Once you become visible, it's hard to disappear into the shadows again, but Hank White was doing his level best. His life depended on it. People looked right through you when you were flipping ... [+]
Dave Bachmann is a retired teacher who taught language arts to special needs students in Arizona for 39 years. He now resides in California, writing poems and short stories for children and grown-ups. "Dandy Lions" is in Short Circuit #14, Short Édition's quarterly review.
It was 1962, Wichita, Kansas. My Dad surveyed the front yard—a very big front yard, a grim look on his face.
"Weeds," he pronounced sullenly, as if our front yard had become the equivalent of a D-Day for an invasive species.
Only nine years old, I did not appreciate the profundity of my father's observation.
"I like the pretty yellow flowers," I quietly voiced.
"They are weeds," my father scolded, ignoring my obvious naivete, "dandelions, to be more precise."
"What?"
"Dandelions. They are pernicious things," he added, using a word I did not yet know but assumed to mean somethin