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Burton Cole

It’s the most wonderful time of year — in my blanket fort

It’s the most wonderful, er, stressful time of the year. OK, maybe those final few hours before April 15 tax deadline when you can’t remember where you tucked your W-2 so you wouldn’t lose it is more stressful, but the Christmas season is a more sustained stress. That’s why I’m hiding in my blanket fort until roughly Jan. 12. I believe the stress begins in earnest on Black Friday. That’s the day millions of shoppers all converge on the very parking space you are trying to pull into. And that’s just at the convenience store for coffee. Things don’t get crazy until ...

Life’s more comfortable when you don’t have to fix things

Over the years, I have carefully cultivated my persona as a guy who can’t fix things. You may laugh, but it’s kept me safely away from numerous repair jobs and household disasters. When the pipe under the sink let go, I heard, “Burt, help! Come out here and fix this… Never mind. ...

Burton by any other name

The website BabyCenter just released the list of most popular baby names of 2024, and once again, for the last 4,000 or so years in row, my name never came close to cracking the top 100. Burton ranks No. 14,361 this year for most popular boys names, plummeting 10,030 spots like a Rock (No. ...

Color-coordinated conundrums confuse clearly clueless guy

My heart skipped when I spotted the set of bedsheets with matching comforter that complemented the color scheme of my bedroom. A sense of excitement flushed over me as I gently positioned them in my shopping cart next to the memory foam bath mats. I have never been more frightened in my ...

Driving drives me crazy

One of the greatest joys of my teen years was jumping in my car and driving. In my high school years, I tooled around in a 1972 Dodge Polara. A 1975 AMC Gremlin became my college years upgrade. One evening at the institution, three other inmates and I couldn’t decide which campus dining hall to visit. “Hey, let’s go to my house,” I said. We crammed ourselves into the Mighty Grem and took off on the nearly two-hour drive to Mom and Dad’s for supper. It was called dinner at the university, but back home on the farm, we called the evening meal supper. Dinner on the farm was ...

I’m out of touch with touch screens

I studied the menu board as I ambled up the counter. But before I could get the word “Quesadilla” out, the teenage punk behind the cash register spoke first: “You have to use the kiosk to order.” He pointed behind me at one of those infernal touch-screen machines. Forty-some years ago, I used to drop quarters into boxes much like that one so that I could use a joystick to send Pac-Man whooshing through a maze to eat ghosts. Now, if I want to eat, I gotta stand at a stupid kiosk that has neither joy nor joystick, and tap photos of what I want to eat. And I don’t insert ...