Insane Earthlings

Thomas was never on time for work. There were days when he would call in to say he was running late, and then never actually make it in. And as time went on, there were days when he did not call or show up for work at all. I was the Director of Manufacturing at the medical device plant where Thomas was employed. I know what you are thinking. And believe me, everyone who worked at the company was thinking the same thing.  Thomas should be fired.  But none of us wanted to do it. His absenteeism became chronic. He started making up excuses for why he was late or why he had missed the last day or three days. Or the last two weeks. There were times that he missed work for so long that we assumed he had quit. Then he would show up with some cockamamie story about why he had not been able to make it or get in touch. We should have fired him by every reasonable and objective measure. But we didn’t. Thomas was a nice guy. I know that sounds lame. He was nic...

It was my second Christmas. I was not even two years old. I don’t remember it of course, but there is the photo . My father, a news photographer, took thousands of pictures of me and my siblings over the years. There are a lot of great photos of the four of us. But this photo taken of us posing with our gifts around the perfectly decorated Christmas tree is special. It’s iconic. It documents a defining moment in our lives as three brothers and one sister. It would be our only Christmas in a town that none of us were born in. The one year that my father sought the greener grass of the New York Times owned newspaper in Chattanooga. A year idealized in my mind by the recounted stories my parents and siblings shared about our year living atop a mountain. The year my older siblings would sit, barefoot, in the open windows of the local church on Sundays. The windows that they would hop out of when the sermon was finished. And then they would dash to our little homestead, carefree and ha...