Free Post Battle Front: Short Fiction Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from PixabayThe winds picked up outside of the barracks at Camp Shelby. Captain Roger Greenwood, a Tennessee Army Guardsman, reclined on a worn leather sofa in the dayroom of a dilapidated Vietnam Era barrack. His soldiers
Free Post The Russian Lesson Photo by Iza Gawrych / UnsplashRegardless of your age, take some time and learn another language. In the next room, I hear the unmistakable chatter of a foreign language. Actually, I hear my bride, Inna, speaking Russian, which is not all that unusual as she
Free Post The Pinecone Kicker (Short Fiction) Greer never gave up on his dream, although his body had reservationsPhoto by Brayden George / UnsplashGreer Davidson took a light and guarded step, planted his foot onto the football field, shifted his weight, and swung his right leg toward an object perched in the
Free Post Life Lessons A Few Thoughts on Making Good Decisions When our girls were little, we’d take them to every possible VBS we could find. Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Church of Christ, Church of God, Catholic, Free Range, Wiccan, didn’t matter.
Free Post Life Lessons Sweet Ice Tea, Siberian Size Jars, and Broken Glass How I learned to appreciate the joys of hot teaPhoto by Alex Boyd / Unsplash“You’re doing this wrong.” Don’t you get tired of these stupid headlines? I do! You’re Eating Apples All WrongYou’re Making Beans All WrongYou’re Eating Pizza
Free Post Living With Russians The Race to a Better Matchstick Photo by Anne Nygård / UnsplashOr, how I taught my Russian mother-in-law to appreciate paper book matchesA long time ago, I went to Russia. I met, fell in love with, and married my translator. Not long after we got married my Russian bride and I
Free Post Growing Up How to Overcome Shyness by Being Anonymous Unexpected Lessons in CommunicationPhoto by Ben Wicks / UnsplashMy dad is on the top of a 40-foot pine tree next to our house, but it’s okay. No, really. He has emphysema, a bad heart, 40 year’s worth of very hard-living, an unfiltered cigarette
Free Post Life Lessons What Breaking My Leg Taught Me About Priorities How using crutches had unintended but beneficial consequencesPhoto by Mike Montgomery / UnsplashThe impact threw me from the motorcycle into the air in the opposite direction of the way we had been traveling. Physics is funny like that! I landed on my right leg, which
Free Post Life Lessons A Quick Lesson About Managing Expectations Do this, and you’ll be way ahead in the game of lifePhoto by Ross Findon / UnsplashI tell my wife and daughters all the time to manage their expectations. Whether it’s a new job, new boyfriend, new car, fast food, new conspiracy theory,
Free Post Life Lessons The High Price of Bad Assumptions The real reason why you shouldn’t store water in gasoline containersPhoto by Klara Kulikova / UnsplashMy translator’s mother, who had a broken leg at the time, hops into the small Russian made car, which looks like a cheap ripoff of a 1970s Toyota
Free Post Life Lessons That Time We Almost Got Killed at the Gas Station Although MythBusters said it couldn’t happen, I still don’t recommend this activityPhoto by Carl Nenzen Loven / UnsplashI’m probably 15 or 16 years old riding around the metropolis of Saraland, Alabama with two guys I knew from our neighborhood. While I don’
Free Post Living With Russians When the Mean U.S. Embassy Worker Wouldn’t Give Us A Visa How patience paid off when we decided to get marriedPhoto by Karson / UnsplashFor a long time after the American Embassy in Moscow denied her request for a visa, I thought about getting my fiancé (somehow) to Mexico and then crossing the southern border into
Free Post Life Lessons Avoiding Tunnel Vision You should read those highway signs about tunnel height restrictionsPhoto by Raghav Kabra / UnsplashThere were no signs warning me not to drive into the tunnel with an empty gas tank. I was driving my mom’s Ford Focus, which was embarrassing enough. The next
Free Post Life Lessons What I learned about my inability to sing When people don’t like your singingPhoto by Navi Photography / UnsplashAt the end of the year in elementary school, the band teacher at the middle school arrived to test us, fifth graders, to see who had “the music.” If you had the music, you
Free Post Life Lessons Congratulations, you’re pregnant And other fun stuff you should probably save for after law schoolPhoto by Everton Vila / UnsplashThere are a few things that professors will tell you not to do when you are in law school: don’t get married, don’t have a baby, or
