My face didn’t freeze that way. My eyes didn’t stay crossed, either. I tromped around for days trying to freeze my face into a snarling, cross-eyed dinosaur mask of terror, but all that happened was my jaw ached. “No, really, it’s ugly,” my cousin Scott soothed, trying to cheer me ...
During elementary school, the first assignment of every year was to write an essay titled, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” Back then, summer vacation was three months of playing baseball, bicycles, camping and pestering siblings. Somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I morphed ...
I harbor big travel plans for my vacation week. I plan to wander from the bedroom all the way to the living room — but not every day. Some days, I’ll do nothing at all, except maybe take a side trip to the refrigerator. Not that I won’t leave the house at all on vacation. It’s that I ...
Gimme a break, gimme a break, the advertising jingles are jangling creases in my cranium. I popped awake the other morning in mid-jingle: “Fat kids, skinny kids / Kids who climb on rocks / Tough kids, sissy kids / Even kids with chicken pox.” My bride blinked. “Why are you singing ...
My life didn’t end when I failed. It just felt like it. There are only so many times a person gets knocked down before he says, “While I’m lying here, I might as well take a nap. I’ll get back up and try again later. Maybe. We’ll see.” I grew up in an era when failure “built ...
Perhaps the world’s most treacherous question is, “Are you busy?” Danger, Will Robinson! You’re about to be in trouble. Way back when I was a cub reporter and dinosaurs roamed the earth, my editor caught me leafing through that day’s edition of the stone tablets. He tugged on his ...
