“I like you,” I told him. “I like you, too,” he replied. “No, I like you, like you,” I said. “OK fool. I know,” he said. We stared at each other for a second before going back to playing with our action figures, until my aunt said it was time for dinner. During the last…
Not only did he attend school plays, piano recitals, basketball games, track meets, even church once or twice, but he was also the one who would drive me to and from those events. Whenever I copped an attitude, he knew how to put a smile on my face. He would scoop me up and take…
“Dealmaker? GREAT SMILE! Dealbreaker? BAD TEETH!” When I was 11, and had just moved with my parents to East Lib, Pittsburgh, this brazen stubby white boy started calling me “Beaver” because of my slightly bucked teeth and perpetual overbite, and that nickname stuck. (People who know me from then still know me as “Beav.”) By…
When Denise Parnell and Whitney Hardy first encountered each other in 2009, it was on a blind date — one that Ms. Parnell was on with a man to whom she had been introduced by friends. To ease the pressure on Ms. Parnell, her friends had arranged for the setup to be part of a…
In September 2015, Henderson Moore Blumer could sense the panic of fellow art student Suzanne Zoe Joskow. She was in her first year of the M.F.A. program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles; he in his second. It was that time at the start of the semester when students begin receiving…
When Jafreen Momtaj Uddin and Shakil Sarfaroz Rabbi matched on Salams, a Muslim dating app, in June 2021, they immediately began a two-hour online conversation that Ms. Uddin described as “extremely comfortable.” “I was visiting an aunt in Philadelphia that day,” said Ms. Uddin, 36. While one of her parents drove, she exchanged messages with…
On Jan. 28, 2020, Sharon Deckey Mussalli was scrolling through Instagram when she came upon a black-and-white photo of Shaun Robert Jenkins, a senior manager of training at Tone House, a trendy gym in New York City. The photo was posted by a mutual friend on Mr. Jenkins’s birthday, and showed him in a tuxedo…
In June 2021, Mr. Dansby surprised Ms. Combs with a proposal with help from her former boss at Harvest Hands, who invited Ms. Combs to what she thought was a volunteer appreciation dinner on June 27. The invitation was a ruse, and when Ms. Combs arrived at the event, she was shocked to see Mr.…
By the time Sneha Medappa Maruvanda met Dr. Mark Ross Edelstein in person, she feared they might not have anything left to say to each other. “I was having a bit of a panic attack about meeting,” said Ms. Medappa Maruvanda, 30, who matched with Dr. Edelstein on Bumble in November 2019, and soon became…
This high-quality mask, made in South Korea, is often described as more comfortable than other respirator masks. Here’s how to find the real thing.