3 miles away: “Good-Looking”

I look perfect, firm, and strong, but once you take me home, you’ll find out just how rotten I am. You probably won’t want to bother going all the way back to the market to start looking again, so you’ll hang on to me longer than you should. When friends say you’re trying too hard, you’ll point out that I have good and bad parts, like everyone else. But in the end, you’ll realize I wasn’t worth it. And I’ll feel angry that you tried to use me.

4 miles away: “Taking It Slow”

You’ll notice that my exterior is particularly hard, but you’ll keep telling…

(Rain Or Shine)

1. The people who said schools were teaching kids to be radical, wanted them back in class real fast.

2. Schools were holding seminars on how to cut down on kids’ screen time — via Zoom

3. Folks saw something disturbing on the news and asked why the media wasn’t covering it

4. The president told suburban women that they wouldn’t be bothered by people living in subsidized housing, while he was living in subsidized housing.

5. The same people who believed coronavirus was exaggerated also proclaimed they probably already survived it because they were coughing in November 2019.

6…

Don’t catch feelings.

Be the “chill girl.”

No regrets.

The fear might be more dangerous than the disease…

As of this year, people are considered “fearmongers” if they talk honestly about a pandemic in which 40,000 people have died in fewer than two months.

I’ve got an idea.

Let’s be strong and admit that it’s ok to be scared of a once-in-a-century virus that sometimes appears to kill quickly and indiscriminately.

People have searched for reasons to believe it won’t affect them — to believe their fairy tale that it will only touch certain people. “Oh, it’s only people with…

I’ve made a lot of resolutions and broken them, so why bother? For this year, here are resolutions for all the rest of you.

1. If you start a sentence with “I don’t know how to tell you this” or “I don’t know how to say this,” you’ll end there, both for reasons of morality and accuracy.

2. You will not buzz me into your apartment for half a second so that I end up bouncing off the second door and having to go back and re-buzz. …

New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day may just be the deadliest 24 hours for domestic violence. From 5 p.m. New Year’s Eve in 2017 to 5 p.m. New Year’s Day in 2018, 10 women across the U.S. — different ages, socioeconomic groups, and ethnicities — were killed by a past or present partner. For comparison’s sake, on an average day, two or three women are killed by intimate partners.

If it happens again this year, will one of the 10 victims be someone you know, or will one of the perpetrators be someone in your family who you worry…

I see them every year, without exception, starting around Thanksgiving — three or four (never fewer) Facebook posts from friends and acquaintances who are disappointed they’ll be alone for the holidays. They don’t want to impose on their friends (they say it’s demoralizing to feel “like a charity case”), yet they’re frustrated that they have to remind relatives (if they have them) to reach out. These self-described “holiday orphans” are isolated for various reasons. In some cases, alienation or complex relationships divided their families, but in others, relatives simply didn’t bother to ask if the person had somewhere to go.

…

Dullsville

12 Morton Lane: Gives out BBBats which “s-s-suck,” and “no one eats them even when fr-fr-free.” The skeleton hanging on the door is “fitting,” because “once you see what they’re giving out you’ll stay skinny forever.” The two BMW’s in the driveway are “misleading.”

The Doubting Thomases

173 Medford Road: Old couple gives out bags of cashews and shelled peanuts “because no one had food allergies when they were growing up” and “it’s probably a hoax” and “today’s kids ought to ‘toughen up.’ ” However, both husband and wife “lack a medical degree.”

Rich Cheapskates

88 Charles St.: This house “gives out Mary Janes,” prompting…