When we hire people, we like to know their limitations, said Mr. Acre, commandant of personnel. Look at Phil with his arm and hook. We could see the problem when we hired him. We’ve hired others with limitations not as obvious and that has backfired. You and I have limitations no one can see. If ours were obvious, someone […]
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I died from a rattlesnake bite and found myself in line with other zombies in front of a bank of elevators, the doors opening and closing as if by metronome. Every time a door opened a voice called the names of 12 zombies who boarded the elevator single file. As the doors closed, Led Zeppelin or Bing Crosby played in the background depending on whether the […]
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The uncommon is common in America today. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Seinfeld might have said to George had they seen the latest Glamour Magazine naming Caitlyn Jenner Woman of the Year. The public seems to agree. No placards hit the air. but Caitlyn has to stand and spray what other women sit to tinkle. Author […]
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Fifty years ago Jane got on a plane and flew away without saying good-bye. Her parents took her, I know. She was only 14 but she could have said good-bye to me, the swain who saw her through our last three years of grammar school when she wore braces, the only girl who had them. Fifty years later at our […]
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Remembering His Third Wife Never speak ill of the dead, his father always said, and his father was a pastor who preached from the pulpit. That’s why whenever he thinks of his third wife, and he does almost daily, he never says anything bad. Instead, he sends himself an email and records for history yet another evil deed she managed to […]
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A Stationary Bicycle The doctor tells Phil and his wife he’s in pretty good health for a man his age but he needs to exercise. And Phil says he agrees and then goes on to explain his faith in recliner therapy. He sits in a recliner for hours, watches TV or reads the paper and wiggles his toes at least three […]
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An Act of the Will If love’s real, not the puppy kind, it’s not just a feeling but an act of the will a constant giving whether one feels like it or not. After many years you don’t know why you’re doing it or why It must be done. Two begin as grapes purple with passion unaware you’ll be raisins wrinkling at the end.
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Old Stag Giddy Elmer’s an old stag now shedding antlers snorting among the trees but sometimes Martha after her shower is a doe beckoning and he becomes giddy and heads for the salt lick happy in the breeze
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Willie in his 80s now hadn’t made sense in years. His wife understood his grunts from the recliner where she propped him up till bedtime where snoring was music in the night. His grandson told neighbors Gramps had Old-Timer’s Disease, an excellent diagnosis with which doctors agreed. It was time to move Gramps to a home so his wife began […]
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An hour a day, sometimes more, I chipped away with mallet and chisel on a block of marble I found in Carrara and shipped to New York on the deck of a trawler. I offered the marble to a famous sculptor who told me he works in granite only so I grabbed his beret and one of his smocks […]
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