Thomas Wictor

Posts Tagged ‘Stavanger’

Be like my mother

My mother and I didn’t get along. It wasn’t her fault; I can’t explain our problem because that would violate her privacy. She was stuck with me. Staunchly pro-life, she couldn’t have had me aborted, and everyone knew she was pregnant with me, so she couldn’t have given me up for adoption. In the last…

 

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One of our Playboys is missing

Here’s one the most mortifying episodes of me getting caught stealing. When we lived in Stavanger, Norway, I’d babysit the local foreign kids for extra money. It was very lucrative. One family of clients consisted of a Norwegian father, his American wife, and their little boy. I lived close enough to walk to and from…

 

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Ghost rediscovered

The Second Ghost is “Jennifer,” an American girl I knew in Stavanger, Norway. I played a part in her downfall, which you can read on pages 15 to 17 of Ghosts and Ballyhoo. I still have a few notes she wrote me, two photos I snagged from a box of rejects left over from the…

 

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Life imitates art

I thought of writing a book titled All the Really Weird Stuff I’ve Experienced That Makes People Think I’m Crazy. Now that I’m winding down my attempt at being an author, I’ll just post these things every now and then. They were part of what I thought would make me a desirable guest on the…

 

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No reason to be afraid

When I lived in Stavanger, one of my friends told me about two abandoned ocean liners moored on the island of Sølyst, near the city. You had to cross the Bybrua—a bridge—to get to them. I think this photo shows on the upper left where the liners were. That may even be them. Who knows?…

 

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My friends are…

…pretty amazing in terms of what I don’t know about them. Joe Cady hadn’t found it necessary to tell me the story below until we had a conversation about cigars. When I was in high school, my friend Bobby-Bob-Bobby and I stole a couple of his father’s cigars. The day my family met Bobby-Bob-Bobby in…

 

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