I kept the address labels. The nickel, too. The night of the day I used the first label, I dreamed of starving orphaned children with distended stomachs. They told me I should have sent the nickel back, along with a generous check and a stamp to save the charity the cost of postage. I ignored the

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Fireworks I ended it on the fourth of July But still she cried and threw things at me. That’s the trouble with American girls: They don’t ‘do’ Irony. Thunder If I’m lying, she said, may the ground open up and swallow me. And as the words left her lips a sound like thunder filled the

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She was wearing what the parlance of the day widely referred to as a wife-beater and even in the dim light of the bar he could make out the tattoo on her back, the inscription “One Ring to Rule Them All” arrayed in a circle around a grinning Richard Simmons. ‘Great God of Tennis Ball

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While I was growing up, my parents were very particular about food, but also quite practical. My father did most of the grocery shopping at our neighborhood Safeway in Washington, D.C., and he often purchased the house brand. At the time, the supermarkets didn’t want to put their own name on most of their in-house

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It happens on the Summer Solstice, unfolding quietly during the night, while most people sleep peacefully. No one sees a thing. To the wary night-owls manning convenience store registers nothing is amiss. Cabbies continue to ply their trade, unloading drunks from their cars without interruption. The world’s most advanced radars and missile defense systems sleep

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