Author: Jocelyn
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Phonology and Flirtation
Phonology: an inventory of sounds and their features; rules specifying how sounds interact with each other. Flirtation: a short period of casual experimentation with or interest in a particular idea or activity. Phlirtology: a short period of inventorying how strangers interact with each other. *** Still sweating from my bike ride across campus, I pulled out a piece…
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Burned Nipples
“Do you smell something?” my employer wrinkled his nose and looked around the house suspiciously as he set down his briefcase. He was a doctor, as was his wife. I was the nanny. It was the summer of 1987. Whitney Houston wanted to dance with somebody, a gallon of gas cost $.89, the FDA approved…
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Turning Ten
Ten years ago this week, I posted for the first time to this blog. Ten years. That’s like high school plus college plus graduate school. It was the start of a new semester, and I’d had the revolutionary idea to ask one of my composition classes to try out this new thing — “blogging” — in…
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The First Day of the Semester: Hour by Hour
The 8 a.m. hour: Rumpled and wild, the bedding reflects the quality of my nervous sleep. Even with relying on my new-found friend, melatonin, I woke throughout the night. By 4 a.m., I rolled around fitfully, the veil of sleep resting lightly upon me, my blood running cold with First Day nerves. This is the…
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What I Did During My Summer Vacation
In a few days, the new academic year begins. Since I’ve not quite recovered from the stresses of the summer session, and since my fall teaching schedule recently underwent an adjustment (one section cancelled, another added), I’m a bit breathless. No matter. Whether or not I’m ready, it’ll happen anyways. I’ll hit an alarm and…
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Noncomplementary
His rage was immediate. “God damn it! You could have killed me! Why weren’t you looking? You God damn just about hit me!” Panting, fueled by adrenaline, the middle-aged man glared at me, outraged, itching to transfer his upset, ready to spit more invective as soon as I engaged. He was shaking; he was scared. In…
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Tender Toddler Tending
Even before he came out after school, even before he got into the car, I knew he’d be crabby. He’s always crabby when he’s nervous. Often, he swings through a few pit stops — quick pullovers at “I’m so tired” and “I’m really hungry” — before parking at the real destination: the thirteen-year-old is cranky because his…
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Grit
I wrote this more than a year ago. I am re-running it. The world is too awful. It was a glorious spring day, the hard edges of the air softening into mildness, the sun reflecting in puddles, spirits sitting up and stretching their arms to the sky. Awaking from the freeze of winter, everyone was…
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The Small Things
Guns. Bombs. Death. Terrorists. Neo-conservatism. Trump. Brexit. As heart-on-her-shirt hard-boiled-egg of a comic strip character Cathy would say, “Ack.” ACK. I feel ill-equipped to have the big conversations. When it comes to politics and violence and hatred and opinions, my stomach compacts into a dark, hard knot; instinctively, my spirit folds protectively into a crouch…
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My Teenage Diaries: The Gifts That Keep Giving
Of late, I’ve been mining my teenage diaries as source material for an essay I’m writing. The collateral joy from this process has been surprising. Because, well, I was an idiot when I was a teenager. I was cruel and bitchy and loving and fun and wishing and wanting and sad and judgmental and snide. Already,…