I’ve been thinking a lot about an old English teacher, Faye Hardin, who passed away in 2019. She was a tough old bag. Some twenty years ago when I had her my senior year, there were students in my class whose parents and grandparents had her as a teacher. She pushed students harder than most–to […]
Tag: friendship
Quarantine, Day 300: New Year’s Eve Edition
The blankets are all over the floor even though I prefer them folded and put away when they aren’t in use. I have like five pillows from the bedroom that have ended up in the living room over the course of the last few days, and I just haven’t bothered to move them. To my […]
Quarantine, Day 79
I went for a walk–a real one, not a virtual one–with my friend Andrew, the two of us maintaining healthy social distancing and wearing our masks. Though I’ve gone on long drives, waltzes into the cemetery, and made runs to a grocery store packed with people, this marks the first time in over two months […]
A Trip to Branchburg, from Quarantine to the Open Road
Down the road about an hour from where I live is a little town called Branchburg. I’ve never been to Branchburg. I don’t know why anybody living just outside of New York City would ever go to Branchburg. But now, I can say, I’ve been, and I think I’ll probably go back. That’s because after […]
Making Memories
Just got back from a nice little trip to St. Louis to see an old fraternity brother and his wife. The weekend was packed with museums, great food-and-drink, and nostalgic conversation. It’s funny, really. When you see someone you haven’t seen in a while, and it’s like everything just falls back into place as though […]
Saying Goodbye to Aaron
I didn’t have many friends growing up. For about nine years or so (from third grade to senior year of high school), I only had one, real friend. I had myself convinced that there are two kinds of people in the world: social people who have lots and lots of acquaintances but few meaningful friendships […]
Waves of Change
They say that Peace Corps Volunteers need one skill more than any other: the ability to adapt. Something tells me there’s a resounding “duh” on the other side of the computer screen with regard to that sentence. I mean, okay, we signed up for two years in a new culture with a new language, and I […]
Thoughts for a Spring Day, or Identity Not-so-Crisis
So, it’s a breezy day, and I’m sitting in a chair chewing gum with my mudir (boss) in what might be the only grassy place (the Dar Chebab, or “House of Youth and Sports” where I work) east of the Middle Atlas Mountains, where everything else is desert. So, we’re sitting there having a short conversation […]
Disconnected.
About a month before I left for Morocco, I deactivated my Facebook account “temporarily.” At the time, I didn’t know that I would be able to check my email or get online from time-to-time, and the last thing I wanted was to log into Facebook and see on my wall that five people had just […]
Friendship, Fate, and Responsibility
Yesterday, Khalil sat down next to me on the couch and handed me a small multi-colored bouncy ball, insisting that we should play soccer with our fingers. After we set up a makeshift field using a remote control, phone, and a few pens, we “kicked” the ball around for about twenty minutes laughing and wrestling […]
saunterings 