The scene where the perp breaks down and confesses all is always a crowd pleaser. That sweatbox drama, the pacing inspector giving the third degree, the metal table marred with cigarette burns. We imagine ourselves behind the one-way, watching the confession unfold. But, what would it be like to be chained to that table instead?…

(Also appeared in the August 19, 2005 Christian Science Monitor) What if, like the new Iraq, we in America had a matter of months to draft a new Constitution? Could we do it? No way – we can barely meet our annual October budget deadline. First, we’d argue over whether current amendments should stick around;…

(From the August 15, 2005 edition of The Christian Science Monitor) There we were, my son and I, at the top of a four-foot quarter-pipe ramp. We are learning “aggressive inline skating.” This particular ramp is one that always bothers me, because it starts vertically, and I often fall, skidding across the asphalt below. We…

From The Christian Science Monitor When I first moved to my neighborhood from another state, I was amazed when the shopkeeper at the dry cleaner’s learned my name within just a few visits. I had only been living there for a couple of weeks when one day, I swung open the door and she looked…

From The Christian Science Monitor One day, my daughter’s teacher directed a disapproving tone across the desk at my wife and me. “Your daughter,” she said, “believes that neither of you have a job.” There it was. It was hard to know what to say. Both my wife and I work at home. She is…

Strapped to a chair in a small, grey house on the edge of a Missouri town, 52-year-old David Masters begged for his life to end by lethal injection instead of by gunshot. His three captors, angered that he was three weeks tardy with rent and that he’d made unwanted advances on one of them, obliged…