Piracy of the Mind

A Focus on the Family official recently warned parents not to let children dress as pirates, as the legendary figures conjure up nothing but “images of sweaty, half-naked men sleeping two sometimes three to a cot.” Then the official, Hugh Troy, closed his eyes and thought of the rigging, the peg legs, the drinking of grog, the “ol’ heigh-ho,” and soon he was hoisting his own main sail and drifting in his own Tropic of Capricorn where the decks always need swabbing and the booty is endless.

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Words of Wisdom Not Forgotten

No, no; don’t worry – this wasn’t going against that thing her parents had taught her when she was a little girl. Admiring from afar; sending the buttons flying as she used her eyes to rip the shirt off his chest; and imagining in graphic detail the sweat trapped between their bodies during a steamy encounter in the nearest motel: even though she had never met the guy, she was sure none of these things qualified as “talking to strangers.”

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Origins

The boy’s mother was insane, and everyone wondered what would become of him as a result. He could have followed in her footsteps, but instead he pushed himself harder than anyone else and became more successful than his classmates and friends with a happier provenance.

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Down, said the witch

The cool wind stirring through his hair and filling his nostrils, he opened his mouth to take in a deep breath of this sweet, new life, for he had finally made it to the top of the top; the summit of the mountain we call success. It felt good, really good there at the top, except for an acute, tugging pain in his abdomen that seemed to be nagging sadistically, cackling at him like an old witch, “There’s only one direction you can go now, buddy – hee-hee hee!”

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Priorities

Her father worked multiple jobs to keep her in a particular house, at a particular school, and routinely participating in the correct extracurricular activities. If anyone had ever asked her, she would’ve said she preferred he work fewer hours, make less money, and spend more time with her doing nothing in particular.

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Drunk Answering

He had a crush on my friend Sarah, though she couldn’t stand to be around him. He phoned one night when I was drunk and immediately accepted my completely insincere invitation to visit—meaning I spent the better part of a good weekend kicking myself whilst trying to distract him from the fact that he was being brutally rebuffed.

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Don’t Jump! …(yet)…

“Wait – don’t jump!” Carly Ann yelled at her big brother who was ready and poised to plummet to (what he thought would be) his death from the window of his second-story bedroom. “Just give me a minute to get up there and I’ll push you off myself!”

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Stipulations

The will the old woman left behind clearly specified that if any of the objects in her home were moved from the way in which she had originally positioned them, the museum established in her name would lose funding from her heirs and be dissolved. After the night of the art theft, the curators determined that if they hoped to keep the museum open, they had no choice but to leave the empty frames on the walls interspersed with the remaining works.

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Guilt

He gave up chocolate every year for lent. Often, he would spend his mornings feeling guilty without knowing why until he suddenly remembered a dream from the night before in which he’d shamelessly gorged on M&Ms or Godiva or brownies.

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