HeyJaredCarol Countryman's Tales from East Texas
Carol Countryman writes personal essays and stories about survival, family, and the kind of humor that saves your life. Her work blends dark wit with hard-won grace—where breaking the family curse feels a little like a resurrection.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 12, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 18, 2026
Latest issues
Johnny Still Can’t Read, But He Sure Can Cheat (opens the original)
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This week, I sat through teacher training discussing the newest and greatest thing in reading education: phonics.I’m not making this up. We have a new acronym, naturally, because public education cannot rediscover the wheel until somebody gives the wheel four capital letters. This one is RBIS: Research-Based Instructional Strategies. And somewhere during the training, while we were learning about explicit instruction and how children actually learn to read, I started thinking about Johnny. Not o
Fatuous Flatulence: Everyone does it, but nobody did it. (opens the original)
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I saw a TikTok this week that stopped me cold in my tracks. I wasn’t actually on tracks, that’s just a saying. I was propped up on pillows scrolling my phone while I should have been sleeping when I saw the 17-second video: a Houston teacher standing in front of a group of young students (she never showed the students, so I assume they are young. She could have been teaching in prison, for all I know). She stands before them and says, “This is our fart corner. If you need to fart, simply come ov
Breast Seller (opens the original)
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My algorithm has decided I need a bra. Every other advertisement I get is for one of the cursed things. I’m a woman who only wears one for decorum, and even then it’s a sports bra. The minute I leave work, I’m wriggling out of it. I’m old enough to have perfected the slip. I put my car on self-driving, pull my right elbow into my T-shirt, reach up with tyrannosaurus arms, and push through the top. I rinse and repeat on the other side. Then I must shimmy the damned thing either up or down, depend
Why I Set My Alarm for Dragnet at 4 A.M. (opens the original)
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I’m obsessed with MeTV, proclaimed to be “America’s #1 Classic Television Network.” From Charlie’s Angels to The Mod Squad to Adam-12, these shows never disappoint me. I was a child of the mid-1960s and came of age during what I still consider the television’s golden years: the ‘70s. I would sprawl on my stomach atop gold shag carpeting in the living room, my chin resting on my stacked fists, mesmerized by Starsky & Hutch, played by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. In seventh grade, my best f
The Best Comedy in America Is in the TikTok Comment Section (opens the original)
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The best comedy is not happening at the Laugh Factory or The Improv. The best comedy is happening on TikTok. Namely, the comment section.Recently, I was scrolling my phone at two in the morning like a woman waiting on a phone call from the county jail. My TikTok algorithm said to me, I know what you need. Let me feed you a little Clara Batten. Clara, who is a content creator from the U.K., is what you would call a “reposter”. She finds or is sent the weirdest short videos and just lets the comme
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