I will never understand why a restaurant would put a random chair like this in their restroom. It serves no purpose other than to make me feel awkward and nervous and a little afraid.
School buses are most often painted yellow because the color attracts attention and is noticed quickly by peripheral vision. In fact, the human eye detects yellow faster than any other color.
Scientists describe this as follows: "Lateral peripheral vision for detecting yellows is 1.24 times greater than for red."
For this same reason, raincoats are often yellow. In the low visibility of a rainy day, you want pedestrians to be as visible as possible to those behind the wheel of vehicles.
This leads me to wonder:
Based upon this data, shouldn't every child's raincoat be yellow? If we're going to paint vehicles that are 45 feet long and nearly impossible to miss yellow so they will be even more impossible to miss, shouldn't we be encapsulating our three foot tall bundles of randomness in cocoons of yellow to protect them, too?
If red, blue, pink, and green raincoats are not as readily detected by motorists, operators of heavy machinery, garbage collectors, cyclists, pilots of exceptionally low flying aircraft, and folks on horseback and camelback, what kind of monster would dress their precious little child in anything by a yellow raincoat?
Forget the gender implication contained in this graph. Where is black?
I've always thought that the concept of a favorite color is kind of strange. My color preferences tend to depend upon context. I might prefer red in some circumstances and green in others.
But if pressed, I say that black is my favorite color. It is my preferred color in most contexts.
When it comes to choosing clothing colors, I prefer black.
When it comes to ink, I prefer black over all others.
My car is black. My golf bag is black. My sneakers are black.
So where is black on these graphs?
Am I the only person in the world whose favorite color is black?
A reader once accused me of being materialistic after I wrote about my lack of a favorite number, specifically criticizing me for saying that when it comes to my salary, my favorite number is the largest number possible.
After refuting the charges of materialism, I acknowledged that I had plenty of other shortcomings and flaws and offered to list them in order to appease my angry reader. Then I did. Then I added to the list when friends suggested that I had forgotten a few.
Nice friends. Huh?
So began an annual tradition of posting my list of shortcomings and flaws, starting first in 2011, and continuing in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
The time has come to assemble my list for 2016, which means I will be reviewing the 2015 list carefully, hoping that I might be able to remove a few and looking to add any that I think might be missing.
As always, I offer you the opportunity to add to the list as well. If you know me personally or through this blog or my books or my storytelling or my podcast and have detected a shortcoming or flaw to add to the list, please let me know. I will be finalizing and publishing my list in about a week, so don't delay.
I look forward to hearing about all the ways in which you think I suck.
My friend and I were discussing the possibilities of a barbecue this summer. I asked him about the size and condition of his gas grill.
"It's a little dented, but it came that way. My dad assembled it and gave it to me for Father's Day, but he didn't secure it well in the back of the truck when he drove it over. It got tossed around a bit. But it works fine."
"Hard to complain about a free gas grill," I said. "I had to buy my own. And assemble it by myself, too."
As I said these words, it occurred to me that I haven't received anything from either one of my parents since I was 17 years-old.
My father left my life when I was very young, and my mother rapidly descended into abject poverty when her second husband - an evil son-of-a-bitch - left her with almost nothing about a year after I graduated from high school. Other than a music box, a collection of state quarters, and a few other small gifts, I haven't received anything of value from my parents for almost thirty years.
No gas grill.
No college tuition.
No cash bailouts when I was in trouble.
No downpayment on my first home.
No birthday, wedding, house warming, or anniversary gifts.
No grandparent gifts for my children.
Furthermore, there was no inheritance when my mother passed away. No family home. No savings account. No precious family heirlooms. My mother died in a nursing home with almost nothing to her name.
I've been on my own for a long, long time.
No safety net. No support system. No backup plan.
Thankfully, my life has turned out well despite the lack of support. I managed to make it to college when I was 23 years-old and managed to graduate five years later with degrees in English and elementary education. I became the teacher and writer I always dreamed of being when I was a little boy.
I was lucky. My dreams came true.
But I find myself wondering about the longterm financial impact of financially stable parents on a person. More specifically, how do outcomes differ between individuals who have the financial support of their parents into adulthood and those who do not?
When a person have to pay their way through college, how does this impact their life longterm?
When a person doesn't have parents to assist with the purchase of a car or a home, how does this change their longterm financial outlook? When there are no parents to pay for weddings, assist with home repairs, provide infusions of cash at precarious moments in the person's life, and even buy the occasional meal or holiday gift, how does this alter a person's future?
is their financial outlook vastly different? Do they differ in terms of happiness and healthiness? Do their life spans differ significantly? Do they become fundamentally different people?
I have friends whose parents have paid for their family vacations. Supplied a downpayment on a home. Fully funded their wedding and honeymoon. Paid every penny of their college tuition.
I have a friend with two children who has never purchased a diaper in his life.
His mother buys them.
I have friends who have joined successful family businesses and have never felt the fear, uncertainty, and sting of longterm unemployment or debilitating poverty. I have friends who have been bailed out of enormous jams by their parents.
Then I have friends like me who have had to grind it out on their own. Find their own way. Save themselves over and over again.
If you're a sociologist, I'd like you to conduct a study that examines the longterm outcomes of people who enjoy parental support post high school graduation and those who do not. I'd like to know how these two groups of people differ in terms of employment, wealth, happiness, life span, health, marital outcomes, and overall achievement.
I'm curious. Which type of person fairs better in the long run?
I'd like to think that those who make it on their own are ultimately more successful in the indicators I have mentioned above, but I suspect that this isn't the case. If I were to hazard a guess, I suspect that people with the support of parents after high school are far better off than those who do not. They tend to be happier, healthier, and wealthier than their counterparts.
And while I certainly don't denigrate my friends who have enjoyed the ongoing support of their parents or joined ready-made family businesses, I tend to be more impressed by the people I know who had to blaze their own trail through life, absent of the gifts of college tuition, downpayments, family businesses, and gas grills.
Unfortunately, I suspect that many of these parentless people fail to blaze their own trails and often fall by the wayside without anyone ever acknowledging the way in which a lack of parental support may have contributed to their negative outcomes.
Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope so. In a day and age in which the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee claims to be a self-made business man despite joining his family's real estate business at an early age and receiving an enormous cash infusion from a father who was worth more than 200 million dollars, it would be nice to know that actual self-made people exist and thrive, despite their lack of familial support.
Get on that, sociologists. I want to know.
Blogger Jason Kottke writes about the differing approaches to "being an adult." In his post, he establishes two kinds of adults:
A: Those who have set aside their childish ways
B: Those who rebel against the lack of freedom of childhood.
“Basically opposite approaches,” he writes. “Responsible adulthood and irresponsible adulthood.”
Kottke continues:
The A people feel that being an adult means eating healthfully, being financially responsible, dressing to meet the expectations of others, flossing regularly, servicing your vehicle regularly, etc.
Folks who take the B approach feel that adulthood means that you can eat candy for breakfast, drink too much, fail to keep careful track of your finances, stay up late, play hours of video games a day, skip dental cleanings for three years, order the steak instead of the salad, etc.
The division between these two types of people has been something that has interested (and frustrated) me for a while, but I don’t entirely agree with Kottke’s distinctions.
I am constantly asking myself where all the rebels have gone.
I cannot understand what causes the adolescent hellion, the teenage idealist, and the twenty-something non-conformist to suddenly accept, embrace and surrender to the traditions and mores of modern society. I marvel at people who are my age - former activists, dreamers, militants, and all-around challengers of authority - who have become so thoroughly invested in cultural, religious, familial, and societal conformity. They have chosen to adhere to the expectations of appearance, accept the etiquette of the masses, follow in the footsteps of previous generations, and possess an overall concern with the opinions and values of the majority.
In short, they have begun to resemble the conservative, staid, judgmental, risk-free nature of the parents they once found objectionable at best.
Have they forgotten the vows made as teenagers and young adults?
Have they chosen to ignore the disdain that they once felt for the rigidity and formality of the adult world?
Have they failed to remember the anthems of their youth?
I think so, and it makes me crazy. I thought that I would be a member of the generation that would tip conformity and convention on its head. I have been disappointed. The majority of people who are my age seem to have eased themselves into the stream of the compliance and traditionalism. This is why clever websites like My Parents Were Awesome are able to exist - as totems to the rebels these people once were. As the website says:
Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome.
I agree, but look at the majority of them now. Free-wheeling? Super awesome? That’s starting to become a harder and harder thing to say about many people my age. I see them giving up on the dreams of their youth, forgoing art and passion completely for cubicles and corporate culture. They are joining their father's companies, doing work that they do not love, and finding value in corner offices and career ladders rather than joyful exuberance and personal expression.
It has made me so sad to watch.
I tend to lean towards non-conformity. I always have. I challenge conventional wisdom whenever possible. I question the most basic rituals and procedures of society.
If you were to ask my friends, they would likely identify me as one of Kottke’s type B adults.
Yet in many ways, I am very much one of Kottke's type A adults as well.
The distinctions that Kottke makes - responsible versus irresponsible - are not quite accurate when describing these two forms of adults, but they are close.
I believe that a type B adult - the kind who does not conform to society’s expectations and challenges convention - can still be responsible when it comes to taking care of him or herself. Despite my desire to tip the world on its head, I don’t want my teeth to fall out, my house to be foreclosed upon, and my heart to explode at the age of 50. I would argue that a person can reject the traditional construct of adulthood while still maintaining a healthy, financially independent lifestyle.
One does not need to live in sloth and destitution in order to be - as someone recently described me - “interesting but difficult.”
Or as another person described me last year:
"Different, in a good way, but sometimes in not so good a way."
A person can reject the trappings of adulthood and still floss regularly.
I wish more would. In both regards.
I've heard this idiom spoken both ways:
So I wondered: Which of these is correct?
The answer: Both.
There is no definitive answer to this question. While it appears that "close to the vest" appeared first, "close to the chest" followed almost immediately, and today, both are used with equal frequency.
This annoys the hell out of me. I want there to be an answer. I want one of these idioms to be correct, and frankly, I want it to be "close to the vest."
This middling, indecisive linguistic uncertainty is stupid.
As a writer, I'm thrilled with a variety of ways to express a single idea, but that variety should contain some actual variation rather than two words (vest and chest) that essentially mean the same thing in this context and rhyme.
And it shouldn't be the result of an inability to decide upon a correct way of expressing a specific idiom.
So I'm taking a stand. I say that "close to the vest" is correct and those who say "close to the chest" are heathens and cretins and socially unacceptable monsters. Linguistic criminals. Language murderers.
Disagree with my selection? Unsure if I'm right? Do a Google image search on "close to the vest" and "close to the chest" and see which set of images more closely capture the meaning of this idiom and which set of images make you marginally uncomfortable.
Who is with me?
My kids are currently watching large amounts of the television show The Octonauts.
They also own many Octonauts toys.
I tend to avoid watching these shows with my kids, and when I do, I rarely pay much attention. I listen to podcast, work on stories in my head, and make excuses to leave. Despite my best efforts, I've become familiar enough with the show to understand the basic characters and plot.
The Octonauts follows an underwater exploring crew made up of stylized anthropomorphic animals. This team of eight adventurers live in an undersea base, the Octopod, from where they go on undersea adventures with the help of a fleet of aquatic vehicles.
When I watch this show, I can only think of one thing:
Who is funding this organization? It must cost a fortune to maintain this fleet of aquatic vehicles and this enormous undersea base, not to mention the salaries of these undersea scientists, who seem to be on duty at all times.
Is this a government sponsored endeavor or privately maintained?
The same goes for Paw Patrol. a show about A boy named Ryder leads a pack of talking dogs known as the PAW Patrol. They work together on rescue missions to protect the city of Adventure Bay. The Paw Patrol has an enormous home base, equipped with a variety of vehicles, all positioned to rescue the idiots in Adventure Bay who can't keep themselves out of trouble.
Who is funding this canine rescue team? Does the government of Adventure Bay have enough tax dollars to fund a police force and a team of canine rescue experts?
I know it's silly to be asking these questions about a show designed for little kids, but I also don't want me daughter to think that these people can act with economic impunity.
When is it too early to introduce the idea that all things - regardless of the good they may do - cost money?
I saw Springsteen on Wednesday night. After watching him perform for almost four hours, I felt so fortunate to have seen him sing and play almost a dozen times over the course of my lifetime.
As I exited the stadium, I thought, "That man can never die. No one does it like him. No one will ever do it that way again. We need that man."
It got me to thinking:
If the Gods were kind and just, they would allow humankind to choose immortals. Human beings who we decide are so universally unique and beloved and needed that we can freeze them in time. Stop their aging process. Hold them as we have them now and forever more.
And it's not like we need an infinite amount of immortals. Let's say that we get ten names. Ten immortals to keep with us forever.
This is what I proposed to my friends as we left the stadium.
Who would those ten people be?
I added the stipulation that the person needs to be alive today. While someone like Abraham Lincoln might be deserving of immortality, once a person is dead, they cannot be brought back.
Given these parameters, which ten people deserve immortality? Who would we choose to keep in place forever?
Bruce Springsteen is on my list.
I have yet to find a second name worthy of inclusion.
Do you think that these ten unevenly placed electrical outlets - located about a dozen feet in front of the McDonald's counter in a rest area off the Mass Pike - are enough?
I'm not so sure. Perhaps they should have covered the entire pole in outlets from floor to ceiling, just in case a busload of weary travelers want to charge their devices while simultaneously waiting in line for a Big Mac and a Coke.
My wife decided that the theme of our next Speak Up show at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford would be "Should've Known Better."
We decided this in the car on the way to New York. As she spoke the words aloud, I said, "Isn't there a song called Should've Known Better?
And there is. It's a Richard Marx song from 1987 - almost 30 years ago.
The song never hit #1 on any billboard chart.
I've never owned a Richard Marx album.
I don't have a song by Richard Marx in my iTunes library.
I was never a Richard Marx fan.
The song probably hasn't been played on a radio station since 1990.
And yet when Elysha played the song, I knew every single word.
That song - one I don't partuicularly like by a musician I never particularly enjoyed - has been living in my head for almost three decades, just waiting to come out.
Even Elysha - a woman who has more music in her head than anyone I have ever known - didn't know the lyrics to this song.
I knew every single word.
I can't help but wonder what else is living inside my head, waiting for the moment to raise its ugly head. What other song or memory or bit of trivia is still lying dormant, as pristine as the day it was encoded into my biological hard drive, waiting for someone to ask the right question and bring it forth?
The brain is a strange thing. Capable of forgetting something you were told five seconds ago yet also able to retain enormous chunks of information over decades without any effort to maintain the integrity of the data.
Oh, and I took a look at Richard Marx's other hit songs., I know at least six others by heart.
Perhaps the man is simply a virus.
Am I the only one who thinks it odd (and deeply disconcerting) that doctors and butchers dress so similarly for work?
A couple weeks ago I visited Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, as a part of my recent book tour for The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs.
Northshire is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. My wife and I take an annual pilgrimage to Northshire in the spring and always love our weekend spent in the bookstore. They certainly didn't disappoint this time around, either. I spoke to a warm and engaging audience, and after my talk, there was a cake auction to benefit children who need books in the home.
Cakes were designed to represent books. Here are what a few looked like:
After the talk, I was approached by a woman who said, "You are a lesson in contradiction, sir."
Before I could ask her what she meant, she was gone. But she bought two of my novels on the way out, so I'll assume it wasn't meant to be too bad.
Northshire is also the only bookstore that I have visited that has a special case for the pens that authors use to sign books. I like it. Made me feel very important despite my actual import.
Here's what I know:
Humor requires patience. The punch line is almost always the last thing to be said, and yet so many people want to say it first. They can't wait to get to the funny part, even though it's the waiting and the building that will make it funny.
When I describe my living circumstances in my early twenties, I say it like this:
"I lived with a family of Jehovah's Witnesses in a converted pantry off the kitchen with a guy named Rick who spoke in tongues in his sleep and the family's indoor pet goat."
A bad storyteller - or an unfunny person - always wants to get to the goat as soon as possible (because it's the funniest part) rather than building to it. They say the funny part first and then fill in the rest of the details when they no longer serve to increase the humor.
I hear this all the time. Both in regular conversation as well as storytelling onstage.
Considering all this, here is what I suspect:
People who make it a habit of interrupting other people are the least funny people I know. These are people who can't wait to speak. Can't wait to insert their voice into the conversation. Can't wait even a second to interject.
These are people who can't wait on a punchline.
But I'm not sure. It's just a theory.
Thoughts?
You may have heard that millennials are living at home more than young people in previous generations. In 2014, the number of young women living with their parents eclipsed their counterparts in 1940, and last year 43% of young men were living at home, which is the highest rate since 1940.
I'm trying to maintain an open mind about the economic struggles of millennials and not expand my own anecdotal experiences beyond reasonable boundaries, but I can't help but wonder if it's not high expectations rather than economic struggle that is keeping these people at home longer.
Do millennials expect more, and as a result, are less willing to live in substandard circumstances and struggle to survive?
When I think about how my friends and I lived during our post high school and college years, the one thing that marks that time is struggle.
We slept on floors and in closets. We drove dilapidated vehicles. We hung out in parking lots. We took dates to pizza places. It was not uncommon to have our electricity shut off from time to time.
And this wasn't the case for just me. The majority of people who I was growing up with after high school and college lived this way.
Again, perhaps my scope is limited, but as a young people, we preferred to eat elbow macaroni, sleep on floors, and watch black-and-white televisions rather than living with our parents.
Are millennials simply unwilling to endure such hardships given the way that the overly-indulged way that so many were raised, or are the economic realities of today truly more debilitating than my generation?
An honest question.
Why do we climb into bed at night but lie on our death bed?
Strange. Right?
Speaking on death beds, why do so many people die in the absence of music?
I have no intention of ever dying, but if I was ever lying on my death bed (merely hypothetical), there would be music playing at all times:
Springsteen. The Beatles. The Who. Van Morrison. The '80's metal bands of my youth.
Why die listening to the beeps and whirs of medical machinery or the hum of passing traffic? Give me Thunder Road, The Bright Side of the Road, and Paradise City.
I'd go out listening to the stuff that I love. You should, too.
I mentioned underoos in class last week, and it turns out that none of my students are aware of the matching top-and-bottom underwear featuring superheroes, Star Wars characters and other heroic characters that dominated so much of my childhood.
Underoos were so ubiquitous when I was a kid that I assumed they still exist today, so I went to the Internet in hopes of showing my students an underoos commercial from the 1980's as a means of defining this product. But when I started watching the commercials on YouTube, I couldn't help but think that they were at least mildly inappropriate and possible exploitative to the children appearing in them.
Not to mention that the production values of the commercials are horrific.
Perhaps I was overreacting, but I can't believe that these commercials were on television when I as a kid. Little kids in little, form fitting underwear dancing all over the screen? And why the hell are little girls wearing bra-like tops?
Am I overreacting? Would these commercials be permitted to air on television today? Do you find them as creepy as I do?
Before watching, it should also be noted that this is not the first time underoos have been mentioned on this blog. Almost exactly a year ago, I became aware of the existence of adult underoos and wrote about them as well.
I need your help. I'm conducting an experiment. In order to maintain the validity of this experiment, I cannot reveal my hypothesis at this time. But part of the experiment is to assemble a list of the 100 most evil people ever. These can be both real and/or fictional beings.
Would you like to help?
If so (and I hope you will), simply send me your suggestions for the list. Send one name or ten names or 100 names. Every contribution will help. Post the names in the comment section of this post or send me an email or tweet the names of evil people with the hashtag #100EvilPeople.
If you could share this with your friends, that would help, too. As with most experiments, the more data I gather, the better.
Once the list is complete, I will share it here and reveal the purpose for its creation.
If you've ever attended one of my author talks, you'll know that I encourage strange, difficult, inappropriate, and challenging questions during the Q&A portion of the evening.
I even award a prize for the most challenging of questions: foreign editions of my books, books I have read and will never read again, and once $2 because I had forgotten to bring a prize.
This tradition was started in honor of a woman at my very first author talk who asked, "How do your ex-girlfriends play a role in your fiction?"
Surprised by the question, I responded, "Why do you ask that question?"
Her answer: "You look like the kind of guy with a lot of ex-girlfriends."
I'm still not sure if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult.
Either way, her question gave me the opportunity to tell a couple of funny stories about my ex-girlfriends, which is what I always do when asked a question. I tell a story.
During the most recent book tour for The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, I've been asked a fair number of challenging questions, including, "How many of your students have been inspired enough by your success to become writers themselves?"
I think the answer is none, though in fairness, the oldest of my former students are still in their early twenties. I didn't become a published author until I was 37.
But the most surprising, challenging, and possibly inappropriate question asked so far came a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore when a woman said, "You're such a sarcastic person. Do you ever make people cry?"
Sadly, the answer was yes, followed by a couple of funny stories about times when I ended up in trouble because of my mouth.
The first gift that my daughter ever received was a stuffed ear of corn from our friend, Justine. It's been sitting on the corner of her bookshelf for the last six years.
She knows that it was the first gift she ever received - given to her before she was even born - but she's never asked why someone chose corn in lieu of a teddy bear or a baby doll.
There is a reason. A good one. It's also one that Elysha and I have never explained to her, nor do we plan on explaining it anytime soon.
The question is when? When do we tell Clara why a stuffed ear of corn made for the perfect first gift?
Watch this video of my Moth GrandSLAM winning story from earlier this year and you will better understand our predicament. Then offer your own suggestion about when we should tell our daughter this story.