3521
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Mine reads: Continued involvement of a discreditable nature with civilian and military authorities. I was nineteen years old when I watched the Yeoman First Class type those words, and all I could think to say was, “Oh, come on now.”
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3151
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Stuttering is like herpes. Only disclose it to people who have to know.
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176632
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On the day my grandmother was buried, my grandfather shucked corn.
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139550
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“No, dad, I've never seen urine colored pearls.”
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12123313
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There was dad sitting at the table, wide awake, reading glasses on nose, pen in hand above a Doppler graph of numbers on paper, one of many now-lost theorems, looking up as his son walked into the room.
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97520
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There's this sepia-toned photograph, which my mother gave me, of my brother and me when we were still both youngsters. In the picture my brother's dressed in a skimpy checked suit whose sleeves were already too short for him — on its way to becoming my
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6280
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His sons have never quite looked at Charlie the way they do now.
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15061613
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The boy giggled, splashing his father and howling at the cold.
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18142521
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I found the knife in a fishing box in the closet. The box was made out of varnished wood. My father’s father had made it.
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18301712
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"If Hillary can forgive Bill, why can't you forgive Dad?" my seven-year-old son wails one night as I put him to bed.
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101252
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Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me showing you how to properly stack the wood?
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121621
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Two days before Christmas 1946, my mother put me on an Illinois Central railroad train at the whistle stop of Neoga, Illinois.
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102021
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Life to her had come to resemble one of those mazes you find in a puzzle book, inscrutable except by those with exceptional IQs. Mary would run her pencil down one path in search of the passage that might penetrate to the exit, then another, but the paths
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35311
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At one time, my father's smile was as wide as a lakebed. It was tight-lipped, but soft, as he held me in his arms as a baby. I was swaddled in a mint green blanket that would later become my comfort on nights when thunder roared…
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15741211
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pressing my hands into the voice in the bed,
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