Get a Midlife!
If you love Princess Bride like I do (and if you don’t, that’s inconceivable) you are well-acquainted with the sound of ultimate suffering. The sound belongs to heroic Wesley, whose agonized screams pierce the idyllic countryside as he endures a medieval torture device called the Life-Sucking Machine. Poor Wesley. He winds up mostly dead. Anyone
Love Flows South—and That Includes the Kids
The Nile famously flows north but loves flows south. Love goes top down and that includes the kids. It’s easier when they’re little. Sure, they fight us on that 1 p.m. naptime and test our patience with long, made-up stories—but at the end of the day we know it’s them and us, us and them.
The Garbageman, the Bee Gees and other Big Triggers
Somewhere in Illinois there’s a garbage man who thinks I have a crush on him. These days, we’d call him a sanitation engineer or waste management professional. But when I was a kid we just called him the garbage man. I don’t know if this was insulting or learned behavior or just what everyone called
How to be a failer, not a failure
I want you to fail. I mean that in the nicest possible way. I’ll explain. I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery. It’s just so untidy. It forces us to grapple with our fear of failure. It makes us go with the tools we’ve got when we’d rather polish them, rearrange them, or, wait until
Kick mom guilt to the curb
Of all things to do me in. A permission slip. “I, the undersigned, parent or legal guardian for _________ , hereby grant permission and approval for the above child to attend the above mentioned off-campus school function. I furthermore release …” Why was everything instantly blurry? Why were the words “I furthermore release…” igniting all
Why twice-a-year Christians are my people
“I don’t get it. Why do people go to church twice a year?” one of my co-workers blurted out this week in a brazen workplace violation of the holy trinity of taboo topics: politics, religion, and will-you-cover-for-me-while-I’m-on-vacation. No one spoke. Crickets. Just, thud. He rescued himself from his own pregnant pause by continuing, “That’s like