On a street right near my house sits a church with a sign on its expansive front lawn. I’m not sure who actually changes the letters on the sign or at what time of day the newest message to the public is thrown up there, but I do know that every few weeks new words appear. I’d think maybe it’s God himself, but sometimes things on the sign are spelled incorrectly and my guess is that God’s got fact checkers and editors and at least three wise men up there who would never let a “your” pass for a “you’re.”

The messages on that church’s sign are usually vaguely threatening, at least the way I read them. They are always blunt – as I guess a sign should be – and they involve commands like, “Kneel. He wants you to,” and I cannot help thinking in return, “But are you sure he wants you ending a sentence with a preposition?” This week the message on the sign is far more tempered than I’ve ever … Continue reading →

I take a lot of things in my life very seriously and one of them is Secret Santa. Sure, currently on the corner of my desk sits a pile of essays about 1960s-style film antiheroes that I should probably grade and there are definitely recommendation letters I need to write so some of my students can get into good colleges and not eventually have to live on the street or get a job at SUR. I should also possibly carve out the time to call the parent of an eighteen year old in one of my classes who sits directly in my eye-line and picks his nose and then eats it. (This is something that really happens. The first time I saw it, I was quite certain that I was hallucinating. I was not hallucinating; the dive into the kid’s nose was real and it was not just a one-time thing. This event happens daily and I fear I might never be the same again. Also, should this kid’s final average turn out to be … Continue reading →