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PEE-YEW!
Each time the stench wafted up my nose in an intermittent wave, I furtively sniffed around me. It had to be me. I was the only one sitting on that end of the couch. Once, twice . . . my nose quickly scanned each armpit as I reached up into a yawn or pretended to pull my hair back. My alarm didn’t go off, so arriving at my cousin’s house late for brunch was a given. There was no time to shower, pick out clothes, or put makeup on. I hurriedly scrubbed a toothbrush around in my mouth, put clothes on from the night before, and combed my hair…
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One Tiny Breath
The baby was battered black and blue and thrown on a table for dead. My mother always said thrown, but it must have been for effect; she wasn’t even there. Well, she was in the room, but she still wasn’t all there. My mother had been so heavily sedated, she missed all the excitement. When she woke two days later, she felt like she’d been hit by a Mack truck. The story was pieced together for her. She remembered going to Lightner Hospital to give birth to her second baby. The baby was not positioned correctly and was coming arm first. Many doctors and nurses were called to assist and at one point my father…
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Win Big at the Raffel
Looking out the superintendent’s office window, our science teacher asked me how to spell raffle. Being a sucker for spelling, I spelled it–r-a-f-f-l-e. He smiled wryly and said, “That’s what I thought–it’s misspelled on the marquee outside.” Attempting to protect the school’s image (and let’s face it–I’d probably go into your yard and change a “For Sell” to “For Sale” sign or climb a billboard with a bucket of paint if it were misspelled), I went out to transpose the letters. The sign had been up for days. The message was announcing a softball tournament fundraiser and “raffel” for a former student who’d had a horrific motorcycle accident. The softball…
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What’s Your Addiction Affliction?
The TV show My Strange Addiction has certainly brought a lot of bizarre repetitive behaviors to light. I don’t believe mine has specifically been included in their menu of episodes, and since they haven’t called me to be featured on the show, maybe mine isn’t quite as bizarre as my friends and I think. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Model of Mental Disorders), the Bible of mental disorders, the authoritative voice of health care professionals, has been updated to include behavioral addictions like compulsive gambling, stealing, buying, and sexual addictions, along with the nine more familiar substance use addictions. The reason for this is both philosophical and medical because there…
