When I was a kid, I went to a used bookstore called the Apollo. It was just across the boulevard on 18th Street, next to the music store where I got my Schirmer classical sheet music. It was a classic of its type: dark, confused, and full of toppling piles of paperbacks and magazines ( Read more... )

P. was a file clerk at the hospital where I was a first a transcriptionist and later the supervisor. I worked with her for almost five years ( Read more... )

Some of us never get over the childhood desire for the impossible. I remember a book I read as a kid, colorfully illustrated without words, in which some children get magical christmas presents of unknown origin. The presents turn out to be strange jumpsuits with backpacks on them. When they are put on and a button on the chest is pressed, the ( Read more... )