Free A 52-Hertz Whale by Bill Sommer Page A

licorice just like her grandmother. She plucks the wad of gum from my fur and basically asks if she can give me a hug. A hug, man—and it didn’t even take a death this time!
    Before I can react, Sophia wraps her arms around me. She can probably hear my heart jackhammering away, even through the seven layers of faux fur, but at least she pretends not to notice. I drop my sign.
    For that second, I’m not James. I’m an Abominable Snowman, and I put one paw on her back then the other. Of course, some jerk yells, “Get some, Bigfoot!” and Sophia blushes and bends to pick up my sign. After, Becky or Sara gives me a hug, too. All I remember about that is her elbows were pointy and her breath smelled like a sour latte. Then, just like that, it was all over.
    I guess what I realized is that even the worst jobs aren’t all bad all the time. It seems that’s true of Testy Snobbin too.
    Sincerely,
    James Turner
    From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: October 21, 2012 at 6:56 PM
Subject: RE: Job News
    Dear J to the T,
    A hug! Dude, I’m envious! (Let me tell you, it’s doing wonders for my self-esteem to be living vicariously through a whale-obsessed ninth grader.)
    Bummer that she didn’t know it was you, and that there was a mass of fur between you and her, but a hug nonetheless.
    Thanks for your continuing updates on the plight of whales. I mean that. To be honest, I didn’t care much about Salt or any other whales when you first started dumping tons of information about them on me. And I thought I did a pretty good job of showing I didn’t really care, but you just kept on writing about them, going on and on. And on. That took spunk.
    I suppose it’s possible you just didn’t read the cues that I didn’t give a crap. Maybe it was accidental spunk—uh, accidental persistence, let’s say—but still commendable. You’ve brought me around on whales. It’s amazing the crap we humans subject them to. They seem like dang fine animals and deserve better treatment. Glad there’s people like you looking out for them. As always, keep fighting the good fight. Maybe I’ll join you in it someday by making a cool whale doc. I just put The Cove (not whales, I know) and Blackfish in the ol’ Netflix queue.
    Fair warning, though: no matter how much you end up helping whales, the human race will continue to disappoint you as long as it exists. You ever thought about that saying, “Nobody’s perfect”? It’s actually the key to explaining the plight of whales and people. All right, let’s start with the premise that no one’s perfect. We’ll call that a given. There’s a fancy logic word for that, but I can’t remember it. Anyway, not a SINGLE PERSON alive right now on this planet is perfect. But just for argument’s sake, let’s suppose that they’re really close—they’re not, I’m living proof—but let’s imagine this extremely rosy scenario. Every human on Earth is dang near perfect. Guess what, though: there are approximately 7 BILLION of us on the planet! So if every swell person does, say, one little shitty thing per month to another person or to a whale or to themselves, we’re already talking about 84,000,000,000,000 (84 trillion, but I thought it was worth seeing all the zeros) shitty things per year! And people AREN’T all that swell. And this thought experiment doesn’t even take into account accidents, mistakes, and good intentions that end up causing incredibly shitty outcomes!!! (For incidents of all of these, please consult chapters 1 through 730 of The Story of How Darren Effed It Up with Corinne ).
    But all hope is not lost. Though I may be loveless, I am not workless. Check it:
    You know how I was paraphrasing all the writers’ ideas and writing them on the whiteboard? Well, the show’s been tanking pretty much all season,