I try not to abuse the privilege of a horn.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, humor, life
I like to think I’m a good guy. I know I’m not, but still…it’s nice to pretend. Heck, every now and then I even convince myself. I do try and go through the motions, you know, on a fairly regular basis: being nice, opening doors for the elderly, picking up the random piece of stray litter, speaking when spoken to, lending a dollar on occasion, offering gum…you get the picture. I try and do these things with some consistency. However, there is a very real part of my Daily Routine in which I flat-out, no-holds-barred hate people. And that part is driving. I absolutely hate...
I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, health, humor, life
I There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood. Of course, this requires explanation. It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so. Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in. I found...
A word about Free Enterprise and blood pressure monitors.
I found myself, yesterday, in the middle of Walgreens. I was comparing the prices of blood pressure monitors, and not for U.L. or a grandmother. I was purchasing one for myself. It seems I stay in a constant state of Stage 1 Hypertension, according to my third doctor's appointment in the last month. This, almost more than anything else, means I am now a bona fide Adult. Nothing says Welcome to Life like high blood pressure. I brag a lot about how healthy I am, but the truth is I’m only doing that as a means of psyching myself out. I know all too...
“We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, humor, life
I’ve never really cared about the gift exchange element to Christmas. Time and time again, as a child, I’d be asked what I wanted and time and time again, I’d say I didn’t care. I’d be pressed until I crumbled and rattled off some random item. A typewriter (which I ended up loving), board games (which I’ve since donated to high school theatre departments), books (I still have every one of these), a video recorder (I used it once six years ago to document a living will). I’ve never really put that much focus on material things. Not to say that I...
I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.
Filed under: Deep South, education, Everyday, faith, family, humor, life
I can count on one hand the number of things I’ve stolen in my entire life: four. I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them. But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items. One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling. I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that...
That one time I rode on Amtrak.
Filed under: Everyday, family, food, humor, life
I never really bought into the sentiment of those Lionel train commercials. Have you ever seen those? Their propaganda touts this concrete belief that Americans have some highly wrought love affair with trains. They're usually spread all over the airwaves around this time, each year. Because nothing says Christmas quite like the stumble-trap of a miniature railroad system circling hour after hour around the base of your tree. My grandmother, she’s 93 as of yesterday, and she had this train set that she would year-in-year-out place around the Christmas tree, letting it silently circle on its tracks, beneath the Douglas Fir. Inevitably, she’d forget...
She was, in fact, too next to me.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, food, humor, language, life
If it hadn’t happened to me, I would have wanted it to. Because I love desperate people, people who are in dire need of belonging to Something: a group, a party, a conversation. They’re simply fascinating to watch in public because they have no radar for ridicule. Enter: Me. The Radar. I’m not always “in your face” about things, but it takes all kinds, I know, and I respect those who are. For me, I’m much more like a Dorothy Zbornak; I like to fight with my wit, when I have any. Like that girl, last night, whom I’m supposing I met thought I...
Mistakes make you feel bad. Like Peter Scolari or Mario van Peebles.
Filed under: faith, food, language, life, theatre, writing
I've made a mistake. I know I've made, like, at least two mistakes, previously, in my whole life and this would make three, and that's like, a holy number, so maybe I've come full circle, now. God, I hope. And though I don't make many mistakes, I know quite well what it feels like; the three I've made already have hurt like the Dickens. You know what the Dickens feels like, don't you? It feels like a headache plus a backache plus a neckache plus a stomachache, and your stomach is connected to your knee bone and your knee bone's connected to your jaw bone, something...
I can't believe I'm blogging.
But, then, is that really true? Aren't we all, deep down, deliciously wanting to be voyeurs, without a court trial attached; those always take up so much time. What we want is to break a law and get away with it. That's all blogging is, really, an acceptably broken law; windows made of words for the rest of us Peeping Toms to look at. Nobody minds it; no, instead, it's encouraged. Besides, isn't there something just too alluring about showing a little "skin" to the Peeping Toms, to the entire web-viewing world about how you feel, on any particular subject: racism, nudity, Republicans, orange juice,...


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