An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An engineer sees the glass as being twice as big as it needs to be. 

I was five years old when my father pointed out the twin granite pillars that cling to Wheeler Crest.

“It’s a rabbit,” I said and pointed. “They look like rabbit ears.”

“Very good son. They do look like rabbit ears now that you mention it.” He said.

Every time we’d drive to Mammoth I’d see it the same; one ear taller than the other with its body off to the left poised to run up and over the hill if we spooked it. If I stared hard enough, I could make out two close-set eyes, a little rabbit nose, and fat cheeks stuffed with carrots from the valley below. I’d smile every time. For years, they looked that way until I was on my way to work one morning.

As the motor revved to bear the grade, I glanced to the west and saw the formation as twin smoke stacks flanked on either side by massive piles of coal. If I looked close enough, chossy crags and sage became plumes of smoke that rose high above to cloud the perfectly blue sky. The rabbit was gone; I couldn’t see it anymore. For years, they looked that way until I was on my way to the doctor one morning.

I drove north like I’ve done so many times before, my hands at ten and two—but these weren’t my hands. These were the hands of an old man on the steering wheel, blue veins seen through thin skin. Surely these aren’t my hands? I looked to the left expecting to see the twin pillars of industry puffing away as they have for so long, but the smoke stacks were gone. In their place, a torso and legs sticking straight up in self destructive free fall—a man’s lower half, the moment of impact captured in a perfectly frozen-frame—dark waves of ejected earth spewing in a cone all around his broken upper half.  I turned to the road and shivered. Don’t like the looks of that. Peering back to the cliffs, I strained to see the rabbit again.