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Ode to Sampson: I Type At You, My Vigor Diminished
Do not even ask me to hold a kettle ball for you right now, much less to swing it around and jack up my triceps. As long as we’re on the point, incidentally, how come you’re always asking me to hold your kettle balls? At any rate, I couldn’t heft even the lightest of your…
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If Imagination Were Actually Given Full Rein
By jinkies and holy Marco Polo, but I’m tired. We got back from our two weeks of travel the other night, and as of today, I almost feel hydrated and centered again. Mos’ def, travels full of weddings and college reunions are hot-doggoliciously fun, but coming home from them requires a state-licensed detox program: detoxing…
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This Gives Me Even Greater License to Drink, Right?
I’m at my 20-year college reunion right now, so typing time is tight. I’ll simply say the beauty of attending such an event is this: I am assured I’m not the only one my age with a paunch and thinning hair. However, to my credit, and unlike many of my peers, I have not chosen…
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June 2009: St. Louis, Missouri: A Wedding So Lovely I Sometimes Was Able to Ignore the Humidity
Back in 1993-1994, Groom worked as a student naturalist at an environmental learning center in Northern Minnesota; during that year, he accrued a passle of friends who have hung together over the years. One of them, John, got married last weekend in St. Louis. Groom’s first memories of John, back at the environmental ed center…
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Home, Trashed Home
As the countdown to the demolition of our kitchen ticked away, we continued our own initial destruction, tearing out cabinets and removing ceiling tiles; it got to the point where little in the room needed to be kept functional or pristine, and then Groom really cut loose. He hung bowling pins from the rafters…
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Not Occurring in Nature
A convergence of events led to the following string of photos. First, my city is revamping its entire school system (in a really logical fashion that is entirely in the best interests of the children because its end result will be at least 32 kids in EVERY classroom and not just in most of them),…
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If You Like This, You Should Read the One About The Time My Bra Fell Out of My Ear at a Bat Mitzvah. That’s ‘My Ear,’ Not ‘My Rear
Mostly, I’m glad my antics didn’t break her water. I have a friend in the neighborhood, you see, who is in her 28th week of pregnancy; part of her MO when pregnant is to have the baby early because she only has half a uterus (somehow, her uterus is bisected and, thus, has only half…
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Ain’t We Lucky We Got ‘Em
During the 1980’s, I attended junior high, high school, and college. To recap that, for those of you Distractites who are reading this with one eye locked onto The Housewives of East St. Louis, I was an adolescent of the ’80s. Thus, all of my worst hormonal moments of wracked self-esteem were accompanied by…
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Instead of Being a Gumshoe, I Chew Gum and Buy Shoes
I’m trying to figure out why I don’t feel like sitting down and writing a post this week. Perhaps it’s because I just finished a year (my 19th) of teaching writing, because I have been spending every evening the last two weeks compiling and editing a 100 page student publication, or because summer classes start…
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Preeeeeeeepare Ye the Way of the Froth
