My voice dropped when I was thirteen and it dropped all the way. There was a girl named Misty I'd met at camp. Louisiana, thick bayou accent, and we were friends — not dating, nothing like that, just a long-distance friend I thought was about the coolest person I knew. I called her house one … Continue reading A Grown Man On The Phone
Category: Life
Excellence Knows No Age
We watched Down Periscope tonight. I've loved that movie for thirty years and it holds up — silly and sweet at the same time, which is harder to do than it looks. I quote it more than I should. There's a scene early on where the captain is meeting his crew, gets a look at … Continue reading Excellence Knows No Age
Ok, So Now What?
There was a papasan chair in that upstairs office. I'd hauled it up there myself. Toward the end I'd go in, shut the door, turn the lights off, and sit in it. Not praying. Not thinking, particularly. Just sitting in the dark in the middle of a workday, numb, in a building full of people … Continue reading Ok, So Now What?
Three Hundred Dollars
The summer after my freshman year I called my grandmother from a pay phone and asked her for three hundred dollars. I was already on the mission trip when I made the call. The arrangement had been seven or eight hundred for the summer, some of it up front — except none of it came … Continue reading Three Hundred Dollars
This Is Him
I had a grown man's voice by the time I was fifteen. On the phone nobody ever knew. One afternoon somebody from a radio station called the house asking for my dad. He'd won something. All he had to do was be the one to claim it. Three words. This is him. Nobody in the … Continue reading This Is Him
