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Time to get out them slow-walkin’ shoes
Prompted By The P O
/ Stories
I’m driving to work at the main post office in downtown Indianapolis. I should be in college for my senior year, but I have been suspended due to my participation in disruptive protests during Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970. Indianapolis is my hometown. I’m back in the house, living with my…
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Autobiography of a Mongoloid youth (1967) by Nigel Hunt
Prompted By Books That Inspired Me
/ Stories
Nigel understood that what he was doing in recounting his everyday activities and observations was subverting most people’s understanding of what was possible for a person with his condition. He mentioned this frequently throughout the narrative—though he never used a verb such as subvert.
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A daycare workers union, a bad back, and some prophetic words
Prompted By Turning Points
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“My ex-husband thought of himself as a ‘breast man.’” She paused. “What have I gotten myself tangled up with here? A ‘floor man?’”
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“That’s funny.”
Prompted By Comedy
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I had one opportunity to spend a few days with my brother and some other road comics. The scene was southern California in the late 1980s. Hugh was working constantly--a lot of college campuses as well as comedy clubs.
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Genius Dog
Prompted By Training Pets
/ Stories
I posted this story in response to the prompt, “Lightning.” But it’s really a story about the most brilliant pet ever. Homer: Semper amati, semper recordati, semper in cordibus nostris
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When a kosher meat man encounters the state bureaucracy
Prompted By The DMV
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In preparing him, Dad emphasized, “Jake, they don’t want to know your philosophy on life. They want to know what you would do as a driver in different situations.” J
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There’s more than one way to break eggs
Prompted By Prison
/ Stories
He must have noticed that the word “kidnapping” shocked us. He took the time to give us the word-for-word definition from the California Criminal Code: “Moving another person a substantial distance, without the person's consent, by means of force or fear.”
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My perilous westward saga
Prompted By Dangerous Deeds
/ Stories
We understood we were trespassing. But we figured that folks who lived in a region like this must do this all the time, right? Just drive up and take a quick dip?
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Terror comes to the Berkshires: a “true-crime” laundry story
Prompted By Laundry
/ Stories
Berkshire County can feel like a very sleepy backwater when we have to wait for hours while a bomb squad with a robotic device drives to our rescue along the Mass Pike, all the way from Boston.
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I never made it to Sugar Mountain
Prompted By Retirement
/ Stories
As we stood there, very excited to have busted in without tickets, Neil Young was joking about “Sugar Mountain,” a song that he told us had too many verses.
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