If I had a million dollars, then I would blow 50 bucks on chocolate. All kinds: dark, milk, Persian. (I’m not so sure about Persian, but whatever) . . . After that, I think I’ll blow the rest on a 5-story high mansion, with a pool and an assortment of different beach chairs. Relax!

“You see the ‘Skins last night?” This man, the man in the green hat, looks to be in his late thirties. He is wearing dark blue jeans and has a goatee.

“Yeah, close game. Fuck the Cowboys. ‘Least the Ravens won.” This man has a blue hat, and looks to be younger than the other man, but must still be in his thirties. He is wearing light black jeans and also has a goatee, but his chin beard extends three inches down his neck. Without this nuance, the two men would be indistinguishable.

“The Rams fucking suck, though.”

Students walk around the twelve or so sidewalk squares that have been blocked off, staring intently at the work of the two culprits.

“Why do you think they are doing that?” His friend just shrugs and stares forward.

A blonde girl passes near the blocked area to go into McCoy. The man in the green hat looks at the girl, eyeing her behind, then looks at the other man and raises his eyebrows. The other man nods in approval, then looks at me catching the situation. I look down at my paper to write some more. A few minutes later the man in the blue hat lights a cigarette, and both men leave in Green Hat Man’s truck. Leaves scurry uphill 34^th street to North Charles, fluttering over the broken sidewalk. Some rise over the square clefts, others not.

Other people pass, giving the sidewalk only a glance. Their names were not on that sidewalk; they are probably going to be remembered a different way. Those people whose names were on the sidewalk might not have had another way of being remembered. Now, because Hopkins sent two men to break the sidewalk, our names exist only in gray pebbles and ash.

—Nicholas Sanchez

“A recipe for Severn Inn Southwestern Quiche, which appeared Nov. 28(!), listed an incorrect number of eggs. The recipe call for 12 whole eggs, not three. The Sun regrets the error.”

I love imagining the scene. Cue would-be chef following the flawed recipe: “A quiche with only three eggs and a dozen red peppers? Ah well, here goes . . . “

“Have a honey stick for the Jewish New Year!” she says. She gingerly hands a honey stick to a student passerby.

“Thank you,” the student replies and adjusts her glasses. She walks away.

A few students walk leisurely up and down the marble steps. The sun starts to peek through the clouds as people stop at the top of the Breezeway to see the Jewish Student Association’s (JSA) table.

“Oh my god, is this your club? How have you been?” one student says to the guy manning the JSA’s set-up.

Crayons and markers roll down the table’s wooden planks where some students decorate cards for U.S. soldiers. A breeze sweeps through the pillars. The Israeli flag flutters, hanging from the table.

Students laugh and chatter about their weekend and suck on honey sticks.

* * *

It’s 11:55 a.m. and the noise of jingling keys and flip flops scraping against brick paths reaches a crescendo. The crowd thickens, morphing into a storm of students rushing to class. Discussion of the weekend ceases. Academic talk echos through the Breezeway.

“I’m going to the lab today, so I won’t be eating dinner until ten.”

“I don’t know anything for this test!!!”

“But the protons are at a low energy state . . .”

Brisk walkers, slow walkers, absent-minded texters, mobs of people deep in conversation clog the Breezeway for a few frenzied minutes. Occasionally, someone will subconsciously take a honey stick from the brown-skirted girl, who still smiles widely.

The clouds start to crawl across the sun.

***

“Hey!”

I look up from my scribbling. Amadeus is leaning across from me at the table where I sit, next to the JSA.

“Oh Hi!” I say, smiling.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, just my homework.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here. I like sitting outside.”

“Every time someone sits here I assume they are advocating something.”

I think about this. I am sitting at the table adjacent to the JSA, who is celebrating the Jewish New Year. My table, although not as elaborately adorned, looks just as official.

“I’m advocating my sanity.”

He laughs.

***

The bell from Gilman Hall chimes, indicating it is noon. A couple of students trickle through the Breezeway. One waits at the top of the steps, waiting for someone. The brown-skirted girl has been replaced with another girl. This girl dons a tidy, black skirt and floral blouse. She slouches as she hovers around the top of the steps with her backpack on her back.

“Honey stick?” she croaks, barely extending her arm.

The quad empties out as noon classes begin.

– Katherine Simeon

Life is not a ‘To Do List’.     Life is, instead, a ‘To Be Space.’

That is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.”

– Douglas Adams The Salmon of Doubt

She quickly glances back at her two-hundred page book (just looking at the sheer width), her face blank, her body slouching, a Pura Vida cup on the armrest. A standing lamp lights the pages in her book. Her hazel eyes are lined by smoky black eye make-up, her black boots paired with paint-splattered jean-like leggings. Her ebony locks are dyed blonde. Or she may have dyed her blonde roots black. I do not know. She has chipped metallic green nail polish on all her fingers, except her left-hand index finger.

My eyes focus back at her pale white face. Her eyes blink slowly and her long black lashes flutter, lethargically. She hasn’t turned a page in the five minutes I have been observing her. While keeping her eyes on the pages, she grasps at the air. She looks up and grabs the drink, pursing her lips and sipping.

Hurray. She has turned the page. She flips through, while keeping her index finger on the page she is on. She sighs. I look around, and I do not make eye contact with anyone else. Everyone else seems intensely absorbed in whatever subject they are reading or writing. I look up and she is looking at me.

Have a Happy Chrismahanukwanzaakah!

Ever since, he’s been known as Random Twinkle. And the kids know the Season is here when we bring him down from the attic to join the light display in front of our house. After years of service, however, his thin plastic face is bashed in and taped back together after all the falls in the wind. His red scarf is often askew, and his plastic ear muffs unplugged.

“We need to fix his ear shovels!” my son said one year.

Alas, this year Random Twinkle lost his twinkle. First his body stopped lighting up, then his head. He’s currently out front for his last Christmas, a string of white lights draped around him like a necklace.

My kids, feeling a bit down, wanted to write a story to immortalize him somehow. Santa wanted to build a new Random Twinkle, my son began, and so he got his elves in Santa’s Workhouse to start building . . .

“Santa’s Workhouse?” my daughter said. “That sounds like Oliver Twist.”

These are the Christmas moments I want to immortalize.