Twenty years ago, my brother invented something he called Retired Guy Syndrome. Our stepfather had retired, and my brother watched him spend a day like this: One morning, Cliff decided it was time to replace a defective cabinet hinge. He went to the hardware store, looked around, bought something plausible, came home. The hinge turned … Read More
At 9:30 this morning, we moved from summer into fall. The shift has made me think about one of Vonnegut’s great inventions, the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five. This race of space-aliens teaches the novel’s traumatized protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, to understand time very differently than humans usually do. For the Tralfamadorians—who look like toilet plungers with … Read More
I’ve had a cold this week. It’s just a cold—but even as I write that sentence, I resent it. It is just a cold: the doctor ruled out Covid pretty quickly, with a test. But it’s easy to forget, when we’re healthy for months on end, how enervating, debilitating, and downright miserable a mere cold … Read More
You’ve already heard two of my Rules for Life. As a reminder, Rule #2 is that everybody gets to whine sometimes—with the corollary that no one gets to whine all the time. Rule # 3 is that everybody gets to make mistakes, with the corollary that you might as well learn to be gentle with … Read More