Posts by Lynn Slaughter
Counting My “Lucky Days”
“This is my lucky day, Mee-Ma,” my six year old granddaughter announced. “Our class got to go swimming, I had chess club after school, and now take a look!” She proudly presented me with a bloody tooth. “Wow, the tooth fairy is going to be busy tonight,” I said.
Read MorePersonality: Invalid?
The other day, my son called up and said with a laugh, “Mom, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I have an invalid personality.” “What do you mean?” “I took this personality test, and it says I’m ‘invalid.’”
Read MoreThinking About Peyton
Okay, so I don’t have his millions—of dollars, of fans, of accolades. But the other day, when the great quarterback Peyton Manning made it official and tearfully announced his retirement after eighteen seasons, all I could think was, “I feel your pain.” The number eighteen is familiar to me. It’s the number of seasons I…
Read MoreSpring Chickens
If we’re lucky, we all get older before we die. In our youth-obsessed culture, it’s not something many of us like to think about or perhaps even acknowledge. But denial only goes so far. Here are my observations about: Six Surefire Signs You’re Not the Spring Chicken You Once Were After watching you swim laps,…
Read MoreNo Words Necessary
The call from my son came in as I drove down the highway to pick up my sixth grade grandchild. Thought I should warn you he got into big trouble today at school. He said something to a girl she really took offense to. She reported him and he ended up spending the day in…
Read MoreA Better Question
We meet someone at a cocktail party, and one of our first questions is apt to be “What do you do?” By that, we usually mean, “Where do you work?” and “What’s your job?” Whether the answer is accountant or domestic goddess, we tend to make certain assumptions about that person. Aha, we say, the…
Read MoreStill My Mom
When I was twelve, my single parent dad remarried. I was ecstatic beyond belief. My new stepmom was warm, caring, and fun-loving. Best of all, she was the first parent I’d ever had who wanted the job. It didn’t matter that most of the other kids in seventh grade thought it was babyish to hang…
Read MoreJennifer Echols Offers Refreshing Look at Teen Romance and More in Perfect Couple
High school yearbook photographer Harper is stunned when she and star quarterback Brody are voted “the Perfect Couple That Never Was.” Never mind that she’s been attracted to the handsome daredevil since their elementary school days. She’s currently dating Kennedy, the intellectual film buff and yearbook editor, and Brody’s with Grace, a popular cheerleader. Besides,…
Read MoreThe Stories We Tell Ourselves
In fiction writing, we have something called the “unreliable narrator”—a story-teller that we eventually discover can’t be counted on for objective accuracy or full disclosure. We readers often end up surprised by what the “truth” is. “Truth,” however, is a slippery concept. There is a sense in which all of us are unreliable narrators. The…
Read MoreA Different Kind of Prayer
Even though I’d volunteered to deliver the prayer at my recent MFA graduation from Seton Hill, I was a little nervous about how my version of a prayer would be received. Seton Hill is a Catholic university, and I am not Catholic—or even Christian. Instead, my faith tradition is Unitarian-Universalist. Believe it or not, the…
Read More