Read Online Amphibian by Carla Gunn - Free Book Online

facts at all – they’re just imaginary thoughts. For example, if I was thinking of a big purple people-eating monster and I had the thought that he was following me all around my office, I would be scared. Would you be scared, Phin, if you thought that?’
    I said I would.
    â€˜What I do when I have a thought like that is say to myself “a thought is not always fact” and then I put it in a bubble in my imagination and send it away,’ said Dr. Barrett. ‘How about you do that with the thoughts that make you worried, Phin? What thought has been worrying you lately?’
    â€˜Well,’ I said, ‘I’m worried about our classroom pet who is a White’s tree frog who shouldn’t be stuck in a cage here in Canada. And I’ve also been thinking a lot about animals going extinct and the earth dying.’
    â€˜Do these thoughts make you really worried and not able to sleep?’ asked Dr. Barrett.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Remember, a thought is not always a fact. A fact is something like two times three equals six and how pistol shrimp make loud noises. A thought, on the other hand, can be something that’s just imaginary and can lead to bad emotions like the ones you’ve been feeling lately. How about we put those thoughts in a bubble and send them away? How about –’
    â€˜But they’re not just thoughts. It’s a fact that Cuddles shouldn’t be in a cage. He should be in his natural environment. And it’s also a fact that the animal species of the earth are dying. A quarter of mammals are already endangered. Just check the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species if you don’t believe me,’ I said.
    Dr. Barrett stopped talking for a moment. Then he said he wanted to teach me something that would help calm me down. He said it would also help me get to sleep at night. He told me that for each breath I took in and let out I should concentrate on a word that pushed other thoughts out of my mind.
    I said, ‘What word?’
    He said, ‘How about the word
calm
?’ I could breathe in deeply and then when I breathe out, I could say the word
calm
to myself.
    I told him I couldn’t use the word
calm
because it might make me think of the word
comet
and then that would make me think of one hurtling toward me from outer space.
    I told him that comets aren’t as dangerous as asteroids because they have bigger orbits, which don’t bring them as close to earth as often. ‘But that doesn’t make them not dangerous,’ I said. I told him that the chances of an asteroid or comet hitting the earth in the next hundred years is one in 5,000, which is quite a bigchance – about the same as dying in a plane crash if you fly twice a year. And that’s likely a bigger chance than a gunman going into our school and shooting at us, which is something my teacher made us prepare for.
    He said, ‘Okay, then let’s try to think of a word that doesn’t really mean anything.’
    That wouldn’t be a word then, I didn’t say.
    He asked me what my word could be and I said I don’t know. He said, ‘Just give it a shot and try out a sound.’
    I thought for a minute and said, ‘How about
turu
?’ I don’t know what made me think of that unword.
    He said, ‘That’s a good word. Try it in your head, say
turu turu turu
.’
    So I said
turu turu turu
, but at the second
turu
I thought about how that word sounded familiar. I think
turu
is a culture in Africa or Asia or something that I watched on Discovery Channel. That got me thinking about the book I read on Asia last week, the book about the tsunami. Then I wasn’t at all relaxed.
    I told Dr. Barrett I couldn’t use that unword because it made me anxious. He asked why and I told him. He said, ‘Okay, let’s pick another word.’ I thought and thought and finally