Baby, it’s hot outside! Or so I’m told. I can’t go out on account of being in a deeply committed relationship with my air conditioner. When I was a teenager, we spent the summer baling hay in weather like this. I haven’t been a teenager for a very long time. I’ve had plenty of ...
I survived the Great Laundry Wars — so far — with only a few streaks of bleach on my shirt and a pocket full of quarters. And a splash of fabric softener gurgling in my left ear. I never knew washing clothes could be dangerous. I didn’t know I’d have to swing elbows and spar with ...
I am an unmarked man. That is to say, I am one of three, possibly four, tattooless people left in the United States. Years ago, a kid could get sent home from school just for drawing the Batman logo on his arm with a Bic pen. (The Bic worked out OK, but Mom about scrubbed my skin off when ...
You know how sometimes a scene plays out in your dreams, something that you couldn’t possibly know when you’re awake, and then two days later, that very thing happens in real life? It just happened to me, more or less. It was astounding. The other night, after eating most of a pepperoni pizza, I fell asleep or passed out or something, and had this amazing dream. The details were quite specific. My friend from Triflestein had been admitted to the Southboardman General Hospital in Southampton, New Jersey. The dream gave precise directions to Southampton, and seconds later — it ...
My wife reached for the Kleenex box and came up empty. She locked eyes with me. “We sure go through a lot of tissues, don’t we?” Every married guy knows what she meant. She didn’t mean WE. She meant ME. The implication was that I, personally, must be grabbing tissues by the fistful to bury in the backyard, feed to the dog or rocket to the moon. “We” most certainly could not be her. Her use of “we” in the singular accusatory tense, grammatically speaking. In plain English, the words translated to, “Look, Bub, stop blowing the honker so much.” But use of “we” ...
I was on another road trip. Not the kind in a car on asphalt. I mean the unreliable road that twists through my memory banks on its way to the Land of Nostalgia. On this trip, I peeked into the “Burt’s Eye View” archives to recall what I was whining about 20 years ago. There were the ...
