Last Monday evening, my wife dropped off our son, age 13, for his weekly class with the rabbi and youth director and the other teenagers of our congregation. I came by at 8 o’clock or so, about a half hour before dismissal, to hang out with the parents. Apart from the receptionist buzzing everyone into the building, the evening proceeded and felt like any other. Of course the rabbi discussed the recent shooting
Invites the occasional guest To sit by the coffee table and Page through academic journals That are too boring to read Properly. The visitors to my office Are few and far between And generally they camp out elsewhere Or conduct their business quickly. No one tarries in reception For very long. So sometimes I imagine that I will arrive to find You on the couch. Waiting for me, patiently. I greet you warmly And then we
I entered one of the defining questions of my life into the Google search engine. The returned links discussed cast changes on a popular British television baking show. Steven Wright asked, “If you’re driving at the speed of light and you turn on your headlights, would they do anything?” The dialogue in a recent Doctor Who sneaked in the phrase, “Stronger Together”, which was the slogan
IV. My lover once confessed to me, “I am a terrible man.” I asked him why he thought so. “I have all these faults and weaknesses, That I am forced to face too often. I make my excuses, And then feel miserable For the rest of the day.” That was half a lifetime ago. Now, I wonder if I had misheard a homonym. Maybe he was, or should have been, Comparing himself to Tissue paper. V. For Halloween,
I. I felt guilty, so I pulled Into the Redemption Center. But all they wanted were My bottles and cans. II. Now that fall has arrived in New England, My husband is wearing his black leather jacket With the matching cowboy hat That he picked up at a flea market On our vacation to Florida. He says that he looks a little like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. I tell him, just once, “No. You don’t.̶
The Stretch DC-9 had landed, taxied across the tarmac, and stopped just short of the gate. This model of airplane is properly called an MD-80, but I happen to think that Stretch DC-9 is a more descriptive and interesting name, so I’m sticking with it. I’m sure the pilot of the Stretch DC-9 announced something to us passengers, but we were parked for I-forget-how-many minutes, sitting in the dark, waiting
I speak the title line of this post to my three cohorts—aka my family—from behind the wheel of our vehicle for the past week, the silver Saturn Vue. My family faithfully ignores me. Both my wife and our older boy, Maxwell, are on their iPhones, the former sending emails to the animal caretakers with the news that we’ll be a day late, the latter sending texts and instant messages to his recently-made
The time is six o’clock on an August afternoon that is turning into an August evening. Maxwell and I are driver and passenger, respectively, in the silver Saturn Vue, and we are stuck in miserable freeway traffic at the edge of downtown Chicago. Just ahead, enticingly, is clear passage to the ramp for Interstate 290, also known as the Eisenhower Expressway, because the freeways in Chicago all have names. Maxwel
Regular enemies are common and easy enough to acquire. Everyone earns them eventually, I imagine, and they come and go. Arch enemies, though, they are special, they are a different kettle of fish. Your arch enemy is your lifelong antagonist, your intractable opponent, against whom conflicts resolve in draws or, at best, incomplete victories, and always temporary. He or She is your structural equal but ethical opposit