God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.
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[I like to pretend I'm writing my memoirs, all of them at the same time, and so this is an excerpt from my second memoir, entitled The Deer in the Road. Feel free to edit, as you go along. Just don't let Amanda know.] On the outside looking in, I had a tragic childhood, I know, I’ve read that…but that’s only the way the story goes. It has a whole different feel, when it's told. The truth is I had a very conventional upbringing, for the most part, and it included a lot of church. I was brought up by a great uncle, who was also...
I died a little, right then, when he said that.
Someone, a long time ago like before I was born probably, once said, "Times, they are a-changin'." This person was either buying a new watch, replacing the battery in an old watch, or just given to random outbursts of speaking the painfully obvious. Also, they might have been Bob Dylan. Whoever it was, I tip my hat to them, and secretly, I call them a Philosopher. (Unless that person is Bob Dylan; I don't call him a Philosopher since his Oscar win). My deepest wish is that Time had a NASDAQ code. Because it is, I believe, the only thing on this earth that...
I buried probably, like, a million birds as a child.
I don't know of a southern household that doesn't own a pair of binoculars or have a jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise in the refrigerator. So, this is going to be a disappointing blog, in part, because my house has neither. Ok, well maybe a thimbleful is left of the mayonnaise. Ms. Frankie, the sweetest neighbor I had while growing up, God love her, thought it was because people really liked to look at the birds, that's why they all had binoculars...and that anything other than Blue Plate was sacrilege. She had a pair, herself, but they sat on the mantle after her husband died and...
Lazarus and his "Transferring to the Banana."
To be quite honest about it, we'd forgotten about him entirely. We did our civic duty, after Max had attacked him, this poor little kitten, in our backyard. At first, we thought he was dead. But, Amanda, who was the brave one, stepping forward and retrieving him from Max's jaws, saw that he was breathing...barely. Breathing enough, however, that he was more than agile and able enought to bite Amanda solidly on her finger. Not long after, she found herself in the emergency room, receiving a Tetanus shot. You may recall that we were turned away from the Vet School at MSU, and abruptly sent to another Vet's...
Because hands can do everything but lie.
I don't always know what to do with my hands. You might find that ironic for an actor, even more so for an educator. But, it's still the truth. It wasn't anything I ever really noticed until a few years ago. I began to realize that my Nana was fascinated by the frequency with which I used my hands to animate my conversation. She would look less at me and more at my gesturing. Over time, I became so concerned with how I might physcially be telling my story that I began to grow flustered at the dinner table. I didn't know how...
Rasputin and the Fateful Finger Day
I: Confession I don't have many great qualities, I'd imagine (for instance, I find it increasingly difficult to even get a date, so I'm tempted to say that I must be lacking some crucial quality - unfortunately, it's a temptation I never give into. I know better). What I do have, and consider a good thing to have, is a large, uncontrollably malleable heart. Even if it's quite a fault of mine to have it, a liability. It's still not the worst thing to have. Then, again, I'm also ignorant about a great many things, and most often, after the initial shock of owning so much pathos, I tend to...
He'd just always wanted a hearse, he said.
U.L. and I like to take Sunday drives, after dinner, each week. There's no rush to this ritual. We enjoy a long dinner with the rest of the family; we gossip, we share news (even the made-up News, an old habit we used to do when I was younger, that's found some way to stick, even to this day). What you do is, you mute the TV, you guess at what's being said by looking at the graphics, and then you tell your version. It was quite a shock, for instance, when I realized that Bush had actually been re-elected, and even greater still,...
The monsters in my mouth.
I'm no prude, but violence in any form shocks me. (I'm rather hoping that's a universal statement). But, and here's where we may differ, my response to it is to laugh. Maybe it's a nervous habit, maybe I think it's a deflection on my part to make it less real. I don't know why I do it, but I laugh. And loudly. See, what you might not know about me is that I am the world's most foremost expert at inappropriate laughter. It just seems easier to laugh at everything, for me. I get tired of crying. (Though, I've done my share of that,...
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