Month: June 2001
Cooter on the run for a decade? He’s dumb enough just to be lost that long
“It was just a random check. The inspector asked him his name and where he was born. He said Canada
It was all floppy, squishy and ripe, but only hair and cockroaches. No bones
“I’ve decided the thing that distresses me most about this house mess is the apparent randomness of it. Buttons mixed with nails mixed with sunflower seeds mixed with dead cockroaches mixed with wrenches mixed with craft supplies mixed with cat vomit mixed with old mail mixed with leftover rolls of linoleum and radiator hoses… I…
We couldn’t prove it until we went a month without doing any laundry
“Day three: I switch the bottles, hiding the bottle of dye behind our own washer, and putting the Tide bottle out in the open. Success! The next time I did laundry, there was dye missing, and the bottle had been put back in a different place. On top of their washer was a purple stained…
Harvard was the zone of ferocious competition and status anxiety
“Right in there, I got on an elevator one day with a dean. I’d had crabs a few months before, and the only way to get rid of them is with this stuff called Pyrinate A-200. Which stinks. And on this elevator was the unmistakable odor of Pyrinate A-200. So I said to the dean,…
If protecting ourselves was the mission, all we had to do was stay at home
“We lost the war and have been putting on a kind of camouflage of modesty. But if you look at our history, you see our aggressiveness. And if we change the Constitution the natural consequence will be for us to rearm.”
His mother said he cried in bed that night
“I was looking through for more cans when I knocked something over. I turned around. There was a can of gasoline. It started to pour out down the ramp. I picked it up. It leaked under the door. I heard some noises, and then a flame shot out from under the door. I went to…
Childhood death is completely invisible. People don’t want to be reminded of it
“No one at the hospital could bear to discuss death with Liza Lister. She had pressed her doctors: ‘What will happen when I die? How will I know I’m dying?’ Her oncologist promised to let her know when death was imminent. But on the final night, as she lay in her mother’s arms next to…
He’d lie on his back under the apple tree and soak in the blossoms
“Long Island is so much more than shopping malls, concrete highways and crowded towns and beaches. There are still cool woodlands, quiet rivers, salt marshes, overgrown meadows, and rolling sand dunes to be enjoyed by those who have the eyes to seek and the desire to learn about the other Long Island.”
To cope with his demons, he was given the horrendous advice to pray
“His reasons for spying had very little to do with spying and much more to do with his emotional pain. He is not mad, but he thinks he’s going mad because of the contents of his thoughts. He snaps, and the snapping is in the form of spying.”
Schools are seen as a safe place to say things and get away with it
“If you’re too short, too tall, too fat, too skinny, you get targeted in middle school. Kids sign their yearbooks, ‘See you next year, fag.’”