“Hey, look! Something tiny and green is growing in the tar!” Popping my head through the open trap door to the roof. Pausing just for a moment before hoisting myself up. You, sprawled on your stomach in cutoffs and an old University of Wisconsin t-shirt of mine that you slept in a...
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So, if you can follow this: Way back, Girl moves from a southern state to Washington DC. She is awkward at first, her accent brings her more attention than she’d like. She finds friends eventually, though; DC is filled with kids displaced by their parents’ careers, there are citizens of the world...
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Any writer leaves stuff out. Well, you have to, for a variety of reasons — length, relevance, good taste. I mean, when I was commissioned a few years ago to describe a 1981 tour of the old Triumph motorcycle plant in Meriden, England, I worked in a reference to the Tiny Perfect...
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I say we met in a bar, he says we met in a restaurant. I think it sounds funnier to say we met in a bar – a couple of Irish and all that. He thinks it sounds unromantic, like we were a drunken one-night stand, which we weren’t. Not even a...
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For thirty-five years its posture has been folded into a deep curtsy, dormant over a hanger, as if waiting for a curtain call. After that one moment in the spotlight, it’s never been worn again. Unless we consider fleeting fantasies of varying scenarios I’ve had over the decades that flash-forwarded to, well,...
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“There’s nothing wrong with your hair,” he told her. “My hair is boring,” she said. “Your hair is pretty, it doesn’t need to be exciting,” he said, but he knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say. She said she didn’t care, she was going...
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The fly’s sudden buzzing at the screen saved me just then from the blank sky of weariness the danger of being sucked up like moisture from the earth to skip from star to star enchanted not wanting to return to my required task of stringing days like...
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The mother said, “They’s all kinda bugs and swamps and allygaters down there! I ain’t goin’ to no Florida.” “But Momma,” the daughter pleaded, “You can’t stay by yourself. We have to do this for Jimmie’s job.” “Let him go. You stay here.” “Momma, he’s my husband....
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According to Family Education magazine, the top ten boy’s first names in 2012 were, in order, Jacob, Mason, William, Jayden, Noah, Michael, Ethan, Alexander, Aiden, and Daniel. My first name, either as the formal “Jerome” or informal “Jerry,” appears nowhere in even the top 100 names, though...
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I started out with just one friend And then I found friend two Then three, and four, and several more Each day my friend list grew It seemed the more requests I got The more it made me fidget And like a worm I’d simply squirm As...
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Steve Draper was laughing. “Seriously, Gerry? I know you’ve sworn to ‘first do no...
“Jimmy!” Lois bellowed from her office door, searching the ridiculously outdated newsroom for the...
What we see, smell, taste, hear and feel originates in our brain; our planet and the universe around us would be a blank canvas in need of a painter if we lacked the ability to process even the tiniest part of it all (which is all most of us are capable of processing). That’s pretty breathtaking all by itself. But what makes us connect to some people and not others? What makes us fall in love, or even lifelong friendship with someone? Does it go back to the amoeba that split, and then thought oh, shit, I miss my other half, can we still be friends? Or did the urge to connect lie dormant until we learned to run in packs and build nations?
What are you talking about?