Brothers
I wish I could remember the exact time my brother became my best friend. It might well have been the moment he was born, but you wouldn’t have known it until much later. Nearly...
Category: Parenting
World Cup tears
The boy’s lip trembled when it became clear that the USA was going to lose to Ghana. He fought the tears as long as he could and stumbled over his words as he asked...
Dos es uno
I’ll be honest. By the time the boy we call Dos came into the world, I’d forgotten a lot about what it took to be the parent of an infant or toddler. I’d forgotten...
The peanut butter conundrum
I was in my mid-teens before I realized that most people did not put peanut butter on their pancakes. Or waffles. Or French toast. This fact, mundane as it may seem, was eventually cause...
The Irrational Machine
Every weekday morning at 7:30am on the nose, John Smith (not his real name) gets up from the same spot on his bed. He showers with a clean wash cloth, washes under the same...
Sinner and a sinner’s son
I never can remember whether I’m sinning in South Carolina. The target for sin is one that moves and not in a way you’d expect. You’re more apt to run right into the bullseye...
Bracketology with a five year-old
That I can win anything in the world of sports prediction is a testament to its ridiculousness. I am not a sports bettor, like those guys seen in an Oddsmonkey review. There’s nothing wrong...
The Brett Favre of parenting
Guilt is a byproduct of selfishness. Guilt, that tightness around the heart and lump in the throat, reminds us that, but for satisfying our own wants and desires, we might not have overlooked something...
On pretense and population
The reason it’s so easy to remember that people largely suck and are more often than not idiots is because there are so many of them. This is as evident in Chinese smog as...
Lost letters
I was cleaning up my laptop this week when I ran across something that bore my younger son’s name. I didn’t remember creating the document, and when I opened it up I didn’t recognize...
St. Francis Hospital: The real cost of having a baby
About the author: I am an award-winning investigative journalist who worked at Greenville, SC’s WYFF News 4 from 1999 to 2005. Everything you read below is objectively true. Summary: Below is a long and...
Being us on Christmas
The other day as we sat beneath stockings and in the glow of a perfectly-lit North Carolina pine, my son asked, “Dad, can we celebrate Hanukkah sometime?” This is where my son’s experience is...
A day with my boy
I just spent ten days pretending I’m a lot younger than I am and acting generally selfish. It was, as you might expect, a damned good time (with the exception of that time it...
Part of growing up
“It’s Wolverine, Dad. X-Men,” he said when he’d turned on the TV. The look on his face let me know that this was not a show his mom would let him watch. The boy...