Between the syncopated machine gun pops of Silas stomping on bubble wrap, I heard a flyer slide under the front door. “What’s it say?” Lindsay asked. “Either a sale on snow tires or a high school cupcake drive,” I responded. My kids started dancing, “CUPCAKES!”
”No, no, I was kidding.” And then a silence fell over the room. Even my dad was disappointed. So I broke my “never entertain hand-delivered offers” policy, and read it aloud.
“Victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme have been forced to auction off their FINE PERSIAN RUGS at greatly reduced prices! Continue…
My mother is an information superhero with her iPad Mini. Granted, she types with one finger, can’t synch it, and insists on plugging it in as soon as the battery drops below 75%, but when it comes to looking up information, her skills are unparalleled.
A week ago, while my dad and I were talking about Gene Hackman (why we were talking about Gene Hackman, I have no idea), I mentioned that it seems as if he hasn’t been in any movies recently, to which my dad responded, “Did you ever see him in that great one…what the hell was that called?” “The Firm?” I asked. Continue…
It’s either day 6 or 7. I can’t remember. After a while, the days without routine and electricity blend together into a foggy-headed smoothie that tastes like the middle of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” sounds. We’re all walking around with grim heavy-metal faces, but all feel confused and awkward, like maybe we accidentally ate some Percocet dusted catnip.
Jet-lagged and overly burdened with luggage (my mother insisted thay we pack nearly everything we owned), the four of us waited at the rental car counter. My father was nervous; not only did he have his wife and son with him, but also his son’s friend who would be joining our family for the year in Florence, Italy. My father may be gentle, but he’s not calm, and he has a general distrust of automobiles and other drivers. He was the same age I am now, so while I didn’t understand his anxiety then, I certainly do today. Continue…
We were driving Jeremy’s mom’s Mercury Topaz, so the police called his parents, even though I was the one throwing tennis balls out the window at passing vehicles. I would have only thrown one, but Jeremy started laughing, and that provided me with all the nerve I needed to hurl the remaning five.
The goal was to hit the windshield of an on-coming car, which had I been more successful, clearly would have resulted in numerous fatalities and an involuntary manslaughter conviction. Continue…
