Catholic school | Mostly Bright Ideas

Browsing All posts tagged under »Catholic school«

Let’s Play It By Ear

July 22, 2013

The subject of ears seemed to come up a lot. Maybe it was because we spent so much time seated in crowded classrooms with our hands folded on the desk in front of us. Or because we had such an incurable penchant for doing things, in school and elsewhere, that required a grown-up to respond […]

Scarred for Life

February 8, 2013

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When we’re young, life takes place on two physical levels. There’s the world of adults, shifting like storm clouds close to the ceiling, and the world of children, where kids create games to simulate the behavior of their parents and relatives. I could barely figure out what was happening on my own level, so I […]

Chew On This

November 19, 2011

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I’ve always wanted to be smart, I guess because I grew up in a time when smart people got some respect. Albert Einstein was considered the greatest genius anybody could imagine. He was so smart, he didn’t even have to comb his hair. In a room full of brilliant people, he still got to sit […]

Minor Indiscretions (Part 1)

June 16, 2011

We all have dark, scary places we drag around from our childhood. It may be the basement, or the attic, or Aunt Trudy’s weird doll collection. Or Aunt Trudy herself. For me, it was the Confessional. The very word still evokes an image in my mind, with attached feelings otherwise reserved for thoughts of the […]

A True Work of Art

January 12, 2011

Every Italian has exactly one friend named Angelo. I met Angelo DeCesare in 1960, in Mrs. Brilli’s kindergarten class at Our Lady of Grace School in the Bronx. If you look at the photo below, Angelo is in the back row, second from the left — the one who’s thinking, “Someday I’m going to enjoy […]

It Was All Just A Misunderstanding.

November 14, 2010

At some point in my early childhood my mother developed the habit of answering every request for a new purchase with the phrase, “Someday, when our ship comes in.” I’d ask when I could get a bike and she’d say, “Someday, when our ship comes in.” I’d ask about the possibility of a color television […]