The other day I was thinking about "Big Johnson" t-shirts. These were shirts that featured stupid dick jokes and caricatures of big breasted women. They were popular in the 1990s before we had social media as an outlet on which college students could show their...
The world is not ending. You could be forgiven for thinking that it is. The attacks in San Bernadino and Paris and Lebanon. The execution of a child in an alley and the murders of black teenagers by police in Chicago. Global warming, and for Pete's sake, Donald Trump...
On Thursday my nine-year-old came home from school and excitedly asked me, "Did you know there were gunshots in front of D's house last night." I did know and I told him that it was all under control, a drug deal from Chicago, a few blocks over had gone bad. Some of...
The other day my daughter asked me if I thought Winnie the Pooh was sexist because it only has one female character. I told her that any individual work only having one, or or even no, female characters wasn't sexist. The problem is that the accepted canon of...
Last night my son was invited to visit a friend who recently moved to St. Charles and my daughter was invited to a costume/slumber party here at home. The plan was that my husband would drive my son out to St. Charles right after school to avoid traffic. I would take...
Going to the zoo on a beautiful day. How a trip to the library could be a full day's activity. Only working part-time. The feeling of giddy joy and unlimited possibility that came just from them both being at a birthday party at the same time. The look of joy on...