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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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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…
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My Lucky Rock
After hearing all Jim’s childhood stories, I teased him that he was raised by the idyllic Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie and Violet (their real names), provided a comfortable, suburban, middle class life for their family, and didn’t seem to make many child-rearing mistakes. The time Jim was at a Sears store playing on the escalator while his mother shopped nearby, was the only questionable parenting decision I am aware of (sister Joanne may disagree with this). It was winter and Jim was five. He was going up and down the escalator like his mother told him not to, and his heavy coat became stuck in the handrail. Before he could…
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A Thief Amongst Us
My dad’s last two surgeries, months apart, brought about some interesting antics. He always carried a lot of cash in his wallet–too much cash for his own good. My sister Geri and I worried he’d be knocked in the head and robbed. And my mother worried the same thing, for decades. It was a terrible habit and I think it had something to do with all the many times he struggled for cash, so that when he had it, he wanted it with him. Upon admitting Daddy for a heart catheterization, the hospital made sure Geri and I had taken all his belongings: watch, ring, wallet, keys, change. We wouldn’t…
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Tornado Alarm
The blasting siren traveled to my six year-old ears, reverberating in every direction inside my skull. Maggie looked to the sky, pulling a Pall Mall out of the tanned, ancient folds protecting her toothless gums and declared, “There’s a tornado com’n!” Terror filled me. I ran in high gear, next door to my two-story red sandpaper-sided house and straight to my personal fallout shelter. Sitting on bathroom scales stuffed between the pipes of our small sink and stained bathtub, I clasped my ears and sobbed, knowing I would be blown to bits. I was a dramatic child. Like “the chicken or the egg” question, I’m not sure which came first:…
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Mrs. Sharon
As I begin my last year of teaching, I am looking back on the last 25 years I have spent in the same district from which I graduated high school. There is one person I wish I could have shared the entire time with, but she is not far from my thoughts. My junior high reading teacher was one of the best teachers I ever had. I was scared to death of her those two years, though, because Mrs. Sharon demanded respect and didn’t take any bull off anyone, as she taught in what I thought was a most unconventional manner. It was really exciting to have a teacher work hard…
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Fake Friends
Yesterday I woke to an interesting Facebook friend request. Over the years, I have received some odd requests, as I guess many people have. The ones that annoy me are from men with profile pictures that look like they are models and have names I have never heard of. I scoff at them, then sometimes curiosity gets the best of me and I examine them closely, because I am immediately suspicious. These jokers are always single. They are friends with a few of my Facebook friends; undoubtedly two or three young females. The bulk of their few friends are always female and many times they have no male friends at all. Their…
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Stonefort Reunion
This is the time of year I remember back to The Stonefort Reunion and the many years friends, classmates and I gathered to walk at least 100 laps each night around the fair midway. It was a time for us to reconnect if we hadn’t seen each other over the summer. We would run to check in with our families, who were sitting in lawn chairs clustered around the stage watching a variety of local music and dance talent, and ask for more money or beg to stay longer. In junior high and high school, it was a time for young love. Countless relationships surely began or ended between the…
