(re-run) When I was in high school and bought some of my clothes at the DAV (Disabled American Vets) thrift store, they called me quirky. When I made a cool pair of bell bottom jeans out of my dad’s old work pants, they called me quirky, but they also asked me where I got them.… Continue reading Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
Category: high school
A New Chorus
(re-run) My chorus hasn’t given a performance in two whole years. We are scheduled to sing next month, with only two rehearsals left. Tonight, we rehearsed for two and a half hours, and we were on the risers for half of it. This chorus is not like the one we had two years ago. The… Continue reading A New Chorus
Home Alone in the Shower
(re-run) If you’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s horror movie, Psycho, Janet Leigh gets killed while taking a shower. It’s a creep fest, and she won awards for her convincing screams. Flash back to the 70s, when I was a teenager and home alone, taking a shower in the new basement bathroom. It was a crude… Continue reading Home Alone in the Shower
Same Old Grind
(re-run) Advanced bruxism – that’s what it’s called when you clench and grind your teeth in your sleep. I didn’t know I had it until my dentist noticed my worn lower teeth at a check-up. She made me a mouth guard to save them. I know when it all started. It was in the big… Continue reading Same Old Grind
The Tennis Shoe and the Broken Window
(re-run) It was senior year in high school. I was on my last semester of PE, my least favorite class. I maintained a straight-A average in all other classes. But not in PE. It alternated between a B and a C. I was feeling good. We were in our next-to last unit, the physical fitness… Continue reading The Tennis Shoe and the Broken Window
Pennies from Heaven
(re-run) When I was sixteen, I saved my babysitting money and went downtown to Cottage Grove Avenue in Des Moines, where there was a head shop filled with incense, hanging beads, roach clips, black light posters and tie dye. Although I wasn’t a pothead (I didn’t smoke cigarettes either), I enjoyed the ambience of the… Continue reading Pennies from Heaven
Chuck’s Drive-in Movie Date
(re-run) Chuck drove his powder blue Bonneville Pontiac to pick up his new girlfriend for their drive-in movie date during his senior year of high school. He had tricked out the interior of the car with his two taxidermy quail on a bed of shag carpeting in the car’s back window. When he drove his… Continue reading Chuck’s Drive-in Movie Date
Drive-in Movie Blues
(re-run) Linda was a freshman that summer and and would start high school in the fall. She was doing summer stock at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa. The play was Bye Bye Birdie, and she was playing the part of a show girl. Jeff, one of the good-looking stage hands, drove a blue ’66… Continue reading Drive-in Movie Blues
Easy Rider
(re-run) – Today we shopped at a different Trader Joe’s and the clerk told me, when I said she looked familiar, that she had a Midwestern face, and I said I did, too, and she asked where I was from and I said Iowa, and she said, Me, too, and she’s from Adel, and I’m… Continue reading Easy Rider
Love of her Life
(re-run) Connie was only fourteen when she went to her first dinner dance at the country club. Brad was two years older, already driving, and as handsome as could be. Connie had been smitten since the day they met at school. She had been at her locker. He had come by and said hello. She’d… Continue reading Love of her Life
