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Pas De Deux
During my youth, I took ballet and modern dance lessons for 9 years from a delicate woman named Miss June. Because it was part of her job, Miss June spent those years chiding my solid self to “just tuck in your tummy as tight as you can, dear,” and to this day, I still…
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Shouldn’t I Get An ‘A’ Just for Enrolling?
Every semester, I am asked by students–with increasing frequency as the term chugs along–if I have any extra credit activities for them. When they ask this, it’s very hard for me not to start the hollerin’. Here’s what I have discovered over the years: 1) the students who will actually complete and submit the extra…
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Thus Sprach Jocey-thustra
I’ve been framed.
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I Can Help You Birth Your Baby, But Please Don’t Ask Me to File Your Taxes
From the teaching life: I have had a student sit in my office and sob about how she was stuck living with her no-account boyfriend who used their money for anything but rent, who hated the fact that she’d chosen to go to college, who sabotaged her every effort to change her life. However, she…
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If You Would Be Kind Enough to Ignore My Oily Skin, Greasy Hair, and Hawkish Profile
Although last night I was on the treadmill at the Y, running like the cops were chasing me and trying to confiscate my plastic glass of watery keg beer, listening to .38 Special sing “Fantasy Girl,” the truth is I’m no longer young. In fact, recently, a very kind optometrist (a young woman with eggs…
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She Ought to Be in Pictures
Nine years ago, a piece of my heart started to live outside of my body. Or, as my pal Pammy puts it, “Having children is like being held hostage by the world; you’ll do anything the universe demands to assure their safe passage.” Girl slides safely out of my passage. In her first year of…
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I Have Called Upon Your Goodwill and Patience Frequently In the Past, But Never Moreso Than Now, When I Have a New Toy
I woke up on my birthday last week and was gifted with a digital video camera, already loaded with this message: Don’t worry. Groom knows he is the whitest boy on the planet when it comes to carrying a tune and/or dancing. Since he excels at all else, it is only fair that he be…
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I Live in Zoo. Word On the Streets Is That I Smell Like a Monkey. Even More Tragically, I Look Like One, Too
Wednesday was my birthday. The cool thing about my announcing this today is that now you aren’t compelled to chime in with a “Happy birthday!” You’re off the hook, toots. Because it was yesterday! And now it’s over!! So nothing you can say or think can change how it was!!! C’est fini!!!! Keep your kind…
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Game Over
Girl stands next to the kitchen table, her Tales of Famous Americans book open next to her, and grins widely as she reads aloud, “Martin Luther King loved learning new words. M.L. exclaimed, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to get me some big words.’” While Girl gets a kick out of this statement, Niblet…
