The email my son won’t get
Hey, buddy. We dropped you off at camp yesterday. We watched you sit on your bunk in a cabin you’d never seen before. We met your counselor. You mimicked his Australian accent and called...
Category: Suburban warrior
Mom’s pencil
One of my earliest memories—one’s that just gauzy enough to prove its age, but just clear enough to be truer than most—is a pencil in my mom’s hand. It’s jitting and jotting across a...
Mr. Andy
My younger son met Mr. Andy at our local grocery store. Mr. Andy bagged groceries for hours on every shift. Once the bags were in the cart, Mr. Andy would push them out to...
Wil Wheaton’s guest
I’m guest-blogging for Wil Wheaton this week. If you’d like to check in on what I wrote, you can find the stories here: WHEATON’S LAW REVISITED A FIELD FULL OF LIGHTNING
When Dad looked at the sky
There is a shiny headstone on the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri, and it’s where people who love my dad go when they want to be alone with him (someone clearly knows How to clean...
Ten things I have done that you (probably) haven’t
I’ll be honest. I’m about to go on a big trip, and I’m–for the first time in a very long time–a little nervous about it. It’s the good kind of nervous, but the anxiety...
The kid you’ll never hear about
The gunfire started about the time we reached Field 4. Rat-tat-tats, small arms, over and over again. We were there for baseball practice. A sunny day in September. Mid-70s, blue sky, light breeze, and...
The happiness blur
My older son turned nine a few weeks ago, and I have no idea what my wife and I gave him as presents. There was a closetful of gifts. I know that much. And...
First day jitters
I wasn’t even leaving the house, and I was terrified. The boy wore a “Phineas and Ferb” t-shirt, plaid shorts, and his new sneaks. He had a fresh haircut and a new backpack. A...
So many kids…
“I see so many kids that love being writers more than they love writing.” —Scroobius Pip I could probably count to a hundred, but if you’d asked me, I would’ve told you there were...
The stillness of an 8-year-old’s chest
I looked down on the ground. In the grass sat a little plastic coin, scuffed and scratched from little-boy cleats that had walked over it on the way to home plate. “Caught doing good,”...
Thank you, Mike Rice
Former Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice is at best a very confused and disturbed human being. He is at worst a psychopath in need of inpatient treatment. Today, I suggest we should thank him...
What did you wash out of your mouth today?
I don’t even know how to start this, so I’ll just say it. My kid peed in my mouth today. There it is. My child—a boy who turns four years old in less than...
Fate’s reprieve
I can’t boil it down to 140 characters. I don’t know why I feel compelled to even consider doing that. Maybe it’s the cook in me who knows that a well-simmered pot will eventually...