Early Saturday morning, I was awakened twice by nightmares about car crashes. These days I seldom have bad dreams that will wake me from a sleep. I found it strange but went back to bed while my wife—who is an early riser—went to the grocery store.
While there are certainly classes that, as a teacher, you’ll look back on fondly—as well as those classes that will continue to haunt your nightmares until your dying breath—one of the best things about my profession is that I still get to experience the exhilaration of the summer vacation every June.
So—at the risk of mansplaining—I’m going to put my MFA in fiction writing to good use and propose some more dramatic confrontations and resolutions to my wife’s story according to three popular genres.
Simply stated, the people who object to Pride Month are often the same people who have made Pride Month a necessity. They are also often the same people who will wrap themselves in an American flag and tout the virtues of freedom, while wanting to oppress the rights of others; or the same people who grab their Bibles and claim to be walking in the shadow Jesus, while practicing prejudice and intolerance.
And my favorite bartender is a French-Canadian woman named Sylvia Caron. Sylvia has worked at Chelby’s Pizza for more than 40 years and has not lost a step. Like all fine bartenders, Sylvia is personable and kind and patient.
I’m about to get all Gen X, sitting-cross-legged-in-front-of-the-television-eating-Cocoa-Puffs real with everyone now.
According to the BMI chart—and I understand that the BMI chart is a dubious and sometimes dangerous measure of healthy weight—I’m not a lost cause, but the opportunity to get my “summer body” continues to dwindle in my rearview as I speed off to another rendezvous with a cheeseburger and a beer.
My stomach sunk as I remembered. I remembered committing to rake the stupid refuse in our stupid yard and pack it in the stupid lawn bags then mow the stupid lawn. I remembered agreeing to help sweep our stupid patio and pull the stupid weeds growing in the stupid cracks between the stupid bricks.
As soon as I’m lifted onto the bed, I’m greeted by this picture of a pug that looks like me and is, quite literally, larger than life. There I am, the “King of Kings,” or the “Pug of Pugs.” But unlike Ozymandias, I’m aware of the fact that time will sweep me into oblivion, as it will all of you, too.
A blood moon hung in the night sky above Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, Mo., on October 27, 2004, a night that ended 86 years of abject misery for the Boston Red Sox and their devoted fanbase.
As a boy, I watched Desmond Davis’ 1981 film “Clash of the Titans” on HBO, long before I read any Greek mythology. The film lingered with me, not as a budding mythology buff, but as a highly anxious mortal, terrified by the world.
Gyllenhaal shows off all of his Academy Award-nominated chops as the soft-spoken Elwood Dalton. Notice that the character does not have the same given name as Swayze’s character in the original film. Gyllanhaal’s Elwood Dalton is not, in fact, the same character as Swayze’s James Dalton, although they’re both referred to simply as “Dalton.”
However, as I’ve gotten older, some of the joy of celebrating my dramatic comeback has subsided and—aside from a few rites of passages at the end of another decade of spinning around the sun—my birthday now goes largely unnoticed. This needs to change. And not just for me. For everyone.
While I am far past the age where I’ll be zooming downtown at 6 a.m. to open the bars with the hosts of a radio morning show— “That is no country for old men”— I still like to celebrate the day with a few beers, a boiled dinner and a Pogues playlist.
During the last week of February, I had a weeklong winter break from my job teaching at a public high school. Many of my friends and colleagues in education use the break as an opportunity to vacation with their families—whether it’s a day trip skiing in the White Mountains, or hopping a last-minute flight to Hawaii.[1]
I teach in a public school so I can’t possibly write a column about school vouchers with a modicum of diplomacy. This screed will invariably devolve into another hot-shot of liberal vitriol, right? Wrong.
My allegiance to the Red Sox vastly contributed to my developing a Chicken Little Syndrome—“The sky is falling”—while creating a seemingly endless well of negativity.
Last Saturday afternoon, after finishing an interview with a local author at Barnes and Noble[1], I met with my editor and publisher of Manchester Ink Link, Carol Robidoux at The Shaskeen Pub to brainstorm some article ideas.
It’s nearing bedtime on Tuesday night, and I’m lying on the couch after a long day, unwinding while watching “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” reruns and cursing Stabler for being a dick. That’s when the itching starts.
For some reason, I experience a vast amount of existential dread—a fear of an eternal abyss—while driving to work each morning.