When I was seventeen, I was told to hunker down. I was in an acting class and had just spent about fifteen minutes improvising a scene played out on a tightrope between the life I was living and the one I’d just created for my character. Real Life Improv - that’s what my teacher called …
A child needs to do one thing over and over to calm himself down when the adults get angry. What does he do? How does he learn it?
A foot's tap Is his music, A bird's chirp: That's his music. And at six, Vibrating his lips, Slapping his knees, And a clock's tick Puts Max to sleep. Mother's expletives Sound best With eyes shut. And a bottle's clink When thrown at the sink Is Max's music. Shutting one ear Then opening it again Changes …
Your Favorite Piece of Playground Equipment
As a human destined to forever be under five feet, a fear of heights is a trait I made sure never to possess. As a child, if there was something I couldn't reach, which happened fairly often, I'd climb. I climbed kitchen countertops to get cups and plates; I climbed the shelves in my closet …
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What’s The Stupidest Thing You Used To Believe Whole-Heartedly
I suppose many who were children during and after 1995 went through a phase very similar to mine, however, did not quite take it as far as I did. 1995 of course was the year John Lasseter and the geniuses over at Pixar created Toy Story. Was it a completely made up story created entirely …
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The Worst
When you first step out of a shower and it’s the absolute coldest of all the cold rooms you’ve ever been in...Let me break it down for you. You’re in the shower. It took a second, but you finally got it to the right temperature. The steam is rolling around you. It’s a little trippy …
Your Favorite Film
Before sitting down to write this, I thought to myself, “how could I possibly come up with only one favorite film?” Every time I go to the movie theatre, I am convinced that the movie I just saw was definitely my favorite. This Is The End, the most recent movie I saw, was brilliant and …
A vivid childhood memory from the child’s perspective
Today I turn five years old. I'm in a tie-dye one piece bathing suit sitting in the sand next to my cousin who has already been five for six months. It's the beginning of summer but the freckles on my cheeks and nose have already popped out. I reach over to my cousins hair and …
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The moment you knew you were no longer a child
The last time I saw her, she wore an oversized sweatshirt and tight, faded jeans. She sat in the back of the classroom looking painfully bored. She had just come back from yet another stint in rehab. She was gone a week later. She had always been a cool girl, a troublemaker, like a character …
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642 Things to Write About 