The rules were just different back then, especially in regard to corporal punishment. Not only could you hit your own children, but you could also hit other people’s.
There were no computers in my high school, and the first two times I attempted college, people were still counting on their fingers and removing their shoes when the numbers got above ten.
When young, the animals were sweet. Then one day they became moody and violent, like human teenagers.
I’ve outlawed “meds,” “bestie,” “bucket list,” “dysfunctional,” “expat,” “cab-sav,” and the verb “do” when used in a restaurant, as in “I’ll do the snails on cinnamon toast.
I’m surrounded by people who have more money than they know what to do with, and none of them have earned it.
If you don’t think a mental patient has the right to bring a sawed-off shotgun to the church where his ex-girlfriend is getting married, you’re part of the problem.
I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you’re bad he comes to your house and steals things.
It’s not that I don’t have opinions about these things. I just don’t feel they’re in any way special. Sure, I follow the news. I read the papers and listen to the radio, but I’m not privy to any inside information. When it comes to politics, all I can offer is emotion. My perspective might be slightly different, but so is anyone’s when they live overseas.
I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso.
Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window.
Time is cruel to everything but seems to have singled out eyeglasses for special punishment. What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion.
Another thing I love about the beach is sitting in the sun, mainly for the lazy kind of talk it generates. A person can say anything with lotion on, and I’m more than willing to listen.
Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that’s for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings. I wanted to say something to this effect, but my hand puppets were back home in their drawer. Instead, I pulled my chair a few inches closer, and we sat silently at our little table on the square, looking for all the world like two people in love.
This is where my mom and dad were the night Martin Luther King was assassinated,” I said to Hugh after we had ordered. “Not here at the airport, obviously, but at their original location downtown.” I told him how someone had stepped out of the kitchen to announce the news, and how everyone but my parents had applauded. “Our family hadn’t been in the South very long, and that was a real eye-opener.
Gambling to me is what a telephone pole might be to a groundhog. He sees that it’s there but doesn’t for the life of him understand why.
We sweat for our pretensions. It.
It’s common to be misread by people who don’t know you.
I’m not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won’t stop crying, but at least now it’ll be doing it for a good reason.
While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you’d have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death.
Later that night I met a Bulgarian. “In my country, you say to someone you hate, ‘May you build a house from your kidney stones.’” Well, finally, I thought.