At the beginning of each graduate course I’ve taken over the past three semesters, students are expected to introduce themselves to their fellow classmates. The format varies slightly, but key bits of information always include giving your name, what your undergraduate degree was in, and where you earned it. This seems like it would be simple information to provide, but… read entire post
Tuesday night after class, a few of my classmates and I left campus and walked to a nearby bar. The bar has half-a-dozen flat-screen televisions mounted over the bar, making it well-suited for watching sporting events. Normally the televisions display multiple football, baseball, and basketball games, but last night they were all tuned in to the 2016 presidential election. In… read entire post
Halloween tip-toed in through the front door and left out the back without saying goodbye. The Halloween decorations (stored in plastic tubs up in the attic throughout the year) made it as far as the garage floor this year, where they remain.
Both kids (with Susan’s help) made rather than bought their costumes this year. Morgan dressed up as the… read entire post
As a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant made me do a lot of things. Once, after dishing an alley oop to Russell Westbrook, he made me leap out of my chair in the cheap seats so hard I spilled $9 worth of beer. Another time after hitting a buzzer beating shot to win in the finals, he… read entire post
When I was a little kid — this would have been the late 1970s, possibly early 1980s — I owned a cup that looked like an ice cream cone. The bottom part of the cup looked like a cone. The “lid” looked like a scoop of ice cream. The plastic ice cream was covered with a removable brown piece of… read entire post
Last week I bought some new stickers for my laptop.
Thirty seconds after I finished applying them I spilled a large glass of lemonade down into my keyboard. I dried the keyboard off with a towel and things seemed fine for a while,but when I turned on my laptop later that evening, 1/4 of the keys were stuck in capital… read entire post
The reason most interviews “work” is because, in most cases, both sides need (or at least want) them to work. Usually the person doing the interview has an article to publish and a deadline to meet, and the person being interviewed typically has something to say. An interview is like a dance, and when both partners are of equal skill,… read entire post
AMC is showing all the Friday the 13th movies today. I don’t think I’ll ever watch a Friday the 13th movie without thinking about Jeff Martin.
Jeff and I met in 7th grade, which means we had only been friends for a couple of months when he invited me to his Halloween party. I’m not 100% positive, but I think… read entire post
We’ve spent our past two Creative Nonfiction class periods interviewing fellow classmates.
I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the past 25 years. I cut my teeth doing interviews for my college newspaper, before doing intern stints with both the El Reno Light and the El Reno Tribune. Most of those interviews went horrible. Typically I showed up with a… read entire post
My dad recently got rid of the shed in his backyard. It was uncharacteristically non-emotional for me. I have nostalgic connections with many things from my childhood, but apparently they do not extend to thirty-year-old wooden storage buildings.
If you ever want to watch human ingenuity at its finest, find something seemingly impossible to move and then advertise it for… read entire post
The Adventures of Rob, Susan, Mason and Morgan O'Hara
