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The giant dead tree stood alone in the empty field like a big wart on the middle of one’s forehead. I was impressionable, only about four or five years old at the time, but my memory of the deformed tree is all too clear. I can still picture it, over sixty years later. I can…

As a child, the grass in our backyard was a vivid shade of green, and the sky a deep blue. Our family life was like living in a colorful water globe that changed hues with each passing year. The modest brick ranch we lived in was our castle, placed inconspicuously on a dead end street in a content world. Towering bushes encircled our home like a moat, keeping us safe.

At the Stony Brook University Southampton Campus, under the direction of my creative writing instructor, the well-known (actually, he corrected me –-“FAMOUS, Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Author-Illustrator”) Jules Feiffer, in a class called “Humor & Truth,” our first assignment was to write about being in an “uncomfortable” situation. I pondered the topic for about two seconds when I came up with – Gee, it’s this assignment! I’m halfway there, for that’s the Truth part.