“I’m bored,” my seven-year-old barked at me, as I flipped eggs one sunny Saturday. I stomped in from the kitchen and pointed the spatula. ”You are never to say that again. You have a room full of toys and books and a park nearby and a pool. Figure it out.” Photo by Julie Kahn Are my exquisite sons stricken with a sense of entitlement? I grew up with a single school-teacher mom. We lived modestly, yet I always had a bike and a baseball team. I even went to sleep-away camp. Sti

If you found 20-pounds of pot floating in the sea, what would you do? My stocky dad and his lanky boat partner, Dan, didn’t think a boat of just 21-feet warranted a name, but unofficially ours was the Thick and Thin, a tip of the visor to a friendship that began in kindergarten and still endures 75 years later. I grew up on that modest dive boat, communing with tropical fish, my freckly face pressed into a little yellow mask. One summer day, when I was 12, we three sped home

The heavy-around-the-middle cop shut the front door behind himself, took a notepad from his shirt pocket and flipped it open. His gaze fell on me, crossed legged on the floor in tube socks, sneakers, a puffy little fro and a mouthful of silver braces. “I’m looking for these three people. Have any of you seen them?” he asked us. The third name was mine. The living room full of underage cigarette smokers, truants and long-hairs fell silent but for a ping-pong ball that bounced

Stuart Sheldon, Don’t Hide Behind Words, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 24″x24″, 2004 I shot my brother with a BB gun. IN THE TESTICLES. I’m not proud of it and it’s not funny. OK, maybe a little. But not really. I was about ten. He was 8. A couple of nappy bedhead boys in short cotton pajamas with little baseball mitts on them. We were in the backyard of our mom’s house shooting lizards off the neighbors wooden fence. I remember the morning sun was warm and bright on my freck