Max Bittle

Elizabeth Bedell and friends.

We were young and exquisitely inexperienced although we thought we were sophisticated and worldly. It was the mid '70s and we taught emotionally disturbed adolescents in a public school program set in a house on Jacksonville Beach. This was our first real job.

With my new counseling degree, I was too naive to realize how much I didn't know about heavily medicated psychotic teenagers, and my limited therapeutic skill was severely tested. My chief technique in trying to tame one student's murderous rages was to coax him into running laps around the house while I pretended to time him. With each lap, I'd intensely study my watch - a wristwatch without a second hand - and announce that he was getting faster, until he'd finally worn out himself and his anger for the day.

After school, we'd change into bikinis and ride our bikes on the beach, often stopping at the ABC liquor store to buy treacly canned daiquiris that held such sweet appeal to the twenty-something palate.

One October afternoon, when a balmy breeze caressed us and the ocean was covered with diamonds, a big dog suddenly appeared, barking darkly and nipping our heels. No amount of hippie peace and love, no amount of fresh-from-college counseling, no dose of pop psychology could get this dog to leave us alone. Exhausted from trying to bring the best out of damaged psyches, human and animal alike, I turned to him and screamed SHUT UP at the top of my lungs.

The dog froze and remained frozen, becoming smaller and smaller behind us. Our perfect day resumed, to be repeated time and again that wonderful year, when everything was still possible, when we had our entire lives ahead of us and trusted no one over 30.