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Size Does Matter

Time and size change as they relate to age . . .
In the beginning or early stages of life, everything seems so big and incredible. As a grown man, I stand two inches above my Father’s height, but as a boy, The Old Man was a giant. His hands were large and capable but mine were small and unblemished. They were untrained and untested. If asked, I believed The Old Man was capable of anything. I believed his hands were strong enough to hold the world together. And I thought this because The Old Man held my family’s world together.

In relation to time and size, my early classrooms looked tremendous. Back then, the school year seemed to last forever and the summers were nothing more than a blink of time. But now, months fly off the calendar and years shed regardless to my opinion of the season.
On the playground, the monkey bars, swings, and the slides were all so tall to me. Yet, as a grown man, I have visited some of my old playgrounds.
Some of them look the same, only now, the ladder to the Continue reading →

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rain

Out of nowhere, the sky turned from sunshine into gray. Then suddenly, the rain came down in sporadic droplets until the sky opened up like a bucket of water pouring over our heads.
I watched the storm through a window beneath the second floor roof. The people scattered on Lexington Avenue, and within minutes, the sidewalks were empty of all its pedestrians.

I looked down from the window and watched the taxi cabs speed through the flooded streets with their windshield wipers swinging from left to right.
Three longhaired girls hid from the downpour inside the front vestibule of an office building across the street. Beside them, the coffee shop seemed crowded and the tables by the window were filled with people watching the storm and sipping over-priced coffee from an over-sized white mug. Continue reading →

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life

I once stood at the north shore on one of the islands in Hawaii and watched teams of surfers try their skill on some of the greatest waves in the world. This was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were others watching with me; there were others staring out with the hints of sunset coloring our faces.
The incoming waves slowly built into tall curling walls of water. Then they crested, and then they folded into the shore.
One of the spectators mentioned, “People come Continue reading →

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a lesson I should learn

They called it a, “Suspended sentence,” conditional upon my behavior. This came from a judge in a courtroom, along with a two year order of protection, and a warning that should I attempt to approach, contact, or interfere with the lives of the youths that tried to impose against me and my home, I would be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I was once a longhaired kid with loose shoelaces and a wise ass mouth. I hung around the corners of my neighborhood and found trouble the way sunlight finds the ground. I laughed too loud and screamed too often. I was wild, but yet, I was aware of when to lean in and when to hold back.
I knew when to speak out and when to quiet down because I understood the possibility of violent consequences.
Today’s youth has a similar Continue reading →

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quick thought

I watched a show about a man that bought a milk truck.
He changed the truck into a mobile kitchen,
and now he makes different types of grilled cheese sandwiches,
and he sells them throughout the streets of Boston.

According to the show, he does pretty well.
He seems happy too.

Before his truck, the man worked in an office.
He had a boss that complained and deadlines to meet.
He punched keys on a keyboard,
and  all day long,
his eyes were fixed to a computer screen as he calculated data
that was pertinent to the lives of others. Continue reading →

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Red, White, and Blue

My earliest memory of fireworks is from a friend’s house in Brentwood, Long Island. More like family, I stayed with a friend that I saw as a brother. I saw his sisters like my own, and I saw their mother and father as I would an aunt and uncle.
It rained in the morning but the afternoon cleared, and by nightfall, the sky was lit with Continue reading →