“Don’t Pet the Fluffy Cows” Although I was born and raised in South Dakota, I was far from ever being a true farm boy. I was more of a hobbit living in the idyllic shire while my classmates were rugged dwarves capable of dissembling or driving a combine at the age of nine. A fellowship of Hobbits, Dwarves, and Elves (those dainty town kids) would all gather in Mrs. Bargman’s classroom and try to understand each other’s language and culture. Belt buckles, cowboy boots, jeans,

Big brothers have a responsibility to ruin things, but boy, oh boy, did I ever ruin my sister Michelle’s birthday party back in 1980. It was an epic destruction on an unimaginable scale that came in the heat of the moment, and even though I bear guilt at the audacity of the moment, I also have a strange sense of pride. Like Aragorn at Helm’s Deep, I stood against a horde of enemies to defend something sacred: my tree house. A year or two before Michelle’s birthday party, my

Once, there was this boy who Got into an accident and couldn’t work at Dominos. But when he finally came back A deer crept out of the black into the bright lights The dent was quite obvious He said it was from when The deer hit his door so hard. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Oh, deer! So in the winter of 1993, I earned the nickname “Crash Test Dummy” after one bizarre week working as a delivery driver at Dominos. For those of you born after 1993, the Crash Test Dummies was

TALES OF AN OXYMORON--EPISODE 2 We’d gathered around Ashley’s kitchen table, Bibles open and pens ready. Keith, Danica, Alex, the Shoemaker girl (Lydia?), and perhaps a younger sibling or two joined me for a study on Job. Little did we know at that moment, but God had a dramatic sense of irony and timing. If I were to guess, I’d put this story around 2002 or 2003, which means I’d been doing youth small group study at Hosanna Lutheran Church for several years already. During t

“How do we kill her?” The entire classroom fell silent as they pondered the dark deed, and then suddenly, each creative writing student began to offer ideas. From grisly to ridiculous, theories were batted around the room. We’d grown close after only a few weeks, and each member offered pieces of themselves to the creation of the screenplay. Even though it was over a quarter-century ago, I can still remember many of those faces. After all, in studying characterization, each s