Maps To Anywhere- Leaving

Leaving is one of Bernard Cooper's short essays in his book, Maps to Anywhere. This short essay sticks out to me in a way that I am unsure of. It talks about an average, typical family, a father, mother, and two and a half kids. Yes, two and a half kids. This is what stood out to me the most. 

This part stood out to me the most because it is unusual to be a half. In the essay, he doesn't state whether that half-child is male or female, nor the age. But, he does explain some of that half-child's features and possible future. Cooper tells us that the half-child is "isolated, half a figure, balanced on one leg, one hand extended..". He tells us that maybe his hand is extended as if to touch the world that he's leaving behind and everything that he's giving up in the world and leaving behind.

In class, we had an assignment where we had to imitate one of Bernard Cooper's short essays. naturally, I did Leaving and I tried to have fun with it. I kept the concept of your average family and instead of a "half-child", I made it into a pet, dog. I changed the title to Forgetting with the idea that instead of leaving everything behind, he's forgetting everything behind for that one special thing, no matter what it is. I did this because I recently met my friend's new dog and he was the most adorable dog there is! Playing with him, I learned something new about dogs; they have no perception of time. Whenever one of left for the bathroom or to go in the basement, he would get worried that we were gone forever. That made me come up with the title Forgetting, because the dog wants to show you something and forgets about everything else at that moment, leaving it behind.