When I was 8 or 9-years-old, I looked forward to checking our mailbox. I would get off the school bus and, before heading inside our house, I’d walk to the mailbox, reach up to see what the mailman had brought, and carry the mail inside with me. Most days, the mailman delivered my parents bills …
Honoring the fallen
When I was a young kid, Memorial Day was a big deal in my small community. The end of the school year would come in a couple of weeks and summer was just around the corner, but the day had so much more meaning. The highlight of the day was our local Memorial Day Parade. …
Good parent or a packrat?
Two miniature Polly Pockets have smiles on their faces and sit precariously on the ledge of a table in between several tealight candles and several old DVDs of long forgotten movies, National Treasure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Little Women to be specific. In another corner, several Rescue Heroes have fallen over on their …
My brother’s keeper
In the weeks prior to the Coronavirus bringing everything to a halt in the United States, I had been working in a large city near where I live. I would take the train into the city and during my lunch break, I would go for a long walk. I started the walks to try to …
Predicting the Future: The Jetson’s robotic maid
When I went to college, I had a Mass Communications Course where the professor came into class one day and asked everyone to come back in two weeks with our predictions for the future. He wanted to know our thoughts on how the world of television, media, and social sciences would change. To get us …
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A letter to a former teacher: Pulling me back from the ledge
When I was 11, my basketball coach, who wasn’t much older than my teammates and I, walked the sideline of the small town community hall where we played, yelling and throwing his hands up in the air when we made a mistake or he disagreed with the referee's call. A few years later when I …
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Thank you Mom!
When Mother's Day rolls around each year, I often find myself thinking of my mother, not as a grown women caring for my brothers and me or, even now, loving life as a grandmother, but instead, I find myself thinking of her as a young girl. In fact, I'm ultimately drawn back to a piece …
License to drive: Excited over a piece of paper
When I got my driver’s license as a young sixteen-year-old, I couldn’t wait to drive. I didn’t care that the car was our family sedan and that anything over 55 mph and the car would start to shake and shimmy. The car and my driver’s license, a small card that had my name and indicated …
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Learning new things during COVID-19
I’ve been married to my wife for more than 25 years. When you wake up next to the same person for that many years, you get to know them pretty well. In my wife's case, I've learned everything from her little idiosyncrasies like how she rubs her nose with the palm of her hand to …
Ten things I’m looking forward to when the COVID-19 quarantine concludes
We’ve followed the rules, we’ve tried to stay home, we’ve avoided close contact with people who are sick. We've kept distance between us and others. We've washed our hands often throughout the day and avoided touching our eyes, nose, and mouth. We've covered our mouths when we coughed or sneezed and we've cleaned and disinfected …
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