Ooooh, they really know how to push my buttons. I wish I could figure out how to push theirs. The stereotype is that older people fumble with technology. Screens freeze us. Robocalls confuse us. If a grandkid with a mean streak tells us we have to do the chicken dance to make our streaming ...

When I was a kid, most moms were tailors by necessity. Not always good ones. But most dads said, “He ripped it. He can wear it.” Moms sighed, rummaged through their sewing boxes and went to work tailoring. I think the patches craze of the 1960s was started by a mom who didn’t have ...

My friend Lynn and I were deep into the pointless exercise of wondering how different our lives would be if only we had done this instead of that. It’s not that either of us were one bad mistake away from a whole new world. We were dozens and dozens of little butterfly decisions away from a ...

Mom couldn’t find her purse. She had wedged it into a hiding place SOMEWHERE in case a burglar broke in, but forgot where her nifty new hidey-hole was. I suggested hiring a burglar to find it. Before I could look up the listing for Burglars, Bandits and Housebreakers in the Yellow Pages ...

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” “It’s a perfect idea.” Falser words were never spoken than whenever Ollie — my third cousin twice removed, but not removed far enough to keep me from getting bent, folded, spindled, stapled or mutilated — declared something as a ...

The grownups, as always, were rude. They laughed at our TV heroes in the 1960s — Batman and Robin, Secret Squirrel, Secret Agent 86 Maxwell Smart, Space Ghost and Lance Link, Secret Chimp and other defenders of justice. “They’re just trying to sell you toys,” the grownups scoffed. The ...