The Shoe box

Some kids brought video games to sleepovers. Mike brought a boot box full of stolen beer and a water bottle of whiskey. He was thirteen and already doing the math: three beers, Pat barely drinking, more for him. “The Shoebox” is about the last day of eighth grade and the first time relief felt like addiction.

The First Sip

Some addictions start with a bang. Mike’s started with a warm Budweiser at 5:47 AM, and ended with a belt across his thigh that same night. He was eight years old and already learning how to hide.

What Beer?

In the late nineties suburbs of Broomall, where the beer was warm and the dreams were big, a group of friends learned that sometimes the best adventures are the ones that go spectacularly wrong.

Finding Hope Through Faith and Friendship

From the outside, I painted a picture of perfection. The all-star baseball player. The champion wrestler. The good student when I chose to be. But behind the facade, a storm raged within me—a tempest of doubt, loneliness, and a pain I couldn’t name.

When the World Came Together

Every day at 5:00 pm, the front door would swing open and Dad would stumble inside after a heavy day…

How We Think About Alcohol Needs To Change

How many advertisements have you seen this week in which people are seen enjoying the supposed benefits of drinking alcohol? 10? 50? 100? Clear those images and think about how many advertisements you have seen, ever, showing people shaking, broken and alone from the actual effects of alcohol.

3D Growth Track: Crossover Church Activates Teams for Community Outreach Programs

3D Growth Track: Crossover Church Activates Team for Community Outreach Programs

Jeanette Lee – The Black Widow – Runs The Table In Tampa

“The Black Widow” is rallying her troops for a trip to Las Vegas to prove, again, she is the best in the world.

Russ Cozart-A Glance Into A Wrestling Legends Life

Rocky Cozart said he admires his father’s wrestling success as well as his energy and enthusiasm.

Amped Up

They were brothers sixteen months apart, both wrestling 135 pounds for Haverford High. When Conestoga’s coaches ducked Mike and sent their best wrestler against Matt instead, Mike had to watch his younger brother take a six-minute beating that ended in a pin. Then it was Mike’s turn. The fury he’d been holding exploded in ten seconds—three shots to the head, arm drag, near-side cradle, pin. The fastest of his career. Not for glory. For his brother.

When 9 A.M. Felt Like Salvation

The mouthwash wasn’t the bottom. The bottom was knowing exactly how much alcohol was in Listerine, knowing which brands had the highest percentage, knowing that if he could just keep it down long enough, his legs might stop seizing before the liquor store opened at 9 a.m.

Guinea Pig

Mike arrived at Lycoming College in the fall with a 3.8 GPA from his first semester and a spot on the wrestling team. Freshman year, first semester—he’d proven he could do it. Could go to class, make weight, compete, maintain the structure that kept everything else from unraveling.

Then he quit wrestling.

Not because of an injury. Not because of grades. He just stopped showing up to practice one day in January, and when the coach called him in, Mike said he needed to focus on academics.

It was a lie.

Bad

A five-year-old holding a grudge about Michael Jackson and executing a flawless revenge plot.

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.258 By fifteen, Mike had a routine. School. Wrestling practice. Four-hour shift at the Bucks County Coffee Company. Home by…

The Incredibly Average Wednesday: The Case of the Possessed Lego Set

The story, “The Case of the Possessed Lego Set,” follows Lucas Hamson, a ten-year-old builder who purchases a vintage Black Monarch’s Castle Lego set from an eccentric old woman. He soon discovers the set is possessed when the minifigures begin moving on their own.