Hello I'm Jak, and I am a dog.  How about let's make me a golden retriever, those are fun.  I dont really have too much of a free life, no kid to play fetch with, no adult to do some silly trick with for a doggie biscuit, no nothing.  I live in a laboratory.  All I have is a cage and the occassional meal.  It seems rather sad but Ive been here for as long as I can remember, so its just life to me.  One day Robert, one of the reasearchers, threw a round object into my cage.  I've never seen one of these things before, but he called it a ball.  Seeing it bounce up and down inside my cage just sent an impulse through me to just go after it, so I did.  I jumped to the ball and quickly caught it in my mouth, and soon did I realize that it tasted DELICIOUS!  I don't know what it is about a rubberized ball.  Not only did it taste so good, but it was so much fun just how it bounced.  Days upon days went by, and this ball was providing so much fun, so much joy for me, if I wasn't playing with the ball, I was thinking about the ball.  Suddenly after a couple of weeks something terrible happen.  While the ball was in my mouth, it exploded!  Not only that, it also disenegrated.  Now I was left with nothing, nothing except the pain of the explosion, oh how it hurt. 

I didn't want to do anything for quite sometime.  I might eat, I might not.  A few weeks went by, and I was starting to get used to everyday life again.  One morning, I woke up, and a brand new ball was in my cage.  I was a little hesitant at first, but eventually I was back to playing with a new ball!  This was even better than the first one, it tasted better, it bounced higher.  Oh how I loved the ball.  And once again, my life's focus was the ball, if I wasnt bouncing the ball, tasting the ball, holding the ball, I sure was thinking about the ball.  A few months later it unfortunately happened again.  As I was holding the ball in my mouth, BOOM, and again I am left with nothing but the pain from the explosion. 

This continues to happen for as long as I am here.  The few days after the explosion the pain causes me to only want to eat.  And as a start to get readjusted to everyday life, a brand new ball comes in.  I play with it, and it explodes.  I never know when it's going to explode, but I do know that the pain is extreme when it does.  Until finally I get to a point. 

They'll put a ball in my cage.  I don't do anything with it.  I want to, I want to play with it, taste it, enjoy it, bounce it up and down and all around my cage, I want to do all of that more than anything in the world.  But I don't, I know it will explode and be very painful.  So here I sit.