Sometime in late November or early December of 1987, I got a UPS truck stuck in Flannery O’Connor’s front yard. That sounds more literary than it was. At the time, I didn’t know jack about Flannery O’Connor. I knew the O’Connor name meant something in Baldwin County (Georgia). There was an O’Connor Road somewhere else...

Long before Wife Unit and I met, I used to date around... A lot. I was a fairly indiscriminate, serial dater. I'd take out a different girl just about every night. I mean sure, I had my standards (teeth), but it didn't matter to me if I met someone at the bank, at the mall, the MiniFoods store, or at a bar. If I met...

She was into her tenth day. Her tenth day since her birthday. Leslie and I had been married just over a year, we had only dated a few months before saying "I do." We barely knew each other. Now our couple was a triple. We had a baby. --- Leslie didn't come standard with the requisite set of mothering skills. She wasn't...

Late one afternoon last May. The phone rings. RZ answers. In the haze of my nap state, I hear her tell the caller: "Yes ma'am, but he's asleep. Well ok, hold on a second." Then my daughter walks over to me and says, "Dad. Dad. Wake up. It's Guy." ("Guy" is my mom's nickname--long story). "Tell her I'm sleeping." "I did,...

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before why I write. It’s less of an exercise in vanity and more of one of humility, as well as memory. The fact that it serves my id is a great by-product but not my primary reason. My end goal, if you will, is that one day, when I’m dead and gone, my daughter will have something to...

[Old story, true but old] Wife, SoML (my daughter), and I went shopping for the essentials. You know, soap, shampoo, lube, toilet paper, aspirin and so on. We were at Wal-Mart finding everything on our list except for the personal lubricant. We scoured (that's actually putting it lightly... We were like rats on acid...

What the fuck was I thinking?!? I must’ve been out of my damned mind. When I was single and had the world by the balls, disposable income as well as disposable time, I would take road trips for my sanity breaks. I’d hop in my car and scoot. I’d go to the mountains, to the coast, to the swamp, just about anywhere. I’d...

It was August, a hot-as-hell, humid Georgia summer afternoon. We — “we” being my wife, my daughter, and I— had just gotten out of church and decided to go shopping for my sister’s birthday gift. We went to the mall and shopped up and down with no luck. My wife suggested that we try TJ Maxx. We hopped in the car and...

The problem I have with telling ghost stories is that, generally, from the start, if people are expecting a ghost story, they are automatically trying to work out the physics in their heads, or they are jumping to the conclusion that it’s a bunch of fictional bullshit. I am here to tell you the story you are about to...

Long ago we set off for Maho Bay on St. John Island in the Virgin Islands. Being tree-hugging eco-tourists at the time, we decided to stay at the Maho Bay Camp. The place was beautiful, and there was plenty to do. You could: explore, sail, windsurf, scuba, snorkel, fish, eat, drink, shop, or lapse into a coma on the...