The room was a frenzy of twirling tutus. Adrenaline filled the air, sparking the tiny ballerinas into frantic leaps that ended with them splattered against the mirror like Silly Putty. Parents rummaged around for ballet slippers, hair ties and dance bags scattered amidst the chaos. Their last class of the year was over, the recital […]

“Hello Bella!” said Levi as he lifted his hand up to give me an enthusiastic high five.”Hey Levi!” I said. I moved into my assigned classroom, stunned and delighted.On any other day, in any other situation, this friendly exchange might seem pretty unremarkable.But, you see, Levi is a seventeen-year-old autistic boy with extremely limited verbal […]

Life is Tough As I sat at age eleven with my Nintendo cradled in my left hand and my eyes buried in my right hand saying my goodbyes to my father, I did not quite realize what was truly happening. For the next eighteen months, the only time I would see my father would be […]

Perhaps the most confusing creature on this earth, by far, is the woman. An ever-flowing waterfall of hormones and emotions, the woman is a blubbering, hysterical mess who never seems to know what it wants. In addition to being fickle and overly sensitive, it is only attracted to men who treat it like a doormat. […]

She’s never been called glamorous or even an enthusiastic pretty. Her acorn-colored hair hangs simply above her shoulders and sometimes catches a glitter from the reflecting sun. She’s constantly trying to keep it tucked behind her ear in hopes that it won’t stray, but it usually half-covers her eye in hopes that it one day […]

Throughout my years of being a student, I’ve always been taught that a minority was someone of a color other than white, from somewhere other than the United States, and who had a faith other than Christian. Well, here it is, 1995, almost 14 years since my school days began. I’m not dependent on any […]

I have always been fond of saying that I “read”, rather than “watch”, TV. I do not read the TV in the most literal sense; I do not require closed captioning, nor am I a karaoke aficionado. My TV literacy, in fact, is carried out in another platform entirely. This medium is print, in the […]

Somewhere in Europe dwells a crazed lunatic running amuck whose precise whereabouts is currently unknown – even to his ­family. This man is my uncle. Uncle Warren always lives life to the fullest, even if it means turning his house into a month-long puppet show, or dressing like an Native American to kayak “authentically.” Some […]

One thousand, eight-hundred and fifty: the number of calories required to create a masterpiece. Three juicy quarter-pound meat patties, draped in applewood bacon and American cheese, adorned with mayonnaise and ketchup, fitted between no ordinary bun, but a premium bun. Each ingredient harmonizes ever so magnificently in this magnum opus of fast food. Each bite […]

“Thetrue meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect tosit” – N. Henderson On a stifling day last summer I sat underthe shady branches of a large mesquite tree in a village in Guanajuato, Mexico,eating popsicles with nine-year-old Mariana. I looked at the people and thesaplings we had just […]