Final Thoughts: An Autobiography

I. Introduction

I remember as a boy I used to run around my backyard, pretending to be an explorer. I would start in our grassy little backyard and eventually make my way out to the intriguing, unknown woods that controlled much of our property. My brothers and I would make forts and bike trails through them, but I always preferred just to walk through them and pretend I was someone else. I always liked to be a secret agent, and act out some of my favorite video games. I would ‘break in’ to my house and sneak around while Dad was asleep and pretend to hide from the imaginary owners of the house. My inventory of ‘weapons’ always consisted of some sticks that I thought resembled a sword, or my trusty hose nozzle that, to me, resembled my spy gun.

How ironic it is that I lie here, unable to move or to speak, yet my mind still races. I used to think that I had insomnia and that was the reason that my mind was always racing, but over the years I realized that it was nothing but my creativeness and intelligence in a battle to overtake my mind. In the end my creativeness always won, and that is why I never had a traditional job. I have had as many different jobs as Leonardo da Vinci does paintings and crazy ideas. Artist, writer, columnist, news anchor, cover illustrator, you name it I’ve done it. My long resume still does not boast the accomplishments of my life however. I like to think in terms of knowledge gained when evaluating what I have accomplished in life. A quote as I have made famous reads, “If you have learned something new today, then today is a good day. If not, then hurry, you still have time.”

With all this talk and lecture you would think that I had been some nutty college professor, but it never was so. I was a product of a generation of experimentation and expression, when to be a rebel was to be the solution, to be a teacher was to be part of the problem. Yep, the sixties, you guessed it. Why is it that when ever people hear experimentation they always think of drugs and the sixties? To me my generation was more than a bunch of drugged up yahoos with nothing better to do than to criticize. They were passionate lovers, real thinkers, you know? They understood themselves, and what it was to be free.

The most important thing I have learned over my many years is that the best knowledge is about yourself and about the abstract. Who needs a bunch of ideas about cars or football…concrete things. It is best to know the meanings behind abstract things like love, purpose and status of the mind. All of those odd questions that seem to have no answer. The question of purpose is my favorite, because it is the answer to itself. The purpose of why people are here is to figure out their purpose. That is the most basic definition, which branches off and gives birth to so many journeys and deeper thoughts.

Again it may seem that I am something I never was, a psychologist or maybe even a shrink? Nope, wrong again. As I said, I am creative and my creativity has led me to be a deep thinker, on a quest for knowledge. I don’t want schooling and book-read knowledge, because to me that isn’t really knowledge at all. Knowledge is something you find out for yourself, not something you read in a book or are given by someone else.

That explains why I never went to college or high school. It’s a shocker right? Oh please… isn’t it a wonder that none of the greatest minds the world has ever known graduated from anything but the eighth grade, if that? In my case I attended Fresno High School until seventh grade and then the creative side of my mind pulled out the battering ram and broke through the gates of my guided intelligence. If you think about it, who really needs a guide on their path to enlightenment? Isn’t the whole point of education, to expand the horizons of what you know? How is that achieved if you constantly have people putting blinders on you as if you were a steed, only letting you see what they have laid out in front of you, and hiding what is beside you?

It seems funny to me that my final thoughts are full of questions, when it is I who is supposed to be the educator. Still I find yet another profession to add to my illustrious resume’. (I manage to squeeze out a chuckle in my mind as my body is unable.)

II. The Very Beginning

Childhood memories aside, I had a very formal upbringing. I was born on January 17th 1952, at 1:11 a.m., a controversial time, appropriate for myself (Some debate whether Satan’s number is 666 or 111). My mother stayed at home and raised me and my two brothers, and Dad worked as a custodian at the University of California-Berkeley. The money he made wasn’t bad; with it we rented a duplex on about four acres in the California countryside. Our little house was nice. It was a tall white colonial, with black shutters. Its location always intrigued me. It sat at the very top of a small hill, about three feet up from the dirt road. On the opposite side of the road was another identical hill, but there were no other houses for a mile or more. On a hot summer afternoon, my favorite thing to do was to sit atop our deck and look down at the busy Golden Gate Bridge. It’s so iconic, you know?

The California as it exists today is much more glamorized than it was fifty or so years ago. California in my time was just beginning to be industrialized, and largely still a home to many immigrants. There was a boy who lived next door to me who I always thought was a bit strange. Though I never met him, I knew a great deal about him (As I said, I was quite the secret agent). His name was Huang Nguyen, and though I could never quite master the pronunciation, I knew it was Korean.

I never had many friends growing up, I was pushed this way and that not to conform, and to be an individual, so much so that I was made to believe that to be part of a group with similar interests was conformity. I believed what I believed and if I came to find out that someone thought the same, which I inevitably did, I was quick to change my views. In reality I was worse than a conformist; I was trying to fit in by not fitting in, no matter what the cost.

My education is unimportant, given that it was short lived and I never really put much into it, but what I will say about it is that it is a necessary evil. Imagine a world with no system of formal education, most people would not find their own means of obtaining knowledge as I have and we would live in a largely ‘retarded’ society.

III. The True Beginning

When I was twelve I became quite interested in the comic strip Blondie. The strip’s illustrations weren’t stellar, but the comedy of it captivated my interest. As children’s interests do, mine shifted to the desire to become a comic strip writer. I read some biographies on some of my favorite strip writers and found out that a lot of them dropped out of high school and became writers at very young ages. This sparked my mind, but I was intelligent as I said so I wasn’t about to leave school.

It was at that point that I started to try and poke holes in the system. I was trying to find a problem with the system of education, but I just wasn’t old enough to fully understand it. The reason I did end up leaving, how ever controversial it may be, was because they didn’t offer any art classes. Many people say it was because I was failing all of my subjects and the administration was going to kick me out anyways, but this is untrue. My creative mind was thirsty and they didn’t have a fountain. I stress they, because I originally intended to transfer to another school, but I started to form other reasons not to. Among those reasons was that the school wasn’t really doing a great job teaching me if I was failing, because I was trying.

The real reason (the realization of my limited education) didn’t actually come to my attention until I was fifteen. So I guess in the beginning I left school for a premature version of this ideal. I get that it was only seventh grade and your education is supposed to be limited at that age, but how was I to realize my dream, and get proper direction if my school didn’t offer the help?

I decided to seek out other forms of help. The first person I went to was a man named Thomas Chen. Mr. Chen was a homeless man who ‘resided’ on the lawn of the arts campus at UC-Berkeley, and I always thought he was a great artist. I would always walk by him and admire his work when I went to work with Dad when I was younger.

One time Dad even bought me one of his paintings for three dollars. I didn’t, at the time, understand what the painting was about, but it was a splash of red and black across a white backdrop, with a man’s sad face in the corner, only…he had white eyes. I called it “The Common Man’s Lament”, because to me it seemed to portray the adult’s loss of many things, including youth and innocence.

I asked Mr. Chen about where he learned to do the things he did, and he simply told me, “Do ya have any money? If ya don’t have money then fuck off!” He was a talented artist but a casualty of society nonetheless. I continued to search for direction, but found none. I decided that I would just draw and write whenever I felt like it and see if I got better. I did get a little bit better, because I learned what sounded good and what didn’t and along the way I learned what sort of topics to avoid, such as the War. I eventually realized that I needed to expand my vocabulary so I bought and read the entire Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. I published my first strip at the age of seventeen, after trial and error my efforts finally paid off. My strip, entitled “Low Life” was a six-panel feature in the L.A Times for three weeks.

My favorite strip was one where the main character, Walter, who was a terrible speller, unknowingly pulls a prank on himself. He is in a programming class at UC-Berkeley, sitting next to his friend who always corrects him on his spelling mistakes. When his friend isn’t paying attention, Walter starts to spell the word ‘total’ wrong every time he uses it. Well his friend never notices, so Walter leans over, laughing and says to his friend,

“Haha, did you notice what I did?”

“No…what?” says his friend.

Trying to stifle back laughter Walter exclaims, “I have been spelling the word ‘total’ wrong every time just to mess with you!”

His friend dutifully looks it over, and looks at Walter with a blank stare, “Walter, that’s how you spell total, it is spelled correctly…”

Walter pauses, and look at it and says, “No it isn’t its t-o-t-l-e…Oh crap!”

Realizing his mistake he is very embarrassed, and his friend continually ridicules him for it.

Low Life was discontinued because they said my topics were getting a bit too ‘racy’. I started to dabble into areas that were unexplored, such as racial comedy, and even sexual comedy. Never the war though, you never made fun of the war. That sort of thinking could get you killed in those times.

It didn’t deter me too much. I had finally achieved some level of success, and all on my own at that. Who needed school? I was on top of the world at seventeen.

IV. The War Years

On my eighteenth birthday I had to sign up and register for the draft. I was terrified because I had a very high chance to go into Vietnam. I was a free spirit and all, but again I was intelligent. I wasn’t about to try and evade the federal government. Logic told me they would find me eventually what with me being in the public eye and all. I had published my first short story in March of 1970, which was called “Visions of a Free Man”. It was about the very thing I feared, being drafted into a war I did not believe in. I would fight to the death for my beliefs, but not to defend a country that had done nothing for the United States. I felt bad for them, I really did, but I had to consider the question: Would they have done the same for us?

I registered for the Selective Service and thankfully my number was never called in those nerve-wracking lotteries. I had a greater calling it seemed, which was to entertain and convey the ideas of my generation in print. The L.A Times, recalling me from my short stint with their comics department, asked if I would compose a series of political cartoons, and even add a short editorial on the War. I was flattered, a chance to criticize the government in artistic form, and be paid for it?! I was excited to say the very least.

My very first cartoon depicted a very big looking American soldier burning down a Vietnamese forest and whistling as he went. (You wouldn’t believe all of the mail, both hating and supporting, I received during my tenure.) My weekly editorial was always an opinion of the latest developments, or just an overview, and people generally agreed with me whether or not they supported the war. Once the war ended they had little use for me and thus ended my streak with the L.A Times yet again.

V. Creativity Rears Its Beautiful Head, Once Again

By this point I was twenty-four years of age, and I realized I had shifted away from thinking creatively. In the constantly waging war in my head, intelligence had taken a strong hold, getting me a high-paying, steady job, while creativity had yielded only a few lousy comic strips in a newspaper once a week. I was starting to re-evaluate whether creativity wouldn’t lead me to more difficulties. I became a news anchor for the local morning news. (Night time was for the real hot-shots) Intelligence had won a crucial battle, but my creative mind retreated to regroup.

I enjoyed my time as a news anchor. I finally felt like I was doing a public service. Entertainment only goes so far, but bringing people important news, that’s empowering. As an added perk, I generally was always in the know, and knew what was going on at all times.

It was at this point that I started to develop a sense of charisma. I lived a closed off child life, so being on television forced me to learn to interact. I was given acting lessons and small pointers on how to conduct myself on-air. It was there that I earned the most of my money, though it was never my original intention. I always wanted to work out in the field as a reporter, but they said my talents lied elsewhere with my on-screen persona. Apparently, I was quite the charmer.

I was with Channel 2 for quite a long time, seven years to be exact. It provided a sense of security, status, and continuity. Sadly, it also came with a sense of monotony, and that’s when the ambush began. General Creative himself attended the battle, bringing his finest troops. It only took one night for Intelligence to be wiped completely from my mind, and would remain dormant for some time. I did not return to work the next morning, causing a storm of chaos, and resulting in my resignation. (Apparently common sense was a major casualty in the ambush as well!)

I used a majority of the money I had acquired to make a massive career shift. I was drawn back to drawing and artistry. I decided painting was what I really wanted to do, so I did it. I was never out of work for too long, a tribute to my well roundedness and versatility. My first painting, “Tranquility” was of a forest scene, and was set to debut in August of 1986, but there were some complications. By complications I mean my attempted suicide by alcohol overdose, a result of my parents’ deaths.

On the eve of July 29th, 1986 a masked man broke into my childhood home and shot both of my sweet parents dead. He and four other men looted the house blind. The next day, before receiving any news of their deaths, I received a small envelope in the mail. Enclosed was a note and a few digital photos. The note read, “Don’t Fuck with Veterans”. Apparently my column from over ten years ago had angered some soldiers, and they had decided it right to take it out on my beloved parents. I immediately reported it to the police, showed them the pictures and gave them my parents’ address.

I drove out to their home. (They had moved since my childhood.) It was disgusting to see my lovely folks home turned into a crime scene. The eye-catching yellow caution tape was everywhere, as if some of the neighborhood kids had toilet papered their house with it. The house was almost empty, the murderers had stolen everything of value. There was no T.V, no computer, and they even took the paintings I had sent. The most crippling sight was to see the two black bags being dragged out, one so petite as my mother, the other robust as my father.

The police assured me they would do all that they could, from analyzing the fingerprints on the note to tracing the stolen merchandise. I appreciated their diligence, but we both knew that the murderers would not be apprehended. They weren’t as dumb as common criminals, they were trained soldiers. The police later concluded that they broke in due to skill only possessed by a Navy S.E.A.L. These guys were special ops, there was no catching them.

From then onward was a downward spiral. I began drinking heavily, but still maintaining a focus on my art, whose subject had transitioned to a darker state. I began taking prescription pain medication which I obtained under false pretenses of course, and I drank even heavier still. At thirty-four years of age I realized that my time had come. I cracked open my favorite bottle…or seven, of whiskey and decided that drinking myself to death would be a satisfying close to all that I had accomplished.

The events from the remainder of that morning… are skewed and obscure. My stomach was pumped several times, and I went into many drug related seizures. Over the course of the day and night I went under many detoxification treatments and I awoke eight days later. Upon awakening, I tried to remove my IV and drink the fluids. Luckily it wasn’t morphine, or already I would’ve been in yet another brush with death. I remained in the hospital for ten more days, and my exit was granted on the requirement that I attend drug rehab. For someone of my generation, this was as familiar as police beatings and sit-in strikes. For me, however up to this point my intelligence had saved me from such. It seemed my intelligence had left me not only metaphorically.

VI. The Transformation

The rehab wasn’t as tough as you might think, given that I had almost died. I wasn’t even required to stay in a facility. I was allowed to go home, and attend sessions regularly, twice a week. Some of the people that I met in there were some of the most deranged society has ever known. One man, Carl, was in between drug rehab, and prison. He had taken a butcher knife and hacked his wife to pieces and scattered her remains all over the local state park. Another guy, whose name I never wanted to know, used to walk up and down the halls singing happy birthday to his mother, whom he had killed and kept her head in his home to talk to. (Truth be told, I never wanted to even talk to him, but he always approached me and I was too terrified to move.)

I had never done drugs before, and never drank too heavily so overcoming the addiction wasn’t the issue. The issue was the fact that I had to get my life back in order. The alcohol and drug addiction had not only ruined my credibility, but had ruined me financially as well. I maintained the trend of never having a traditional job, and it was from this point onward that I never had an employer again. As you might imagine, the flood of drugs and alcohol washed away my intelligence forever. Creativity was in control, and it would be forever so.

I turned back to painting, and “Tranquility” debuted on February the 18th, 1987. It was met with praise and applause, but its reputation was marred by its author. I put out several more forest scenes, and was fast becoming one of the best in doing so. My favorite, “The Repercussions of Autumn”, was the first step in a slow shift away from painting and into photography.

The idea for “Autumn” came from a picture I had taken from the bedroom of my home in the Hollywood Hills. I was just trying out my new camera, and flashed a shot of the woods beyond my home, just as a flutter of leaves was falling. I decided I would paint the picture. Later I realized, why not cut out the middle man? Why paint the picture I have already taken, why not just publish the photo?

I tossed out my new camera, and opted for a professional model. I didn’t really understand how one went about taking pictures, what to include and what to leave out. So I simply shot everything. I snapped pictures of wildlife, and foliage around my home to begin with and moved out into the city. There I realized I was becoming quite the tourist. I shot pictures of the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame, and other iconic figures. Then I realized the one simple thing that every photographer needs to know, if that was the way to take pictures, then all of the travelers would be pros. Photography is all about the abstract, and creating something that really isn’t there. In a painting, you can create things with a particular feel, mood or meaning in mind. In photography you can’t change what’s already there, so you have to use angles, and lighting to get your mood across. It was at this point that my hobby of photography became a cash cow. Of course was never my intention, but I was in dire need of funds. My first published album was a series of architectural shots. From the Golden gate at dawn, to down Rodeo Drive at dusk, I covered all of the architectural magnificence that is California. Sticking with my architectural knack, I took to traveling.

Still one of my greatest anthologies to date, “Building America” took place all over the states, capturing all of the nation’s finest wonders. The majority of the work took place in Chicago (Though you could hardly call it “work”). The book is divided by regions, but Chicago has a section all its own. Among the photos featured there are the world famous Sears Tower, the intriguing Smurfit-Stone Building, and the John Hancock Center. My favorite of all those photos is the one of the Smurfit-Stone. Every year, around Christmas time, they use lights and spell out MERRY XMAS on its slanted roof. It’s beautiful.

VII. Broadening Photographical Horizons

Most of my work after four years of photography had been urban and architectural, but not all. By 1991 I had amassed quite an impressive collection of professional football photos. I approached Sports Illustrated just before the start of the 1991 season, to see if they were interested in buying any of the photos that I had taken to include in their first ever Sports Illustrated Almanac. They were very interested and praised my skills. But as I said I have never had an employer since my addiction. They bought a few photos here and there, but curiously I was never offered a job. One of the most famous photos, the play immortalized as “The Catch”, was taken by yours truly. Joe Montana is seen rejoicing as Dwight Clark catches a pass in the back of the end zone, sending the 1981 San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl over the Dallas Cowboys. I dabbled in other sports but football had always been my favorite. I wasn’t a huge fan, I only caught a game from time to time. I wasn’t much a sports fan anyway.

By the summer of 1999 I had stopped publishing photos and was thinking about retiring from everything altogether. Then came new life, the Information Age began to take charge. I sold many of my nature photos to various internet servers, and many to Microsoft to be used as desktop backgrounds. Ten of the pre-packaged images that come with Microsoft Windows XP are from my collection.

I turned from photography for art, to using it for practicality. I snapped photos to be included in news articles, and curiously I even shot photos of the trial of Carl Biggins, the man who had hacked up his wife. Over the next five years I continued to take pictures and sell them to newspapers. Sometimes, on some of the more hyped stories I even would sell three or more of the same picture to different newspapers. (Haha, imagine their surprise when they open the competitors paper, only to find the exact same photo!) After all those years, again it seemed my work had found its way back to the L.A. Times.

VIII. Getting Away

At that point in my life was 48 years old, and ready to relax and enjoy the rest of my life. Think about it, who gets the chance to retire comfortably at 48? Athletes and Celebrities that’s who, not common men like me. So I hung it up for a while, everything. Photography, Painting, Drawing, Writing, Everything. I even left my home behind; I was ready to start a new life.

I sold my house and took off to Montana. I bought a nice car before I went, and planned to observe the coveted “No Speed Zones”. I bought a 1967 teal Mustang GT convertible with white leather. She was beautiful, and roared like a lion, yet purred like a kitten at the same time. I went and bought a small ranch home on about twelve acres. I didn’t really have any plans to do anything with the land; I just wanted to be by myself. The house was similar to my childhood abode, white with black shutters. I decided to paint the shutters green after a few months, because the similar look reminded me of my parents and I definitely didn’t want to slip back down that path again.

There weren’t very many people in the small town of Hobson, Montana. Having such an expensive car in a poor town like that and having such a big house hardly afforded me the reclusiveness I so longed for. (I still never really understood why I wanted to buy such a mansion, I lived alone for chrissake!) I was never married, and never in love, but I did meet a woman. A Goddess. Her full name I never knew, but we spoke daily. Her first name was Mary. She was years younger than I, but was educated beyond her years. She and her husband owned and ran the local café, and did a fine job. (Excellent java!) She was a tall, 50’s type of gal. She often wore long skirts, and had short blonde hair. It was always done up so magnificently into a cute poodle cut. She wore dark red lipstick almost every time I saw her, and was always so polite. We spoke of many things, from literature to life, news to gossip. We covered it all. I wasn’t aware that I was smitten, until years after we had gone our separate ways. I went in that coffee shop and had a cup of coffee every single evening for thirteen years. Then I missed one evening.

It was not by choice of course, even when I hadn’t wanted coffee I went, just for the company of Mary. No…no, I did not attend my regular meeting because that afternoon, right after lunch I suffered a severe seizure. I was just sitting in my wooden chair at the kitchen table, when suddenly my right eye began to twitch. This was the onset of something much, much worse though at the time I did not know it. I just closed my eye and hoped it was just another annoying muscle spasm. It was not. I started to convulse violently and fell onto the floor. My mouth began to foam and I lost consciousness.

I was found two hours after I had the first seizure and the doctors concluded that I had suffered a total of three seizures. It was Mary who had found me. She had noted my absence from the coffeehouse and came to my aid. There had been some serious damage done to my body. Part of my tongue had been bitten completely off, I had several lacerations on top of my head, and my arms were tingling. To me the tingling was no big deal, just an annoyance. When I went to itch it away, however, it stopped instantly and I couldn’t move my arms. I panicked and hopped out of my bed. No… I didn’t. I couldn’t move my legs either. I was completely paralyzed, the only motion I had left were above my eyes. So I could move my eyes and my eyebrows…oh joy. The doctors told me that I had epilepsy but had never been diagnosed. It had been dormant, but the stimulating alcohol abuse and drugs had aggravated it so many years ago. It had picked now to kick into action, now at the height of my retirement.

IX. Permanent Retirement

So I am 61 and on permanent bed rest, not a whole lot to look forward to. One day my doctor came in, and introduced to me a way that I could talk. I was ecstatic. It was a laptop that had a camera attached to it so it could read messages sent by my acute eye movements during thought. (A computer that could read my mind, creepy!) So I sit in the hospital permanently renting a room, the room that will ultimately be my tomb. My saggy old jowels, and my guy protruding above the sheets, I lie. My wispy white hair, rising ever so slowly above my old, spotted head, as I slowly slip into better days.

Many of the people close to me, fans of my work, and the few friends have urged me to chronicle my life, so here I lay it all out. The purpose of this is to educate, not about things, but about possibilities. Life is full of them, and life is limitless. Go out and live your life, don’t get stuck into a career solely for the benefits it brings. Do what you love and the money will take care of itself. If you don’t like the way you are living do something about it, the power is all yours.

Life as I have learned it, is all about whatever you want. Life isn’t about one concrete solution or meaning. You fit your own meaning, and build your own purpose. Life has not answers, but only more questions. You will never know everything, but you should damn sure try.



My final thought: Here Lies Donald Thompson, Friend, Artist, Creator, and all of the above a second time over.

X. Afterword

Donald died three weeks after the penning of his autobiography. He officially died on September 9th 2013. He himself obviously did not physically write this, but the ideas and words are all his. The ideas of a great man are here, captured in print. I have gotten to know Donald quite well over the past few months during the writing process. He is by far one of the most inspirational men I have ever met. All that he has accomplished should make those not squeezing everything out of everyday feel guilty for not doing so. This great man has changed my life. With his views, and teachings he is sure to be remembered for decades to come.

During the writing of his autobiography, Donald just took all of his thoughts and committed them to his computer. In turn his computer churned out everything this fine man had to say and I took it all down. The parenthesized sections are all small side thoughts Donald had about things he had said. Donald had nothing to do other than to talk so we would often stay up until all hours of the night just talking. I wrote down everything he said, but not all has been included. Some things were just conversations between the two of us, about things from his joys to his final wishes.

He loved to fish. He often spoke of the many marlins he had landed off the coast of Mexico, and how he always wanted to go ice fishing. Sadly he never got the chance to land that frozen fish, but I believe he was a man without regret…how foolish I am for saying so, that isn’t true. He would say something like, “Every man has regret, I simply don’t dwell upon mine.” It is strange that I feel like his closest friend after only knowing him for a few short months. He led a very closed off life, as he stated, so maybe I was the closest to him at the time.

I don’t know that he had a best friend, other than possibly Mary. She continued to come and visit him every week after his condition arose, until the day he was peacefully swept away. He would do the funniest thing whenever he saw her. He would wiggle his eyebrows up and down very quickly and say, “Well here’s my smile now, you better appreciate it.”

It was the saddest thing though, as he told some of the more emotional parts in his life, his eyes would well up with tears, and he could do nothing to clear them. I of course did so, but it was so sad to see such a valiant man reduced to helplessness. It is great to know that he always had someone by his side through his journey to the end. Mary and he would talk for hours, about who knows what. I always gave them privacy, even though Donald always insisted that I stay and include it in the book. They deserved what the two of them said to be preserved by memory, not immortalized in ink for all to know.
He had so very many valuable lessons to teach. Included is a lesson that applies to every age, sex, and type of person. I believe the most important lesson that he had to teach is best represented in his most famous quote,



“If you have learned something new today, then today is a good day. If not, then hurry, you still have time.”