On it goes with blood, bricks, and bowls flying between young intellectual elites in this Harvard College food fight.
#27 A WOMAN’S BRIEFS -- TREES
“You can call it a Tulip tree if you choose to, but that’s no Tulip tree. It’s a Magnolia.” So said the university student with snobby certitude.
We had invited this preppy girl to our home for Sunday dinner (thinking she might be a suitable date for our bachelor son). She stood in our kitchen, looked outside with us through broad windows at our huge Tulip tree standing guard at lawn’s edge, and smartly straighten us out. Our Magnolia, our Dinnerplate Magnolia, was just off to the north, at the edge of our wooden deck.
#50 PUPPY - LILLY
“What do you see here, Scooter?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“No, you didn’t. You aren’t in trouble. What is it you see?”
“Lilly.”
“Lilly? Oh, no, not what do you smell. Turn off your nose and tell me what you see?”
#26 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- TERGIVERSATION
One stinking letter off on the FIFTH try! ONE Stink’n letter. It’s got to be an ‘M’ or a ‘K.’ Which?
#49 PUPPY -- ONE QUESTION ANSWERED
How do we answer, Scooter? People are asking, ‘How’s the training going?’ What do we say?
#25 A WOMAN'S BRIEF -- BOILING WATER
“What’s the chemical action when water boils?” I asked. I waited for some profound molecular explanation.
#48 PUPPY -- SCOOTER MEETS TRAINER
Not that stuff,” Scooter sniffed. He held his chin intentionally high, his eyes focused on the tippy top shelf. He sat stock still.
#47 PUPPY -- REALITY CHECK
“You like my new haircut?” he asked, using the sense of his middle name, Sublime, as style.
#46 PUPPY - "FIRE!"
It’s that sound,” signaled his body.
“Ah, Scooter, it’s terrible, isn’t it.”
#45 PUPPY - MISCHKA
“And Cats?
“What?”
#24 A WOMAN’S BRIEF: A KNITTER’S STORY
What could be more straightforward, right?
#5 WORD SERIES--LOVE
What sort of love is a decision rather than a fuzzy feeling?
#23b A WOMAN’S BRIEFS: ALIYAH BET
It was crazy dangerous, this Aliyah Bet thing. Still, over two decades, more than 100,00 people, 70,000 of them Holocaust survivors, dared to sign on. Let’s call it: Adventure.
#23a A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- "WHAT A BOOK CAN DO"
I don’t remember which port it was where they picked up a container “Said to contain panties de senora, five and a half tons.”
I remembered being coaxed, sweet-talked, to the center of the Columbus Junction swinging bridge. Big cracks between wooden slats.
#44 PUPPY—SCOOTER’S RETROSPECTIVE: 2021-2022
Let’s be fair. My darling flat-nosed infancy ended a good while ago. Even adolescence is behind me—what with adventures under the sofa and mattress, the deaths of Lambchops, those months during which my nose, body, and voice grew, and for the first time, things got clipped: my heavy coat, my toenails, and, well, my little boy balls. So goes growing up
#4 WORD SERIES -- SHIBBOLETH
None of us is likely to be killed for mispronouncing Shibboleth, but once in the plentiful history of humans harassing one another . . . WELL . . .
A CHRISTMAS THOUGHT NOT SUITABLE FOR A CARD -- 2018 REPRISED
I confess, like math, cosmology, and my mom’s recipe for Baked Green-beans, the traditional, mythical Christmas story may well benefit from honest review.
#43 PUPPY - SICK PUPPY
“Scooter?”
He didn’t come to the door. I walked into the darkened bedroom, and there he was, as I expected, lying in on the Matelasse Cotton spread.
#3 WORD SERIES: "F-word"
It’s a chase I’m going to cut to here in this look at the F-word, even though I find a peek at the history of profanity resembles the first sip of a Moscow Mule – there’s more there, and there’s no reason not to reach the bottom – and let me tell you . . .