A Shoe on the Other Foot

Wouldn’t it be obvious to someone who started the night in three-inch heels that one of their shoes went missing? Or was it such a great night that walking away without it, severely off-balance, seemed perfectly okay?

Brew It Forward

I’m guessing that the person who left the tea bag so neatly and carefully arranged on the bench at the bus stop is participating in the new “Brew it Forward” program here in the City.

Poor Horseman of the Apocalypse

New York (6/25/17) – Wouldn’t you think that every cowpoke worth his saddle sores carries a thesaurus in his bedroll? Something handy he can pull out to find just the right word for every western-y occasion? Like when he’s face-to-face with a greenhorn tenderfoot dude what reckons he knows anything at all about horses. What kind of horse do you put under him?

Weekday Warriors

New York (5/19/17) – There are days when your mate sends you out wearing fierce words as you wrest sustenance from the harsh asphalt, concrete, and steel of the city.

Opera in My Shorts

New York (5/10/2017) – Nothing prepares you for being on stage with a world famous opera soprano when she lights up her larynx in front of an audience at a New York premiere. All I can say is, if you find yourself in that predicament, make sure you’ve tucked in your shirt and buckled your pumpkin pants extra tight. If you didn’t, at least make sure you start the night in something more professional than your lucky underwear. You know the ones. The pair with the red chili peppers that glow in the dark.

Rats Ate My Cool

New York, (3/10/17) – For a short while in junior high school I collected rats.

I thought it would be cool. I thought it would demonstrate my innate courage without my having to do anything that required any actual risk, like school yard fistfights, driver’s ed class, or talking to girls.

I Hit the Heights, the Heights Hit Back

New York (2/4/2017) – For all the years I’ve lived in the City, Lisa and I had never gone to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person. It was a bit of a big deal when I was growing up in Arizona some fifteen hundred miles away. Late morning, early afternoon of Thanksgiving Day I’d watched the parade with my mom, sister, and brother, while my dad was in the shed working up an appetite. Years later, here in the City, Lisa and I watched it on television, even though it was happening a few blocks down and a few blocks over from our turkeified apartment.

Norsk for a Day

New York (11/12/16) – In trying to explain my lack of enthusiasm for large gatherings of people, I wanted my wife to understand that I was not and could never be as gregarious as she. I didn’t make friends easily. In fact, for the years before I knew her, it was a trait that I deliberately cultivated. The punchline was, of course, that I was such a loner she’d have to pay six random guys to be my pall bearers, because there was no chance I could scare up a half-dozen friends to carry me out of the church. I thought it was a clever way to encapsulate my fierce isolation.

The Halloween in My Head

New York (10/9/2016) – On Halloween back when I was in third grade, I wanted two things. First, to be a pirate. Second, to be twenty-two years old. On that second one, I wanted to close my eyes, and when I opened them, I would be twenty-two years old. I was specific because I did the math. I’d be out of grade school, out of high school, out of college, and be a walking, talking adult, preferably one of those without a central nervous system that reacted to negative, unpleasant stimuli.

Clueless in Tap Shoes

New York (9/5/2016) – Tap shoes. What a great gift. I was deep into my thinks-he’s-Gene-Kelly period, and having the astute, generous, creative wife that I have, she got me tap shoes. Learning to tap was on my short list of theater skills to polish. Not just the shoes, but when I opened the shoebox, she’d included a voucher for ten beginner tap lessons at a very popular professional dance studio down on 42nd Street & Broadway. How symbolic. Did I mention she was astute and creative?