I’m terrible at a lot of things, but especially at baseball. I know this because my Little League coach told me so when I was eleven. I was, perhaps, a bit pudgy and uncoordinated for my age, so things like throwing and catching and running were embarrassingly problematic. Still, I showed up to every practice… Continue reading Not Everyone Deserves a Trophy
My 5th-grader had to write a persuasive research paper on the advantages of same-sex schools. He included a lot of great points, like ". . . boys are sometimes trying to impress the girls so they will try to act funny and this ends up getting them in trouble." So true. He then noted that… Continue reading Just the Facts
Today my nine-year-old called me upstairs to witness the maiden flight of his latest paper airplane — the Triple X. He’d been working on it all morning so we both had high expectations for the flight. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. The “flight” was really more of a tumultuous freefall and what aviation experts would likely classify as… Continue reading I Often Lack the Right Perspective
My 11-year-old son is going through the infamous F.L.A.S.H. (Family Life And Sexual Heath) unit right now in school. Everything was going pretty well until they wrapped-up F.L. and then moved on to the A.S.H. segment. I’d prepped him for this day a few weeks ago, but he was still pretty traumatized by the sudden… Continue reading F.L.A.S.H. Back
Well, it’s done. I dropped my firstborn son off at college. In another town. In another state. 1500 miles away from “home.” And it didn’t go anything like I’d imagined. My wife and I flew down to Phoenix with him a week before classes started so we could get him settled into his dorm and… Continue reading Courageously Onward
I’m rich. Yes, this came as a big surprise to me, too. I always thought I’d notice if anything like this ever happened because I’d start wearing a monocle and would be able to afford luxuries like cufflinks and name-brand cereal. Instead, I read the news in a rejection letter for a government loan that… Continue reading My Best Long-Term Investments
[I wrote this in 1997, so it's too late to send any congratulatory cigars. I'm still accepting cash, though.] My wife and I recently discovered we hadn’t gained much ground in our pursuit of vast riches and fame. In the meantime, though, we'd created a wonderful marriage together and our growing love for one another… Continue reading Not What I Expected
