Philip Henderson, you don’t know it but you walked across my stage and initiated the climactic turning point the plot of my play hinged upon, the one I’d been reaching and reaching for these past 12 years. Alas, this starring role came at a price, […]
She was tipped over so far to one side in her wheelchair she was almost horizontal to the floor. From this position she was trying to drink a cup of cranberry juice. I stared across the table at her, entranced. Was it possible? Apparently. Somehow, […]
I was trying to inflate myself, make myself important in some way I hadn’t earned by tagging onto something noble I was told my parents had done. Though self-elevation wasn’t new to me, I was especially driven to it in the writing class I was […]
I committed my first cruelty at the innocent age of 4. And I knew it. We were a team almost from the get go, Amy and me. In the 4-kid ABBA rhyme scheme that was our family pattern, we were the tight middle core — […]
I was in a situation I couldn’t see my way out of short of calling in the ski patrol, however you do that. The problem: the bottom of the mountain was very different from the top. What had been manageable down below on my amateur […]
I could hear the laughing getting closer and closer before they busted through the door of the drama lab, shouting out, “Ms. Clayton, do you want to know how to eat a peanut butter sandwich in one bite?” They tumbled in like puppies, these two freshmen from […]
“I got the breath of life put in me.” He said it slow, unable to get over the wonder of it. “There was an accident. I’ve been to the county home.” Christine and her friend Kathy had been walking across an old bridge on a […]
So what was this flag girl part of me ready to say I am not having it? The part that, as time went on, was so in-tune with how-to details. “Hmmm, Mary Kerr keeps a garden hose at the ready in the trunk of her car,” […]
A classmate and her mother were murdered in their home when I was a sophomore in high school, first her mother, who was shot in the basement where they were both were watching tv, then Karol, who was chased up the stairs into the garage […]
A mouse takes 130 very rapid little mouse breaths per minute and lives for 1 – 3 years. A whale takes 6 whale-sized breaths every minute and lives to be around 100. It almost makes you think breathing long and slow might be a very […]
We heard the DOT paid great so we decided we’d stand on the highway with a flag in our hand and rake it in for a summer. What a thing; we’d just stand on a road and rake it in. Our assignment was Highway 218…mile […]
He had stuff I loved. From the minute I pulled into the driveway and saw the shapely Zen garden pot the size of a full-bodied hydrangea bush, I thought the psychiatrist who chose that elegant garden pottery is the psychiatrist for me. It just kept getting better and better […]
Be cool. 