To my mother I said, “I asked you, told you more than twice, please Mom, no ‘welcome home’ party, please,” but she stared at me and smiled and said, “This isn’t a party. It’s a…
Posts published by “Doug Holland”
My odd job for the morning was from a voice mail that came last night, in the early evening. A man said he was calling from a donut shop in the Sunset, and the guy…
As with many mistakes in life and a few smart moves, this story starts with a girl. Shari was her name, or it might have been Sharri. All my life has happened since then, so…
I was a temp worker, doing brainless clerical work in an office. In the back of the same building, the company had their factory, churning out medical equipment. It wasn’t a high-tech product, because nobody…
The email to all employees seemed so darn happy: “Our newly-remodeled snack-room is now open! Stop by on your break!” So far so good. And then the next sentence: “A vendor rep is on-site to…
It was the summer of 1977. I was fresh out of high school, living on my own, generally disinterested in the church but not yet an atheist. Once a month I attended the church I…
My dad's motto was, "If you're going to do something, do it right." He had a thousand inspirational clichés, but that was the one that stuck with me the most. "If you're painting the wall,"…
I was about twelve years old when Harold and Maude came out, in 1971. At that age I only went to the movies if my parents took us kids to see G-rated dreck. I wasn't…
A youngish white guy comes into the diner. He's clean-cut and wearing a suit and tie, and he sits a few stools away from an ancient bald man who sometimes has oxygen tubes in his…