Juicy Fruit

I worked with a woman once who had gone to prison as a teenager and not released until her early thirties.

She told me that the first thing she did when she got out was go to the grocery store to buy a pack of gum. Gum wasn’t allowed in prison, and it had become very significant to her.

While there, she had a panic attack in the toothpaste aisle. She found the number of choices overwhelming. For most of her life, there had been only one choice– a generic white tube with black lettering.

I think it’s good to remind ourselves sometimes of all the simple things we take for granted.


Slice of Life

I was standing against the wall, waiting for someone. Two old friends were sitting side by side on a bench nearby.

The first said, “I’m seventy-three now. I feel like once you’re past sixty-five, you’re into overtime.”

The other one considered this for a moment, then added, “Sudden death.”

And they both laughed.


The only time people use the word “lest” anymore is on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, when they like to say, “Lest we forget.”

It’s a pompous, pretentious word, and I don’t care for it.


If you have an old CD of an old album, on the back it will say:

This compact disc contains program transferred from analog tape, and therefore may contain some tape hiss and other anomalies that exist with analog recording.

If you have a new CD of an old album, on the front it will say:




It doesn’t bother me that Brian Williams inflated a story to make himself look better.  Guys do that in bars all the time.

What bothers me is that he perpetuated a false narrative which led to a war that killed over a million people, created several million homeless refugees, and continues to rage on long after America has had her parades and pinned medals on her heroes.

So far, nobody has been suspended for that one.