Class Struggles
Wrestling with my wants
A few stale phrases — chestnuts, really — of my mother’s came to mind on a recent walk with my partner, as we weighed our own current parenting dilemmas. I [...]
Daddy done gone
Robert Frost staked out a childhood spot as a swinger of birches. Me, I was a Frankenstein swinger. Long before I became acquainted with the book, and the fact that [...]
Wordplay in academe
Gosh, but aren't we humans dazzling apes sometimes! This paragon among animals, with snappy synapses aplenty. And sometimes these brainy zaps twist themselves around the very words that we speak [...]
Lend me your ears
Now, I'm not opposed to grandmas (or grandpas) on principle. I am, however, allergic to ageism and stereotyping, especially as it relates to disabilities. What got my hackles up was [...]
Goodbye, year of the skibidi toilet
If architecture is “frozen music,” an American public middle school building must at least be, I don't know, a blue Taki crushed under a Crocs heel, which of course has [...]
Seeking professional huggers
I have a hyperbolic fuckton of reasons to need a hug. Or maybe just a dozen. These reasons extend from a careeningly suicidal child to a personal disability to a [...]
Naming what’s lost
To forestall insomnia, I don't count sheep, but I do sleep with one. His name is BaaBaa O'Riley, and he's the color of creamy coffee. Slightly smaller than a volleyball, [...]
Love and donuts
The void in my stomach didn't make its presence known until about halfway through eight 400 meter sprints. A six-pack of chocolate Donettes chugged with an eight ounce carton of [...]
Some pig, and his best bud
Human beings may be the most highly evolved of all animals, and yet to peek into the other world they sometimes require the help of a species not quite so [...]
A flea eviction
A story about a 44-million-year-old louse brought me abruptly to my own annus miserabilis in the form of another scrawny sucker, the lowly flea. This tiny but persistent parasite perhaps [...]
Author
Lucy Umber is is the assumed name of an American educator, editor, and writer who resides and works in an East Coast state. She has elected to conceal her identity to avoid causing potential offense to friends and coworkers in her tightly knit community. “The American” has verified her actual name and the authenticity of her background.