I grew up reading books where kids jumped in lakes and rivers to swim. I also grew up in Louisiana with a bayou just beyond my back yard. I grew up with my parents constantly telling me not to jump in the bayou behind our house to swim, because it was

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So there I was—about an hour left in the anniversary, in a five flan match (sweet, sweet 530% bloodpoint bonus), in a game where two teammates dc’ed on first hook, leaving me (death hook) and our fourth (no hooks, clearly team mvp) sitting on a mountain of points for chases, saves,

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Map showing interstate 81 cutting through Virginia, to West Virginia, and then Maryland

It happened one August. I was to drive from Louisiana up to New England for college, arriving early for orientation leader training and the like. Because of the way the timing worked out, one of my best friends was able to tag along for the road trip, have a short New

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blue sky

I love the sky on those late-April, early-May days, the days that are warm and sunny, temperatures reaching up above seventy. In my childhood, those days came sooner, which makes them all the more precious to me now. But yes, the sky. I’m talking about the kind of day where there

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close up of toy raptor in tall grass

I grew up with a bayou at the edge of my backyard, and on the other side of the bayou, a field. We—my three siblings and a motley crew of neighborhood kids, kids whose afterschool care came in the form of grandparents who lived in the neighborhood, friends who lived in

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Trixie Cat, in her lanky adolescent cat body phase, clinging to a screen door like an old fashioned Garfield suction cup window cling

When I was a teenager, my friends and I went through a “boffer” phase of building our own foam-padded swords and fighting with them. We’d hit up the local Home Depot for pipe insulation foam and lightweight pvc pipes (we started with bamboo stalks cut out of one friend’s backyard, but

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*(here’s a bit of a mission statement—skip to the end if you’re just looking for biographical information)* I can imagine that if someone were to poke around here at random, they might be confused at a seeming lack of focus. What is this, anyway: a blog about writing? a humor site?

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