Before The Kids And Mortgage by Eyal N. Danon

Chapter One

The Love Boat On The Kali Gandaki

In a small apartment, the telephone rings. “Hello, I’m speaking with Eyal?” a man’s voice asks in English with a heavy French accent.
“Yes,” I reply. “Who is this?”
“This is Freddy, from the rafting trip in Nepal.”
“Freddy! How are you? Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes, everything is fine. Can you come fetch me?”
“What do you mean, ‘fetch you’?” As far as I knew, Freddy was at that very moment in distant Brussels. “Where are you?”
“At your airport. I’m here, in Israel,” Freddy explained patiently in his nasally voice. “Don’t you remember? When we were in the Himalayas, I promised that if you two would get married, I’m come to your wedding.”

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Love, Clancy: A dog’s Letters Home by Richard Glover

Age: Three Months
c/-The New Kennel
Chateau Chaos
28 November

Dear Mum and Dad,
It’s Clancy here, your puppy, writing from my new home in the city. The people I’ve moved in with seem friendly but a little strange. They’re particularly weird whenever I urinate. Either they run around grabbing rolls of paper towel, in a scene of some hysteria, saying, ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ or the stand smiling and saying, ‘Good dog, good dog.’

The first version happens inside, after I’ve urinated on the kitchen floor; the other outside, after I’ve urinated on the grass. I’m not sure what they are trying to convey. The only certain thing is that the “Oh no! Oh no!’ version is much more fun for me to watch, so it’s the reaction I go out of my way to generate.

The Best Life Stories: 150 Real-life Tales of Resilience, Joy, and Hope-

all 150 Words or Less!

Let Him Go, Olivia

Alejandro Arbide, San Antonio, Texas

There I was. Upside down inside the swimming pool. Drowned. My parents were screaming. It must have been the summer of  ’63. It was a gloomy day. Every Sunday we went to my grandparents’ house. My cousins and I were playing alongside the pool. I must have slipped. At three years old, I did not know how to swim. My mother was giving me CPR. More than twenty or twenty-five minutes had gone by. The ambulance had arrived. Everybody was staring at my mother. “Let him go, Olivia. It’s over.” Even my father had some feelings of resignation. Yet, she never gave up.

I write this story as a tribute to my mother, who, only four years later, passed away. And also in recognition of the editors who made it possible for my mother to have read in Reader’s Digest the miracle made by another woman utilizing then recently discovered CPR.

Neighbors by Danielle Steel

Chapter 1
The massive stone mansion was hot even in the basement as Debbie Speck bustled around the large efficient kitchen putting away the groceries that her husband Jack had just brought in. He was perspiring profusely. He was forty-four years old, somewhat overweight with balding dark hair and always reeked of aftershave that covered the faintly boozy smell of the cheap scotch he kept in his room and drank at night. It came through his pores the next day, when he exerted himself. Debbie usually joined him with a drink or two at night. She preferred gin and tonic or vodka she kept in the freezer in the basement apartment where their employer, Meredith White, never ventured. She respected their privacy which was ideal for them. Debbie was also heavy and dyed her hair blond herself.