Short Stories

I collect stories. Short ones. Small bits about peoples' lives, the places they've traveled, the things they know. I fell asleep last night and mulling over a bouquet of short stories I collected this week.

• D who has researched his mountaineering trip to Tibet. He knows the road conditions to the base-camp of Mt Everest. He has a plan for how to avoid spreading bedbugs upon his return. 

• The B family who just got a government backed refinance for their home after four years of living under the threat of foreclosure. 

• M who had to cancel this weekend's road-trip due to treacherous life conditions.

• TJ who tells me that singing out-loud acts as a mild antidepressant.

• My friend who found out: sometimes, with relationships, you need to give a little. Your husband's bathroom can have the Star Wars theme. It just isn't that big of a deal.

• The distinction, from S years and years ago, that there are friends and there are friends that will help you hide a body. 

• The idea, from T, that we do our best work when we're slightly distracted. The outside influence makes everything richer.

• C who braces physically and financially for her second emergency surgery without health insurance this year.

• My GG who insisted on teaching me to drink black coffee in case of an emergency. To this day I prefer my coffee with cream. But, in a pinch, I can drink it black.

• The oldest woman in the world who attributes her long and good life to minding her own business and not eating junk food.

• My physics guru, K, said he spent twenty years hiding behind the mathematics of his field. Mathematically he was good to go, conceptually...well...he didn't go there. K has a phD in Physics. He's been an instructor for more than a decade and told me that story as he watched me struggle with my latest physics homework assignment. Conceptually I got it, but I just could not get the numbers to hammer out correctly.   It isn't often that someone so accomplished in his field would extend himself with that kind of intellectual generosity.