October 2003: Kansas City, Missouri. More adults dressed up this year for Halloween than I’ve seen in a long time. Pikachu is a server at the sushi restaurant on Friday night. The woman in the car in front of me has cat ears. A discarded Lil’ Bo Peep cap lies on the sidewalk outside my apartment Saturday morning.
September 1985: Naples, Italy. Members of my graduating high school class are held captive at gunpoint on the beach for … how long? … twenty minutes? an hour? It seems like I should remember.
December 1989: Berlin, Germany. I walk up to the Berlin wall with a hammer and pound on it until pieces fall into my hand. Guards come sauntering by to shoo me away halfheartedly.
Stitching the pieces together makes a life. Some fabrics are more interesting than others. Sometimes it feels like you have a choice, and sometimes it does not.
Pieces of Other People’s Lives
In his entry, “Pieces of a Life,” George briefly lists three experiences and comments that “stitching the pieces together makes a life.” Some of these experiences (Halloween costumes in Kansas City, several of his classmates taken captive at gunpoint o…
time slips
After reading a pieces of George’s life, Chuck spun it out to include his father’s. I’m lucky. My mom and dad are telling their stories now. Things I didn’t know. Like dad talking about segregation in Texas when he was…