I was driving in upstate New York a month ago with my wife and adult kid, on our way to visit a waterfall. It was a hilly area and the county roads twisted and bent. Unlike in the midwest, few of the intersections were at right angles. There weren’t...

I went bowling for the first time in long while the other day. It was fine as far as bowling goes, but there was an incident with the group bowling next to us. They were four college-age young men, and they were kind of jerks about one of the bowling...

When I was little, like four years old little, I liked to hide from my mom and crawl under things. That’s probably a not-so-unusual thing for a dumb little kid to do. But hiding from your mother can have consequences. One day, Mom took me on a shoppi...

My friend Wayne and I were bumming around the park behind my house one day and he found a black, leather glove. We were four at the time and the glove was kid-sized, meaning we could wear it. I immediately developed an obsessive lust for that glove....

When I was fifteen, I attended the funeral of a distant relative who died, tragically, in his thirties. He suffered from a rare, congenital disorder and finally succumbed. For some reason, I got a case of the giggles at the funeral. I was there with...

When I was in fourth grade, my penchant for collecting took a strange turn and got me into trouble at school. Shame and fear of being ostracized tormented me. All because of some straws. I had dabbled in collecting before then with stamps, stickers,...

I know the climate crisis is kicking our collective ass, with heat domes in the south and biblical flooding in the northeast, but my lawn has never been greener during July and August. Twenty years ago, the lawn would be burned to a crisp and I could...