Nobody Sounds Good Writing About Your Divorce,

The Failures Of Other Genres To Provide An Emotional Connection With Some Of Their Characters And Narratives Gives Memoir A Toehold.

How Much Smaller The Large Places Are Once We're Grown Up, When We Have Car Keys And Credit Cards.

It Strikes Me That Whatever Advantages There Are To Being A Boy--getting To Stay Out Late And Having Other People Wash Your Clothes And Bring You Plates Of Stuff--get Undercut By Having To Play Football.

I Kept The Fingers Of My Left Hand Crossed All The Time, While On My Right-hand Fingers I Counted Anything At All—steps To The Refrigerator, Seconds On The Clock, Words In A Sentence—to Keep My Head Occupied. The Counting Felt Like Something To Hang On To, As If Finding The Right Numbers Might Somehow Crack The Code On Whatever System Ran The Slippery Universe We Were Moving Through.

The Voice Of God Does Not Pander, Offers No Five-year Plan, No Long-term Solution, Nary An Edict. It Is Small & Fond & Local. Don't Look For Your Initials In The Geese Honking Overhead Or To See Thru The Glass Even Darkly. It Says The Most Obvious Crap - Put Down That Gun, You Need A Sandwich.