I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.

November 13, 2009 by The Clever Kris · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, humor, life 
What do you want from me? The Kit-Kat logo is copyrighted.

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...

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God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

August 21, 2009 by The Clever Kris · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Everyday 
"On a hill far away..."

[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...

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I was able to order my fish sandwich without incident.

June 20, 2009 by The Clever Kris · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Everyday 
This is how flying feels to me.

I can no longer ignore the inevitable because Wednesday, June 24, is fast approaching. And that is the day in which I must board a plane. And fly to Memphis, in which, I will get off one plane and onto another one...and head to Tacoma. A city in a state so far away from here that it might as well not even be a part of the United States. Few other things make me as defensive or difficult as flying. Because I'm so afraid of it. Not just because I'm mean.  Flying is something that I can safely hate. I become neurotic, distraught, maybe even mean...I'm...

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January 2004: The Five-Day Cider War

May 13, 2009 by The Clever Kris · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Everyday 
Spotlight by day; Superstar by night.

I've just about decided that there's nothing that karaoke can't fix.  If it can train a Sicilian and a Southerner to live together, in harmony, then at the next G8, or G12, G+number, Summit...we need to hire Disco Dan, or Happy Butch to grab their mic stands and their CDs. I resisted this, what to me, was merely a bar-room, nocturnal, alcohol-fueled passtime, for many years. I felt that I couldn't possibly degrade myself, a real singer, I thought to myself, to such a ridiculously low-level thirst for spotlight attention. Ah, but what a little spotlight can do. With my brief second tenure in Indiana, I...

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