The Other Awkward Age
By Terry Barr I watch her remove the jar of Maxwell House from the top kitchen cabinet. She lets me sniff the stuff inside, the coffee, in the only form I’ll know it for many years. She spoons two helpings into her open dull-green cup, one of a set of six. Except for the colder … Continue reading Having Backbone
By Jennifer Niesslein I wish I could bring all of us together for a holiday party. The last time I got together with some FGP people, some things that you just can’t through reading and emailing. For instance, I learned that Kim Kankiewicz once gave a voice lesson to Emily Kinney, the actress who played … Continue reading FGP’s Virtual Holiday Party
By Karen Dempsey We’re climbing the hill where I used to search for arrowheads. But we are in the car. It is night, dark. And we can see only the small patches of road illuminated by our headlights. My father is driving and he knows the turns from memory. In preparing for this trip, I’ve … Continue reading The Little House
Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it! Merry Meal at Your Favorite Chinese Restaurant, if you don’t!
Full Grown People will be back on Friday with a new essay (one I can barely wait for you all to read!), but to tide you over in the meanwhile, here’s a handy list of what some of the massively talented FGP contributors have had published elsewhere. A little re-gifting in a good way, if you will.
xo, Jennifer
We piled into a long, rented passenger van. Two of the juniors, Dan and Mike, had already claimed “driver” and “co” and instituted the rule that driver chooses music, setting us up for sixteen solid hours of Phish.
I crunched in next to a wiry kid with a mess of black hair.
“Benjamin.” He grinned, showing off a shiny retainer. “Freshman.”
I was a college sophomore headed out on a road trip from Boston to Savannah with a dozen kids I didn’t know. It was a Habitat for Humanity volunteer trip—not exactly MTV Spring Break. But, for me, that wasn’t really the noteworthy part.
I don’t need an introvert/extrovert quiz to know where I fall on the spectrum of personality types. I’ve always been a person who lingers most comfortably near the edges of things, enjoying the view from a distance. Even at nineteen years old, my ideal break would have looked more like a low-key trip with a good friend, or week at home in Buffalo with the people who knew me best.
But some small part of me had pushed to try it for once: fall fully and inescapably into the center of something unfamiliar, with a whole group of people I didn’t know pressed in close. And I’m being literal here, because, as I settled into my seat, Benjamin the freshman was making the case that he should be allowed to sleep on me.
“I need to buy some underwear and return a bra,” I said to my father—very directly— as he rode beside me in the car. “Do you have any errands you need to run?”
He shrugged. “I’ll just come with you.”
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