I smell the charred pan fried edges of a bologna burger and the burnt rubber tires of an amateur race car driver spinning out in Turn 3 and the body stench and beer sweat pouring out of a race fan…
Tag: childhood
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The Seizure
A grand mal seizure reveals something more dire: anaplastic oligodendroglioma.
Stephen King terrorized my childhood in the 1980s. I’m pretty sure he (and It) terrorized your childhood too.
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The New Kid
At first, I didn’t like the new kid. I resented him actually. That would all change in time as Jeremiah grew to be one of the best friends I would ever have.
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The Music Stops
No one ever said this would happen. That it could happen.
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The Gilliam Shed
Or, how I got that really cool scar on my left elbow
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Creature from the Black Lagoon
A prehistoric creature lurks in the waters. A creature from the black lagoon.
Today is my birthday, and no, I am not just writing a blog post so you can tell me Happy Birthday. But hey, if you want, there’s always the comment section below. Why I’m writing is because (1) I like…
“There’s nothing that makes me feel more like a failure than sitting down to write this story.”
“Maybe you need to reframe your mindset as to what constitutes failure,” my wife said to me. She sat across from me on the couch, a book open before her.
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Polly Was a Fat Dog
The story of the world’s fattest liver and white basset hound
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Book Update 1
Updates with respect to the book I am writing, When the Lights Go Out at 10:16, a memoir of childhood and friendship in the face of cancer
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The Day We Went Back In Time
The day the present became the past, and we, as children, walked into a foreign world.
Now more than ever, my hometown of Phenix, Virginia, carries with it ghosts. The ghosts of my childhood. Almost fourteen years ago, I wrote these very lines.
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It Doesn’t Matter Where We Go
In the rearview, I glance back at my son Henry. He’s wearing a black t-shirt that has on its front drawings of insects, different kinds, beetles and flies—bugs that shout, “I am a boy!” He moves the toy truck into the air as if it has wings and glides on air.
“Do you know what my favorite thing to do with my dad was when I was growing up,” I ask Henry.
An excerpt from Sleeping Birds Do Not Sing, a novel about mental illness and friendship that I wrote a decade ago that only one person has ever read—until now.
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This Great Big Scary Thing
I open the door of the car which swings open freely, and set my feet on the ground, run for the tree line. There is a path in here somewhere, the hayfield, I know it. There isn’t. I will have to create my own path. This is where the adventure starts. Where the snakes hide in wait. Where the flowers form at the root and the weeds do all they can to strangle the beauty. The road is not paved before me. It never was. This is where the children of my past run freely. Where the thorns snag at shirts and acorns fly through the air like bullets piercing into skin.