The stories in “Childhood Notes” represent a portion of work I have done as a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland. They were chosen for their thematic links, for their stylistic experimentation, and for their roles in guiding me to pay a closer attention to language. Collectively, they read as life episodes undergone by characters who find no comfort in being where they are: disillusioned couples, two friends in a segregated city, a medical doctor in a conflict area, and people lost in Japan.