Book One - Jake and Whispers - Episode One

Another Place Another Time

Book One

Jake and Whispers

Episode One

The day I met Whispers, I was nineteen and he was one. From the day we met, we were not apart for a single day for almost fifteen years. I cannot imagine what my life would have been without Whispers, and frankly, I don’t even want to think about it. This is our story, my dog, Whispers’ and mine.

I am going to begin the story in 1967, when I was seventeen years old, even though I didn’t meet Whispers until I was nineteen. In a few minutes, you’ll know why I’m starting there.

My given name is Leonard Jacobsen and for the first nineteen years of my life everyone called me Leonard. In Vietnam, I became Jake, and I've been Jake since then.

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In early January 1967, during a televised address, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth President of the United States, said, “North Vietnam isn't serious about peace. For that reason, the United States will continue to step up its defense of South Vietnam.” He said some other things that evening, but I wasn't paying much attention to LBJ back then, and I can’t remember what they were.

One month later, U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam went over five hundred thousand for the first time. I knew there was a war going on in Southeast Asia, but I could not have found South Vietnam on a map without some difficulty.

On Monday morning, February 4, 1967, I was a senior at Harris Senior High School in Valdosta, Georgia, and I was on the way to the principal’s office, again. There was nothing unusual about that. Seldom had a school day passed that I didn’t hear a teacher say, “Leonard, why don’t you go to the office for a while?” It was a fact that I spent more time in the office than I did in class.

My frequent absences from class didn’t have any affect on my grades. Nothing affected my grades. The only time I ever made anything other than an ‘A’ was when I made an ‘A+.’ My grades, however, had nothing to do with hard work, long hours, or intense effort. They were simply a reflection of the way I am, which is not easy to describe, but I’ll take a shot at it. I pay attention to everything all the time. That’s not something I learned, it’s just the way I am. Until I was six years old, I thought everyone was that way. It’s as if you aren’t attached to any single thing, but you are attached to everything equally, and you know it.

At age six, I realized that not many people experience life that way. In fact, it was then that I began to wonder if anyone else paid attention to everything, all the time. For a while, I thought I was just crazy, and then I had an even more alarming thought. I wondered if I were a reject who had somehow slipped past the quality control department. In time, the idea that I was flawed gave way to an understanding that flawed or not, there is no other way that I would rather live than the way I live.

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I didn’t mind spending time in the office or talking with Mr. Jones. It gave me the opportunity to learn jobs I’d have never learned in a classroom. In fact, I knew everything about the routine office tasks of the school. That’s why Mrs. Little, the school secretary, always put me to work answering the phone, checking and filing the class rosters, writing hall passes, and all the other little tasks that seemed necessary to run the school. I spent so much time in the office that many my classmates thought it was a part-time job.

That particular morning, I walked in the office fully expecting Mrs. Little to put me to work as usual. Instead she said, “Good morning, Leonard. Go on back, he’s waiting for you.”