“Daddy will be really happy,” she told the German shepherd sitting on her kitchen floor. “Of course, he’s too cranky to be happy about anything, and he’ll be mad because Katie won’t eat it because I spent all day makin’ it and the only thing she wants to eat right now is pancakes.”
This is an example of an evaluative claim because it involves characteristics of Caleb from Brannan stating that he is cranky and upset that Katie won’t eat the lasagna that Brannan made for them. Katie only wants to eat pancakes.
Later, she reminds me that Lasagna Night can come apart in an instant, if Caleb has a “bad PTSD moment.” These are supposed to be her easy months, she sighs, April and May and June, before the anniversaries of his worst firefights—many of them in Ramadi; a lot of bad things happened in Ramadi—exacerbate his flashbacks and nightmares. That’s usually September through January, the “really bad” months, whereas in the spring, she gets a bit of “vacation,” time to clean up the house and catch up on work, rest.
This is an example of comparative claim because it is comparing Caleb’s PTSD months as April May and June are easy months for her before Caleb’s anniversaries of his worst firefights that are in Ramadi but September through January are bad months, but it gets easy on her during the spring.
She used to ask Caleb what was wrong, why he was coiled so tight and poisonous, screaming and yelling at everybody.
This statement is an analogy claim and a categorical claim because it’s describing how he is like with the symptoms of PTSD by yelling at everyone.
And then she’ll just sit and listen while he says he cannot get it out of his head, about how if he had caught that fucking sniper, that enemy sniper he’d been trying to get, that’d been following them around, terrorizing their unit, if he’d have managed to kill him like he was supposed to, then the sniper wouldn’t have gotten off the shot that killed his buddy.
This is an example of categorical claim and factual because Caleb can’t get the thought of not being able to kill the sniper that killed his friend. This is factual because if he were able to pull it off, he wouldn’t have PTSD.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Lots of good observations here, and nothing you say is wrong, JReggie, but you don’t have to quote sections of five or six lines long to find multiple claims. Let me illustrate:
—You say it’s an analogy, and I agree, but you don’t identify the analogy as a comparison between Caleb and a venomous snake.
—You don’t point out that it’s comparative in the simple way it compares what she “used to” do and what she does now.
—You don’t suggest that Brannan is looking for a Causal explanation from Caleb. She believes there must be “something wrong” for him to start screaming.
Provisionally graded. Revisions are always encouraged and Regrades are always possible. Put the post into Feedback Please if you elect to revise.