Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind. My birthday is coming up. Which I have subtly, delicately, with the grace of a foghorn reminded certain people about. Not because I need a parade. (Although, let’s be clear, I would not decline a parade.) But because […]
There is a purpose for everyone you meet. I know. It sounds like something you’d find cross-stitched on a pillow next to a suspiciously calm fern. Stay with me. Because some people do not enter your life gently. They arrive like a pop quiz you didn’t study for, […]
“It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.” Ah, Ernest. Sir. You really woke up and chose violence with that one. Because here I am, not yet sixty (thank you very much), and already deeply aware that the second half of […]
There are wrinkles you earn through laugh lines, sun-kissed memories, and the faint crease of “I have lived.” And then there are the other wrinkles. The ones brought to you by that person. You know the one. Actually, you probably know three. A family member who calls only […]
Somewhere in upstate New York, Syracuse University looked at its course catalog (apparently the academic equivalent of a hoarder’s attic) and said, with admirable calm, “This no longer sparks enrollment.” Eighty-four majors. Gone. Or paused. Or gently escorted to the existential waiting room where discontinued things go to […]
Apparently, the youths (yes, I said it, the youths) have discovered something groundbreaking. Revolutionary. Positively cutting-edge. It’s called Nonnamaxxing. Which, for those of us who have been busy answering emails while brushing our teeth and silently spiraling, is the idea that if you live like an Italian grandmother […]
Somewhere in the friendly skies, two pilots decided that what air traffic control really needed amid the symphony of call signs, altitudes, and headings was a little feline flair. “Meow, meow.” Yes. Not turbulence. Not interference. Not a glitch in the matrix. Just grown adults, entrusted with a […]
Somewhere in Warsaw, a humanoid robot recently chased a group of wild boars out of a neighborhood, escorted them politely into the woods, and then because subtlety is dead, waved goodbye. Waved. Goodbye. And the internet, naturally, let the video go viral thinking on part that it was […]
There was a time not that long ago when I considered myself a stealth operator in the wild terrain of office hallways. Baseball cap pulled low, eyes fixed forward, stride purposeful. If there were an Olympic sport for avoiding small talk, I would have been on the podium, […]
I recently came across an odd news story about a man who called 911 after Red Lobster refused to refill his cheddar biscuits for the twelfth time. Twelfth. 12. A dozen biscuits deep into what I can only assume was a very committed personal journey, this man decided […]