Month: November 2008

  • Dear Jeebus and Pilgrims Who Are Dead: I Am Thankful For Teaching That Is Never Dull

      A follow-up to my previous post. After a few days of putting out feelers, I managed to hook up Mindy with an office on campus that helps with things like food and cars and telephones. Now, dauntless, even in the face of an STD, Mindy continues to spread her witless charm throughout the Land […]

  • Can I Talk to You After Class?

    In the middle of a rousing class session, during which I assigned the persuasive essay and outlawed the topic of abortion (never a good subject for a two-page paper written by untried students who still live at home), a 19-year-old student named Mindy came up and asked me if we could have a private moment […]

  • Benchmarks

    School pictures came home last week, toted in backpacks jumbled with Boxcar Children books, broken pencils, water bottles, and gym shoes. The kids are proud and excited about the photos; usually, I fake an interest on their behalf. However, I find I’m turning a corner, when it comes to my attitude about these highly-contrived photos […]

  • Twenty-Three Years and Thirteen Days

      In terms of female friendships, I have sixty-eleventeen inspirations but only three true Women of My Life. One of these three I met in 1985, in a dorm lounge, where she was being way too cute and cynical and cutting for her own good. Intimidated, I decided I didn’t like her. She kept being […]

  • Neuf

    A pot of water boiled on the burner behind my husband, as he leaned against the stove, pulling my face into his sweatshirt. This story does not end with seared human flesh, so relax, gentle reader. He hugged me to him for a long time, hard. Finally, I managed to choke out, through thick tonsils, […]

  • Decapitating the Child

    For almost nine years, Groom has been our stay-at-home parent (I married him because he was the closest thing to a woman I could find in a man’s body). He is an example of walking Zen, so his temperament has been perfectly suited to taking the kids to storytime at the library, playing soccer in […]

  • In a Fog

    It was full-frontal foggy the other day. This wasn’t just film noir, dry ice kind of stuff. Nay. This was, “Holy Haunted House, but I’m holding my hand up in front of my face, and I can’t see it!” Okay, it wasn’t my actually my hand, but I was waving something vaguely hand-like up in […]

  • Casting Your Vote in 2048

    In about forty years, if you start seeing lawn signs in your neighborhood touting “Wee Niblet for President,” I urge you to slow down your hover vehicle and take note. In Wee Niblet, you’d have a president who could work both sides of the Target Halloween clearance aisle, who could stabilize the economy (“One dollar, […]