My junior year of college, I lived in a building on campus called The Chateau. The first floor was for French classrooms and professors’ offices. The second and third floors were sweet-ass housing for juniors and seniors: huge wooden floors, epic sunset and mountain views, around the corner from the tastiest dining hall, up the stairs from the coveted, secret bathroom… Continue reading Chat(eau) Roulette

When I was moving last month, I came across a folder of old school stuff. There was my Official Poetic License certificate from second grade. There was my first grade story about a snowman that played running back and carried his team, the Snowy Snowmen, to the Super Bowl. And there was a graded test… Continue reading IQ of a Macadamia Nut

In mid-August, my pal, Sam, and I raced the T—our fourth race against the puttering B-Line and fifth race total. It was the single hottest day of the summer and heinously humid when we took off late morning. The sidewalks were packed with incoming college students, Red Sox game-day traffic, and the usual Sunday brunch-goers.… Continue reading The Michael Scott Road Runners

Joseph Gordon-Levitt went on Colbert last week. Before they got into talking about Snowden, Colbert asked Gordon-Levitt about his mismatched socks (the first 1:45): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bz4n7N0QsM  You had two different kind of socks on last time I saw you. And you do again. I kept it a little more subtle this time. But they do not match.… Continue reading Sock N’ Roll

About this time eight years ago, the Middlebury cross country coach emailed me that Michael Schmidt, a freshman on the team, would host me when I visited. The baseball nerd in me thought this was a hoot. Mike Schmidt?! The Hall-Of-Fame third baseman for the Phillies?! 548 career home runs, but who’s counting?! When I… Continue reading You Gotta Be Schmidting Me

When I lived in Denver two years ago, I worked at an elementary school and spent lots of time with a third-grader named Udo. Udo’s a little fella with a big ol’ pair of glasses and an aptitude for making animal noises of extinct animals. He’s adopted from Korea, autistic, and an only-child to divorced… Continue reading Gotta Get Those Brakes Checked

The throwers’ coach at our rival school looked squarely at Coach Kirby then down at the shot puts then back at Coach Kirby in disgust. “Fran, what the hell are you trying to pull here? All your shot puts are a pound light. Come on, Kirby. You can’t pull this shit.” Coach Kirby promptly picked… Continue reading The Word Of The Day Is

When I was nine, my family and I went to a rain-soaked Red Sox game in the middle of July. We sat just out from under the first base overhang down the right field line, decked out in our dorky Red Sox ponchos for over an hour until they postponed the game before the first… Continue reading Thanks, Papi.

My sophomore year of high school, I took a class called Modern European History. We started at the French Revolution and ended at the fall of the Berlin Wall. There were only eight of us dudes—sophomoric both in grade-level and weiner joke proficiency—and one salty teacher who looked like William Macy, acted like William Macy, and… Continue reading Imagine

In June 1997, right after Kindergarten, my family and I moved from upstate New York to the Boston suburbs. Almost instantly, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez replaced Hans Solo and Chewbacca as my heroes. I had never played baseball but was now a crazed, six- year-old Boston transplant hooked by its baseball culture. Often, I… Continue reading The Kid