***This is an essay I wrote for a grad program I didn’t have the grades to get into. SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t get in.*** There are two second-day-of-work experiences that woke me from coasting. I spent many years in a love triangle, intermittently dedicating myself to either higher ed or…

My daughter works at a home goods store and, after a period of COVID-19 layoff, was called back to fulfill essential curbside orders. None too excited about this, she has taken to sending snaps of the most (non)essential items of the day. I thought, hey man, let’s turn this into something to make the kid chuckle. Here is a completely fictitious super short story about why that item was essential. —

This morning as I was driving my babies, three and one, to our weekly library Rhythm and Rhyme group, I thought about what a fantastic joke it was that, once again, I was all gleeful about belting out “5 Little Speckled Frogs” in public. So what if I sound like…

He told me while face-to-face, the intimacy of it strangling me. We were so young and we must have looked too small to passerby. He looked at me with very serious, sincere eyes and told me that he loved me. …

I may have signed something somewhere along the way promising to never disclose this information, but I doubt that anyone who may stumble upon this will be in danger. I mean. Really. One of our country’s major retailers trains its employees by using a fictitious family headed by Jennie and…

A few years ago I had a rather big crush on a gentleman who was in my grammar class on Wednesday nights. It being that I had a boyfriend at the time and this classmate was eight years younger than me, it was rather harmless. …

Did you know… If I were the one going, it wouldn’t hurt half as bad as watching you go. I’m glad I didn’t meet you first. That’s why I simply smiled when you told me you wish you had.

1988 Cutlass Ciera When I was 16, my mom bought a new car and, instead of trading it in, let me drive her old. Not a bad deal given that I only had to pay insurance on it, no car payment. I was a superb student until I hit high…

“During the Beehive meetings we talk and do meeting related things (talk about bees, ideas, plan our business).”-My daughter My daughter has dozens of those laying around. She uses a new one for each story, organizational system, or club she starts. Like the beehive club. She started it with her…