Jane Eyre and Alice
When my mom died, one of the things that nobody else wanted was a copy of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, that had been given to my grandmother when she was twelve. I had always been fascinated by my maternal grandmother, Alice, because my mom didn’t remember her much, and she looked so pretty in her wedding picture. My mom looked more like her father, who had huge laughing eyes and a long face. What prettiness she did have was inherited from that lovely, innocent bride who looked at us so sweetly from the sepia-toned wedding portrait. Although her beauty was...
Read MoreInnocence and Esperance
Mark Twain may have written about Innocents Abroad, but when many people write or talk about their times abroad, they often discuss losing their innocence, their sense of naiveté that often accompanies an American citizenship. For example, when I was preparing to go abroad, a good friend of mine, Richard, told me of his own travels in Europe. He spoke of coming home with a new cultural awareness and a vast spiritual awakening — as well as a nasty case of crabs. Innocence lost. Richard advised me to bring to France a journal, to record all of my experiences, and a couple of boxes of...
Read MoreHow I Broke Into New York Fashion
There was no point to sticking around Montreal any longer. It was 1982 and the economy was in the tank. I put all my things in storage, packed up my best clothes and my design portfolio, and caught the Montrealer express train to New York. I remember gazing wistfully over the hardscrabble Pointe St. Charles neighborhood as the train roared south. When we arrived at the U.S. border, I had to show Canadian identification to the U.S. immigration and convince them that I was a U.S. citizen. They held up the train for a long time, deciding what to do about me. Finally, they let me...
Read MoreLetter from the Patent and Trade Office: You Can’t Patent a Time Traveling De Lorean
Dear Dr. Emmett L. Brown, We have received the patent application (Appl. No. 04/567,892) for your invention, “the flux capacitor.” Having carefully reviewed all of your documentation, I regret to inform you that we are unable to grant you a patent at this time. While we were fascinated by the claim you make in the application abstract — “The flux capacitor makes time travel possible” — we were sadly disappointed by the contents of your supporting literature and scientific data. In fact, as near as we could tell, the flux capacitor appears to be nothing more than some Christmas...
Read MoreRoot Canal
Could he have possibly heard that right? Zack held his eyes shut, though he felt he was thoroughly awake. Well, not totally, but he had definitely not gone into la-la land like he usually did under nitrous oxide. It could be due to his heightened anxiety or the fact that he felt like a corpse somebody dug up, then dragged for ten miles behind a garbage truck. That’s what a savage frat party’ll do to you. It was one sweet orgy with a bazillion people there. He was so annihilated he’d passed out in a Dumpster. Or someone put him in it; who...
Read MoreLaundry
I do the laundry in my household and I do it well, I might add. My wife undertook the arduous task of teaching me the finer points of color and fabric separation after I ran a tie-dyed T-shirt all over her favorite silk blouse. Interestingly, I’ve discovered I have Dacron/Rayon blindness. I have made great strides in laundry since I first took it up seriously in college. The college was co-ed except for the laundromats, which the women on campus demanded be separate. The men’s laundromat had enormous machines, which allowed you to put in an entire semester of dirty laundry. As a...
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