“He looks at all of us one at a time. The sun comes in. The feeling, the sucked-out breath feeling, is almost familiar.”
November 2005 to January 2007 | Upstate New York | By JESSICA LANGAN-PECK

Quickies should be 200 words or less and fit into one of these categories: secrets and confessions; moments of extreme euphoria or enlightenment; moments of extreme embarrassment, shame, terror, or despair; biggest makes or regrets; turning points; and random acts of kindness.

“The sky drips incessantly, littering red-dirt roads with trash, trickling sewage, and swimming diseases. I’m getting thinner, and my hair is falling out.”
Summer of 2007 | Freetown, Sierra Leone | By AILEA SNELLER

“Words that start with a hard consonant like B, K, or P, and are followed by a vowel sound such as “eee” or “uhh,” are particularly difficult, which is why being named Pete Cummin sucks.”
Fall of 1995 | Boston, Massachusetts | By PETE CUMMIN

“In a mining town of decreasing population, I could pass for a famous actress — at least until the cameras rolled.”
August 2006 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | By AMANDA BROWN

“Yesterday, we may have been bartenders or IT managers or college students enjoying our summer break; today we are line sitters.”
June 2007 | San Francisco, California | By MIKE HOLMES

“Our class was made up of jocks who actually enjoyed this sort of stuff, greasers who saw it as an open invitation from the public-education system to pound the bejesus out of someone with relative impunity.”
Fall of 1971 | distant suburbs of Detroit, Michigan | By CURT MacDOUGALL

“You have only to look at my school photographs to witness the embarrassment of being a tall, plain weed in a bed of tiny rosebuds.”
1960s | Cheltenham, United Kingdom | By TERESA HEWITT

“I was the subject of a study at the University of Connecticut, and learned there that I lack the ability to differentiate between different voices.”
1994 | University of Connecticut | By SCOT NOLAN

“Patrick told my mother that he was using his route money to put himself through private school.”
1978 and 2007 | Boston, Massachusetts | By SABRINA PARADIS