In college, I was convinced that symbolism would be my downfall. I’d never graduate. It all started in high school when I was a new sophomore in an all-girls boarding school. Mr. Shohet, my English teacher, seemed like an aggressive, angry sort, perhaps a frustrated author who resented having to teach callow over-privileged teenagers. He…
Read MoreThere must be something about the fall that prompts birds to fly into our windows. Perhaps it is the lengthening rays and shortening days as the setting sun inches south across the horizon at the edge of the prairie. Perhaps the small birds see the sandhill cranes heading south, with their spindly leg floating behind…
Read MoreEven as a preteen I immediately understood the romance and glamor of an overnight train ride. For a couple of years during the 1960s, my mother, my two brothers and I took the California Zephyr from Chicago to Colorado for an Aspen skiing vacation. My father, who was not a skier, would drive us in…
Read MoreI feel quite confident in my theory. Across the entire history of homo sapiens, across all cultures, ethnicities, geographies, and however else we might seek to self-identify, I know that we all have one thing in common – enjoyment of an occasional jolt of potty humor. Two of the foundations of humor are the element…
Read MoreI have been well-trained to assimilate the ICK factor with equanimity and good humor. As a pathologist, I have performed hundreds of autopsies, uncoiling yards of slippery intestines and carefully scooping out their contents. When assigned to the operating room, I analyzed all the bits and pieces that were removed during surgery – lungs, breasts,…
Read MoreIt didn’t take long for the two of us to make a social faux pas as a married couple. It was 1981 and we were still figuring out how to divvy up chores, and so far had done so along gender lines – Nick took out the garbage and paid the bills, I folded the…
Read MoreThe default radio channel in my car is National Public Radio, but I also toggle to my guilty pleasure – sports talk radio. Who are the Chicago Bears eyeing in the draft, can our beloved Blackhawks repeat as Stanley Cup champions? The ads come fast and furious – ads for ticket brokers, remedies for low…
Read MoreIn 1969, when my father was at the peak of his career as a printing salesman, he decided to put an in-ground swimming pool in our back yard. It seemed like an odd decision since neither of my parents were swimmers. When I think back on it now, I believe that the pool was probably…
Read MoreI had never been to Ty’s house before, so I waited for Mrs. Winterbotham to answer the doorbell and usher me to her bedroom. The room was paneled with dark wood; heavy drapes let in a sliver of afternoon light. Ty was propped up in bed midst a tangle of bedcovers and sheets, her thin frizzy…
Read MoreHere is an addition to the category of “Odd but True, Anatomy Division.” It is a third human nipple, a vestige of our evolution from large litters to the current format of single gestations followed by prolonged parenting. About five percent of humans will have a third nipple, located somewhere along the ancestral “milk line” extending from…
Read More