April 2012
2 posts
Handwriting Analysis
Due to the legally sensitive nature of the post below lets all just say this MIGHT have happened.
Several months after my father passed away my sister was still in our hometown taking care of the important things that need to be done when a loved one dies unexpectedly. Because I could not be there in person I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to get my father’s estate in order but my...
April 13, 2009
The last time I got my hopes up for a New York Mets game in April was back in 2009 because I was going to be in New York for the Mets home opener, which happened to be their first game at the then brand new Citi Field.
My father called me a few days before I left LA for NY to tell me that he scored us a pair of tickets to the game even though it had been sold out for months. He had a knack for...
March 2012
1 post
1 tag
Breakin' Barriers
In 1984 I was 10 years old and desperately seeking the three B’s: baseball, boobs and break-dancing.
Baseball was readily available; I could watch games on TV all spring and summer.
Thanks to limited parental supervision there was easy access to grown up movies and magazines so the second B was accounted for with shocking regularity.
Break-dancing on the other hand, was the most elusive of the...
February 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Celebrity Snow Days
This short entry appeared on my now defunct old blog many years ago but I was reminded of it today following the passing of the Monkees Davy Jones.
When John Lennon was shot I was only six years old. I remember my mom crying, but I don’t remember being sad because I got to stay home from school. This started the bittersweet tradition of the Celebrity Snow Day.
A few years later it happened...
1 tag
Headaches and Signs
In my early 20’s I begun to suffer from terribly painful headaches. Not migraines, just painful headaches. This was around 1997 a time when I taking home about $200 week and then finding a way to pay rent, keep my car insured and eat. My primary entertainment was sitting in my studio apartment with a headache and keeping these headaches a secret from people.
By the spring of 1997 I had been...
2 tags
Bring Enough For Everyone
Nobody told us what happened inside of the building across the street before my mother rented the house in the summer of 1983. Since we moved in over a weekend it was a few days before we found out that the small white building was an industrial bread bakery. As far as we were concerned, that summer we had arrived in paradise.
Our version of paradise was a high ranch three bedroom house on a dirt...
January 2012
1 post
A Year Of Billy Joel: Streetlife Serenader →
ayearofbillyjoel:
Song: Streetlife Serenader
Album: Streetlife Serenade (1974)
Over the course of the month I’ve been working on A Year of Billy Joel, five different people have contacted me to warn me about the album Streetlife Serenade. Their messages boiled down to the following warning: Streetlife…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here because I’ve been working...
December 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Making It Last A Little Longer
As a kid I would come to the sad realization every Christmas night that it was over.
The weeks of planning and anticipation had ended with opening presents earlier that day. The food had been eaten, the relatives had been seen and by 8 PM on Christmas night there was nothing left to do but go to my room. As a kid this seemed unfair.
I often wondered why I lived in a world where Labor Day and...
2 tags
The Tree Dream
My dad had a dream about the family and our Christmas tree. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, he would crank up the holiday music and start setting the tree up in hopes that it would come true.
The Christmas tree dream went like this: He’d set up the tree and the lights and then we’d each take turns placing an ornament on the tree until the tree was perfect. This was designed to bring us...
1 tag
Two Types Of Family Gift Giving
Part One- Holidays in Stereo
By the fall of 1984 my parents had been separated for more than three years. While we were doing better than we had been the first two years, things were still far from easy for my mother. When Christmas came around that year mom reminded me that money was really tight and Christmas was going to be very simple. I didn’t need a reminder but I told her that I...
3 tags
The Infamous Holiday Story
By the time the holidays arrived in 1995 I had already moved out of my father’s house. Since I was technically going to be a guest in the house where I used to live I called my father a few days before Christmas to ask if I could bring anything. I should have expected the response I got:
“I’ve been doing this for a while, I think I got it. Just be on time.” He told me.
I had been on my own for...
2 tags
Don't Wake the Kids
By the time the news of John Lennon’s death broke I was already asleep. My parents, sometimes woke me up to watch TV with them but not that night. Usually they woke me because there was a particularly good Star Trek or Odd Couple rerun on but on this night they let me sleep. It’s easier to explain space travel and divorce than it is to explain death. A month earlier they had also let...
November 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Life And Death On The West Side
“Please don’t do this. He’s his best friend.”
My mother was begging my father to not leave the house, to not take me with him and to not do what he said he was going to do when we got out there. I was waiting by the door in my blue and orange Mets jacket hoping that my mother would win this argument.
They were fighting about my best friend. He was a boy in my class who had everything better that...
3 tags
Visitation
Except for the empty closet, the place didn’t look any different than the last time I was there. The furniture was in the same places, the beds were still made from the day we left and the toys had been sitting untouched for weeks. The closet in my room was empty though. My clothes, along with my brother and sister’s clothes had all been packed into bags and taken away with us when we left.
...
2 tags
Maps and Legends
Based on the traffic at that time of night, I figured I had an hour to get the place presentable before she arrived. I was already wearing the nicest shirt and jacket I owned so I just had to make the place look a little less like a single guy’s apartment than it usually looked.
Washing the dishes and making the bathroom (barely) presentable was easy enough and since my roommate was out of town I...
1 tag
The Good Doctor
My wife and I hadn’t planned on waking up before dawn on a Sunday to run a 10K race but as the sun came up over Santa Monica on that October morning we were stretching our legs and looking for Lisa near the starting line. We did not see her face but somewhere among the thousands of runners she was there.
Lisa had invited us to participate in the race and we jumped at the opportunity because...
October 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Sunday Mornings Never Change
Two weeks ago I found myself driving through my hometown at 7 AM looking for a place to get coffee. I pulled into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts and walked inside. It was Sunday and the line was shorter than I expected. I looked around for a newspaper but couldn’t find one so I walked up to the counter and ordered coffee.
I was hungry but I couldn’t bring myself to order a breakfast sandwich...
Please Pardon The Delay
Hello,
I apologize for the lack of new story. For the last several days I have been back in my hometown, the place where many of my sentimental accidents have taken place. I have come home to see a good friend get married and to help out with some family issues and I’ll be here for the next several days.
Something new as soon as things calm down.
Thank you,
Will
2 tags
Something To Bring Home
Every Sunday my great-grandmother cooked for the entire family. Cooking for 25 people or more required a day and a half of work and two kitchens. She used the upstairs kitchen for baking and the downstairs kitchen to prepare meatballs, sauce and pasta.
Every Sunday my brother, sister and I would arrive at my great-grandmother’s before noon. My father, who adored and admired his grandmother,...
reflectedsunlight asked: Are your stories true?
3 tags
Painless Dentistry
A few years after moving to Los Angeles I returned home to Long Island for Christmas. I flew in on December 23rd and headed straight to a friends house for a holiday party. For the first few hours in my hometown everything was going just fine but as the night wore on things took a turn for the worse.
Shortly after midnight I left the party and headed to my father’s house where I would be...
September 2011
9 posts
4 tags
Temporary Secretary: Part Two
The first part of this story can be found here.
I didn’t look up as I walked past my father on my way out of the bar because I didn’t want him to see me leaving. Out on the sidewalk I considered my options for a minute and looked for a payphone.
I was walking towards the corner my father burst through the door of the bar and called my name. I stopped and turned around but didn’t say a word. We...
4 tags
Temporary Secretary
Part one of a two part story.
I’ll never forget the night I spent with my father in September 1997. It was the first time anyone asked me how my mother died.
We were drinking at a bar in the Bronx when my father had introduced me to his secretary. My father’s job as a construction foreman didn’t require a lot of typing so it was unlikely that he actually had a secretary but I didn’t want to ruin a...
Anonymous asked: Just thought you should know that as I was microwaving my lunch, I thought "I hope be the boy wrote another story". I love to read your posts whilst I dine at my desk. I've been reading for a long time - from NY and now from Austin. Can't wait for the book.
5 tags
Checking Accountability
My father and I were ready for dinner when the phone rang in the kitchen. Linda, my father’s wife, was still in the kitchen getting a drink so she answered the phone. She told the caller to hang on and put the receiver down on the counter. My father assumed it was for him because I rarely received calls. He started to get up from the table but stopped when Linda said:
“Sam, The Boathouse is...
1 tag
Anonymous asked: Not really questions as much as 3 statements: 1) You are a tremendous writer. Your ability to paint such clear pictures with words is amazing. 2) The last few stories written about your childhood have been extremely compelling, both from subject matter and the quality of your writing. 3) Damn you for making me tear up at work over a wooden spoon.
3 tags
Good Enough For Goodbye
Note: I’ve told the story below a few times but it’s the one I go back to whenever I’m going through a tough time. Today I’m having some trouble but it’s nothing that won’t pass. For some reason, this story brings always makes me feel better so I’m sharing it with you. I was reminded of this story after reading this post by Rob Delaney.
Good Enough For...
2 tags
Early Dismissal
In a move that can best be described as “not completely thought out” my parents decided to have a baby while they were both still teenagers. When my mother was 16 and my father was 18 she got pregnant and they got married. My mother moved into my father’s room at his parent’s house and soon afterward I was born.
Then, as if to show they weren’t kidding around, they had another baby two and a...
5 tags
A Great Day For Ice Cream
One of the highlights of my childhood was the trips we took to Carvel. Unfortunately these trips didn’t happen that often. This wasn’t because of a lack of Carvel locations; there were at least five of them within ten miles of my house selling soft serve ice cream and Fudgie The Whale cakes. The problem was my family.
According to my family, Carvel was strictly for special occasions: Birthdays,...
5 tags
Tape Delayed Viewing
For most of my life, from September through December, my father and I watched the New York Jets play on Sundays. It was our tradition.
However, this tradition was placed on hold in the fall of 1995. I had been living on my own and working two part-time jobs to pay my way through college. If I wasn’t at class, I was at work. My schedule meant no Sunday football, but my father would tape the games...
August 2011
3 posts
4 tags
End of Days Cake
Monday September 12, 1988 was the worst possible time for the world to end. I was 14 and just getting the hang of smoking, the Mets were about to lock up a playoff spot and after years of struggling with financial problems and poor decision-making, things were finally looking up for my family.
Two years earlier we would have welcomed the apocalypse, but on the day it was all scheduled to end we...
4 tags
What's My Name
My name is Will, short for William. On every official document my name is listed as William but if you ask my family and childhood friends what my name is they would swear to the fact that my name is Sam. There was a time when I did the same.
The confusion began on June 18, 1974, the day I was born in Amityville New York. My parents had met about a year earlier and immediately fell madly into an...
1 tag
Welcome To My New Home
Hello there reader. Welcome to the latest (and possibly greatest) place I’ve called home on the Internet.
My name is Will and I’ve been telling stories about my life and the people around me for years. These stories have been spread out across a number of online locations and a few offline ones, under various assumed identities.
This site will be bringing many of these stories...