It could all go wrong.

"And then he thought of what could go wrong — the child could fall off a rollercoaster or drown in a lake. Get hit in the head by a ball in a Little League game and suffer irreversible brain damage. Or be a complainer — at his side to criticize his every move — or have a learning disability or autism. They could do it all wrong; they could spoil their child — buy too much stuff, or the wrong stuff — all the electronics that ruin a kid. As an adult — into his or her 30s — his offspring could call up to whine and plead for money. Or could get killed in a bar — an innocent sipping cocktails in a lawless country — or, worse, kidnapped by aliens from outer space. They would beam down and sweep away his child, who would be disappeared as if America were Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. It could all go wrong."

~~ from "An Amazing Turn" by Alex Kudera

They did not want us.

"They did not want us as neighbors in their valleys. They did not want us as friends. We lived in unsightly shacks and could not speak plain English. We cared only about money. Our farming methods were poor. We used too much water. We did not plow deeply enough. Our husbands worked us like slaves. They import those girls from Japan as free labor. We worked in the fields all day long without stopping for supper. We worked in the fields late at night by the light of our kerosene lamps. We never took a single day off. A clock and a bed are two things a Japanese farmer never used in his life. We were taking over their cauliflower industry. We had taken over their spinach industry. We had a monopoly on their strawberry industry and had cornered their market on beans. We were unbeatable, unstoppable economic machine and if our progress was not checked the entire western United States would soon become the next Asiatic outpost and colony."

~~ from The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

An Amazing Turn

I'm grateful that the New Oxford Review published "An Amazing Turn."

the hood

"The tricky thing about the hood is that you're always working, working, working, and you feel like something's happening, but really nothing's happening at all. I was out there every day from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and every day it was: How do we turn ten rand into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? How do I turn fifty into a hundred? At the end of the day we'd spend it on food and maybe some beers, and then we'd go home and come back and it was: How do we turn ten into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? It was a whole day's work to flip that money. You had to walking, be moving, be thinking. You had to get to a guy, meet a guy. There were many days we'd end up back at zero, but I always felt like I'd been very productive."

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Extraction

"When your great-grandparents grew up in Stalin’s terror-famine, your grandparents in the Holocaust, and your parents in a straddle between totalitarianism and democracy, you grew up confused about pain. Especially your own, by comparison. Were you entitled to it? Was it real?

"Almost always, the answer was no. Food, shelter, clothing, education — these were readily available to me. Without physical or intellectual deprivation, what did I have to cry about?"

~~ from "Extraction" by Tali Perch

my whole childhood

"My relationship with my mom was like the relationship between a cop and a criminal in the movies—the relentless detective and the devious mastermind she's determined to catch. They're bitter rivals, but, damn, they respect the hell out of each other, and somehow they even grow to like each other. Sometimes my mom would catch me, but she was usually one step behind, and she was always giving me the eye. Someday, kid. Someday I'm going to catch you and put you away for the rest of your life. Then I would give her a nod in return. Have a good evening, Officer. That was my whole childhood."

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Meet the Working Class

It's hard to make ends meet.

The Buddha in the Attic

"For three days a cold wind blew down from the mountains without stopping. Clouds of dust rose up from the fields and the bare branches of the trees thrashed against an empty gray sky. Gravestones toppled over in our cemeteries. Barn floors flew open. Tin roofs rattled. Favorite dogs ran away. A Chinese laundryman was found unconscious and bleeding on the waterfront and left behind for dead. They mistook him for one of us. A barn was set on fire in a remote island valley and the stench of dead cattle lingered downwind for days."

~~ from The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

damp, drizzly November in my soul

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly [January 6] in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”

~~ [mostly] from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

the mention

I can't say I haven't had my moments.