1962 5 2
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Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.
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1962 17 10
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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"?
Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.
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1962 8 4
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I want crazy at my funeral. I want clowns, a petting zoo, fireworks, craps tables, male and female strippers, and a three-person band composed of old men wearing striped vests, black pants, and straw hats: one plays a banjo, another on tuba, and…
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1961 9 4
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Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.
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1961 6 5
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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.
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1961 4 1
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What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.
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1961 13 11
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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.
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1961 5 4
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Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar
the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.
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1961 0 0
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There’s an old journalism adage, usually uttered by editors who haven’t had their butts out of a comfy leather newsroom chair in years, which goes: “You know… the news just doesn’t walk in the door.” ... But sometimes, it does.
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1961 22 7
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Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…
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1961 14 6
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The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…
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1960 6 4
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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never
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1960 13 13
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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/
thought-in-action types
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1960 4 1
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Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an
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1960 17 15
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There he was. Minnesota Fats, short and pudgy, jowly and blond-haired.
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1960 0 0
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He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the
lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the
world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and
artists of all strip
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1960 11 5
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Hippy health food. It all began with Hannah’s homemade granola.
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1960 10 5
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1.There's a young woman in a nightclub seated next to a window out of which she watches the slow descent of snow, illuminated by strategic lights. She imagines herself falling with those flakes. Her friend has left her for the dance floor. The young woman is…
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1960 3 2
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The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders
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1960 0 0
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She turned to the window, staring into the dark. A smile crept to her lips and she laughed softly. “No, we can’t. I’m Mexican and we speak Spanish.” The smile vanished and she moved to leave. “No sé qué decir… sólo puedo llorar. Nada
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1960 21 18
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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.
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1960 5 1
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The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n
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1960 21 5
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You got a lot of people, out there
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1959 6 5
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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…
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1959 7 7
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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f
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1959 3 2
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In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?”
“Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.
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1959 6 4
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We lived in a white and mint green trailer in the woods. I was 23. The hanging of the clothes on the line made me feel kind of famous in the eyes of nature
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1959 0 0
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An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.
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1959 7 4
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The things we do for books, she thought.
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1959 4 1
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He lit my cigarette even though he didn't want me to smoke. Buying me drinks all night, he didn't complain, but he thought I drank too much.
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