Blue Legs and Other Coming of Age Stories

The elusive, unstable and treasured fragments that make up our individual identities are often traceable to the awkward experiences of our fleeting teen years. The stories in this collection look back upon these awkward coming of age years with wit and wisdom. Some of the talented wordsmiths in this volume have decades between themselves and the age of freckles and pimples, others are only a few years removed from the manufactured crises of teen drama. What unites these authors is...
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The elusive, unstable and treasured fragments that make up our individual identities are often traceable to the awkward experiences of our fleeting teen years. The stories in this collection look back upon these awkward coming of age years with wit and wisdom. Some of the talented wordsmiths in this volume have decades between themselves and the age of freckles and pimples, others are only a few years removed from the manufactured crises of teen drama. What unites these authors is their common desire to document and examine this most intriguing season of life. Our collection opens with Bex Bates's "Blue Legs," a humorous look back on a family's culinary rituals. Ms. Bates captures both the universality of family relationships and the uniqueness of this delightful family's crab-eating life together. We move from blue to red with Lisa Dunn's exposure of the woman behind a stunning red coat. Like Toto in the Wizard of Oz, Dunn pulls away the cloak and reveals what really lurks behind the intimidating façade in "The Kind of Woman in a Red Coat." LB McGill and LM Ellzey reach back even further in the past and poke around into their characters' preteen past. In "True Grit," McGill's lead character struggles with human relationships, but achieves an intensely gratifying mutuality with a cantankerous pony while at summer camp. Ellzey's preteen character in "Water Puddles" also flees the world of troubled human relationships and finds consolation by cavorting with an unwieldy gang of spider-like children who inhabit the majesty spires of a nearby bridge. Young men often have a more difficult time accepting the responsibilities of adulthood than do young women. "Wishes," "Dog Years," and "Ghetto Birds" each looks over the shoulder of a young man who is moving toward maturity. In "Wishes," Emerald Barnes allows the reader to witness the conflicted emotions of a young man who unexpectedly finds himself approaching fatherhood. His initial reactions are not good, but can he grow up? The young man in Shaun Deilke's "Dog Years" also appears without initial merit, however, his relationship with an aging canine sheds light on the better impulses of his maturing character. The young man in Matthew James's "Ghetto Birds" indulges in the self-absorption of youth before coming to the realization that one can find moments of transcendence in even the most mundane activities. Our next two stories offer retrospectives on the teen experience of sports and competition-one story from the perspective of the underdog and one from the perspective of the star athlete. Laura L. Mays Hoopes's young softball player both laments and rejoices in the rituals of choosing teams for a softball game. The reader's responses will range from resigned laughter to sympathetic sighs as Laura's character experiences, evaluates and then reevaluates the social dynamics of teen sportsmanship. Everett Cooney looks at high school sports from the perspective of the star athlete-a wrestler, in fact. Coaches, we learn, have their human foibles. Our final story, JP Behrens's "The Final Statement," gives painful voice to the effects of teen bullying and adult indifference-a plight which is too common and a tragedy which is less than rare. As always, each of these stories has won the highly competitive Phyllis Scott contest for short stories. We are happy to offer these gifted emerging authors to the reading public.Phyllis Scott, series editor