After I’d left my wife, after I’d been fired, again, I sat alone in my apartment drinking…
Editor’s Note: This little bit first appeared October 3, 2011.
Last night after my bath I could tell I wore my mom out in the whole long day we had. I couldn’t help it I had extra lots of energy and she did not. So I said You waited a long time to have me and you got the very best kid. Because she’s an old lady mom. She lade down on the bed and I thought she was crying. She wasn’t. She was laughing. Now I know what to say if I tire her all out.
Editor’s Note: This little bit first appeared June 20, 2011.
At school we can’t say bad words. When someone says a bad word, other kids say Aw you said a bad word! And then tell the teacher. I get tired of that. I say Hey listen sometimes you just have to say a bad word. It’s no big deal. Get over it. Move on.
Hello, Sports Fans, we’re at the All Star Break and I am here with the National League…
Editor’s Note: This little bit first appeared June 6, 2011.
Sometimes I want things to happen a certain way and they don’t. I get upset and frustrated and can’t get out of it. I want to but I just can’t do it. My mom says take a breath. Calm down. I just can’t get out of my mood. So I like to say “I don’t like your reaction!” My mom says whose? I say yours! She says what? I say never mind boo tee ko. This helps because I crack myself up.
Editor’s Note: The events described here did not take place in Pensacola, FL; the setting and related details have been changed to protect the identity of the author.
I saw for the first time tonight the outline of a drone over Pensacola, my part of the city. And if you think I’m crazy, well, I hope you are right.
In the past and mostly in the country, I followed the lights up above, as I have always been far more interested in aircraft in the night sky than the seemingly static and painfully unreachable stars and planets.
The blinking lights, nose and tail, trajectories and turns. Color codes and headings. A feeling that something’s there long before it is realized.
For I am the nephew of an accomplished commercial pilot, the son of a command-level cop, both of whom served in the U.S. Navy Air Corps and grew up by the Pensacola International Airport, which used to serve fighter and C-130 training wings. Facing the airport, either right off the runway at grandpa’s or in my driveway 5 miles NE, I watched the touch-and-go’s of the transports nearly every night as a kid, thrilled by the sight of the occasional F-4 Phantom loping in for some reason or another.
Editor’s Note: This post first appeared November 24, 2010.
When you’re a kid everyone asks you what’s your favorite color. This is a silly question. There are too many colors to choose from. Like it is fighting over green yellow and black. Because I like all of them even other colors. I like black because it’s dark. If you press hard it looks dark and nice and pretty. I press my pencil hard to get that color. I like green because it’s so shiny and my tongue is green right now because I got a green lollipop. I like yellow because it’s so bright. I like violet because I can mix violet with dark blue and make dark violet or mix violet with light blue and make light violet. I don’t like pink because I’m a girl. I like it because when I think of red I think of a pinkish red and that reminds me of pink. I like red because you need it to make brown. When you look at paintings you see the colors you like. Vincent van gogh has a painting Starry Night and I see green yellow black and violet. Mommy sees green yellow and blue. Maybe because I don’t like blue as much as violet.
In support of cultural evolution of alternative and often derided forms, I wish to laud the language…
Editor’s Note: This post first appeared September 27, 2010, when its author, Sophia, was five years old. This week we will celebrate Sophia’s contributions to B2L2 by re-running five of her greatest hits.
Once upon a time, there was a swamp with turtles, and sometimes, there were elephants and hippopatumuses. They went for a good swim and bath, and there was a forest with toucans, and in that forest, there was a bear. The scientists they were named Lucy, Evelyn, Donis, William, Max, and Will, and Wildum, and Sanarial, and Abador, and Doresel, and Karsee, and Sassy, and Rassy Golden, and Forseel, Sackle, Seekle, and Ceila, and Crass, Losa, Riles Pez, and Kraze, Grace, and Kriz.
One day, they went in the rainforest where toucans and macaws were, and one day, when they were in the rainforest, those twenty-three scientists discovered that if you chop down all the trees, then there would be no homes or trees. And it would be just desert.
It’s a couple of months after the end of the trip, and I sit here in supreme…
Billy sat in his cloister trying very hard not to hear his mother’s screams. It was impossible….
It is important to ask of those who feel they have the South neatly bound in easy…