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Burton Cole

Remember, just keep on driving, keep on driving

I don’t mean to brag, but I drove somewhere without my GPS. And arrived where I meant to be. Without getting lost once. Seriously. This would be ho-hum news a few decades ago. Then technology began erasing our memories. Not erasing, exactly. More like replacing. When I was a teen, I carried a Rolodex of telephone numbers in my head. Then I gained a smartphone and lost my smarts. Since the phone remembers all the phone numbers I need, I can’t recall more than a couple of digits on my own. The GPS did in our brains a similar disservice. In the old days, if I didn’t ...

We’re smiling through the seasonal tears

For many of us, tears accompany this joyful season of giving thanks and giving gifts. We’re missing hearts that used to beat alongside ours. I used to think that it would be a blessing that if once, just once, I wouldn’t be told that I had arranged the Thanksgiving table the wrong way ...

Say that again, but this time, make it make sense

Whenever life has me stumped and I don’t know what to do next, I sit back and ponder, “What would HE do?” He, of course, refers to that bear whose head is stuffed with fluff, Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh Bear himself once said, “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and other people are looking at it.” Generally, I doze off in the middle of contemplating that bit of wisdom, and by the time I stir awake, things don’t look quite as ...

With age comes wisdom — but this just ain’t it

I heard the phrase “hidden wisdom” the other day and thought, “Hey, that’s me!” I am chock full of wisdom. I have so much wisdom that it’s rolling out of my ears. But my wisdom is hidden. It must be. Nobody can see it. “Cole, if you had a brain, you’d be dangerous,” is one of the nicer things people say to me when I proclaim something profound. Yeah, well… well… Oooh, I’m sure I’ll think of something smart to say as a retort. Because I have hidden away tons of wisdom. While I’m thinking, let me share a few of these genius nuggets I’ve collected ...

You call this cozy, when the dark of Novem-brrrr came early?

“You want me to come over and help you take those air conditioners out of your windows?” I shook my head. “I hate to do that so early. We’ve got to have another stretch of warm days, right?” The next morning when I left for the office, the thermometer shivered at 37 degrees. Because it was the first full week of Novem-brrrr. I had forgotten that November is when the “brrrr” months get serious. Septembrrrr and Octoberrrr are a pleasant but often weird variety of 90-degree highs and 40-degree lows. There’s just enough brrrr in there to relieve the monotony of summer ...

It’s too peopley outside for this introvert

I slithered through the crowd, trying to avoid contact. Not from elbows. I was afraid that someone in this bubbly mass might talk to me. Brrr. I broke through the swarm and headed for the far corner. Someone had beaten me to it. A woman — my hero — stood there in a T-shirt that proclaimed, “It’s too peopley outside.” I wanted to run right up to tell her how much I agree. Instead, I headed for the opposite far corner. Because that’s what introverts do when it’s too peopley. Crowds energize those overly social and talkative extroverts. Crowds terrorize introverts. It ...