I hadn’t heard from Ben for weeks, so I didn’t know whether he still wanted to buy the old car I have sitting at home. I haven’t driven it for three years, but I kept it for a long time simply as a backup. Eventually, I kept it simply because I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything with it.
Ben caught me one day a few weeks ago as I got home. He wanted to know whether the car was for sale. We talked and he agreed to come back some evening before dark so he could try to get the car started. We wanted to coordinate our schedules by phone in the coming days, but he didn’t have a cell phone.
I finally saw Ben again this evening. It was after dark, so we couldn’t look at the car tonight, but he told me I could call him on his cell phone now.
He still couldn’t afford a phone, but he explained that someone he knew traded a “free government phone” to him in exchange for $8 worth of beer.
We’re happier if we learn to ‘sell’ ourselves to people who want us
Little blonde cousins are sometimes perfect antidote for life’s bleak days
End of life brought cancer patient to baptism six days before death
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
THE McELROY ZOO: Meet Munchkin, the dog who vanished without a trace
Our reactions to others’ suicides say something about how we view life
In a vulnerable moment, woman confesses she’s scared to change