Category: birthdays
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Arc of Some Skivers
In the fall of 1985, my mom dropped me off near the little town in Minnesota where I would be starting college. Fortunately, my aunt and uncle lived at the spot where she stopped the car, so it wasn’t like I was left trying to hitch a ride to campus or anything. Mom had a…
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If You Wheel It, He Will Roll
Groom just turned thirty-seven. We gave him a unicycle. He should never have said, offhandedly, as he bit into a piece of watermelon this summer, “By the time I’m forty, I want to be able to ride a unicycle.” ‘Cause then we gave him one. And now he has to master the sucker. Thus, Groom’s…
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“Talent Will Tell” Most nights, I watch only the first three minutes of the evening news. Everyone knows the first three minutes are where it’s at, and the other twenty-seven minutes are all weather teasers; superficial overviews of happenings nationally and internationally; the weather guy in an outside-the-studio weather garden ringing a bell because the…
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Seven Years Since the Blue Moon
I got engaged and pregnant on the same day. Even better, it was “Buck Night” at the local ball park, so I also got to drink a whole lot of cheap beer on a really humid July night while feigning interest in an All-American sport. You might be trying to forge a connection between all…
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“Happy Bir– Oh, Hell, Whatever” (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38626538@N00/401568720/) I’m turning forty on Sunday. My dad would have been seventy-two that same day, had he not passed away four years ago. Suddenly, four years ago, I stopped enjoying a shared birthday and now face a lifetime of solo celebration. Since 2003, even as I greet a new…