David Altshuler, M.S.
(305) 978-8917 | [email protected]

Category: Parenting

Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One

Sparks and smoke billow unabashedly from a dozen places in a 18-ton machine covering 4000 square feet of a factory floor. Gears whine pointlessly as 30 men stand uselessly at their positions along the unmoving conveyor belt. Dozens of trucks are lined up outside, filled with raw materials to be

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Trick Question

Which of the following first person stories seems more plausible? 1) “There were these two sets of double doors between the dining room and the kitchen. I carried trays stacked high with the leftover food from the plates of the patrons. On the way to hand the trays to the

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Sex Ed, Advice, Schnauzers

In a sex ed class some 40 years ago, a student whom I did not know well asked a question about reproductive biology. His inquiry, something specific about condoms as I recall, impressed me as highly theoretical at the time. It is certainly possible that he was honestly requesting information

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Do You Need a Date?

Some years ago driving to my girlfriend’s house, I saw an attractive young woman hitch hiking. Concerned about the quality of the neighborhood and eager to offer a hand, I slowed to a stop. This was the late 70s and girls with their thumbs out were rare. I pulled over

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The Sorting Hat

That organic chemistry makes more sociology majors than it does doctors is well known. Less obvious, is that colleges who claim that “92% of our pre-medical students are admitted to medical school!” are not quite telling the whole story. The 92 % figure may be accurate, but what happened to

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Upstairs Craig and the $15 Loan

My undergraduate roommate, Joel, and I had become fairly friendly with our upstairs neighbor in our off-campus apartment junior year. I don’t know about Joel, but I thought it was fun to have an acquaintance who had a real job. Everyone else we knew was a student. Craig seemed much

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Boodleheimer!

My best friends growing up were three brothers who introduced me to–among other things–The Silly Book, and the cartoon character, “Boodleheimer.” It would be difficult, almost 50 years down the road, to overestimate the extraordinary joy that Rod, Paul, Frank, and I got from the following verse of the “Silly

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Parenting Quiz

Question One: Your five-year-old daughter comes home from kindergarten with a paper that the children have worked on in class, writing letters or distinguishing shapes or colors. Your daughter’s page does not contain a sticker, although you have noticed that most papers that come home from school do have a

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It’s Only a Game… ?

My limited understanding of the mortgage debacle was that there were “bunches” of bundled debts, some of which were supposed to be “good” mortgages and some of which were understood to be “not so good” mortgages. Shockingly, it turned out that each and every one of the mortgages in the

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