I am Emily Doerle, the “o” is silent when you say my last name. I used to race horses before college and my favorite band is Tenth Avenue North. I live in Upper Sandusky and I work at Lowe’s in Marion. I graduated from Carey High School and my favorite books are the Eragon series.

“The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

Such waltzing was hard, terribly hard, for with a boy’s scrawny arms I was trying to hold my tipsy father upright.” I believe this writer put this particular poem in his story so we could actually realize it is not easy living with an alcoholic. I believe it describes how the writer was trying so hard to be strong for his father and taking the responsibility of his father’s drinking problems into his own hands. The writer hangs on to his father like a leach to someone’s skin. He wanted a father that cared and loved him, the only time he got that love back is when his father wasn’t drunk. What struck me the most was how though out the writer’s life he strived for one thing to be the best son he could possibly be. The writer strived to be perfect whatever the cost may be. In the story the writer said that when he was in baseball and he pitch a ball, his father would yell at the umpire for calling it a ball instead of a strike so the writer would pitch only strikes. That just shows you the loyalty the writer had to his father, he wanted to make him the happiest man alive but knew he couldn’t because the alcoholism burned in his father’s veins like venom that never leaves, burning until it finally kills his father.