In the early winter of 2012, I stood in front of my condo building and stared at my parked car. Someone had scrawled on my driver’s side window in burgundy gunk. Vandalism? I lived in Aurora, Colorado, which has a crime problem, but the area felt safe. A neighbor was a meth addict, but the …
I gasped, my throat emitting a sound like when you press your ear to a wall and hear water rushing through pipes. Haauuuh! It was 1:18PM. I was in my bed and my alarm clock had to be wrong. Had to be. Maybe the AM and PM were mixed up? No, the sun shone through …
It only took a few moments before the rumbling began. It was Saturday, the 3rd of October. Since Wednesday, my wife and I had been in California, visiting a client. That night, we ate at a restaurant in downtown Pleasanton. Like many other small towns, they closed traffic to their main street in the evenings …
Sounds rumbled from just outside my closed bedroom door at 1AM. Thump… thump… thump. It was spring 2015 and I’d been living in downtown Baltimore for a few months. When the riots had raged, friends asked me what the city was like. “Well, I’d sit in the living room hearing police and ambulance sirens outside …
“Hi. Golden Police. Get out.” I sat on a park bench in Golden, Colorado as the sun set, gnats barrel-rolled above the grass, and a cop yelled at kids rafting in Clear Creek, just beyond the “Creek Closed” sign. I was reading a book called How To Write Short. It was the perfect timing for …
In 2007, I sat at a table for dinner with maybe fifteen other people as we slowly revolved – slow enough to be unnoticed by some and fast enough to make others nauseous – counterclockwise to view the stale surroundings of Tampa International Airport. Our group was eating on the top floor of the airport’s …
I grabbed the edges of the six-foot metal basket, bent my knees, leaned forward, and adjusted my alignment as if setting up a pool shot. The basket probably weighed over 1000 pounds. Maybe close to 2000. I gave it a little push to test which way it rolled, stepped to the left six inches, bent …
Rex, his wife, another couple, my wife and I shared a big booth to celebrate our recent marriage. I called it a wedding aftershock party. A few days earlier, the temperature had dropped more than 50 degrees to below freezing just in time for our outdoor mountain ceremony. The day after, it had rocketed back …
Billy’s snores rumbled through the dark hotel room, like a dirt-stuffed garden hose choking and sputtering. He rasped more air into his lungs, like a dentist pulling back his drill before plunging forward again, penetrating deeper into our brains. Three of us shared the hotel room: Billy, me, and Wally. A little before midnight, I’d …