It’s not a real word. I made it up. But then again, all words are made up. At some point, someone says something new. If enough people adopt it, it sticks. Sometimes we recycle old words and give them new meaning—like when “phat” had its moment in th...

It’s not one of my favorite movies, but Ready Player One has stuck with me—less because of the film itself and more because of how I first watched it. In the backyard of my son’s friend, his parents had set up an outdoor movie theater. For a child of...

When I moved to Virginia from New Jersey, one of the most upsetting things was leaving my barber behind. Mand’s Barbershop in Hackettstown was the best find the year prior to my move. The owner, Amanda Sunshine, cut my hair perfectly, is a great conv...

The concept is old. Not many stores do it anymore with the rise of credit cards and Buy Now, Pay Later arrangements. Still, I remember it well. My mother at Jamesway (a Walmart-like store, for those unfamiliar) putting an item on “layaway.” The store...

Driving at night is a pretty dicey affair when you think about it. You’re moving forward at speed with not much more than thirty yards of vision and a yellow or white line to guide you. At the same time, complete strangers are coming at you in the op...

I’m not really certain what it was written for, but I remember the big letters on a slip of paper: IOU. Maybe I’d borrowed a few dollars from a friend. Maybe a teacher had loaned me a pencil and wanted it back. My memory is pretty good, but it’s not...

It’s one of those places in time I can return to with absolute clarity. I was sitting on an airplane flying back from Europe in the summer of 1998. My best friend and I had spent almost a month roaming through England, Spain, Germany, and France, wit...

For many people, it’s a problem. Especially now. Our world is full of quick routes to small prizes. A short video gives us a hit of superiority because someone somewhere fell flat on their face. A quick drive to the coffee shop delivers our non-presc...

In soccer, the best players don’t control every moment. They create space. They anticipate. They make the people around them better. The playmaker isn’t the loudest or always the flashiest, he’s the one who sees the whole field and moves the game for...

Today I received some sad news: a former player passed away. It’s always tough to hear when these things happen. As a coach and teacher, my hope has always been to help propel young people toward better lives. It hurts deeply when one of those lives...