I pride myself on some outstanding pranks over the years. True moments of embarrassment and surprise perpetrated on my closest friends and colleagues.
Nothing has ever come close to this. This is truly the greatest prank I have ever seen and probably ever will see.
A smiling, little boy with a golf club in hand, wearing an RJ Julia Booksellers tee-shirt and riding a fire truck.
Perfection in its purest form.
I’m always a little excited about the new school year, but that excitement is always tempered by the fact that it spells the end of my summer vacation.
This is apparently not the case for my daughter, who just began her last year of preschool (though in fairness, she only had a week of vacation, so perhaps the transition was a little less jarring).
Can you believe this? So close to losing. So close to deserved heartbreak.
So close to unbelievably joyous schadenfreude.
My friend (and fictional character), Mrs. Gosk, has a tradition of giving me a new pen at the onset of every new school year.
This year she has outdone herself, introducing me to a product that I did not know existed.
To think that I could’ve spent my childhood free of the smear of ink that could always be found on the side of my left hand.
Kids have it so good these day.
George Zimmerman has asked that the state of Florida to reimburse him for up to $300,000 for expenses he incurred while successfully defending himself in court after shooting and killing Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman has a good chance at recouping these losses. Florida law requires the state to cover some legal costs for defendants who are acquitted.
For anyone who was appalled by the verdict, the idea that George Zimmerman will now be collecting taxpayer funds in order to reimburse his expenses will not go over well.
As appalling as I found the Zimmerman verdict to be, I was not upset by this news. Rather, I was thrilled to hear that the state of Florida has a law like this in place.
When I was 21 years old, I was arrested and tried for a crime I did not commit. I was refused legal counsel from the state despite the fact that I would be unemployed and homeless just three weeks after my arraignment. I lost two years of my life working 18 hours a day in order to pay for my $25,000 in legal fees (more than $45,000 in today’s money) for something that I did not do.
When it was ultimately determined that I was not guilty, I was sent on my way without so much as an apology.
Like many people, I was outraged at the idea that George Zimmerman might be collecting taxpayer money, but I am not upset that a law like this is in place. When a defendant is truly innocent of any crime, it is only right that the state reimburse his or her expenses, especially if the state has refused to provide legal counsel in the first place.
Twenty years after my trial, I remain shocked that this was not the case. The state of Massachusetts disrupted by life for more than two years and imposed an enormous cost upon me, and there was no means for me to gain restitution for their error.
While it sickens me to think that George Zimmerman will likely be collecting money from the state to cover part of his legal defenses, these laws need to exist. There are defendants like myself who did nothing wrong, whose actions did not result in the loss of human life, who suffer financially for years as a result of a horror on the part of police officers and prosecutors.
I wrote about this issue and my personal situation in greater detail two years ago. I said it then, and I’ll say it again now:
I want my $25,000 back, damn it.
From a New York Times piece entitled When You Can’t Forget the Gifts You Didn’t Get:
In the hierarchy of social transgressions, the wedding-gift omission, for some, is a sin of the highest order, the cause of relationship breakdowns and unwavering resentment.“You could talk to a 98-year-old woman and she won’t be able to tell you what song she danced to at her wedding, but she can tell you who didn’t give her a gift,” said Jodi R. R. Smith, an etiquette expert in Marblehead, Mass., and consultant for the wedding industry.
The piece goes on to describe a handful of women who are angry and continue to hold grudges about wedding gift omissions, some from decades ago.
I have theory on these women and people similar to them:
Scientists have discovered that as a result of interbreeding hundreds of thousands of years ago, most of us have a little bit of Neanderthal DNA inside us. In fact, you can purchase a genetic test to determine exactly how much.
I’d like to go out on a limb and predict that someday scientists will also discover that human beings who fixate on a wedding gift omission have at least a little bit of pond scum DNA inside them as well.
Anyone who would allow the lack of a wedding gift to impact a relationship or even linger in the memory years after the big day has to be one of the basest, most materialistic, most petty persons on the planet. Can a person be so bereft of meaning in their life that something like a wedding gift omission is the thing they choose to remember long term?
Add to this the tunnel vision required to allow your name to be used in a piece like this. It takes a fairly pathetic person to harbor these feelings of anger about the lack of a wedding gift, but it requires a whole new level of stupidity to announce these vile and self-loathing thoughts to the world and a New York Times reporter.
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. You can read about that debate here if you would like.
After refuting the charges of materialism, I acknowledged that I had plenty of other shortcomings and offered to list them in order to appease my angry reader. 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 flaws and shortcomings. Here is the revised list for 2013. I’ve added 7 items to the list, bringing my total to 29. In all honesty, most of the new items on the list have existed for a long time. Only the last two items have become pronounced enough over the previous year to warrant inclusion on the list.
Sadly, no item was removed from the list this year.
If you have a suggestion for a flaw or shortcoming that you do not see on the list, please feel free to submit it for review.
Matthew Dicks’s List of Shortcomings and Flaws
1. I have difficulty being agreeable even when the outcome means nothing to me but means a great deal to someone else.
2. I have a limited palate (though I would like to stress that this is not by choice).
3. I often lack tact, particularly in circumstances in which tact is especially important.
4. I am a below average golfer.
5. It is hard for me to sympathize with adults with difficulties that I do not understand, do not think are worthy of sympathy and/or are suffering with difficulties that I would have avoided entirely.
6. I have difficulty putting myself in another person’s shoes. Rather than attempting understand the person, I envision myself within their context and point out what I would have done instead.
7. When it comes to argument and debate, I often lack restraint. I will use everything in my arsenal in order to win, even if this means hurting the other person’s feelings in the process.
8. I do many things for the sake of spite.
9. I have an unreasonable fear of needles.
10. I become angry and petulant when told what to wear.
11. Bees kill me dead.
12. I am incapable of carrying on small talk for any length of time and become extremely irritable and uncomfortable when forced to do so.
13. I become sullen and inconsolable when the New England Patriots lose a football game.
14. I lack adequate compassion and empathy for adults who are not very smart or resourceful.
15. I can form strong opinions about things that I possess a limited knowledge of and are inconsequential to me.
16. Field of Dreams makes me cry every time without fail.
17. I am unable to make the simplest of household or automobile repairs.
18. I would rarely change the sheets on my bed if not for my wife.
19. I eat ice cream too quickly.
20. I procrastinate when it comes to tasks that require the use of the telephone.
21. I am uncomfortable and ineffective at haggling for a better price.
22. I am exceptionally hard on myself when I fail to reach a goal or meet a deadline, thus impacting my performance and creating a negative feedback loop that further hinders progress.
23. I take little pleasure in walking.
24. I cannot snap a onesie correctly.
25. Sharing food in restaurants annoys me.
26. I drink too much Diet Coke.
27. I forget my EpiPen far too often.
28. My hatred for meetings of almost any kind cause me to be unproductive, inattentive and obstructionist.
29. I have developed a tendency to express my displeasure or boredom with people through unconscious verbal exhalations and sighs.
She can't actually read much yet, but she has all of the proper reading behaviors, and she loves books. She looks like a reader. The words aren't from behind.
A friend sent me this, saying it made him think of me.
“Me?” I asked.
“Not you,” he said. “The exact opposite of you.”
This made a lot more sense to me.
Is it me, or is there a definite resemblance?
I’ve seen some strange things on the golf course. I have made more than one shot in my time that seemed impossible. I have unintentionally bent golf balls around objects at impossible angles. I hit myself in the head with a golf ball last year. I have struck water fowl.
But I’ve never seen anything as cool as this happen on a golf course.
Today is my last day of summer vacation. Tomorrow I will head back to school. It is a bittersweet time for teachers. Another summer has come and gone, faster than we can believe, and while most of us wish that our summer days would never end, we are also returning to a profession that we love with all our hearts.
Sadly, the first two days of every school year are consumed with meetings. My students don’t arrive until Wednesday morning, making the beginning of school especially difficult.
I love to teach. I despise meetings.
As my school year begins, I can’t help but think that I am returning home after a summer abroad. After fifteen years of teaching, my school has begun to feel more than a little like home. It has become a fixture of my life, and during my years spent teaching, I have worked and continue to work among people who have become some of my closest and dearest friends.
I have taught children who return to my classroom on a weekly basis to apprise their former teacher about their adventures in middle and high school. As they grow older, some of these students have become friends. I play basketball with them, counsel them on difficulties that they are experiencing and share in their accomplishments. Some of my former students now babysit my children and attend important family events with us. It’s something I could’ve never imagined when I began teaching so long ago.
I have also developed friendships with the parents of some of my former students, and these friends have become some of the most important people in my life. I count many of them as my best and closest friends. One is my daughter’s godmother, and two others are my son’s godparents.
Recently, I came to realize that some of the most important events of my life have taken place inside the walls to my school.
On September 11, 2001, I watched the second plane strike the World Trade Center and the both towers fall on a television in my principal’s office. Immediately thereafter, I retrieved my students from music class and went on with my day without telling them that anything had happened, giving them a few more precious hours of normalcy in a world that had suddenly changed.
In the fall of 2002, I met my future wife in the first staff meeting of the year. Ironically, our first real conversation would take place a few weeks later at a YMCA camp as we hiked around the lake with students and discussed the plans for her upcoming wedding, an engagement that she would later break off.
In the fall of 2004, I revealed plans to ask Elysha to marry me to a colleague and friend in our Curriculum Specialist’s office. A month later, while Elysha was trapped in an after-school meeting, a committee of teachers and friends helped me choose Elysha’s engagement ring. During the next month, I would hatch my plan to ask her to marry me in the principal’s office with several friends who were instrumental in pulling off the surprise.
In the spring of 2005 Elysha and I would knock on the door of our principal’s office after school one day and ask him to marry us on our wedding day.
That same spring, I received a call from the veterinarian before school informing me that my dog required life threatening spinal surgery. I went on to teach for the rest of the day while Kaleigh was in surgery, waiting to hear if she was alive or dead.
In the winter of 2006 I found a set of golf clubs in the back of my truck in the parking lot of my school, tied together by a thin, red ribbon. They were a gift from a friend and colleague. That set of used irons, which he had purchased for $10 at a yard sale, began my long and joyous road to golf mediocrity.
In February of 2007, I was sitting at the desk in the principal’s office when my aunt told me over the phone that my mother was dead. I spent a few moments alone before returning to class to finish the day with my kids.
In May of 2007, I received a call while teaching from a member of Human Resources, instructing me to come to his office immediately. That phone call and the subsequent meeting led to nearly a year of turmoil and terror that included an anonymous conspiracy to destroy my career (as well as the careers of my wife and friend), a large-scale attempt at character assassination and public defamation, a legal battle over my First Amendment rights and the unexpected and overwhelming support of the community.
In the fall of 2008 I was sitting at my desk when a call came in from the geneticist, informing me that I was a carrier of the muscular dystrophy gene, and that I was almost certain to contract the same disease that killed my mother.
That same year, I was sitting at the same desk when I received the call from my agent informing me that Random House had made a preemptive offer on my first novel. I spent a moment collecting myself before finding Elysha alone in the hall and informing her of the news. She collapsed to the floor in tears, sparking great concern throughout the faculty that something terrible had happened (and that perhaps I had broken up with her). I was standing by the library after the school day had ended when negotiations over the book had finished and the call came in with the final purchase price.
In the spring of 2010, a student teacher and I had a conversation while on recess duty that gave me the idea for my third novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. The book that I didn’t want to write and thought would be stupid was born on my school’s playground and has now been published in more than 20 countries around the world.
With experiences like these, and so many more, is it any surprise that a school can begin to feel like a home?
I can’t help but wonder: Does this happen to everyone at the workplace, or is there something different about working in a school?
Updated from a post originally written in 2010.
Yesterday morning, my four year-old daughter woke up, got dressed, made her bed, cleaned her room, and only then opened her bedroom door and called for me to come see her.
She did this on her own, without ever being asked, but I am taking full credit for it, because I am her father, and that is my right. Somewhere along the way, I said or did something incredibly insightful that left an indelible mark on her, and the fruits of my genius are just now becoming evident.
It’s 5:48 in the morning. The sun has not yet risen. The house is quiet. I’m trying to write, but in truth, I’m anxiously waiting to see if it happens again when she wakes up.
If it doesn’t, it’s not my fault.
A new Tumblr called Hot-Dog Legs challenges viewers to determine if what they are looking at are legs or a pair of hot dogs.
It’s shocking how much the two look alike.
Perhaps this will finally bring an end to the self-indulgent photos of surf, sky and a pair of suntanned legs. Probably not, but there’s always hoping.
Truthfully, I like hot dogs a lot. They’re my second favorite food, topped only by ice cream cake. And legs are great, too.
So whether the photo contains dogs or legs, both fine with me.
I agree. This is a brilliant idea.
Now I just need to become a famous author.
I describe myself as a reluctant atheist.
Essentially, this means that I do not believe in God, but I wish I did. I have tried to believe. At this point in my life, I simply lack the faith required to believe. Despite reading the Bible cover to cover three times in my life, I have been unable to find truth in those words.
Truthfully, the more I read, the less I believe.
Adding the word “reluctant” to my atheist label has had an interesting effect on others in terms of their reactions to my position on religion.
For people of faith, the word “reluctant” seems to have added a level of approachability and acceptance that did not exist before. While many people of faith have a difficult time understanding the non-believer and are often offended by the criticism of their religion, they seem to have an acceptance of the idea of a crisis of faith, and they often assume that this is what I am experiencing.
Even when I take a hard-lined stance against a practice or policy of their religious institution, the addition of the word “reluctant” has seemed to temper their anger and outrage.
This has been good.
I tend to believe that my position on God is not a crisis of faith and more rationale and cemented than some of these people of faith seem to believe, but perhaps I am wrong and someday faith will come to me.
Either way, we seem to be able to engage in discourse more easily now.
For some atheists, the addition of the word “reluctant” has been greeted with skepticism and disappointment. They believe that I do a disservice to nonbelievers when I fail to take a strong position on my atheist views.
I try to explain to these people that my position on atheism is actually quite strong. While I wish that I believed in a higher power and an afterlife, I am convinced that neither exists.
“Then why try to believe in something that you know doesn’t exist?” they ask. “Why wish for the impossible? And for someone who has read the Bible carefully, why would you wish for the God described in the Bible?”
They have a point. The Biblical God, particularly in the Old Testament, is not a friendly guy.
There are tough questions. I often find myself feeling like the little boy who has just discovered that Santa Claus isn’t real but still desperately wants him to be real. It’s a difficult position to explain or defend.
But I think I’ve found my answer. I’ve found my answer in Antoinette Tuff, the Georgian woman who saved the lives of untold numbers of students and teachers with her quick thinking and steel nerves. Listening to her describe the role that her faith in God played during her encounter with the gunman and the humility that her faith has given her in the wake of all the attention she has received was inspiring.
As I listened to her speak, I found myself jealous of her faith, wishing that I could believe with the absolute certainty that she possesses.
There is nothing wrong with wanting something as powerful as faith, even when you are convinced that it is predicated on something that does not exist.
I’m off to New York tonight to compete in another Moth StorySLAM. I have been exceptionally fortunate enough to win the last five StorySLAMs in which I have competed, including my last four in New York.
I am not attempting to be humble in any way when I describe this recent streak of consecutive victories as exceptionally fortunate. A great number of factors come into play when competing in these events. In addition to a storyteller’s actual performance, the order that the names are chosen from the hat plays an enormous role. You can tell the best story of the night, but if you are the first or even second storyteller of the evening, you have almost no chance of winning.
The judging is also very subjective. While the judges typically do an excellent job, the difference between the winning story and the second or third place story is often slim.
Sometimes nonexistent.
So a story that may have easily won in last week’s competition might not place second or third the following week, depending on who has been chosen to judge and the level of competition.
It’s also extremely helpful when the names of some of the best storytellers in the house remain in the hat, as was the case when I won last week. When three champion storytellers are unable to the the stage because of bad luck, your chances of winning increase considerably.
You need to tell a good story, but you need some luck on your side, too.
I’ve been telling stories for The Moth for two years now. I’ve told stories in 20 StorySLAM competitions so far and won 10 of them. I’ve done well and am admittedly proud of my success.
But here is the truth:
Last night a friend said to me, “It must be exciting winning all of these competitions in a row. You probably want to win tomorrow night and keep your streak alive. Huh?”
While it’s true that I would love to win tonight’s competition, the real truth is that as much as I always want to win, I’m much more worried about not making a fool of myself onstage. No matter how many times I take that stage and tell a story, and no matter how many times I win one of these competitions, the possibility that I will stand before that microphone and make an idiot of myself remains my primary concern.
It’s odd. I love storytelling, and I especially love storytelling for The Moth. I love the audiences and my fellow storytellers and the competitive aspect of the event. I love it all. I would take the stage every night and tell a story if I could, and yet it still scares the hell out of me. Perhaps a little less now than it did my first night two years ago, but when I am telling a story, I feel like I am walking on a high wire.
If I perform well, I have the chance to thrill an audience.
But there is also the ever-present possibility that I will fail, and if so, I will fail in front of an audience who were depending on my to entertain them for five minutes. Even worse, I will fail in the midst of sharing something meaningful or intimate about myself.
So if you see me on stage tonight or at any point in the future and think I look exceptionally poised and confident in the midst of my performance, please remember that there is also a small, frightened man on the stage as well, hoping like hell that the audience will like him and terrified that he will fail miserably.
My friend, who happens to be a physicist (so you know he’s smart) believes that women have a four degree comfort zone and men have a 20 degree comfort zone, and this explains why women are so often cold in an air conditioned environment.
I agree with this hypothesis. I have expanded slightly on his theory by identifying the average temperature ranges for both men and women.
In my experience, women seem to be most comfortable in a 68-72 degree environment, whereas men seem just fine in temperatures ranging from 60-80 degrees.
I have not conducted a formal study to determine if my friend’s theory is correct, but I know this:
In my four decades on this planet, I have never heard a man express the need for a sweater, jacket or wrap upon entering an air conditioned space. but I have heard a hundred thousand million women express this exact sentiment.
This has been enough evidence for me, but lo and behold, there is actually some research that supports this belief. Findings suggest that there is a significant difference in heat perception between men and women on average. While studies have found that women's actual core body heat is slightly higher than men's, women's extremities tend to be a lot colder.
In 1998, researchers at the University of Utah added a layer of subtlety to science's understanding of gender and body temperature. As had been found in previous studies, the researchers observed women tended to possess higher core temperatures than men (97.8 °F vs. 97.4 °F). Their hands, however, were consistently colder. A lot colder. While men registered an average hand temperature of 90 °F, the mean hand temperature for women was just 87.2 °F.
Similar studies have also found this to be true for women’s feet as well. Apparently this reduced temperature in a woman’s extremities accounts for greater sensitivity to changes in air temperature.
Thus the constant need for a sweater.
What will forever remain a mystery to me is how often a woman finds herself in need of a sweater and doesn’t have one. If you’ve spent your entire life shivering in movie theaters, restaurants and banquet halls, why would you ever leave the house without an additional layer?
I suspect that I’ll find no answer to this eternal conundrum.
I’m not complaining about having to stop for these geese, who were crossing from one side of the road to the other. It took less than a minute to allow them to pass, and frankly, it was kind of cute to watch.
But have these stupid birds forgotten that they are capable of flight?
Perhaps if there had been some baby geese included in the flock, I would better understand their decision to walk, but these were all full grown geese.
Fly, damn it.
