Pillow Talk

Just the other day I got a brand new pillow.  A pillow may not be a big deal to you, but I’m incredibly picky about my pillow.  It has to be a down pillow and, when I travel, I bring it with me.  If my pillow is not right, either too flat or too full or too hard, I cannot sleep.  I can’t count on the hotel Continue reading

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I Remember…

I’ve finally gotten to the age where I find myself, more and more often, saying, “I remember when…”  It’s a teeny bit frustrating to sound like a classic old man but, let’s face it, I am.  Wait.  I don’t, by any stretch, mean that I’m a classic.  But I am definitely a senior citizen.  Still, it’s as if, as long as I don’t openly admit it, I can continue to live in a hazy state of disavowal. Continue reading

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What Was She Thinking?

Have you ever watched an event transpiring and said to yourself, “This can’t be happening?”  The first time it happened to me was in the second grade.  And, to this day, I am still amazed at what occurred.

Okay.  Let me begin by saying Continue reading

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Not Covered

We’re done for.  I’ve said it before and my position only grows stronger.  In a past post called Healthcare Will Kill Us All, I explained the process it took from telling my primary care physician that I felt I’d torn my biceps, to finally getting to the surgeon five months later who said, Continue reading

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Amazing Coincidences!

It’s often curious to me how people can manage to find a coincidence whenever they need one.  Instead of just following their heart and doing what they want to do on its own merit—for no other reason that it makes them feel good and it’s what they want to do—they search for Continue reading

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Tossing Grenades

I was born nine years after the end of WWII; immediately following the Korean War.  Being of the post-war “Boomer” generation, many of the toys I had during my formative years were war toys.  True, we also had cowboy pistols and rifles due to the preponderance of westerns on TV, especially Saturday afternoons.  But one of the popular shows on Continue reading

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The Worst Day of My Life

It was a day like any other.  There wasn’t anything unique about it.  It was so nondescript, in fact, that I recall nothing else about the day except that moment.  Of course, everything else in my life pales in comparison to that moment so it isn’t surprising that nothing else from that day stands out. Continue reading

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(Mis) Understanding the Arts

I am, without doubt, an uncultured slob.  Perhaps that’s why I don’t understand “the Arts.” Now, I have no formal education in any of the arts.  But I have tried to appreciate it/them.

Well, wait. When I was in college, long before the turn of the century, I took a class called Art Appreciation.  So I guess that counts as Continue reading

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Keeping My Fingers Crossed

I think superstitions are silly.  And I know I’ve had a few in my life.  Mostly they revolved around my golf game.  My skill level has always rested upon a precarious perch somewhere between bad and truly horrible.

My best 18-hole score is 75.  I’d scored in the 70’s quite a bit when I was young and played all the time.  But I could never crack that Continue reading

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Struggling Against Nothing

I think the majority of us struggle.  And I think most of the struggles are self-imposed. The world of today is filled with myriad distractions.  Advertising tells us that if we don’t buy innumerable products, then we won’t be cool or in or living up to our full potential—whatever it is with which they’re brow-beating us in their ads.

For those who aren’t part of the daily rat race to Continue reading

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Is it Worth All the Marbles?

Even as I was doing it, I knew it was the wrong thing to be doing.  I looked over to our neighbor’s yard—our “yards” in those days were basically dirt separated my more dirt—and saw his collie prancing about with Continue reading

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Dreaming my Life Lesson

Horrible.  That’s the word for it.  Horrible.  It was the most horrible dream I’d ever had.  I woke up in a cold sweat.  I believe I was actually shuddering with fear.  What I saw or, more accurately, what I heard was truly horrifying.

In my dream, I had died.  That wasn’t the terrible part.  At the point I can recall my dream, I had already died and Continue reading

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Space Race v. Cell Phones

When I was a kid, we had this really cool thing called outside.  It was amazing.  If you wanted to do something, you went there.  These days, I don’t think kids have outside.  They just sit in the house and stare at small, hand-held devices.  Well, if they do venture out, they being their devices with them and continue to stare.

Just the other day I heard a friend say that she Continue reading

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Long Lost Treasure

I know the location of an actual buried treasure.  Well, let’s just say that I can come within approximately ten yards of it.  But, because I lost the map, I can’t get to the exact location.  It was buried in the last millennium but, once in a while, I think of that treasure.

Buried pirate treasure has long been a delightful myth within our culture.  In truth, there was very little Continue reading

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My Misfortune with Cookies

What’s the deal with fortune cookies?! They’re not even fortunes anymore. You used to open them up and they’d tell you that you were going to be a millionaire or famous or something. They never came true; even if you ate the cookie. (That’s the rule, you know. You have to eat the cookie or, for sure, the fortune won’t come true.) But even if Continue reading

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The Unexamined Life

According to Plato, Socrates said, at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I have examined my life. I do it all the time. However, it’s not a text-book example of an examination. To me, that sounds rather scientific. An examination. Ooooh… serious! An inspection. An investigation! An analysis of one’s life.

Mine is more like a perpetual question of Continue reading

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Temper… Temper…

I hate it! I really do! I am so frustrated at my lack of progress in my life. I realize that there is only one path—that being the one towards self-realization and Heaven—so I know I’m on the path, but I’m absolutely sure I am moving in the wrong direction. One can either move towards or away. And every time I allow myself a smidgen of a possibility, a twinkling of an idea that I may be progressing upwards on my path, I drive on the stupid Southern California freeways! Continue reading

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Dumber Than a First Grader

Is my inability to understand computers and grasp the concept of the Internet and all its wonders nothing more than a result of being born a generation too early? Why does a five-year-old know how to write code and apps while I can’t remember something as simple as my password? Continue reading

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No One is the Villain in Their Own Life

I knew something was about to happen.  Following the previous evening’s events, something was bound to happen, had to happen.  It was my senior year of high school and the evening before, another friend and I had been in a physical altercation with some others in the street in front of my house. Continue reading

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The Librarian

I didn’t know her, but I was afraid. She was an imposing woman of grey hair, twisted tightly and somehow bolted in a bun to the top of her head. As cliché as it may sound, around her neck was a delicate chain to which was attached a pair of half-glasses; and those were perched out near the tip of her nose.

She was an imposing figure to me. I looked at her, standing beyond and in some way above the great counter. She had to be standing on something! The old woman seemed Continue reading

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