Skinnies Sink Fatties Float:
Tales of life in the Husky Department
Author: David Schaefer
ISBN: 978-1-937720-52-0
A humorist look at life through the eyes of young David Schaefer in the early 60’s and 70’s in suburban Cincinnati.
“Dave offers us vivid and quirky anecdotes that capture the alarms and consolations of an idiosyncratic and yet entirely recognizable American childhood.”
Gregory Maguire—Author of WICKED
I am not a swimming coach, although you may be tempted to believe it from the cover. Nor is this a book about swimming. Metaphorically: I tried to swim upstream through my young life. I am a great floater though. I’ve honed these skills over my childhood and young adulthood in the greasy ponds and rusty metal streams of southern Ohio. Because of the cuts and scrapes, physical and emotional, I developed a resilience, a quirky way of viewing the world, and the art of finding the funny, the strange, the odd, and the just plain crazy.
Mind you, my mom trudged me through the “Searses” (that is what it was called in my neck of town) Husky Department and its myriad choices of either brown, brown, or the very popular brown slacks . . . a subtle but demoralizing reminder of the differences between myself and other kids. My childhood was pocked by a series of subtle yet scarring differences, whether it was the special orthopedic shoes or sitting out gym class with the help of a doctor’s note excusing me for bad feet. Okay by me, as long as I didn’t have to be like everybody else.