My first day in school was really my second day — Jangchup Phelygal The Radiators That Ticked Heat into the Room — Laura Rhoton McNeal Rear Rank Rudy — Jim Morris Forget-me-nots — Rosa Colwin …

A bell rings. The big metal door flies open, and hallway sounds of boisterous chitter-chatter rush into the empty classroom like lake water breaching an ill-built dam. Now comes a paddling of young humans, averaging …

I never made it to my first day of school. Or rather, I made it there, but I didn't stay. That is, the first day I ever went to school, I was there for all …

'Do you think you're pretty?" A strip of tawny brown hair, chewed at the ends, dawdles by her nose. She stands at the top of the stairs and tilts her head to the side, flipping …

I don't remember much from my childhood. Why this is, I don't know. I was happy; I remember that much. I came from an intact, loving, financially stable home. But when I go poking around …

If there were nursery schools on the northwest side of Chicago in the late 1950s, I knew nothing about them. The other preschoolers on my block and I negotiated our way through those years when …

Faded memories There's a line in the 1986 movie Stand by Me about "never having friends like the ones you have when you're young." This came to mind recently while I was going through old …

Jess's Ford roaring up my driveway woke me up. I looked at the clock, 7:15. I was supposed to be awake at 7:00. I was in the shower when I heard Jess yell from my …

"God is involved in a lot of ways in hurricane Katrina," said Seth Pruitt, the worship leader at Ethnos. "God is sovereign. He allowed Katrina to occur. In allowing it to occur, He has a …

Upon my return from Boston, where I attend college, and dizzy with the prospects of home, the customary pile of mail one expects after a long sojourn greeted me. Two thin off-white envelopes lay within …

"Coffee, please," I say and hold back on snapping my fingers and yelling, "Quick! Quick! Move! Move!" She understands the unspoken commands and slides a clear, textured glass of ice water in front of me. …

Tim Walter is the technical director at On Broadway, downtown -- that's a fancy name for a VJ (video jockey). "There's a unique balance found in the chaos, which, as of late, is very joyful," …

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive …

Envy: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison. Random House, 2005; $24.95; 301 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: Will, a Brooklyn psychoanalyst and almost-identical twin, has a good sex life-with the woman he married. So why then …

Jewel has decided not to release a book of love poems she calls "too steamy, too private" for publication. In a message posted at www.jeweljk.com, the 31-year-old explains, "They're too explicit...when I wrote these poems, …

Obscured by Fog and black hooded gowns, Goblin Cock tore through their debut show at the Casbah on August 20. The band, led by "Lord Phallus," crawled from the shadows to fuse the sounds of …

"Rampant Liver-Defying Consumption" is promised at Rocket From The Crypt's final show on Halloween. "After 16 years of scars and ear damage all in the name of spreading goodwill and the Rock N Roll doctrine," …

"It's very hard to get Balboa Park between Memorial Day and Labor Day," says Benny Garcia, a promoter based in Orange County. For two years he's been seeking approval from the city to let him …

Candye Kane won't be doing lap dances at Tio Leo's tomorrow night; she'll be singing with her blues band. However, members of the Fat Bottom Girls will shake their booties during the ten-woman burlesque troupe's …

Twenty years ago, concert promoter Bill Silva predicted that there would eventually be two concert markets in San Diego County: North County and metro San Diego. In other words, the same artist could play both …

Clear Channel Entertainment holds exclusive rights to book the Sports Arena. Sources say the agreement won't be renewed when it expires in December. As the largest concert company in the U.S., Clear Channel Entertainment dominates …

One of Hot Snakes' final recordings is featured on Activision's video game soundtrack to Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. They do a cover of Government Issue's "Time to Escape." Saves the Day, Thrice, My Chemical Romance, …

I was enthusiastic about it from the start. World War II had ended only three years before, and I had spent my early childhood poring over battle maps in the evening paper, reading comic books …

Forget those jokes: blondes are not dumb. The proof is the former Nancy Hoover Hunter -- now named Nancy Fletcher and once again living in luxury in San Diego County. She and her husband of …

In early September 2001, Carol Eklund went to Paris for a fashion show. She was looking for new lines to offer sales representatives of a wholesale business she had started two years earlier. Her return …

Last Sunday morning, August 28, at about 7 a.m., I left my apartment on St. Charles Avenue to evacuate New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina closed in. The night before, my parents had plans to "vertically …

Los Pinos Mountain's 4805-foot height hardly places it in the same league as the nearby, higher peaks of the Cuyamacas and Lagunas, but the peak does get some recognition as the site of one of …

With the city's finances in tatters, the Union-Tribune has lately been talking up the idea of raising taxes. In a lengthy front-page story a week ago Sunday, headlined "America's cheapest city," the newspaper set forth …

Mary Jackson founded a ministry in Barrio Logan. She helps women learn job skills. Mary drives a new Honda Element. “Do you want to hear how I got such a nice car?” she asks. I …

Two of my brothers-in-law are superstars in karaoke world. Carl and Leon are both tall, handsome, wannabe Vegas singers. Leon, whose curly hair earned him the nickname David Hasselhoff, favors cheesy '80s rock ballads: Journey, …

When the fall quarter began in 1972, I vowed to make no new friends at school. I was a third-year graduate student in literature at U.C. Irvine. I was finishing coursework and would take qualifying …

It was the first week of September, must have been. I was 13 and it was 1964. JFK was dead less than a year, but the Beatles were making us feel better about it. I …

The second day of seventh grade, the students of my new junior high were having a sit-in in the library over open campus. There were about 40 of them on the floor between the stacks, …

It looks as if you're cradling a baby goat in your arms while something explodes from its backside. Right wrist rests atop left elbow. Right elbow rests atop left wrist. Right pinky and index finger …

On August 24, 1968, Mary McBride and I stood one mile south of Hawthorne, Nevada. It was 108 degrees, and we hadn't eaten in a day or had a change of clothes in two. She …

The first day of higher education started for me with morning ablutions in my own private bathroom. I had one of the few single rooms on the dorm's fourth floor, and baths adjoined no other …

Authentic Afghan cuisine is hard to find. For several years, Chopahn restaurant was an overlooked storefront in a huge mall up near UTC. "When we were in the Renaissance Towne Center, people often drove right …

Day one, 5 a.m. I am buttoned into an immaculate uniform, my polished black shoes sport steel toes, I carry a whip, rubber spreader, and an 11-inch slicer. My heart bangs at over 100 beats …

'If you know that the good guys aren't so good, you're a Raiders fan. If you know you've been jacked and are waiting for revenge, you're a Raiders fan. If you know your boss isn't …

My parents had taught me that, as a Catholic, I was a member of the One True Church. But the Catholic school I attended in first, second, and third grades stopped teaching that kind of …

“The wet laboratory of your mouth is not always the same.”

“We realized this was not our soup. It was the customers’. They’re very possessive.”

The winter I was in fifth grade, my father brought home a National Geographic book that seemed to consist entirely of swamp photographs. He turned the thick, glossy pages for me, and I stared at …

Movies reviewed this week: Crimen Perfecto, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Memory of a Killer, and A Sound of Thunder

What a brown land, I thought, peering out of a late-'80s station wagon, at the chaparral-covered mountains looming over the Santa Clarita Valley. I was headed to a Great Books college, Thomas Aquinas, tucked away …

I enjoy Evite party invitations for the on-line responses from people who are showing up or declining. A woman named Bonnie (an editor at WORD San Diego) sent me an Evite: "Bring a dish to …

First day of kindergarten, newly arrived in Boston, newly separated from my best friend (and neighbor) Andy, doing the standard weeping thing, even though I had attended preschool back in upstate New York and loved …

Graduate school started not with a bang or with a whimper, but with the slow fall of a scarf down my head and over my eyes. Three things terrified me about my arrival at Brown …

Dear Matt, I won't join a circus to find out so this task goes to you Matt, you find the answer to nearly anything we experience in day-to-day life. What propels the human cannonballs? I …

Thirty Years Ago I left San Diego at 1:00 p.m. on the 21st of July for Vancouver, British Columbia. I had been rapping about how much fun I was going to have for so long …

It was September 1950, and that first day of school my brown uniform shirt scratched, the heavy corduroy pants were stiff with newness, my suspenders would not stay up, and my new shoes (bought a …

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. — Andre Dubus I had it all planned out. During the last week …