In second grade my friend Mark and I were playing Tuesday-afternoon hookey in and around Minnehaha Creek, which had dried up. We began to march down the mostly dry creekbed but I balked when it became wetter and wetter and more like a real creek. Why walk through water? It wasn't even summer yet. And in your shoes? But Mark invented a marching song in order to keep me going. He began to chant:

Walk. Straight. Even thouuughh it's deep
Walk. Straight. Even thouuughh it's deep

In that way, we spent the afternoon chanting and getting filthy.

In college I told this story to my friend Craig, who's now a writer-producer in Hollywood, and we both thought it pretty great life advice. The next time I saw him, Craig set a chair next to a piano and played me a new song he'd written that included the line. It was the first time I'd ever been an audience of one, and, being who I was/am, I found it unnerving. But Craig pushed on through. Craig was already following the life advice, while I was still balking. 

I do wish I'd followed it more. In retrospect, in certain moments of my life, I needed Mark standing behind me, chanting.