400 Words: The Literature of Everyday Life

Archive for August 2007

Erase Me

by Chuck—Age 32—Hollywood, CA
Age 5, my father sits me on his lap in his Oldsmobile and lets me drive us into a snow bank and then yells at me. I later have nightmares about being in cars until I have my own license. Later, my mother teaches me how to drive in a cemetery.
Age 10, […]

The Dog Ate My Life

by Rosemarie—Age 55—Los Angeles, CA
Sixteen, working behind the deli counter that’s taller than me, the same old man comes every week to buy a half pound of nose-snotty, slip-ploppy, ripped-out-alien-guts oysters.
Seventeen, singing folk songs for the Friday night country clubbers’ dinner hour, I am not discovered.
Nineteen, one month pregnant with her, I need a job. […]

Director of Domestic Bliss

by Lorri—Age 44—Renton, WA
My most ill-suited job was as a babysitter, which I quit after a boy three years younger and two inches taller wrapped me in a rug and rolled me into the hall closet, singsonging his version of a popular commercial: “You know how my dad spells relief? F-U-C-K-I-N-G.”
My favorite job […]

Sentences

by Holly–Age 37–Spokane, WA
Age 17:
Waitressed at The Huckleberry, in the mountain town of McCall, Idaho. I was eager to please. Customers scared me. Coworkers slipped me Xanax. Later, in college, I studied for tests with one sentence taped to my desk: Never Waitress Again.
Age 22:
Graduated with a B.A. in English; moved home, waitressed again. One […]