You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fe...
I cook better than you," Nick corrected absently. "I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you." "I'd like to have a monkey that cooked for me," said Jamie. " I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse." "I agree, that ...
I've been a storyteller since I was six years old when my mother had her first series of electroshock therapy treatments. I made up stories to keep my sisters quiet while mom slept." Dear Deb "I didn't know how it felt to have cancer, but I knew abou...
If one has failed to develop curiosity and interest in the early years, it is a good idea to acquire them now, before it is too late to improve the quality of life. To do so is fairly easy in principle, but more difficult in practice. Yet it is sure ...
Cover me!' Augustus said as he jumped out from behind the wall and raced toward the school. Isaac fumbled for his controller and then started firing while the bullets rained down on Augustus, who was shot once and then twice but still ran, Augustus s...
I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising myself for possible disto...
You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend'...
His father was IRA and his mother was Quebecois, and they had reliquished their mortal coils in the internecine conflagration that ended their conjoined separatist movement, IRA-Q. The appellation he was given by his progenitors was Ray O'Vaque ("Lik...
Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years. My last visit, when I knew...
I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce. Beth went a little nuts. I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year o...
...Ty grabbed my phone and threatened to tell Otter that I liked being spanked during sex. This proceeded to lead up on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. H said he mi...
In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologist...
People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs a...
My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In...
I know that you and your girls have been told for years on end that you just don’t pass up any opportunities when a man walks your way—he could be The One. But I’m here to tell you that this philosophy is just plain dumb. Women are smart—you ...
A few years ago, when I was hitchhiking through Laramie, Wyoming, I met an old and infertile man named John. I told him, “I think I’d have made a good son, John. But I’d have made an even better Johnson.” He nodded as he took a long drag from...
Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile. 'I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might,' he hesitated, 'yes, as we might.' Eastman looked at him sourly...
[My grandfather] returned to what he called ‘studying.’ He sat looking down at his lap, his left hand idle on the chair arm, his right scratching his head, his white hair gleaming in the lamplight. I knew that when he was studying he was thinking...
What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making gestures from the other side of the glass, which I can’t penetrate. …people can speak out of anything, though the struggle takes years. The prob...
Lance rolled his eyes. “I’m already sorrier than you could possibly imagine. Now you promise me you won’t interfere, or mention it to anyone, or poke your nose in, or follow Mr. Traynor along the street when he comes into town,...” Lily snort...
It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generatio...
