Levity & Brevity

At this point, there was no repairing my reputation as the neighborhood crackpot. The neighbors are avoiding me. I fear I'm the talk of the neighborhood. I think I know why. I'll start at the beginning. The countertop in my aging kitchen is old, gold-flecked white laminate, which yellows and stains easily. Every few months…

It's never too late to work on your perceived flaws.

There are disadvantages and advantages to growing up in a very small town where everybody knows everybody else. As the saying goes; it takes a village. One of the disadvantages is that if you or your friends are up to something you shouldn't be that could cause someone to get hurt, someone will be sure…

As we enter our senior years, it's gravity that causes our ample flesh to begin packing its bags and heading south like "snowbirds" heading south for the winter. By the time we enter the retirement home, we resemble Shar-Pei puppies. We have rug burns on body parts that once flew so high that air traffic…

The graphic art in the plastic surgery center's ad was what caught my eye. It was a large photo of Michaelangelo's David, one of the most exquisite and realistic depictions of the nude male ever created. In the ad, amateurish airbrushing over his groin area had rendered him anatomically neutered, as smooth and genderless as…

I saw something you don't see every day: Two well-dressed, dignified-looking elderly ladies angrily screaming at each other in the parking lot of a party supply/liquor store parking lot. One of them gave the other one "the finger," stormed off, climbed into her car, and drove away. What they were arguing about? Did one lady…

"Music has charms to soothe the savage beast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak." That would depend on whether the music was good or bad. My father's mellow baritone could soothe a savage beast. Mom's caterwauling could certainly soften rocks or bend a knotted oak, as well as cause the wallpaper to fall…

Whenever teenagers ask me what it was like learning to drive when I was their age, I tell them, "There were few rules of the road. Often there wasn't a road. I just had to remember to hold the reins loosely and try to keep the wagon wheels out of the ruts, because it might…

According to George Bernard Shaw, "The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel." Scientists and psychologists have long understood that anger is a powerful motivator of human behavior. It takes a long-married couple several decades to realize that body language can be just as effective and a lot…

Said my friend, Wanda, while hiking in the woods, "Have you ever had a peacock s*** on your chest from three stories up?" "Excuse me? What?!" As someone who often hikes the countryside alone, I'd been thrilled when Wanda offered to join my friend Marlene and I one afternoon. At last, I thought, the possibility…