Painting Lines

“… but painting those lines, it was all he had ever known.”

His ancient eyes carefully surveyed the freshly painted thick white line as it shone brightly in the earliest morning hours. He sat on a large machine that made wide turns in a spectacular fashion and purred like a kitten, a quite incongruous sensation when seen and heard at the same time. But he had a job to do, one that he had done more times than even he could remember, which was also part of the reason why he studied that white line for so long. Reputation was a very important thing in his business, in any business really, but painting those lines, it was all he had ever known.

He remembered going out with his father on weekday mornings before tea time, when only the crows would be out, dancing on telephone wires and watching them with those spectacle eyes. His dad would open the large shed, that reminded him of a barn with its massive size, and back out the industrial-sized lawn mower. Ironically, what he recalled most about that behemoth was the name on its side, KAT. He wondered why they would have misspelled the word “cat” but he kept it to himself. The older man would sit him up on the top of the mower with his colossal hands until he could feel its vibrations. They made him have to pee, but he kept that to himself as well. Continue reading “Painting Lines”

Black Irish

Black? And four leaves? Wow.

“Mr. McManus, are you really Irish?” my student asks skeptically, knowing as she does that every Irish person she’s ever seen has been white, and also knowing that I’m not even remotely white.

“Of course I am,” I reply, with a twinkle in my eye.

“But how can you be Irish?” she asks, trying not to say what everyone else in the class is thinking.

“Haven’t you heard of Black Irish?” I say, and it ends the debate. Continue reading “Black Irish”

Friends Forever

Remember your high school yearbook where everyone, even the people you hardly ever talked to, just had to write in it and tell you how  absolutely amazing it was being your “friend” in school? And you were so excited because even though they hadn’t really been your friend, you knew you would be able to … Continue reading Friends Forever

Road Tripping

I’m going on a picnic, and I’m taking asparagus, broccoli, carrots…

Yeah, right.

You know I’m really taking angel food cake, Bacardi, candy…

But usually I’m playing the game with my kids, and I want to make sure I’m leaving a good impression about vegetables instead of candy and other things I would ordinarily bring on an adult-type picnic. These are the types of games we play in the car on road trips, or at least they were until technology interfered. Or, I should say, until I let technology interfere. That’s the glory of road trips. We can go old school if we want, just to remind ourselves of how the days of yore went by. Continue reading “Road Tripping”

Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection

This one’s a classic.

When I was young, I couldn’t stand my sister, Joy, for a multitude of reasons. First, she was older than me, so she felt like she could lord it over me from sunup till sundown. Secondly, she was outgoing so she made friends easily, which was something I was hard-pressed to do. In fact, my only real friend from birth until eighth grade was one boy who I thought felt sorry for me, or some of my sister’s friends who also seemed to feel bad for me.

Because she was older than me (by fifteen months), Joy was always in the grade ahead of mine, and because we went to a small school where each grade level was taught by one teacher, she would always get the same teachers right before I got there. And saying that Joy was good in school was a massive understatement. I lost count of all the times, on the first day of each school year, when the teacher would look at me, look at my last name on the sheet, and have this look on his/her face that said, “Oh, you’re HER brother!” Then, when I wasn’t as motivated as she was, they would shake their heads and make tsking sounds, like I had disappointed them. Continue reading “Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection”