The five tools.

A visiting priest gave an interesting homily in our church a few weeks ago. In addition to a hair-raising story of possession, he told us the five tools the Devil uses against us. I was all ears—with my history, it’s not surprising that I believed in the existence of the Devil before I believed in the existence of God.

The tools are:

Apathy: It doesn't matter, nothing matters, or at least nothing has to be done today.

Temptation: What will one [dangerous thing] hurt? YOLO! Sure, you said [promise] but aren't there extenuating circumstances? Just this once. You're worth it!

Accusation: You're a piece of garbage, just give up, nothing you do is right, might as well go all in. (Satan is known as the accuser, and loves this one.)

Deception: Just flat-out lies to make the bad look good and the good look bad. Betrayal is good, selfishness is the highest virtue, truth is what you make of it, there is no devil, and so on. The father of lies indeed. 

Discouragement: After this, you should just give up all hope.

As you can imagine, the road to perdition involves these five in countless combinations and shadings. Anyone who has read Lewis's The Screwtape Letters has had a good education in how these tools can be used to attack, twist, blind, and mangle a human soul. 

Catholics, among others, are bound to believe that humanity is faced with this enemy who seeks our destruction. We can't outsmart him, we can't overpower him. With all due respect to the late Charlie Daniels, it is exceptionally unlikely one can beat him. And yet, we have no choice but to do battle or lose without a whimper.

Fortunately, we do not go into battle alone. And that, as you know, is a much better story with a much happier ending. 

Per &@%#$! aspera ad &@%#$! astra.

Think of this as my graduation speech to the class of 2022. 

I took the photo above from a storm sewer in the neighborhood. The photo is real. The words are my words of advice to the youth of America who can't seem to stop seething with envy long enough to build their lives. They can do it -- but it takes effort, including the effort to stop looking over the shoulders of those who started out with more advantages.

I know what that's like. When I started in publishing, many entry-level jobs were unpaid or barely-paid internships, which meant that the only people who could take them were rich kids living on their parents' dime. I had to sneak into the business through the backdoor, being a jack-of-all-trades for a small circulation nonprofit magazine that was run by four people plus me. While other my age were padding their résumés, I was filling my skill box, and the best jobs I've had ever came from employers who appreciated the difference. 

Still, not having the connections one would get from the chummy Ivy League set has always been a disadvantage for me, but so what? When the magazines started to fold and the dot com bubble burst, all of those guys were as unemployed as I was, and many for a longer period. 

What I'm trying to say is not that you should stay in a lousy position or a lousy town, but that you have to play the hand life deals you. You can't always trade them in. Know what you can and can't change. And toughen up, buttercup. You'll get a lot further and stay a lot happier if you don't let your life run on envy.

Regrets, I've had a few.

An article in the London Sun, linked on the New York Post site, reported a hospice nurse's experience with her patients, particularly the four most regrets they have revealed to her at life's end. Julie, an American nurse, had posted her observations on TikTok. 

Julie posted the video in the hopes that people watching would take away her advice so they would not have the same regrets when looking back on their lives.

     The nurse responded to a question which asked: "What kind of regrets do you hear? I feel like in the end, everyone's going to have regrets of some sort."

     She said: "Most people at the end of their lives have regrets about not appreciating their health.

     "Not appreciating being alive, the little things.

     "Working their life away.

     "And not spending more time with family."

It's hard not to see the wisdom in that. The story continues:

From her patient's confessions, Julie has learned to "Be in the moment, live presently, be grateful, don't take for granted your health, and little things about living life.

     "Don't work your life away if you don't have to, or make it so you don't have to.

     "Spend time with those you love, not necessarily family, but those you love and make you feel loved."

Sure, that's fine. However, most of us do have to spend most of our waking hours working at something, or traveling to and from work, or working on our domiciles, or plain running errands. And that's okay, actually. Work is important to mental health. Everyone needs a purpose. If that purpose is selling Chryslers or mopping floors to feed the family, supporting ourselves independently, preaching the Gospel to save souls, or organizing charity events to help the poor, or any other honest work, that shouldn't be disparaged as a waste of time. Of course, looking back on one's life, it's easy to think about all the dull hours spent in these pursuits, but that doesn't make them useless. To me, looking at it that way disparages one's achievements, no matter if -- or perhaps especially if -- those achievements are humble.

And on that note, one of the reasons I find it hard to live in the moment is that the moment can suck. "Yay, I'm living in the moment as a proofread the most boring book in the history of books." "I'm living in the moment while I'm wiping dog hair off the toilet." "Mhmhmsm mhmsh momnbent whilemn bbrushing muh teef." Similarly, no one wants to live in the moment in the dentist's chair.  

Still, the point is taken that we shouldn't be so busy providing for others that we neglect the others. My dad and a lot of dads I knew growing up were like that. They worked like dogs and then felt like the kids hardly knew them, and vice versa. My dad even said as much once to my cousin's husband.  

Anyway, I expect I'll have all those same regrets if I linger on a deathbed rather than suffer a quick demise, like getting thrown off a cliff by an enraged author. ("How DARE you correct my speling?!" "It's 'spelling.'" "AAARGH!") 

Being a special and sensitive soul, though, I plan to have some extra regrets as well. Such as:

• Leaving the oven on
• Not saying goodbye to my dry cleaner
• Leaving the car running outside the emergency room door
• Janet Schnorbuss (forgive me, Janet!)
• All the people I ran over on the way to the hospital
• That time I swam naked in the fountain at Charlotte Premium Outlets and told them my name was Stiiv 
• That awful All-You-Can-Eat Wednesday at Schnitzel's Hofbrau
• Lying to the dog (I still had the ball, Fazzy)
• Not buying Apple in 1999
• Pulling Wanda's hair in class (you'd think a college senior would have a sense of humor about it though)
• Rumple Minze -- let's leave it at that
• Taking the Work Hard Challenge (turns out putting your nose literally to the grindstone has its drawbacks)
• Investing in Acme Corp.
• Swimming with electric eels at Ocean Mystery World Park
• Reading a Tom Robbins book
• Anvil paragliding

So many regrets, and yet, so many joys. Life! Sweet mystery of life!

Fred's Book Club: Good Things.

Happy Wednesday, folks! And that means Fred's Book Club is back, with another humpless Humpback Writer for Hump Day.

This week we have one of the most unlikely pairings one might ever find in a self-help book, one that sounds like the beginning of a joke. What do you get when you combine a rabbi psychiatrist and the world's best-loved cartoonist?

When Do the Good Things Start? is a self-help book published originally in 1988 by rabbi and psychiatrist Abraham J. Twerski, with some illustrative cartoons from the long-running Peanuts strip. Everyone familiar with Peanuts knows that part of its great appeal was its undertone of postwar psychological ideas at play, certainly in its early years. Personal failings, individuals vs. society, imagination vs. reality, phobias, insecurity, boneless intellectualism vs. boneheaded determination, friction between personalities, cultural commentary, so many things worked through the strip through the years when it was at its best. Dr. Twerski cleverly uses some of them to illustrate points about weathering life's problems and bettering ourselves in the process.

Dr. Twerski initiated this project because he'd found Peanuts useful in his counseling career. In the introduction he relates the first time he did so, working with an alcoholic who was trying one thing after another to control his drinking, failing every time. "I remembered how Charlie Brown falls flat on his back each time he tries to kick the football at the beginning of each season. And how every year he rationalizes why this year things were going to be different and he was not going to miss the ball. Yet every year the same thing happened. Charlie Brown did not learn from his experience." This made sense to his patient, who saw his behavior now in the same way, presumably learning that the only way to win was to give up the game.

Rather than quote the book, I've scanned some pages (poorly) so you can see how it works with the cartoons. I hope neither Dr. Twerski nor the estate of Charles Schulz will give me grief, as I think this does count as a review. As you can see, the book is written in short chapters, essays really, that discuss common emotional conditions and encourage healthy responses.

I bought the book years ago because I had always enjoyed Peanuts, and I thought it might have some good advice for me. Indeed, its advice is solid, although pretty much right at the level of any self-help book.

I've read several classics in the field -- I'm OK, You're OK; The Power of Positive Thinking; Who Moved My Cheese?; The Purpose Driven Life -- usually because they were recommended to me. And they all have good advice. The problem is, we have to take it, and keep taking it. Charlie Brown gets good advice all the time, but he lacks the spirit to take it beyond a few moments. Most of us just fall back into our groove after the energy we expend climbing out of it dissipates.

None of the Peanuts characters ever really changes. Of course, they never grow up. Growing up does change us; it is a crisis in its way, and every crisis has the possibility of making us move out of our groove because we have to. But without that motive force, good advice can be all so much hot air.

Anyway, I thought I'd run with this book today because I've read some articles about advantages of life during quarantine, and some recommend taking this time to see what's really important, and to better ourselves and our relationships. So, you could do worse than read this book. And if we are shoved out of our old grooves by current events, may we all wind up in better places after it's over.

Dead wood.

Well, here we are, the first day of autumn, the autumnal equinox. Surely "equinox" is the coolest word for astronomical events on the calendar.

On Saturday I had a job to do that I'd been avoiding all summer.

When we moved into the house, bright young things full of hope that we were, there was a new tree planted in the front yard. It died. I replaced it the following year with a dogwood. That died. I replaced that the following year with a thundercloud plum. That has survived.

The thundercloud plum is a pretty tree with small leaves that start the season pink and turn a dark purple. It's looked so good on the front lawn every spring and summer, and I say to myself with no little pride, I planted that. I, city boy, from a borough where people cut down the trees and put up umbrellas, I planted that tree and it didn't die. And every year it makes me smile.

Last year, late in the summer, though, I noticed that it looked kind of thin.

Sure enough, some major branches had no leaves. The rest of the tree looked good, but those limbs were dead. Small bits snapped right off. These were mighty branches in the center of the tree, and they were dead as doornails.

I was going to have to prune.

I put it off all year, but as we approached autumn I knew I would have to take action. Once the leaves had fallen it would be tough to tell the dead from the living. But cutting off the dead limbs was going to leave a big hole in the middle of the tree, like a guy going bald from the part. And I didn't have the right kind of saw for the job, just hacksaws and a big crosscut saw and a circular saw. Last Friday I stopped in Home Depot for something else, saw the saws, and knew the time had come.

Saturday, the ax fell. Well, not the ax, but you know what I mean.

From plum to prune.

I hope it bounces back in the spring. From what I'd read, pruning was the only hope to prevent termites, promote health in live limbs, and preserve the structural integrity of the tree. I guess we'll find out in eight months how it went.

And that brings us to Life Lessons with Grandpa Fred: Autumn is not a time of new beginnings, like New Year's and spring. Autumn is rather a time of old beginnings, which makes no sense, but stay with me. Our lives, like our trees, may require some pruning to keep healthy. Too much junk in the house? Get rid of it. Bad relationships? Walk away. Unsightly blemish? Ooh, better see a dermatologist. It's all part of living, and a sad part, yes, but we can be stronger and healthier if we face what's causing trouble and remove it.

That's all for this episode of Wise Words from a Suburban Gentleman. Tomorrow we'll be back to our regular stupidity.

Live a little.

I recently read that human beings cry up to 30 gallons of tears annually. That's each of us, not all together. And it's a good thing that we don't do it all at once, or we'd be dead. In fact, we'd be worse than dehydrated, like we got zapped by the Kelvans; 30 gallons of water weighs more than 250 pounds, so a lot of us would disappear up the spout, as it were.

The fact is, we live out our entire existence on earth incrementally, one meal, one breath, one tear at a time. Years ago I heard about the "bologna loaf" method of tackling large and daunting projects -- no one can just sit down and eat an entire 10-pound loaf of bologna, but anyone (except perhaps the most bologna-adverse) can eat one slice. Do that every day and eventually: no more bologna.

Now, I don't know why someone would need to consume that whole loaf, nor how it could stay fresh long enough for such a period, but the point is illustrated well. You can't do it all at once, so do a bit now.

People sometimes like to advise us to live one day at a time, and there was even a hit country song along those lines in 1974. And while this doesn't mean to go hog-wild and throw away all your money today like Don Ameche leaving for space in Cocoon, it does mean that there's no day in which to do anything but the day we are in. So focus on that.

The mathematics of increments are always mind-boggling, though. Based on an average lifespan, the American male will brush his teeth more than 57,000 times, eat more than 86,000 meals, take something like 576,700,000 breaths. Hell, I'll probably spend 100 hours playing a game on my phone that I don't even like that much. And yet we think life is too short.

The Huffington Post's more useful Australian site addressed this topic two years ago, and their calculations provided some weird figures: You'll spend:

• just over 13 years of your life at work 
• with an extra year on top in unpaid overtime
• more than 11 years looking at screens
• 16 months exercising
• 4 and a half years eating
• 26 years sleeping

Man, just looking at all this makes me tired. I think I'm about six months behind in my sleeping, so I'm gonna lie down and catch up, k? See you at Christmas.

Things I learned the hard way.

There are different ways to learn in life -- you can learn from applying yourself to theory and being out front with research; you can learn from good experience, if you're paying attention; you can learn from others' experience, if you're open to it; and you can learn from my favorite means, doing something stupid and suffering the consequences. "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn from no other," says that Franklin guy, and maybe he should know.

So today here is the benefit of things I had to learn the hard way, usually because I would not read the label, listen to the experience of others, or follow common sense. I was quite young for most of these, but sadly, not all of these. Maybe this will save some trouble for you out there in Internet land.

💣💢🚔💔💩🔪🚽🚑

Don't take up smoking. If you never smoke, you'll never miss it; if you take it up, you can quit, but years and years later you'll still miss it.

Do not avoid asking the person on a date because you're afraid of what third parties will think.

Never put Dawn in the dishwasher.

If you want to join a serious league, make sure you are serious about the sport. Otherwise you can and will get hurt. And lose.

When cooking for someone for the first time, don't combine unexpected things, like peas in the omelets, even if someone else sprung that one on you in the past.

Drunkeness is never appropriate, except when everyone else is drunk, and even then some idiot will suggest driving someplace and it will seem like a fine idea.

Many college professors will not put up with sloppy, chucked-together homework the way high school teachers will, no matter what a genius you are, Precious.

Do not lose focus on ladders.

In winter, be aware that black ice is always an option.

Redheads are evil. Okay, not all of them. Maybe not most. Maybe I was just attracted to evil ones. Or maybe my behavior encouraged evil responses. Maybe I need to think this one out some more.

Never cut frozen bacon. Thawed bacon is slippery enough.

When you get your driver's license for the first time, pay special attention to turning lanes, speed limits, and your proximity to the car in front of you. This will save you tickets, money, and embarrassment, at least.

You don't see them around that much anymore in the era of the big battery, but: When using plug-in yard appliances, never lose sight of where the freaking electrical cord is. This is especially true for appliances with sharp blades, like lawn mowers and hedge clippers. Especially lawn mowers and hedge clippers. And especially especially when you're supposedly getting paid to use them.

Small children, puppies, and dumb people require more patience than you have. If you expect to encounter these, you had better get some more.

Limit the Oreos. Decide how many you should have in advance and take just those. That number should be in single digits. Talking to you, Teens of America.

Those stupid things your dentist tells you to do? Do them.

💀🏥🚒🚫🔥❌👊👿

Is this everything I learned in life the hard way? No, since I pretty much learn everything the hard way. I might have to visit this topic again.

Life and times of shazbat.

Rushes.

The rushes, or film dailies, are the segments of film from a day's shooting, assembled to allow the director of a movie and others to view at the end of the day. Apparently the term "rushes" comes from the speed at which they were prepared in the past, so that they could be viewed soon after shooting was done for the day. That way, any necessary reshooting could be done the following day. It's still done, but with digital technology it's undoubtedly easier than when film had to be developed.

🎬🎥💑

I would like rushes of my days.

Seriously, I'd love to be able to sit down at the end of the day and review them. Then go back and reshoot what didn't work, or at least cut what went wrong. It might go something like this....

💬

"Okay, here's the scene where you start the day --"

"Ugh! Oh, no, that looks stupid. Checks the phone first thing? That makes the character look weak. We'll trim that out."

"All right... Here you're walking the dog..."

"Yeah, and that jackass blew his horn at us  -- wait, back that up. Shoot, that's the guy with the Dalmatian three blocks up. He was just saying hi? Okay, we'll have to cut the part where I give him the finger, and reshoot it as a wave."

"Nah, we can fix it with CGI. Okay, now to the desk."

"Jeez, who designed that set. What a mess."

"It's your desk."

"Yes, but I thought it would look smart-cluttered on film, or eccentric-cluttered. This just looks lazy-cluttered."

"Okay, maybe we reshoot tomorrow."

"Well... It's not like anything interesting happens in that scene."

"Let's have a look... There's a lot of typing and frowning at the laptop... Big lunge for the dictionary... Pretty dull."

"We have to keep that in, though, or I don't get paid."

"Looks like you're pounding out something."

"Yeesh, yeah, angry e-mail to an editor. Probably shouldn't have sent that. Adds drama but it'll hurt revenues, specifically mine. We'll cut that part."

"Like it didn't happen. Let's have a look here, at the scene with your wife. You were irritated at her."

"Yeah, but see? I look calm and collected here."

"Watch this. Where she asks you if you think the ChapStick that was in her coat from last year is still good?"

"Oh, yeah... To be fair, if I hadn't known we had a brand-new ChapStick in the medicine cabinet, I wouldn't have rubbed that one on my butt and tried to hand it back to her."

"Maybe if we punch up the dialogue? 'Feels good to me' is a little pedestrian."

"The whole scene is going to alienate the viewers."

"Let's leave it in and see how it tests."

"No, I want a rewrite. Way too much childish humor in this film. Tell the bullpen to get something to me tomorrow morning."

"Okay, don't sweat it. By the time we're done your wife won't be mad anymore and you will have had a good day. Wanna see the supermarket run? I know you had some concerns about wardrobe."

"Yeah, old Dad jeans versus new sweatpants. I mean, they're both bad, but which is worse? But aside from that I think the supermarket scene was fine."

"Even when you grabbed five cheese samples while the cheese sample lady was talking to someone?"

"Ooh, well, yeah... But look, her job is to make the samples disappear, and I helped."

"What will the audience think?"

"All right, all right, let's have a look at the whole scene and maybe we can cut the cheese."

[Screening room dissolves into laughter. This scene is a keeper.]

Big production number.

Yesterday I jokingly joshed in a jocular way about the useless of dogs. But there was something to the topic. A friend of ours does not understand the idea of pets, and asked why we would even have one. That was before we got the second one, so I guess we're twice as confusing now.

Weeks like this make me wonder, too.

Not that the dogs were getting into trouble. For the most part they have been very good. Little dog has been his usual fun-loving self. The problem was that the big dog, Tralfaz, hurt himself by accident last week and had to be rushed to the vet. (Pro tip: Call the vet's office and tell them you're coming. I had read that tip just the week before and it was a lifesaver.) He was bleeding like crazy. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the path to the car, in the car, on a trail to the office and into the exam room and all over the exam room floor. I was surprised he hadn't passed out.

It reminded me of the scene in Twenty Years After, Alexandre Dumas's sequel to The Three Musketeers, in which Mordaunt executes Charles I while Athos is concealed under the scaffold. When the royal head is severed, Athos is deluged by a "crimson cataract" (some translations are more vivid). There was a lot of blood.

Fazzy will recover, I trust, but our return visit had the vet go "Ick!" when looking at the wound -- never a good sign -- and prescribe a huge bottle of big-capsuled antibiotics for him. Three pills, twice a day with food. It is very hard to give a dog a medication that he can't chew. Fazzy behaved poorly at the vet on this follow-up, and even worse with his first dose of pills. This is going to be another long week.

So the question emerged: Why the dogs? They offer protection, sure, but we have an alarm system for that, plus we don't have a whole lot of valuables anyway. And the dogs really have no other purpose.

What it comes down to are the things I heard so often growing up. "I can't be bothered" was a common one from the older members of my tribe, when asked why they didn't do something, or why we didn't do things other families did. "I can't be bothered." "Too much trouble." "You know how much work that is?" "Everything with that is a big production number."

Do people still know what that phrase means? Members of my family who grew up during Hollywood's golden age knew a big production number as a large set piece in musical films where a cast of thousands danced and sung their hearts out on elaborate sets. A big production number was a lot of trouble to film and cost a huge amount of money.

Dogs are not a big production number, but they are a continual source of duty. Are they worth the trouble? For that matter, are children? Some will grow up to support their parents, but will most of them do that these days? It seems the goal of children now is to run as far and fast from home as they can, spurning their folks' beliefs and values, or, on the opposite end, to stay in the cellar like a mushroom and continue to be a drain on the family forever.

Everything is a pain in the ass. Fish? Gotta clean the tank. Pool? Gotta clean the pool. Car? Don't get me started. House? Kill me now. What isn't a load of trouble in life? Is the only path to happiness that of a monk? Or of Diogenes, who was thrilled when he threw away his cup because he realized he could cup his hands, and so didn't even need that sole possession?

This is one of those thread questions, a little thing that you tug on and next thing you know everything starts to unravel. But I think I can snip it, at least to my own satisfaction.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is popular because it makes sense to us, as many things in psychology don't. When we get above the bottom two categories, for basic necessities and security, we enter into those needs that have to do with love. And that's the answer. 

I don't mean "love" in the two senses that it's often bandied about these days -- political love, which is a flag meant to express hate for others, or love solely related to the disposition of one's genitalia. I mean love from the highest (agape) to the lowest (sub-human), as C. S. Lewis discusses at length in his brief and wonderful book The Four Loves. Note that the sub-human love here doesn't refer to Cro-Magnon man love, but love for that which is not itself human -- which would include trivial things like model trains or movies, or great things like one's country. He addresses this love in his book but it is not one of the four, those being affection, friendship, romantic love, and love of God. But for the sake of my point today, it's all love, and it all takes us out of our purely selfish state.

Love is worth a big production number. Love is worth going through trouble that you don't have to go through. Even in my family, which seemed dedicated to the idea of not being bothered with stuff, you'd hear plenty of things like "It's different when it's blood" and "Charity begins at home" and "You do things for your children." Not the noblest, most Christian sentiments, but they express the point that when you love, you do. You accept the responsibility. You go to the trouble.

And that means even on days when it's no fun, and they do nothing that makes me happy, the dogs are worth the trouble. If I threw them out when they stopped being cute, or started costing me more money that I'd expected, then it was never love. And that's one of two dangers that pop out right away, that I may misjudge my motives, and that I may be led captive by my possessions. I may think I love fish until I get so tired of cleaning the tank that I let it stay until the little punks are floating upside down. I may love my big house but spend all my time slaving to pay for it and keep it up, ignoring more important things.

I like to say that if it can't drive you nuts, it isn't love. But not everything that makes me nuts is love. I must know what I love and not abandon it. Then I might be happy.

Lessons of KinderFred.

It's been 30 years since Robert Fulghum published his runaway best-seller All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I've never read it, but it was enjoyed by people I respect, so I can't knock it. I don't know how comprehensive the author's kindergarten learning was. I mean, personally, I need to know how to write checks and balance my checkbook, but I doubt that these skills were in the curriculum. Neither, I suppose, were how to drive a car, how to talk to girls after puberty, how to cook a decent meal, how to tie a necktie, how to make yourself get up and go to your stupid job when all you want to do is stay in bed--these are all important things that every man ought to know.

I guess he means lessons like: share your stuff, don't hit, be nice, and so on, the basic building blocks that turn the little savages into rational human beings--or try to. I am reminded, as was perhaps Mr. Fulghum, of Hannah Arendt's famous quote: "Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"

As I thought about it I realized there were some important things I did learn in kindergarten, although I'm not sure they would have made Mr. Fulghum's book or its several sequels. 

My lessons include:

• Never get into a fight with girls. If you lose, you got beat up by a girl; if you win--you just beat up a girl, jerk.

• Always make sure you take the right paper bag off the counter in the morning. Instead of your toy for show-and-tell, you might wind up with a sack full of Dad's leftover bolts and pipe connectors for the machine shop.

• When it becomes apparent that they are never going to give you anything but unflavored milk, you'd better learn to choke it down.

• Never snap your fingers at the substitute teacher.

• To talk to the pretty girls, it helps to have a neat parlor trick. Blowing a bubble with your own saliva is an excellent one.

• Use the magic words "please" and "thank you." It's astonishing how well grown-ups respond to them. But you still won't get chocolate milk.

• Being able to sit Indian-style is very important. It may be that this is how the President holds Cabinet Meetings.

• Fifth graders are immense, inscrutable, and dangerous. Don't make eye contact with them.

• Proper crayon etiquette dictates that you share, even if Charlie rubbed his black crayon down to a nub and now it looks like he wants to do the same to yours. Perhaps explain that it's enough to hint that the night sky is black with a little shading. You don't have to color in every inch of the paper.

• Don't worry too much about what you say you want to do when you grow up. It's not a contract; no one will hold you to it.

• Somersaults are cool. So is standing on your head. But socking people in the eye with your foot while doing them is not cool.

• Girls cry no matter what. Get used to it.

• The nap mat you used last year for naptime in nursery school is a thing of the past. So is naptime, for that matter. It's hard, but it's time to move on. No point staying attached to the things of your fleeting youth.

• School is going to bore you stupid sometimes. Learn to distract yourself by thinking of other stuff. It's like talking in your own head where no one else can hear it. This "thinking" thing might really be worth something someday.

• Never miss an opportunity to use the can. You do not want any accidents. Not ever.

• In a similar vein, boogers can be a real social faux pas, although some guys have the chutzpah to use them to their advantage. Unless you are certain that you are in the latter camp, maintain good nasal hygiene at all times. But not in class. No nasal spelunking in public. 

• Most of the time, whatever you want to fight about is not worth it. But don't let anyone ever try to tell you that you will never have to stand up for yourself, that you'll never be called on to let someone have it in spades. Some people need to have the mean knocked out of them.

• Cupcakes are awesome. But if you have too many, you will discover that they taste much better on the way down than on the way up.

What I learned from movies.

🎥 Children are more intelligent than adults, and more resourceful

🎥 A clever child can beat an experienced adult man in combat

🎥 So can a woman--any woman

🎥 Picking a fight is a great way to resolve family problems; screaming at each other is healthy

🎥 More men died as a result of Joe McCarthy than as a result of Pickett’s Charge

🎥 All authority is corrupt, except for vigilantes (who willfully break the law)—especially if they wear costumes

🎥 Everyone decent person in the past, in any era or location, secretly believed in the exact same things Hollywood in the 21^st century believes in, or would agree if they knew about them

🎥 DNA can be identified within an hour by any city police force

🎥 Silencers silence guns so they sound like a flea fart

🎥 You can do everything better when you’re angry

🎥 Fast hammering on a keyboard is the best way to hack networks

🎥 Girls will and ought to sleep with you on the first date unless you're a catastrophic loser

🎥 Crazy people are more knowledgeable, perceptive, and wise than noncrazy people

🎥 Drinking continuously makes you fun and doesn't hamper your activities, especially if it's important

🎥 Drugs, either

🎥 And you can sober up enough to perform surgery or something with just a slap on the face and a bucket of water

🎥 Any difficult task can be accomplished quickly with a pop tune and a montage

🎥 The capture of vicious criminals is best accomplished by rogue cops working alone or with one faithful partner

🎥 And may involve the destruction of large amounts of public property

🎥 Best friends and lovers start by hating each other, every time

Modern LIFE.

If you grew up at any time in America after 1960, you probably played the board game known as the Game of Life.

As the incomparable Board Game Geek describes it:

This game attempts to mirror life events many people go through from going to college, raising a family, buying a home, working and retiring.
The intent of the game is to have the most assets at the end of the game, assets are earned primarily by working and earning tokens with dollars amount on them. Additionally the first person to complete the course gets additional money tokens.

They've made changes to the game in various editions, as inflation has raised costs and salaries, unfriendliness was reduced ("Revenge" and "Poor Farm" were changed to "Sue for Damages" and "Countryside Acres"), and, worst of all, in the new edition they let kids pick careers. The game was supposed to teach children about being a grown-up; if the careers are Badass Rap Star and NFL Quarterback, they're not going to learn much.

So that's where I'm stepping in.

Here are some new board spaces I recommend for the next edition of the Game of Life, spaces that will bring the game back to the sense of reality, what it means to be a grown-up in America now. I'm sure you'll agree they would make the game more risky and more interesting.

DRIVE DRUNK!
Lose all turns; game over

MARRY A DUGGAR
Collect prizes

BITTER DIVORCE
Wife leaves you for woman; gets the car;
move only 1 space at a time until you get over it

UNDERWATER MORTGAGE
Bank takes home; live in car

KIDS IN COLLEGE
Lose all money; collect a handful of promissory notes

LAID OFF!

Choose new, lower-paid career;

tell everyone it's been your dream for ages

JUST GIVE UP
Stay home on sofa; lose about five or so turns, whatever

HEAR STRANGE NOISE
What's with this mansion?

MIDLIFE CRISIS

Buy new car; take girlfriend to Paris

GET INVOLVED WITH STUPID TRIVIA
Waste time, lose turn

UH-OH
Ponzi scheme unsuccessful; game over

Ash Wednesday.

People have asked what I'm giving up for Lent, and I am a bit torn. I'd like to give up chocolate, but Valentine's Day falls on Sunday, and if I get any I am eating it. I know me better than to think otherwise.

Others say you should focus more on doing something positive rather than giving up something negative. I think you can do both at once, by which I mean focusing on forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a positive act; giving up something is a negative one. By "negative" I don't mean bad, I just mean that you remove something that was there. In this case, a debt you are owed.

We know that the Bible refers to our sins using the metaphor of debt, that when we harm others we owe them for it, that those who have harmed us owe us. One translation of that section of the Lord's Prayer is "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

I find this very useful, not just because I desperately want my debts forgiven, but also because it gives me a helpful visual aid for those who have sinned against me.

Yes, the old Parker Brothers Game of Life Promissory Note, which paves the road to penury and lands you in the Poor Farm at the end. Let's say this represents the grievance committed against me by another. Like, perhaps, vicious gossip spread by someone who meant to get me in trouble.

I decide I will obey Jesus and forgive this person. Not trying to make excuses for her; it could have been a completely evil act, and I still am under orders to forgive her. So there's my promissory note, what she would owe me on the Day of Judgment were I to hold on to the memory like an Irish elephant. But I determine that I am going to forgive this person.

The problem with forgiveness is that I can do it, and then find myself getting mad all over again when the incident comes to mind. C. S. Lewis wrote about this, about not only forgiving once but every time the memory angers us.*

By burning the note---usually just mentally; I don't want to run through board game supplies---I realize that I have to let it go, because it was a bearer bond and I destroyed it. I can no longer cash in that note. It's gone.

In that way, I can make something into ashes, and make it into something good, all at the same time.

-----

* I forget which book that was in---I may make it a Lenten mission to find out.

Tired of summer?

I passed a scummy pond that had become as green as a crayon, what with stagnant water, little rain, and the stink of rank, August days. Going out of the house at dawn these days has been like walking into a humidor that stores old meat. Then I thought about what's coming.

Dreary gray skies, an endless scrim of snow and mud, darkness and rain and ice. Yippie!

An optimistic chap would think of the advantages of each season. Spring's refreshing rain! Summer's balm of warmth! Fall's wild, colorful parade! Winter's crystal, bracing breeze! But I tend to see the year as a round of sogginess, burns, humidity, slipperiness, freezing, and misery. Yes, something to hate at all times of the year. What an ungrateful slob I can be.

I do understand people who have retired to the south saying that they miss the change of seasons. When you grow up within a temperate zone, your eyes come to hunger for the next season. A friend of mine who spent a couple of years in Quito said, "You can get tired of the perfect weather." Enough of this dull green sward, this blinding sun! Bring on short days and mounds of snow!

I think the great Lileks once wrote that in Minnesota, seasons hang on just long enough to overstay their welcome, and there's something useful in that. If the seasons must change, it's better that we are happy greet them.

Seems like there was a time we felt that way about the seasons of our lives, too, but maybe that's just wishful thinking of the past. After all, St. Paul might have noted that when he became a man he put away childish things, but perhaps he thought of that because he saw men not putting away childish things. It'd be like thinking you could hold on to spring forever. If it doesn't ripen to summer, it will choke to death.

This comes from a guy who likes cartoons and PBJ, so take it with whatever grains of salt you wish.

Survival.

Moved into the house more than a decade ago, and there was a row of shrubs along the front yard. Juniper, azalea, evil barberry, azalea, juniper. Repeat on the opposite side.

Thing is, junipers and barberries grow like freaking Jack's beanstalk, and azaleas just hum along, minding their own business. A couple of summers in, the azaleas were getting choked out. The third summer, two of the four had been strangled by the plants on either side.

The surviving two were moved to the side of the house, where they limped along that summer. Sometime during the winter, the third one croaked.

More than ten years later, the last one will not give up. I thought for sure it was kaput this year, after two brutal winters.

Think again.

Azaleas are hearty and can live a stupid long time under ideal conditions. But the fact that the fourth one has lived longer than the other three combined affords it a lot of respect. Even if it were not pretty---and it is, when in full May bloom, and a pleasant green all summer long---I would want to protect and nourish this plant. But it doesn't seem to need much help. It's hanging in there pretty much on its own.

Funny how the last anything of a set will seem to last the longest. Everyone's kitchen cabinet probably has several solo glasses, each from a once-proud set of four. The first three in the set fell quickly to incidents and accidents, spills and chills, but the last glass hangs on and on.

I'm not sure if there's a lesson there, beyond that survival does command respect of a kind, even from things you don't much like, like cockroaches. The gristly actor who waits tables in his 60s, expecting to hear from his agent... The elderly woman who still trudges down the sidewalk to the market every day, rain or shine, whether she needs anything or not... The old guy in the last desk on the row, who people think will still be in that spot for decades, even if the building is destroyed in an earthquake, tapping away on his keyboard, his bit of floor held up by a ragged spire of rubble... Tenacity is admirable.

When it's something as pleasant as a flowering shrub, what's not to admire?

Story of my life.

Adriftmas.

I feel like every year I set out my plans for the journey from Thanksgiving to Christmas like a fellow planning to go downriver in a small boat. I know what stops I need to make, and anticipate a nice, easy ride.

Some of the ports of call along the way are:

• The Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8 -- a day of obligation, you know)
• Outdoor lights
• Cookie baking
• Decorating indoors
• Confession (not a requirement as it is at Lent as part of Easter duty, but a good idea nonetheless)
• Charitable contributions (cash, food kitchen donations, all that stuff)
• Parties
• Lunches
• Christmas cards (you'll get one eventually, Aunt Ethel)
• Shopping, shopping, shopping
• Arrangements for presents for editing clients
• Packages of presents for loved ones far away
• Dinner plans for the Big Day
• Wrapping presents

As you can see, there's a lot of stops on this river, actually more than I've listed. And the current runs faster the farther you go. At this point in the month of December, I've lost control of the little boat, which is dangerously overloaded and impossible to steer; it's being spun around in eddies and squeezed through rapids, and I keep thinking the whole thing is about to capsize or shatter. Even if I do make it to port at last, I'll likely be slammed into the pier and sunk in the harbor.

And yet, at the end, the delta appears, the river broadens and calms, and I ease into the port gently and gratefully.

Then I'm sad because the journey is over. I guess getting there is at least half the fun.

Learning curve.

Yep, story of my life.

Just a reminder.

For those of you in northern climes...

We've really been enjoying a spectacular August, as I mentioned the other day. Very few miserable days, very little rain, hardly any high noons that make you feel like a Poppin' Fresh Grands being baked by a novice cook who thinks the key to quick biscuits is "the hotter, the faster." 

Normally at this time I am dying for fall. It has not meant "back to school" to me in decades, so I no longer have that "fall = suck" sense that many kids have---no, young'uns, eventually that goes away because the misery of work does not take a break for summer, by cracky. Normally I desire September because I'm sick of being melty like cheese on a Pizza Hut commercial.

But I haven't been this year, and I'm certainly not looking forward to shorter days. Then, yesterday, the humidity crept up and the thermometer followed behind, and suddenly August felt like August. And I'd prefer everything felt like June again. Failing that, I'll take September.

My mother always advised me never to wish my life away, which is good advice, but when you're six and it's a WHOLE WEEK until your birthday, it's hard not to wish that week could go on fast-forward. I try to be more patient now. Especially since I know that coming right behind that refreshing autumn is...

...blarg.