I met a monster last week and he made me cringe a little. Huggy Wuggy, a character in a video game with the deceptively charming name of Poppy Playtime, has sharp rows of teeth and a creepy habit of roaming an abandoned toy factory and exacting revenge on his enemies. But, really, Huggy is just [...]
"I want to be rich!" the small boy said as he wished upon a star And the wise moon whispered back, “You already are.” “I wish to be rich!” the small boy said to the dandelion seed. And the wind it rode on answered, “You have everything you need.” “I want to be real rich,” [...]
I recently played a word association game called Bye Felicia with a 12-year old boy I know. The idea is to write down as many related words to an assigned topic as you can think of in 30 seconds. One of our categories was “Things you can open and close.” I chuckled as I wrote [...]
We both did our best on that last, cold day but, like Carole King said, it was too late, baby. My trusty Townie, the bike that had been with me for 18 years, got stuck in first gear and, as I pedaled so furiously and yet so painfully slowly that my young companions had to [...]
An unfamiliar November sun rode in this weekend and we Midwesterners responded with great gulps of glee. Everywhere we looked people rode bikes they had put away for the winter, hauled out the summer shorts, dined al fresco , walked, jogged, raked leaves, climbed playground equipment and tried to stay outside as long as possible. [...]