It occurs to me now that this story is wasted on the young. As a child, I found it overwrought. Then again, I was the kind of insufferable pedant who insisted on pointing out that I was ten and a half or turning thirteen next month. To me, the delta between just-turned-twelve and twelve-plus-eleven-months was… Continue reading these changes ain’t changing me
teenage dream
Every so often, I give up on pretending that I have sophisticated taste in music and turn on the kind of thing I used to wallow to in high school. It's a sure ticket to the past, which has been especially welcome lately—nothing like escaping to the good old days when the president was just… Continue reading teenage dream
city mouse, suburb mouse
“Master-planned community”: a euphemism for “white people and expensive trees, arranged along streets that are cleverly named so that a typical set of directions sounds like 'make a right on Timber Rose, then a left on Heirloom Rose, and then another right on Scarlet Rose.'”* This is where I was raised, on a parcel of… Continue reading city mouse, suburb mouse
bathrooms of the great midwest
I have a small bladder. Perhaps it's more proper to say that I am a small woman and then let you infer the rest, but I've never pretended to be proper, so let's just be frontal about it and move on. I have to pee often enough that I'm a bad person to bring on… Continue reading bathrooms of the great midwest
thicker than water
“An introverted Finn looks at his shoes when talking to you; an extroverted Finn looks at your shoes.” I traveled recently to Finland, the country that my mother's family left several generations ago. I've never been particularly in tune with my cultural heritage, mostly because I'm not just a mutt but a generic, whiter-than-white-bread mutt:… Continue reading thicker than water
freshman disorientation
Nothing prepared me for the first time that I tried to walk from one building on Vassar's campus to another alone. It was before smartphones or even the proper signage that the fire department recently forced the college to install. I was hell-bent on finding my own way, no way was I going to ask… Continue reading freshman disorientation
textually transmitted diseases
I have thought often since then about where the boundaries lie between what's mine and what's fair for me to talk about and what secrets belong to the people who shape me.
