Somewhere between making New Year’s Resolutions and that point where people give up on resolutions, I found myself drawn to a sport I had previously ignored: golf. I always loved nature, grass, trees, lakes, and a long, hot walk in the coastal lushness. …

Harry Potter had an invisibility cloak — and it was AWESOME! He and a friend or two could hide under the cloak and escape detection. That blanket saved Harry so many times. And wouldn’t it be FUN?! I would love to get my hands on that serape. Unfortunately, I know…

“Come on, Steven! You’re gonna miss the bus!,” My dad hollered from the kitchen. “I know! I KNOW, all right? I’m going as fast as I can!” I scrambled through the room, putting my backpack on and twisting behind his chair and out the door. “Well, you need to go…

Everybody hated Ms. Walker. She was never nice. She made a girl cry. She was a dictator. She had no patience. She had no smile. She had no soul. She had forty incorrigibles in third period English. I don’t know how she survived. When I was in eighth grade (1981–82)…

My dad once rescued a kid trapped in a hangman’s noose. Daddy grew up near the Esso plant in East Baton Rouge. Next door lived a troublemaker. The bad seed. He could hardly tell the story without shaking his head over the neighbor kid’s evil ways. One day the teenager…

Long ago I taught 12th-grade English alongside a great teacher named Rick. Today we both teach in colleges. Anyway, one of his courses provided both high school and college credit, and a student walked in boldly one morning and announced: "My mom wants to know why you gave her paper an F! She got a C on it at Prairie View A&M!"

I often asked myself why I had children in private school. It was an extravagant luxury — something others could afford, but not me. I had spent years teaching in public schools — were they so bad? Everyone I know attended public schools. Yet each time I questioned the decision…

Too often on stage, film, and in paintings and stained glass, Jesus comes across as both physically weak and mentally confused by his circumstances. The pale, apparently malnourished “victim” seems surprised by the way public opinion turns against him, never having imagined that the cross lay ahead. That seems to…

When television is good, nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.” Newton Minow, 1961.* My friend is a television and movie lover. No one knows more about Hollywood’s Golden Age and the movies and movie stars that made it golden than a friend I will call…