Preamble In a 24 hour period over the course of the 26th and 27th of February, I was the victim of two forms of vehicular emoting. The first was the “daring” sort of vehicular emoting. Not quite the most one can do with anger whilst seat-belted in a moving vehicle, but an act that carried…
Category: Autobiographical
The Lunch Walk
The Industrial Nopes One of the reasons I became a teacher–and I know this is not what I should be saying–was so that I wouldn’t have to work in a cubicle. It was at the beginning of my teenagedom that I had suspected that the cubicle environment would not be my bag. I don’t remember…
I Am Not a Hoarder; I Am a Hoarder
My wife spread her arms as if to point out something egregious, something obvious and no-duh-ish. Her arms seemed to be indicating our living room. I scanned it. Nothing was amiss. I squinted. This was my way of letting her continue. “Your books,” she said. “Don’t you think this is hoarding? How many have you…
Retail and Idealism
Working and College Like any American, I have my consumerist bent on worldly things, and while my time and focus was on college, I wanted to work a life sustaining job while surrounded with things I had a kinship with: books and computers. And like an idealistic ninny, I chose to work at a bookstore,…
Midwesterners in an Arizona Blizzard
Driving Opinions People really like to declare a city of drivers terrible. You’ve heard it, “People drive like [insert parts of speech here] around here.” The metric always changes. And I guess I can see a sort of difference in New York City drivers versus Cincinnati drivers, but Nashville versus Cincinnati? St. Louis versus Houston?…
Lions and Lions and Lions
“There,” our tour guide said. I skimmed my eyes through the yellow grass, long and swirling still even with the absence of wind. We plodded closer and in looking so close, I could see how this could resemble American prairie, the lighter color of autumn covering much vastness. Then blotches of what was flattened grass…
The Wolf Sanctuary and Empathy
“You must be asking yourself why I’m not in the enclosure with the wolves like the other conservationists,” the gentleman, an elder in age, said into the microphone. “It’s quite simple. I might not make it out.” You wouldn’t think West Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University and many, many cornfields, would be a place…
The Writing Tick Psychoanalysis
I have a tick in my writing that has followed me for years. Maybe writing about it will be like when people who fear snakes do that process where they slowly acclimatize themselves to snake nearness and, baring no tragedy, lose the fear. When I write for my students, I hear murmurs. Someone will eventually…
Learning to Rock Climb
Wherein the Author Describes the Beginning “Let me down,” I said. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “But you are almost there.” “Let me down,” I said again, this time with the loud but hushed quality of a seriously perturbed person feigning composure. Nothing matters when you have climbed, with you hands and legs, like childhood days,…
Falling Back on Cereal
Before college, my life was littered with empty cereal bowls. This was largely the fault, and perhaps the triumph, of my mother. I ate cereal like one greedily gasps for air after running 1,000 miles per hour. Instead of lungs and air, it was cereal and stomach. Growing up, there was never any soda in…