Grandma Shrake told me once, when I was a teenager, with visible and audible disdain, regarding Marlene Dietrich, “I never believed she was a woman.”

I’ve always wanted to be a dead legend. “I’ll never see 30, man,” I said to my brother. He said, “Um, Scott: I think you are an expert on Janis Joplin, and you can imitate her, and we all know you like her a lot, but…” “What? Are you ashamed to have a rock star who died of a heroin overdose in the family?”

Great Aunt Nell had lost her son in a custody battle with her ex-husband, a department store magnate. She had testified against him in a drunken-driving case back in the ’40s, and his family used their influence to see to it she never had contact with her son again…

A scout from our group came running down the driveway yelling that a mass of strangers was making its way to our territory from the next street over and they wanted to have a war with us.

I caught my co-worker Faye reading the Bible on her Amazon Kindle. “It’s the only book I’ve got on there, besides a book on menopause,” she shrugged. Her frequent lunch partner and sister-friend-coworker Ruby was sitting across from her, but looking over at me. “How old are you?” Ruby asked me. I told her. Then [...]

At least she had a manservant around! You know what I’ve got? Sweet F.A. is what I’ve got. So I’m that much lonelier now than Marlene, my idol when I was a late teenager.

They all came in. My elementary school gym teacher who had terrorized me, Mrs. Overman, came in. (Why would she be dead?) “Friends” I hated from high school came in, lots of them, and saw me being a cashier. From salaried magazine editor to round-the-clock mental patient to hourly cashier in six months. A little humbling.

There have been times in my current apartment when I’ve been wakened out of a sound sleep by my next-door lesbian sobbing and screeching about lost trust, failed love, betrayal.

They were unashamed of the fact that everyone knew they were nothing but bullies. If you had asked them about themselves and their interests they would have said “We’re bullies” in the same tone of voice one would use when saying “I play soccer.”

Me mum took me to Scotland last week for my 40th birthday. Of the three British countries I’ve visited (England, Ireland, Scotland) it’s my favorite. The people are a pure delight. They talk funny. And it shows in their signs… Munchy Box? Chicken Cottage? Mini-Burger that’s not a burger at all, but made of chicken? [...]