One of the many things my mom told me as I was growing up in our cash-strapped family of five was to eat with a tortilla so we would get full. It seemed as thought we were always eating beans, rice and tortillas. This tortillacentric culture spilled out into the neighborhood. My childhood friends would gather in the kitchen, a small army of latchkey kids, placing their orders for bean burritos or tortillas with butter. While my mom was at work, my live-in grandma would don th

Tide. Slide. Open wide. Homejob hems on action slacks. "Errbody doing the Clickety Clack. "That was a dance in the seventies, now!" Cars approach the man, who by now is performing jumping jacks in the middle of the street, as motorists honk and swear. "Move your shit, old man," says the woman in the lead car, tapping her front bumper against the man's cart. On cue, the man staggers and crumples, as if shot. He lies in the crosswalk, a jigsaw for the cops to put together, to f

One of the many things I learned as a young private in Army basic training was that transitions can be difficult, even dangerous. While out marching in the backwoods of Fort Jackson, S.C., in two columns, our drill sergeants would harp on us to not bunch up. Their rationale: an anti personnel mine could maim or kill fewer people if soldiers weren't so close together. Decades later, as a first-year teacher, l quickly learned the last 3 to 5 minutes of class were often when the