(re-run) When I was a third-year teacher in 1979, I had a new school and a new classroom. One wall was white concrete blocks, cold and uninviting. Nothing would stick to it, so I couldn’t hang up posters, classwork, decorations, anything. That wall really bugged me. At the time, I was dating an artist, a… Continue reading It’s Easier to Ask for Forgiveness
Category: Iowa
State Fair Memory
(re-run) The Iowa State Fair is the biggest in the country, with 165 food items on a stick! and the butter cow. But the fair was expensive for a family of seven, plus Dad had had polio as a late teen and walked with a limp. The fairgrounds covered a lot of acreage, so we… Continue reading State Fair Memory
Pontoon Boat Disaster
(re-run) My parents didn’t swim. When we went on vacation at Clear Lake, Iowa, and Dad wanted to take us out in a rented pontoon boat, my mom objected. Dad won in the end, and the five kids put on our life jackets. I think my mom did, too. I am sure my dad didn’t… Continue reading Pontoon Boat Disaster
Leroy, the Farmer Boy
It was a Saturday night and the dorm floor was deserted. Everyone was off doing something fun. Ellie sat at her desk trying to study Biology 101, but she wasn’t feeling it. A dorm mate burst in and asked her if she wanted to go on a double date right then and there, to a… Continue reading Leroy, the Farmer Boy
A Mouse in the Bed
(re-run) When my oldest was in 4th or 5th grade, she told me one morning that there was a mouse in her bed. “There’s no mouse in your bed!” I said. “There is,” she said. “I felt it crawling over my leg.” She went off to school, and I told my mother, who was visiting… Continue reading A Mouse in the Bed
The Busted Nut
(re-run) A decade ago, my boyfriend (at the time) and I took a driving vacation from my mom’s place in Iowa, up to Sioux Falls, and across South Dakota to Rapid City, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse. I’d never seen the Badlands or the Black Hills. First we heard the story of Mount Rushmore, USA… Continue reading The Busted Nut
Chinese Fire Drills and Other Politically Incorrect Things from my Past
(re-run) Back in high school in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, we did whatever we could to stir up some fun and sometimes some trouble. It was a simple existence: go to school, do homework, think about and look for boys. With no cell phones or social media to organize anything, kids spent a… Continue reading Chinese Fire Drills and Other Politically Incorrect Things from my Past
Lime Vodka, Raisinets, and Cheesecake
(re-run) It’s an American teenager’s rite of passage to get sick the first time they drink. I was no exception. Aside from tasting different liqueurs on babysitting jobs after the kids went to bed, I had only tasted my dad’s beer, Schlitz. No thank you. I was not a fan of fizzy bitter fermentation. So… Continue reading Lime Vodka, Raisinets, and Cheesecake
The Day I Found my Voice
(re-run) When you’re in the dog house, you are in trouble. You’ve done something bad. As a child, I was never in the dog house because we didn’t have one. We didn’t even have a dog. My mother had her own strain of weird expressions that she said to us kids on a regular basis,… Continue reading The Day I Found my Voice
A 4th of July to Remember, or Not
(re-run) It wasn’t a typical 4th of July. I was getting divorced, and I had a boyfriend, although he was a conspiracy theorist. If you don’t believe me, you could just look at his wardrobe. He owned a collection of t-shirts that screamed, I am anti-government, anti-media, anti-logic of any kind. But he was cute,… Continue reading A 4th of July to Remember, or Not
