Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

A Bad Trip

It’s 1969. Everybody does drugs. I'm giving this girl a ride back to college and on the New Jersey Turnpike she says, "Try? THC laced with acid." In my crowd, the studiers, we just smoke grass. Here is my chance to be cool. Minutes later I'm crossing the lanes, skimming the guardrail, trying to fly my car to a Holiday Inn sign on the other side of the highway. She screams, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I pull over. "I can't drive. You drive." No. "You have to!" No again. “Why not?” I yell. And she says, "I don't know how."

Nancy Bulger is a teacher, writer, and international business entrepreneur.

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