What I Did
The Committment Conundrum in Three Vignettes
1: No As we headed out on our bike ridewe were suddenly accompanied by an uninvited dog. We got off and tried to shoo him home, but he didn’t move. I clearly did not want a tag along dog – we were headed out on a long ride, around a lake and between two mountains,…
Read MoreMy Hat in the Ring
Over the past two years we have buried both my parents in the family plot at Lake ForestCemetery, joining my brother, grandparents, great and great-great grandparents. While the plot was certainly filling up, it appeared that there was plenty of room in front of the monument that was the plot’s centerpiece. I figured that this…
Read MoreLaw and Order
I think that every generation of children has a touchstone television show whose ingrained theme song immediately brings back their youth. For me, it was Leave it to Beaver, and then later with my younger brothers, most definitely The Dick Van Dyke Show. Every night at 6:30 we would watch the opening credits and try…
Read MoreConversation Piece
I would not consider myself a good conversationalist, and you can’t convince me otherwise, because every time I take one of those personality tests, I end up with all the other socially awkward people. But I have developed a few work-arounds over the years, and the one that I have field tested the most extensively…
Read MoreNo Place Like Home
My meeting downtown finished early, and so I arrived at O’Hare hours ahead of time for my evening flight to Atlanta. I settled in to read, and then deep into my novel, I became irritated at the flashing lights above me. As I got up to move my seat, I realized that I had been…
Read MoreLiving the Dream
I was over 30 years old by the time I finished my college, medical school and residency training. One of the most joyful aspects of this feat of endurance was the realization that I would no longer be subjected to standardized tests. The guiding philosophy of the medical school I attended was not to train…
Read MoreVindictive Snack Mom
I greeted my first assignment as snack mom with undiluted pleasure. Like many of my contemporaries, I had delayed childbearing into the thirties, and had only two children. Now was the time for commitment to participate intimately in the life of my children and to bear witness to every school pageant, field trip and sports…
Read MoreThrown Under the Bus
This spring, on an ill advised impulse, I signed up for a ladies’ ice hockey league, where random teams were formed based on the self ranking of the players. I originally had no interest, but then I was contacted directly and urged to participate. This was the first time I had ever been pursued athletically…
Read MoreLine Management
For the past 50+ years I have celebrated Christmas in exactly the same way – family get togethers and toting casseroles from suburb to suburb, trying to make sure that everyone had the same quality and quantity of gifts and filling up stockings with crappy little shit. Two years ago as I was gathering stocking…
Read MoreLast One Picked
Girls’ grade school sports in the pre Title 9 days of the late 1960s were a decidedly low key affair, and presumably were included in the curriculum on the basis of the “sound mind, sound body” principle. There was no such thing as traveling teams, no parental involvement and no aspirations for college scholarships, simply…
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