Author Archives: Sarah

But daaaaad!

custer.jpg
Southwest Custer County, Nebraska, 1892
“Yes, you will play the bass.”
“But dad, I can’t reach all the notes!”
“Don’t ‘but dad’ me, young man, I paid for it, now you’ll play it!”
“Awwww, maaaaaan.”

Sherman Alexie gives me a boner

From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian:

“But you should approach each book — you should approach life — with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point.”
“A metaphorical boner!” I shouted. “What the heck is a metaphorical boner?”
Gordy laughed.
“When I say boner, I really mean joy,” he said.
“Then why don’t you say joy? You didn’t have to say boner. Whenever I think about boners, I get confused.”
“Boner is funnier. And more joyful.”

And so many are in Oregon and Utah

As an impressionable youth, I was always horrified and fascinated by the ads in the back of Sunset magazine for various wilderness survival camps and boarding schools for children who had become “defiant.” How defiant would you have to be to get sent away? Well, turns out these places are even worse than I thought, according to a GAO report. It turns out that combining parental fears, large sums of money, and nearly no oversight can result in tragedy.