It’s odd how seemingly inconsequential places and experiences can stick with you.

In the spring of 2019, less than a year before the world shut down, my wife, three kids, and I took a spring break trip from our home in Florida to the UK. Michelle and I traveled quite a bit before we had kids, including a 10-month stay in Cambridge, where I completed a one-year master’s program. Since having kids, we’ve rarely left the house, let alone the country.

Our trip to London to relive our youth was the one exception.

Traveling across an ocean with children ages 8, 5, and 3 was ambitious (i.e., insane). I know people probably do it all the time, but it’s still a completely crazy thing to do voluntarily. I have two extremely vivid memories of that trip, and the rest have pretty much faded into a smear of disconnected moments.

The two core memories: 1. The customs line at Heathrow Airport after we flew the redeye flight from Orlando via Reykjavik, Iceland. The children so tired they were practically sleeping on the floor, splayed out around our suitcases and bags while we inched forward for hours in an interminable queue. It felt like we would never escape. 2. A simple neighborhood playground in London.

The persistence of the customs queue memory is fairly easy to account for. The highly unusual setting, crowded together with other weary travelers, children wallowing on the grimy linoleum floor, eyes struggling to adjust to the unsettling artificial light after hours spent trying to sleep thousands of feet in the air in a metal tube hurtling through space. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. At least for me.

On the other hand, the small playground in London? It was ordinary. Mundane. My kids and I have visited hundreds of playgrounds in our time, and nothing about this one was particularly exceptional. On this trip, we visited renowned landmarks like Buckingham Palace, various museums, and Big Ben (I do remember it was covered in scaffolding), among others. The little playground lingers in my mind more than any of the more famous places.

The walk to the park from our friend’s flat along busy city streets. The fading evening light. The sharp March air. Such a contrast from the swampy Florida we left behind less than 24 hours ago. Somehow less than a day? Feels so much longer. The water by the park’s edge (a river?). The children’s pink cheeks. Insufficient jackets. Shivering. Hands stuffed in pockets to escape the cold. A big metal slide, gleaming. Looks like it must be freezing to the touch but the kids don’t care. A suspension bridge connecting the climbing equipment. Children crossing one by one. Silhouettes. Swaying steps. Gripping the ropes with small hands. Tall buildings in the background, standing watch. A sandy area where the kids crouch, digging in the sand with their fingers. That fuzzy, untethered feeling you get with lack of sleep. Day turning to night. Or night turning to day? Hard to know which. Feels like existing outside of time.

We visited that little park several times during our week in London. You can have big aspirations when traveling with kids but every trip tends to end up being a fight for survival. Someone gets sick. Everyone is tired. Routines are disrupted. Comfy, familiar beds are missed. We quickly realized the best strategy was to plan one real outing per day (at most) to a significant sight or activity and then spend the rest of the time doing the same things we do at home, just in a different geographic location. Watch iPads. Eat McDonald’s. Read books. Sit around. Go to the same little playground over and over again. But in London!

So, yes, we did visit the park enough times to make the memory indelible but I believe there is something a little deeper at play.

As I mentioned earlier, Michelle and I lived in the UK for a little less than a year right after we got married and right before we had our first child. That year was transformative for me. It felt like the first time I went my own way. I was 29 when we arrived in Cambridge, stepping off a bus in the town’s center on a late evening in late September with a couple of suitcases and absolutely no idea what we were doing. I was kind of old as young adults go but it felt like my first adult move. My first adult year.

Until that point, I had carefully hewed to a well-trodden path. I lived with my parents for a long time. I went to college close to home. I didn’t date. I had very few friends. I took odd jobs that were mostly comfortable and easy. I played it very safe. Moving across an ocean felt extremely daring. Very grown up. I believed it was the start of something big.

I somewhat inexplicably applied for and was accepted to a master’s program in development studies (if you’re wondering what that is, think international aid work, policy, other stuff the U.S. isn’t allowed to do anymore). I had no background or experience in the subject but I guess even the most hallowed and ancient universities are happy to take your money if you’re willing to give it.

I spent that year living a life that was completely different from the one I lived before and the one I’ve lived after. It was an outlier. There were classes and lectures, yes, and I remember a little bit about those, but the academic calendar was extremely leisurely, with three eight-week terms and seemingly endless holidays, so a lot of the time was spent just existing in this otherworldly place on a small island near the top of the world.

Old, stately buildings. Expanses of pristine green grass with cows grazing. Riding bicycles in the cold rain on cobblestoned streets. Hours spent lounging in the coffee shop on the top floor of the university center overlooking the river. Cappuccinos and dark chocolate bars. Punts floating past. Never trying that. Too scared we’d look silly trying to push the boat along with the long pole.

Frozen pizzas picked up from the college bar. Wow, the colleges have bars? Cooked in the oven in our studio apartment on the second floor. Topped with zucchini slices. They call them courgettes here. Watching all the episodes of How I Met Your Mother on the laptop. Pints of cider at the pubs. Barely knew how to drink back then. Twenty-nine years old but the palette of a teenager. Weekend trip to Amsterdam just because. Consider trying a weed brownie. Decide against it. Too awkward.

Comfy black jacket. Wore it everywhere. Gloves that were cheap and flimsy. Always wet. Fingers like icicles. Little knit hat. Self-conscious about that at first but got used to it. And scarves. Scarves! Never knew they were a thing people actually wore. Learning how to wrap it around. There are several ways. Whatever works. Just go with it. Ice skating outside before Christmas. Endless darkness. Lights twinkling. Staying upright is an accomplishment. No broken bones. Proud of ourselves.

Fly home for the holidays. Why is it so sunny here? Ugh. Are we… northern people now? Stop by Ireland on the way back. Might as well. No obligations. Tiny, winding roads. Castle ruins in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes feel like the last two people on earth.

Back in Cambridge. Winter slowly turns to spring. Still cold but when the sun comes out everyone pretends. Students playing ultimate frisbee on the college greens. Tank-tops. Shorts. Tennis on the unkempt grass courts with sagging nets. Classmate asks me to play. Wants to play a match. I destroy him. He never sees it coming. What if this is my life now? Picture myself wearing one of those professor jackets with patches on the elbows. Hair graying. Bicycling into town for lectures. Playing tennis on weekends. Fresh-faced kids surprised when they find out the old guy still has a killer forehand.

Time starts to slip away. Still sitting in coffee shops. Watching the boats float by. Kind of hoping someone will fall in. Would be exciting. Eating falafels from the street cart. Get a punch card. So retro. Buy eight, get one free. Dark crowded bar with sticky floors and watered-down tequila shots for one pound. I’m 30 now. Pulsing music. The Killers. Mr. Brightside. Of course. One-third of the school year still left but no more classes. Who knows why? Just sitting. Reading. Nothing to do, really. Think about the future. What is the point of all this? To have fun? Does anything meaningful come after? Kind of privileged, if I’m being honest. Summer arrives. Still cold, usually. Like three hot days. No air conditioning. Giant window of the little apartment thrown open. Hear the chatter of the little boy who lives downstairs playing outside in the courtyard. Families live here, too. It’s possible. Oh, right, we’re going to have a baby. In November. Thanksgiving. Now what?

Exams. Desks arranged in long, neat lines. Like in the movies. Soft light slanting in through windows near the ceiling. Write by hand in little books for an hour, two, three. What about? Hardly even know. Try to sound smart. Scholarly. Amartya Sen! Development Economics! Charles Dickens! No clue why that last one is in there. Professor with the wild gray Einstein hair loves unexpected connections. Play the game. Fake it. From day one to the end. Hop on a plane to Italy while we wait for graduation. A completely ridiculous life. Take the train through Austria, Switzerland, France. Surprised by fireworks on Bastille Day in Marseille. Forgot that was even a thing. Try to use high school German at a fast food place in Switzerland. Pretty sure they speak German here? Fail miserably. Idiot.

Graduation. Stupid black gown. Weird ritual. Forgotten within moments. Taking pictures in the bright sun. Smiling. Scared of what comes next. Back on a plane. Across an ocean. Home. Finally. Reunited with the chihuahuas. Pepper and Zoe. What did they think of all this? Are they ready for what’s next? Nope. Try to settle back in. Find somewhere to live. Rent a house with ugly carpets. The baby is here.

As it turned out, the degree I earned across the pond was mostly meaningless. I mean, it was done in less than a year. Hard to expect much from that. After I graduated, I casually tried to get a few jobs, but I never got further than a phone interview with Médecins Sans Frontières that I conducted in a noisy airport somewhere in Europe. Once we returned to the U.S., the guy called me and said something like, “I really like your resume. It’s so unique. I could never justify hiring you, but I love how weird it is. Keep in touch!”

I quickly gave up my dream of saving the world and returned to my comfortable existence. Michelle went back to her job. Started climbing the ladder. She had a baby. I stayed home with the baby and then eventually went back to my old job at the local university, working part-time, alternating days with Michelle so one of us was always home with the kid, and later, kids. My job quietly disappeared as I knew it eventually would. I was fine with that. It always felt like a dead end. Whatever that means. I stayed home with the kids even more. It became my thing. Pretty much my entire thing with a dash of writing on the side. We moved to a reasonably nice middle-class neighborhood in an Orlando suburb. People park their cars and trucks all over the streets but nowhere is perfect. Many of the neighbors have toxic political beliefs but, you know, it is Florida. It is America. The kids are growing up. They have good friends who live close by. There’s a trampoline in the backyard. I just noticed my oldest son has fuzz on his upper lip. The passage of time is preposterous, but we’re living the dream to the extent the dream exists anymore. There is really nothing to complain about.

It is all extremely safe. Very predictable.

In a way, the little playground in London is what lies behind the sliding door. It’s my road not taken.

What if this playground in the middle of a vibrant city was the one where my kids grew up instead of the sleepy park by the elementary school around the corner from our house?

What if these were streets (or streets like these in some other far-flung, exotic-seeming, very grown-up location) where we walked?

What if I had an important job trying to save the world or something? Parenting is a very important job, no doubt, but it’s hard to escape our societal expectations about work and domestic labor and value and what constitutes a meaningful life.

The idea of all this, living anywhere other than Florida where I’ve lived for more than 40 years now, seems ridiculous but it wasn’t too far from happening. It wasn’t particularly close, either, but we at least took a step or two down this other path. Because I had no idea what to do with my life and I had already completed the requisite step of enrolling in and quitting law school several years prior, I wrote a PhD proposal as I was completing my very hasty master’s degree back in 2011.

Looking back on this is extremely funny because, of course, I had no clue what I should research so I wrote something about studying maternal health in the developing world strictly because Michelle was a labor and delivery nurse. Astoundingly, I was accepted into the PhD program at Cambridge and offered a partial stipend. The money wasn’t nearly enough to cover the cost of living, Michelle’s nursing certification didn’t cleanly transfer to the UK, and as I mentioned, she was pregnant with our first child. Because of all those complicating factors and because I was terrified of being exposed as a complete fraud, we never seriously considered taking that path. But, there is enough there for me to daydream about what might’ve been.

Of course, I typically choose to skip over the part of this fantastical other life where I show up in a country in Africa or South Asia and ask some confused person, “May I see all your finest maternal health data, please?” The thought of that is mortifying but the thought of walking my kids to school along cobblestoned streets is pretty appealing. I can almost hear their slight British accents and see their cute little school uniforms.

Would this imaginary life I sometimes think about be better than the one we’ve built?

In some ways, possibly. In other ways, likely not. In the end, it probably doesn’t even matter. I tend to believe life is more about who you spend it with rather than where you spend your time. And in my case, the people I spend most of my life with reside within these four walls. They’re all amazing and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. (However, sometimes I would consider parting with the dog or the bunnies. Hades, the dog, has been chewing stuff up lately. Like crazy. With his penchant for chaos, you would almost think he’s the god of the underworld or something.)

I used to have this running joke with the one good friend I’ve stayed in touch with from that transformative year I spent abroad. A professor we both had in the master’s program, and my would-be PhD advisor, once mentioned in an email the possibility of me doing some work for her. This was in the year after I moved home from Cambridge. When I was still pretending that returning to pursue a PhD was a possibility. She promised to circle back soon. Soon turned into months and then years. So, as the years ticked by, I would randomly text my friend something like, “Thinking about checking in with Dr. F about that job opportunity!”

It was a joke. Mostly. But as jokes sometimes tend to be, it wasn’t just a joke. It was a lifeline. Parenting small children is hard. The days are long and tedious. Everywhere, no doubt, but particularly in Florida. You really haven’t lived until you’ve managed a parcel of kids fighting over a garden hose all day in a muddy backyard when the air is molten lava. It’s a tiring and isolating experience.

During those years of long days, long nights, and a sometimes mind-numbing sameness, it was nice to dream. To escape for a moment to another life that would always be cool and educated and pleasantly overcast with a light drizzle. Somehow. It’s a dream life that will never exist. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Like a small playground in London. The place we kept going back to in real life for those ephemeral spring days in 2019. The place I go back to in my mind every so often when the chores get unusually tedious or the local politics get particularly stupid.

Real life is weird. Painful. Boring. Monotonous. It’s nice to have an imaginary world you can escape to sometimes. If only for a few minutes. Whether it’s a tropical island or a chateau in the south of France or that cool house on Zillow you found in rural Canada where you could embrace your inner lumberjack. Or somewhere a little more ordinary. It can keep you motivated. Keep you believing in possibility.

And the best part? Dream lives never let you down because you never have to live them. You don’t have to do the dishes there or fold laundry or work or fail to save the world with your important job or get sick or suffer any flavor of disappointment.

My dream life self takes his kids to a small playground in London.

How about yours?

Don’t forget to check out my books!

Love’s a Disaster - contemporary fiction about a marriage proposal gone wrong, complicated families, second-chance love, Florida, sword fighting, and punk rock music.

Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years - essays and humor about the very early years of my parenting journey

Anyway, here’s a little glimpse of what we did.

I’m not sure if it’s the same where you are, but around these parts, Spring Break actually starts the week before Spring Break. It’s a bit of a paradox. There is no school on Friday the week before, and on Thursday, our elementary school always hosts Field Day and Family Picnic. So, on the Thursday before Spring Break, Michelle and I went up to school bright and early to watch our youngest two play some games in a field.

When I was in elementary school, Field Day was highly competitive, with ribbons for event winners and a giant trophy given to the classroom in each grade that scored the most total points. It was the pinnacle of the school calendar. We trained for the three-legged race and the water balloon toss like we were getting ready for the Olympics. Teachers made sure to stack their relay teams with the fast kids and bury the unathletic schlubs in events like the Mash Relay (which is an event name I distinctly remember even though I can’t find it anywhere online… I think it was what the internet calls a leaking cup relay where team members take turns transporting water in a cup that has holes in it).

Anyway, that’s not how things are at my children’s school. There is almost zero competitiveness. When they do the three-legged race or ride scooter boards to move ping-pong balls from one place to another, they take turns continuously for a set period of time, and nobody even keeps track of who wins or loses. They do it for the love of the game, I guess? For fun? Weird.

Because of this lack of killer instinct, the modern Field Day isn’t particularly interesting, but at least it’s relatively short and the weather was nice. We had a pleasant time. They still do tug-of-war, and there was some rope burn on the hands and children falling to the ground and getting stepped on, so at least we still have that.

I bet you didn’t think I still had my Field Day ribbons, did you? I’ve proven you wrong once again.

After the pre-Spring Break festivities, we transitioned to Spring Break proper with a day trip to Tampa to see the Savannah Bananas. If you’re not familiar with the Bananas, they are kind of like the baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters with a lot more choreographed dancing and shirtlessness.

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of the Savannah Bananas experience. The kids seemed to enjoy it well enough. It’s a fun and frivolous spectacle. It feels like sports for people who don’t really like sports, which is kind of an odd concept, but I guess it’s a good thing to experience once. Our seats were in the outfield, so it was hard to appreciate the tricks they do during the actual baseball playing without watching the big screen. The dancing was funny-ish, but the extra in-game entertainment seemed to be weirdly fixated on such things as how long people in the crowd had been married and various displays of forced patriotism, which was kind of cringy to me. They also change the music every fifteen seconds or so and rarely mention what is happening in the game so it feels a little like scrolling TikTok.

To be fair, I am a huge stick in the mud. Everyone else I’ve encountered seems to love the Bananas without reservation. You should probably go if you ever get the chance.

Somehow, the game ended up going into extra innings. Or a showdown. Or a face-off. Or whatever it is they call it in Banana Ball. This was extremely convoluted, involving the pitcher and batter more or less going one-on-one or one-on-two (with one fielder on defense). The batters were kind of terrible, considering all they needed to do was get the ball in play pretty much anywhere on the field. The game would likely still be going on but the head banana, a guy in the yellow suit and hat who I think is the team owner, called in a favor after thirty minutes or so of the protracted duel and instructed the dancing umpire to make a terrible call at home plate so the Bananas could be declared the “winner.” The crowd went home happy.

After the game, we stayed the night in a hotel before returning home the next day. The hotel had free breakfast, and we were on the top floor with an unobstructed view of the industrial park next door. Win-win.

The rest of Spring Break was fairly mundane by comparison. The kids had a few friends over at various times. We went to the playground once. They ventured into the woods by the pond in our neighborhood and made a small encampment, and one of them slept over at a friend’s house one night. Normal things.

We also went over to the East Coast to visit my mom for the day and walk around by the river. There were some manatees in the water that we couldn’t really see, but close enough, and then the kids clambered around on the rocks by the water for an hour or so.

It was cold and windy that day, by Florida standards, so it wasn’t the most comfortable hour for me, but at least I got this photo of Hades staring out to sea (the river).

On the last day of Spring Break, we went to SeaWorld because my oldest really wanted to ride rollercoasters. We woke up early and arrived just as the park was opening. The weather was nice, and the crowds weren’t too bad. I managed to avoid riding any rollercoasters except for the kiddie coaster in Sesame Street Land and one kiddie-adjacent coaster at the penguin exhibit that made me slightly nauseous. Oh, yes, and I also won a basketball carnival game, and we are now the proud owners of a giant duck plushie.

However big of a duck plushie you’re imagining, think bigger. I’m not going to say or show anything more because I’m bringing you the full duck experience in a brand-new post next week. Stay tuned.

The game I won was the standard basketball shooting game. I paid for eight shots since the sign said that was the best deal. My son burned through the first four without hesitation, and I was like, “Whoa there… are you going to let me shoot any or what?”

The guy told me to use a lot of arc, so I did. My first shots weren’t terrible, but they hit front rim and bounced off. The rims are small, and the balls are rubber and overinflated so you have to be very precise. My third shot floated high, cleared the front rim, and rattled around, ultimately resting on the back flange for a moment before falling through the hoop. What a moment. My daughter immediately selected the giant duck because the kids had already chosen the prize before I even agreed to play. They knew we were going to win. They suggested we play again since it was so easy and because the giant koala would pair perfectly with the duck, but I convinced them we shouldn’t press our luck.

And with that, Spring Break ended, and we’re back to reality. The kids are back in school. On their first day back, I went in for a check-up with my GP since I was overdue and I had nothing else to do. She said I was the picture of health (she didn’t say that, but I read between the lines). I did score high on the generalized anxiety survey, but she was like, “Such is life, I guess,” and I was like, “Amen, sister.” We promised to meet up again in six months, this time over FaceTime for a virtual visit to mix things up.

I was about to say to her, “Come on… generalized anxiety? Me? My newsletter subscribers can attest that I am A-okay on that front.”

But then I remembered the last newsletter I sent out. And the one before that. And the one coming up next. And the— yeah, you get the idea.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

At least we’ll always have Spring Break.

My children have had many long, elaborate, and often incomprehensible bedtime routines. I’ve written about these rituals several times because this nightly production has been a pillar of my existence for over a decade. It takes up a lot of space in my head and sometimes causes a fair amount of stiffness in my lower back.

The particulars shift as time passes, sometimes changing almost imperceptibly, like the ocean creeping higher on the shore. Other times, the changes are sharp and crisp, with clearly defined edges, like when my boys went from sharing a room to sleeping in separate rooms and then back to sharing space in a new bunk bed (don’t ask).

My two oldest boys, who currently share a bedroom, are ten and thirteen years old. Bedtime has gotten a lot easier but it’s still more elaborate than you might expect. We’ve taken a step down from, like, a Von Trapp-children-leaving-a-party level to something slightly less choreographed but probably more time-consuming.

It’s both a blessing and a curse.

On the positive side, the routine keeps me connected to my kids as they enter their tween and teen years. It’s nice to feel useful during these end-of-the-day hours when the light is gone and the often chaotic house is still. Between school and activities and gaming and video calls with friends, it often feels like my kids and I live very separate lives now. So, it’s nice to feel like, at least for a small amount of time each day, we’re more than work colleagues exchanging desultory waves and nods at the office coffee machine.

On the negative side, I spend a good hour or more every night lying on a carpeted floor. I’m getting older. My body hurts. It can sometimes be very boring.

I don’t just lie there, of course. As a semi-professional bedtime coordinator, I do have a function. A role that began I’m not sure exactly when but it was at the very least three to four years ago when my oldest son started getting sick with what we later learned was the early symptoms of Crohn’s disease. Back then, I would do whatever it took to make him feel better including reading books out loud for hours at a time.

For the past several years, I have been lying on the floor and reading while the boys lie down and listen in their beds or on the floor or wherever it is they sleep at any given time. At first, I gravitated toward physical books, often illuminating the pages with a flashlight. Recently, I typically stick to e-books on my phone. If they are available, I check them out through the Libby or Hoopla library apps. It all feels extremely mundane in the moment, but when I zoom out and take a wider view, this reading ritual feels at least a little bit magical.

My boys and I have visited so many different worlds together in the past few years. They are big into fantasy and magic. We’ve churned through books featuring wizards, dragons, and talking animals, but we’ve also branched out a bit into other areas. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept a complete record of the books we’ve read but I did log at least some of them into my Goodreads. That has seriously screwed up my year-in-review stats, but it does give me some idea of the imaginary roads we’ve traversed.

I wish I would’ve written all the titles down but who has time for that when you’re lying on the floor for an hour or two every night?

Back when I first decided, kind of on a whim, that I was going to get into books and reading — when I was maybe nineteen years old — I diligently wrote down the title of every book I read in a fat little spiral notebook with a blue cover. I wish I still had that level of commitment and dedication to record-keeping but such is life, I guess. Time tends to wash away our ambition and attention to detail. Or something.

Anyway, among the first books my boys and I read together was the Harry Potter series. The boys were really into all that for a while and then I quietly nudged us in other directions because, well, if you follow news about authors and the writing community, you probably know why.

We read the Percy Jackson books and pretty much everything by Rick Riordan including all the spin-off series (Nico di Angelo is a great character; check those books out if you haven’t yet). We timed it right so new Percy Jackson books started coming out again after we had finished with everything else.

We read a lot of Rick Riordan presents books including standouts like the Tristan Strong series by Kwame Mbalia, the Aru Shah series by Roshani Choksi, and the Sal & Gabi series by Carlos Hernandez.

I discovered an Irish author named Michael Scott, which was super exciting for me because I could casually think about The Office every night for months while we read The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series and others. My oldest son says these books remain amongst his all-time favorites.

We spent a solid six to nine months plowing through Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven, Dragonwatch, and Five Kingdoms. All of these are really good.

I’m not exactly sure how we stumbled upon The Van Gogh Deception and other books in The Lost Art Mysteries series by Deron R. Hicks, but they turned out to be really entertaining. These books feature a couple of kids who solve art museum heists so the boys got to learn a little about famous artists.

I think we mostly did The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith on audiobook, so I didn’t really pay attention, but my oldest son loved these. We gravitated to this series because it’s about adventuring rabbits who I believe fight battles and such. We have two bunnies of our own, Artemis and Apollo, which we got when my son’s chronic illness cropped up. That year of suffering certainly kicked off a lot of things.

Every now and then, we mixed in some shorter and very random titles that I can hardly remember. Books with names like Night of the Bats! These were typically about Minecraft or some other video game.

I forced the boys to indulge me by listening to the entirety of The Chronicles of Prydain series (The Black Cauldron, etc.) by Lloyd Alexander which I had read as a kid and presumably liked. I don’t typically do voices when I read but I did do a pretty killer Gurgi voice.

We also read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which is a book I remember loving when it first came out. I wasn’t sure if they were old enough for it because I didn’t remember the details, but I went for it and it turned out fine. There are some rough themes and topics but I think it was important for them to at least be exposed to real-world issues. Particularly because of the type of world they are likely to inherit.

Most recently, we’ve been methodically working our way through the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland. There are, by my unofficial count, about 37 books in this series so I’m hoping we can wrap it up before my oldest heads off to college. (I’m leaving this joke in, but I just checked and we are actually closing in on the end of the series so I’m a little depressed now. I guess all good things must come to an end.)

Each night now, when I’ve read my required few chapters about dragons or fairies or spunky teens, I lie on the floor, looking through my phone under the soft light of an outer space projection that illuminates the bedroom’s ceiling. I turn on an audiobook because my oldest son needs even more storytelling than my voice can provide. Sometimes my younger son picks up his book and reads it by the light of my phone’s flashlight. I don’t listen to or partake in these books. These are theirs to explore and appreciate.

It feels a bit like passing the torch. I read my book (or scroll my feeds) while they go their own way. Maybe my kids will keep up their reading habits when the bedtime ritual ends in a year or two or five. Maybe they won’t. It’s impossible to know.

All I know is that I appreciate these moments. Even when I’m tired or bored or kind of in the mood to do anything but read about dragons. These moments are all I’ve got. It’s all any of us have. Even when the world is on fire, if we’re lucky, we can still carve out a little time and space to escape. And connect with the people who matter most.

Time’s not up for us yet. We still have more places to explore. Together.

Andrew Knott is a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

I was sitting by myself in my car in a shopping plaza parking lot, scrolling my phone for a moment before heading to my next destination when a mom and her two little kids took me back in time.

The mom was struggling to push and cajole a giant, green, car-shaped grocery cart along a row of parked cars while two small boys sat in the cart seat, twisting and turning the little black steering wheels. I live in Florida so, of course, this was outside of Publix. I hadn’t touched one of those car-cart behemoths in years, but I was all too familiar with them.

My youngest child is eight now, but for many years when my kids were little, every trip to the grocery store featured my personal battle with the green car-carts. I always had to hope the car-cart was available when we arrived, otherwise, there would be drama. If one was available, there would also be drama because one child or another would want to sit somewhere or spin the wheel in some specific way or push the giant cart into a pyramid of canned goods. I bet you thought giant pyramids of canned goods only existed in old TV sitcoms, or if they existed in the real world, went out of style decades ago. You would be right with one exception. Between five and eight years ago, store managers started hastily setting up the pyramids again anytime my children and I went shopping to provide shoppers and store employees with some light entertainment.

“Mike, hurry up with the cans! Yeah, set it up right there on Aisle 6 where the fruit snacks are. That one dad is in the parking lot and it looks like the oldest kid is insisting on ‘driving’ the car-cart. This is going to be one for the ages lol!”

Cans or no cans, the cart was pretty impossible to maneuver in the tight grocery store aisles under the best of circumstances. And grocery shopping with small children is far from the best of circumstances.

For years, the car-cart haunted my dreams on many a night. Sometimes, I miss it.

As I watched, the mom eventually parked the cart behind her SUV and wrangled her groceries and children where they needed to go. I could feel her sigh of relief when she shut the trunk door and pushed the cart aside. I remembered what it felt like when every small trip outside the house was a fight for survival.

I think I’ve finally reached the stage of parenting where I feel the urge to share moments of connection with other parents who are doing the things I used to do. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because time comes for all of us and turns us into nostalgic saps.

If I wasn’t so far away, I might’ve walked by the mom and said something like, “I’ve fought my share of battles with that cart!” That would’ve cracked her up, I bet. Maybe I would’ve offered to return it for her because I had nothing else to do. After all, my kids were at school, and I was free to sit in my car and spy on people.

Instead, I just sat and watched because interacting with strangers isn’t my thing and I didn’t want to seem super weird. I’ve gotta keep the weirdness to myself. Well, I’ll share it with you guys, but that’s where it stops.

However, as luck would have it, another opportunity for a shared parental connection arose just a few days later. I returned to the same shopping plaza on another school day, this time to pick up lunch at Chipotle (look, everyone has to eat and I freely admit I don’t have a lot going on). I grabbed my order from the shelf and was about to exit when a young woman pushing a stroller pulled open the glass door. She was clearly struggling. She shifted the stroller this way and that, trying to find the right angle while propping open the door with her foot. The man in front of me raced through the open door without stopping, helping, or acknowledging her at all. What a jerk!

I sprang into action. Gallantly holding the door. She nodded her thanks and moved past me. The stroller was zipped up so I couldn’t see who was inside. Aww, the little guy or girl must’ve been sleeping.

I came so close to saying, “No problem… I’ve been there,” but again, I held back. That connection I craved was really with my past self, so I was getting everything I needed out of these interactions without being creepy. Plus, my actions (kind of half-holding the door for a young mom) were objectively heroic, and I was ready to ride that high all day!

I sat down at the table outside Chipotle and enjoyed my veggie burrito, basking in the glow of my accomplishment. I was alone, yes, but at least I had that feeling of superiority to cling to and my memories of years gone by to flip through in my mind while I frittered away the minutes until the final school bell rang. My how things change. One day you’re struggling to push a stroller through a door or a giant car-cart around a grocery store and the next you spend most of your time waiting for your kids to come back to you.

It’s the circle of life, I suppose.

I wadded up my empty burrito wrapper and turned to find a trash can. A couple of tables over, the woman with the stroller was seated outside, meticulously picking bits of onion out of a plastic cup of pico de gallo. At this point, it was beginning to feel like fate. I was destined to experience a moment of connection with a parent—if only once.

I was on the verge of speaking up when movement from the stroller caught my attention.

A small head popped up from below table level and it was… very furry.

It also had neatly trimmed bangs. And pointy ears. And a black, shiny nose.

A doggy!

I pivoted seamlessly.

“Ma’am, your little guy is adorable! And you just have to see my big little guy named Hades. He’s a Labradoodle puppy. Eight months? Nine months? I don’t know. Somewhere around there. Time sure does fly! Here, look at this picture. My wife got this novelty towel as a gift, and you’re not going to believe it, but the dog on the towel is just a random dog! Like a stock image or something. I thought it might’ve been based on a photo of Hades, but no. So cute, right? It is nice how our fur babies are always there waiting for us when we come home, isn’t it? I mean, when we don’t bring them with us, of course! Have a great day, you two!”

Those meaningful connections with other parents you start to crave when you reach a certain age and stage of your parenting journey? They’re often right in front of you. Sometimes in unexpected places. All you have to do is keep your eyes open and be ready to seize the moment.

Just make sure you don’t make it weird.

*What is truth? What is fiction? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Andrew Knott is a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

The tattoo artist worked meticulously but quickly on my knuckle tattoos as I sat hunched over in a straight-backed chair, my arm resting on a paint-splattered wooden table. It was one of those fuzzy days between Christmas and New Year’s when time ceases to have any meaning and our actions have zero consequences.

I’m perpetually online so I’ve seen all the end-of-the-year posts. All of them. Literally. Fun fact: I scrolled all the way to the end of the internet and started over again at the beginning before the calendar flipped over to 2025.

During my endless scrolling, I discovered that a few days after Christmas, Janet from New Mexico posted on TurquoiseHaze or whichever app we all use now: “Today is Saturday. Yesterday was Saturday. And tomorrow is Saturday. I’ll be taking no follow-up questions.”

I felt that one.

Not to be outdone, Daniel from the Upper Peninsula posted this jaunty little number on Spools or whichever other app we were using for a while until it turned out to be as evil as that other one: “The week between Christmas and New Year’s is the calendar equivalent of Las Vegas. What happens here, stays here.”

I felt that one, too. As did many others. Both posts were huge hits with human platform users and bots alike. They were stolen and reposted with tiny variations thousands of times. Of course, there is little doubt that Janet and Daniel (neither of whom exist in case that wasn’t clear) copied from countless other users who have made the same observation every December since humankind invented the holidays and blogs.

The end of the year is stressful so this annual reminder that the last week of the year is a consequence-free blank space in which no one knows what day of the week it is and everyone gives in to their most hedonistic desires came as a huge relief to me. I was so wound up and after weeks of moving a little elf around the house every night and providing tech support for the incomprehensible gifts my kids received, I was ready to let loose.

And by let loose, I mean get my first eight tattoos after living a miserable 43-plus years on this planet with completely non-tattooed skin. I was way overdue to get inked. And hey, if I didn’t like them, it was no biggie because this liminal week doesn’t count for anything. It’s like gambling on a cruise ship in international waters. If you lose all your money, they have to give it back. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

I didn’t have any tattoos before the events described in this story, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued by them. I admire quite a few celebrities who have tattoos. I follow several tattoo artists on Instagram. And my wife has a few tattoos that I’ve observed over the years. Tattoos have always seemed cool, mysterious, and a little roguish. They are also intimidating—particularly the idea of entering a tattoo shop and asking to get one.

Pretty much anytime we pass by a tattoo place when we’re driving somewhere together or on vacation I quip to my wife, “Might be time for me to get some ink!” That line always cracks us both up because it is patently ridiculous. Like, imagine me of all people walking into a tattoo shop. What would I do? Ask for one of each?

I wouldn’t even know where to start and the whole situation just seems incredibly awkward.

Hi, there… my good sir! Yes, could you please paint my body with your needle gun?

How silly. Tattoos are for cool people and those who know how to navigate mundane interpersonal interactions without extreme anxiety.

Luckily, I found a loophole and was able to avoid any awkwardness because on an unseasonably warm late December day the tattoo shop came to me! In addition, the stars truly aligned because I had the perfect idea for a tattoo (or 8 tattoos as it were) gifted to me somewhere between one and five days prior. My children gave me Green Day’s American Idiot Twentieth Anniversary Edition vinyl record for Christmas and the album included this photo on the inside that features, you guessed it, tattoos!

So there I was, sitting at the table, idly looking at whatever it is I always look at on my laptop screen while the tattoo artist went to work on my hands. I tried to distract myself as much as possible because I was nervous as a first-timer, and if I’m being honest, the artist seemed a bit inexperienced.

“Stop moving!” she said, pausing her work and adjusting her angle of attack. The amount of franticness in her voice wasn’t particularly comforting.

As I watched her make fine adjustments to my shiny new hand tattoos, I had a sudden and vivid memory of sitting at this table about a year and a half before. On that day, I was seated across from the very same person who was currently going to town on my skin. At the time of our previous meeting, she was in the restaurant business and she grilled me relentlessly during what turned out to be the most bizarre job interview of my life.

Inexplicably, that infamous interview included some bloody heart imagery very reminiscent of the American Idiot album cover:

“Act like you’re pulling your heart out of your chest with your hand and show it to me,” my interviewer whispered to me.

The parallels between the two days were quite striking.

I don’t know exactly when she switched gears and got into the fine art of tattoos but it didn’t matter. I trusted her implicitly. And it’s not like tattoos are permanent or anything. Particularly not during this week of all weeks. The week that exists outside of time and space.

My tattooist (is that the right word… I’m going with it) must’ve had a light touch because I barely felt a thing during the five- to ten-minute tattoo application. The only pain came when she wrenched my arm so she could get a top view of the lettering. As all you tattoo veterans know, arm wrenching is a key step in the tattooing process. Her eyes flicked back and forth from the photograph inside the album that was propped up on the table to her handy work on my hands. She gave a little shrug as if to say, “Yeah, sure… that’ll do.”

Exactly the type of reaction you want from your tattoo girl.

In the end, I was pleased with the final product. To my eye, the craftsmanship was of high quality and I looked sufficiently hardcore when I was sweeping off the trampoline with a hefty dose of “rage” and “love.” Those leaves and acorns didn’t stand a chance.

I proudly showed off my new tattoos to the neighborhood kids when they stopped by the house to bounce on the trampoline and raid our snack closet. They showed zero interest but what do they know, anyway?

I was looking forward to dominating the New Year with my fresh ink but a funny thing happened along the way. As is so often the case when you’re a parent (or just a person, I guess) all these weird moments and days and years that seem to exist outside of time — and don’t so many of them feel that way no matter where they fall on the calendar? — have a way of suddenly ending.

Sometimes they leave visible marks but often they disappear leaving behind only a ghost of a memory.

That restaurant I interviewed at a year and a half ago? It closed its doors sometime between then and now and I’m not sure if it will ever reopen. A hand-drawn sign that read “Olivia’s Restaurant” hung above the door for what seemed like years but now it’s gone. I don’t remember when it left.

And before the restaurant, there was a hair and nail salon I used to frequent that had irregular hours and highly questionable sanitary practices. My tattooist worked there with a couple of her closest associates. They painted my nails, brushed my hair, and made me stick my bare feet in a tub of lukewarm water for some reason. That place shut down years ago.

There was no fanfare. No warning. No going out of business sale.

The restaurant and the salon faded away. Like the last of the light on a winter evening. Like a day at the end of December that hardly exists. Like knuckle tattoos etched in ink that might as well be invisible because it’s hard to believe they even existed at all.

Everything we know and love tends to fade and change and become fuzzy around the edges until it's almost unrecognizable. If we’re lucky, sometimes it re-forms into something new. Something fresh and exciting.

Like a pop-up tattoo shop.

But other times, the only thing left behind to remind us of all those weird and wonderful things that came before are fading memories. Echoes. Faint outlines of old tattoos.

Sometimes we don’t even get that much.

Sometimes it all disappears.

Sometimes it feels like it never happened at all.

Like a forgotten day in a week that hardly existed.

Andrew Knott is a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

I was sitting by myself in my car in a shopping plaza parking lot, scrolling my phone for a moment before heading to my next destination when a mom and her two little kids took me back in time.

The mom was struggling to push and cajole a giant, green, car-shaped grocery cart along a row of parked cars while two small boys sat in the cart seat, twisting and turning the little black steering wheels. I live in Florida so, of course, this was outside of Publix. I hadn’t touched one of those car-cart behemoths in years, but I was all too familiar with them.

My youngest child is eight now, but for many years when my kids were little, every trip to the grocery store featured my personal battle with the green car-carts. I always had to hope the car-cart was available when we arrived, otherwise, there would be drama. If one was available, there would also be drama because one child or another would want to sit somewhere or spin the wheel in some specific way or push the giant cart into a pyramid of canned goods. I bet you thought giant pyramids of canned goods only existed in old TV sitcoms, or if they existed in the real world, went out of style decades ago. You would be right with one exception. Between five and eight years ago, store managers started hastily setting up the pyramids again anytime my children and I went shopping to provide shoppers and store employees with some light entertainment.

“Mike, hurry up with the cans! Yeah, set it up right there on Aisle 6 where the fruit snacks are. That one dad is in the parking lot and it looks like the oldest kid is insisting on ‘driving’ the car-cart. This is going to be one for the ages lol!”

Cans or no cans, the cart was pretty impossible to maneuver in the tight grocery store aisles under the best of circumstances. And grocery shopping with small children is far from the best of circumstances.

For years, the car-cart haunted my dreams on many a night. Sometimes, I miss it.

As I watched, the mom eventually parked the cart behind her SUV and wrangled her groceries and children where they needed to go. I could feel her sigh of relief when she shut the trunk door and pushed the cart aside. I remembered what it felt like when every small trip outside the house was a fight for survival.

I think I’ve finally reached the stage of parenting where I feel the urge to share moments of connection with other parents who are doing the things I used to do. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because time comes for all of us and turns us into nostalgic saps.

If I wasn’t so far away, I might’ve walked by the mom and said something like, “I’ve fought my share of battles with that cart!” That would’ve cracked her up, I bet. Maybe I would’ve offered to return it for her because I had nothing else to do. After all, my kids were at school, and I was free to sit in my car and spy on people.

Instead, I just sat and watched because interacting with strangers isn’t my thing and I didn’t want to seem super weird. I’ve gotta keep the weirdness to myself. Well, I’ll share it with you guys, but that’s where it stops.

However, as luck would have it, another opportunity for a shared parental connection arose just a few days later. I returned to the same shopping plaza on another school day, this time to pick up lunch at Chipotle (look, everyone has to eat and I freely admit I don’t have a lot going on). I grabbed my order from the shelf and was about to exit when a young woman pushing a stroller pulled open the glass door. She was clearly struggling. She shifted the stroller this way and that, trying to find the right angle while propping open the door with her foot. The man in front of me raced through the open door without stopping, helping, or acknowledging her at all. What a jerk!

I sprang into action. Gallantly holding the door. She nodded her thanks and moved past me. The stroller was zipped up so I couldn’t see who was inside. Aww, the little guy or girl must’ve been sleeping.

I came so close to saying, “No problem… I’ve been there,” but again, I held back. That connection I craved was really with my past self, so I was getting everything I needed out of these interactions without being creepy. Plus, my actions (kind of half-holding the door for a young mom) were objectively heroic, and I was ready to ride that high all day!

I sat down at the table outside Chipotle and enjoyed my veggie burrito, basking in the glow of my accomplishment. I was alone, yes, but at least I had that feeling of superiority to cling to and my memories of years gone by to flip through in my mind while I frittered away the minutes until the final school bell rang. My how things change. One day you’re struggling to push a stroller through a door or a giant car-cart around a grocery store and the next you spend most of your time waiting for your kids to come back to you.

It’s the circle of life, I suppose.

I wadded up my empty burrito wrapper and turned to find a trash can. A couple of tables over, the woman with the stroller was seated outside, meticulously picking bits of onion out of a plastic cup of pico de gallo. At this point, it was beginning to feel like fate. I was destined to experience a moment of connection with a parent—if only once.

I was on the verge of speaking up when movement from the stroller caught my attention.

A small head popped up from below table level and it was… very furry.

It also had neatly trimmed bangs. And pointy ears. And a black, shiny nose.

A doggy!

I pivoted seamlessly.

“Ma’am, your little guy is adorable! And you just have to see my big little guy named Hades. He’s a Labradoodle puppy. Eight months? Nine months? I don’t know. Somewhere around there. Time sure does fly! Here, look at this picture. My wife got this novelty towel as a gift, and you’re not going to believe it, but the dog on the towel is just a random dog! Like a stock image or something. I thought it might’ve been based on a photo of Hades, but no. So cute, right? It is nice how our fur babies are always there waiting for us when we come home, isn’t it? I mean, when we don’t bring them with us, of course! Have a great day, you two!”

Those meaningful connections with other parents you start to crave when you reach a certain age and stage of your parenting journey? They’re often right in front of you. Sometimes in unexpected places. All you have to do is keep your eyes open and be ready to seize the moment.

Just make sure you don’t make it weird.

*What is truth? What is fiction? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

You can subscribe to my newsletter for updates. My debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

“Remember to keep your knees bent and a little loose so you can roll with the movement of the train,” I said to them from my seat a few steps away. They immediately complied. With their knees bent, standing sideways with their arms outstretched, they looked like a line of students at a beginner’s tennis class waiting to hit forehands. If we were trying to pass ourselves off as locals instead of tourists, we were failing, but at least the children were slightly less likely to be falling.

Our train was moving forward toward our destination of the zoo or the National Archives or the Green Day concert or wherever it was we were going that day. Meanwhile, with just a few offhand words about loose knees on a subway train, I was traveling backward. About 30 years back in time.

I traveled with my parents to D.C. several times when I was between the ages of 11 and 13 or so. One of my older sisters lived and worked in the city. We didn’t do a ton of traveling when I was a kid, so those D.C. trips stand out in my memory. And probably the thing I remember most is riding the Metro.

I grew up in a small Florida town where the Orange Julius at the local mall was the centerpiece of the city until the Super Walmart opened when I was in high school. The mall was one of those places that even in the ‘80s felt like it had seen better days, but probably never had. So, needless to say, traveling from a place where hitting the drive-thru at Burger King after school felt like the ultimate adventure, to a place where there was an entire mass transit system with a cool map with lots of colored dots felt extremely exotic.

I remember how proud we were that we managed to maneuver around the Metro without making complete fools of ourselves. I remember how proud I was that my mom told people I was a real pro at deciphering the Metro map. And I remember her developing the theory that if you keep your knees a little loose when you’re standing up on the subway, it’s easier to keep your balance and roll with the movement of the train.

I have no idea how accurate that subway riding advice is but some things require no fact checking. Thirty years have come and gone but as I sat on the plastic seat, the familiarity of the Metro washing over me, it felt like it had only been minutes.

I passed my mom’s advice on without a second thought. Our family legacy of loose knees carries on. A new generation has taken the torch.

So, if you ever see us riding a subway in your area, you’ll know what’s going on. And let’s be honest, it’s extremely likely you’ll be wondering what in the world we’re doing with our knees.

Some quick notes on our 10-day trip to the D.C and Baltimore area:

• We flew from Orlando to Baltimore on a Thursday afternoon and I basically have no memory of it so I’m assuming it went fine. The return trip I remember because it did not go fine… more on that in a second.

• We went to the aquarium in Baltimore which was pretty decent if a lot overpriced. I was concerned because I read a one-star review online that the aquarium smelled like fish. The reviewer was not wrong so I’m glad they prepared me for that. My nose clip was the envy of the town.

• We went to an Orioles game at Camden Yards. It was the kids’ first baseball game of any kind so they had to buy t-shirts with a player name on the back. My 12-year-old selected a player named Cowser. When he was announced in the starting line-up it seemed like the whole crowd erupted in a chorus of “boos” so we were all quite alarmed. Turns out they were mooing.

  similar vibes

• We drove across a very long bridge so my wife could show us the house she used to live in (time travel again). The children were enamored.

• We went to the National Zoo in D.C. The boys and I waited in line to get into the Ape House to see the gorillas and orangutans because that was another core memory of mine. Let me tell you, those guys were still living up to the hype several decades later.

• We slipped out a side exit of the zoo and made what has to be one of the longest walks in the history of mankind to get to the Metro station. There was a dark tunnel where I was pretty sure we were going to get smashed into by one of the cars racing by and then we had to flip this tire before they would let us go any farther? It was bizarre.

• So, we had a rental SUV, and when we first got it one of the kids found a wire coat hanger in the third row. I don’t know why it was in there. Maybe a previous renter left it by accident or the company knew we were from Florida and might enjoy a little reminder of home. Either way, it was a huge hit with the kids. Believe it or not, to forestall the constant arguing, we had to make a rule that whoever was sitting in the back row got to have the wire coat hanger. Seriously. My wife and I literally had to say the words “You know the rule! Whoever is in the back seat gets the hanger!” multiple times. Parenting is a journey.

• We went to a Green Day concert (it was an amazing show, of course) and it rained as we were exiting the Metro station. The kids were astounded by the men who seemed to appear out of nowhere to sell “ten-dollar ponchos.” That is the only job they want now. Green Day played two entire albums (Dookie and American Idiot) which was super cool for me because I got to hear some of my favorite songs live that I’d never heard them play before like Homecoming, Whatsername, and Having a Blast. The kids did well despite the length of the show and the oppressive heat although my 10-year-old did ask if it was almost over about four songs into the first album (oh, dear). I’ll also always remember my 8-year-old daughter shuffling down the aisle to tell me very seriously that I needed to take a break from singing because I was going to lose my voice. Never, my girl. Never.

• I came this close to doing karaoke at Planet Word, an immersive language museum in D.C. A young couple sitting on the curved sofa in the karaoke room was goading me with their eyes. The guy even gave me a subtle hand gesture like, “Take the mic and the spotlight.” It was tough, but I did not relent. Just imagine: you could have had a video of me singing “Counting Stars” by One Republic right here, right now. The world may never recover from this artistic loss.

• We took a day trip to Hersheypark where we stood in many very long lines. The park was pretty extensive with lots of rides and a water park. They shut down the rides for at least an hour or two in the early afternoon because of lightning in the area and I was hoping everyone would leave. They did not. We had to wait nearly an hour to do a single-tube ride in the water park just minutes before the park closed. All of the children then said Hersheypark was the highlight of the entire trip. Parenting is a journey.

• As we were driving through rural Pennsylvania late at night, I had the sudden urge to take the scenic route back to Maryland via Gettysburg. I wondered what it might be like to run around on the battlefield in the dark when all the ghosts were out. It’s possible I was jonesing for some new content because my ghosts essay is the only thing I’ve ever written that anyone has read. We ultimately decided to take the big highway and not get arrested for trespassing.

• We wrapped up our trip with another concert: CG5, a YouTube musician. Only the boys and I went and it once again rained when we exited the Metro on our way to the show. Apparently, CG5 isn’t big enough to attract the ten-dollar-poncho guys. Instead of waiting in line in the rain outside the venue, we walked around the neighborhood until we saw a sheet of torrential rain rushing toward us and we ducked into the nearest establishment: JoJo’s Pizza. If you ever need to escape the rain and are standing right outside JoJo’s, I recommend it highly.

• The day we were supposed to fly home, we met up with one of my oldest friends at an Irish Pub for lunch. I selected a quinoa salad to get a little bit of that local Irish flavor. It was uniquely terrible. Another thing that was terrible? Finding out a few hours later that our flight was canceled and there were no available flight options for two days. And those options routed us through Puerto Rico or Denver. At least we got to play mini-golf and hit a few balls on the driving range.

• Instead of flying through Europe to get home, we made the drive to Florida. Approximately 13.5 hours from 7 p.m. Sunday to 8:30 a.m. Monday. Then Michelle napped for maybe an hour and went to work because she is hardcore. It’s been over a week now and school has started but I think I’m still recovering. I’m not hardcore. I just got the kids off to school for day two of the school year and went to Lowe’s to buy a trashcan. That felt like a full day’s work. I need a vacation.

My family discovered a new outdoor activity that helped us ward off the mid-summer malaise but after just a few days, bruises, bumps, and a broken-down car ended our fun.

Summer parenting is weird even during the best of times. The lack of consistent schedules often leaves me feeling untethered and aimless. But when things start to go sideways, man, it can quickly feel like the wheels are completely falling off, or perhaps more aptly as you’ll see in a moment, the engine is stalled.

For me, maybe it’s the oppressive Florida humidity and unpredictable weather that make every mishap feel a little bit more cataclysmic. It has to be part of it, but there is certainly something more at play. Expectations.

Our society bombards us with both explicit and subliminal messages about the magic of summertime. The ads and Instagram posts promise us relaxation and fun. They make us feel like we’re wasting precious time with our children if we don’t do it all and see it all. And if our kids spend too much time playing video games and watching TV while the earth melts and the parents try to scrape together enough money to live? Well, we are clearly doing things wrong.

I fight this internal battle with expectations every summer and I’ve yet to win. Probably because there is no winning. It feels borderline absurd that the world is fraying around the edges and I’m still sitting here worried about making memories. Whatever that even means.

So, when the boredom gets to be too much and the YouTube gets even more annoying than usual, typically sometime in July which is objectively the weirdest month, I hatch a hare-brained scheme to try to salvage summer.

This year’s scheme: a pump track!

I didn’t know what a pump track was until about a week ago so allow me to provide a quick definition in case you are similarly unaware. A pump track is a track built for bicycles, skateboards, and other rolly things that has hills, turns, and ramps. The name comes from the technique riders use (pumping) to generate momentum with their upper bodies. To my eye, it looks kind of like the motion one would use to bounce on a pogo stick, but on a bike instead. We just discovered these tracks existed and, of course, immediately made pump tracking (is that what you call it?) our entire personality.

At least, for about four days.

We went to the pump track located at a county park about 20 minutes from our home multiple days in one week, braving the scorching heat and suffocating humidity. On our first visit, the evening air was heavy after the afternoon thunderstorms and the entire park smelled swampy and earthy. My 12-year-old son, who was the most keen on trying this new sport, was hesitant at first but he luckily received encouragement from a shirtless six-year-old boy who seemed to live by himself at the park and, based on how fast he was whipping around the curves, will likely be participating in X-Games BMX events later in the summer.

All was going well. My 12-year-old was loving it, which I was happy to see because he is typically a very indoor child. My 10-year-old basketball-loving son also gave it a try and was getting more comfortable with each attempt. And my 8-year-old daughter was just starting to get the hang of navigating the small hills on rollerblades.

However, on our third visit, my oldest had a fluke accident and fell from the top of a ramp while he was waiting to ride. One moment he was perched atop the wall on one of the track’s curves, and then I turned my head away for a second and heard a clatter and heavy thump. When it comes to children and most other things, clatters and heavy thumps are rarely good.

Fortunately, my son avoided broken bones so the total family broken bone count remains at one for the summer (so far… the 10-year-old broke a finger at basketball camp). However, I have the sneaking suspicion his newfound passion may have been squelched.

Video games are much safer, after all.

And if the accident wasn’t enough misery for one day, when we tried to leave the park with a gaggle of children and several bicycles in tow, my car wouldn’t start. Fortunately, a friend had joined us at the park and she had a minivan that could accommodate all of the people and some of the equipment. My car was left to survive on its own but luckily we didn’t have to leave any children behind.

After a few days of struggling with car repair and a late-night visit to the emergency room where my son got the all-clear, we’re mostly back to normal. My wife quipped that at least our son, who has expensive Crohn’s disease treatments every eight weeks, had already hit his out-of-pocket max for the year so his ER visit was free. I guess that’s what you call a silver lining when you live in modern-day America. Just think of all the reckless shenanigans he can get up to in the next four-plus months without the risk of further bankrupting us!

Once the physical and psychological scars heal, I hope we’ll be heading back to the pump track. Because summer is long, but the years are short… or something? We’re going to keep trying our best to make some memories and push ourselves out of our comfort zones at least a little.

Why? I don’t know. I guess because it’s summer and that’s what this dumb season is all about. Or so I’ve been told.

Andrew Knott is the editor of Frazzled and a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

My debut novel LOVE’S A DISASTER is out NOW and I have created a playlist of songs to accompany the book!

Why is this a thing authors do now? I don’t know! But I’m honestly very happy about it.

Music plays a HUGE role in LOVE’S A DISASTER so a playlist or soundtrack kind of does make sense in this case. First, the book begins with a marriage proposal by Caleb to Sadie at a punk rock concert in Florida. This is no secret; it’s in the summary text found on the book cover so I’m not giving anything away here. Second, Sadie is a musician. She plays guitar, sings, writes songs, and teaches music. She also worked as a professional in the music industry. I don’t get into this much because jobs in books tend to bore me, but the job does play a small but important role in the book’s ending.

So, the book is pretty saturated with music. Why? Because I like music. Big fan. Hope I’m not offending any music haters in the audience by admitting this but sometimes you have to take risks. If Caleb can put it all on the line by proposing in the muddy mosh pit, the least I can do is own up to enjoying music.

To be clear, I’m not particularly musical (though I can play a singular song on the ukelele… is it “Basket Case”? Yes, it is “Basket Case”), I just like listening to songs sometimes.

I’m not going to talk about every song on the playlist because some are just songs I like that fit the overall vibe of the book. But I am going to highlight some of them and explain my choices.

You can listen to the LOVE’S A DISASTER playlist on Apple Music and Spotify.

“Waiting” by Green Day — Love this song and it was always going to be first on the playlist for a very specific reason. I’ve mentioned this before but I know most of you don’t follow me as closely as I follow myself so it bears repeating. The idea for the initial premise of this book (what would happen if a guy proposed to his girlfriend at a punk rock concert?) came from a Green Day message board. A decade or two ago I was perusing the message board and found a thread in which a guy said he proposed at a Green Day concert during a specific song.

“Waiting” was the song.

This simple post stuck with me for a long time, and in particular, the possibility of disaster associated with proposing in such an odd and public place. There is another layer to the comedy involving the song Caleb chose to propose during that isn’t revealed until later in the book, but I did base some aspects of that song, which is by the fictional punk rock band The Pigeontoes, on “Waiting.” You’ll have to read carefully (or skim through until you find it) to learn more about that.

Favorite lyric: “Well, I’m so much closer than / I have ever known / Wake up!”

“Gone Away” by The Marked Men

So, this one is mostly about the title (Sadie has gone away after the proposal… and other important people in the book have also gone away), but I also wanted a song from The Marked Men on here because I love this band. Additionally, their punk rock aesthetic fits the overall vibe of the book.

Favorite lyric (I think… it’s tough to find lyrics for this one or make them out fully in the song): “Just when I thought it’s safe to turn around / I realized my life turned upside down”

“Florida!!!” by Taylor Swift (feat. Florence + The Machine)

Again, obvious. Florida is a BIG part of this book. Also, my daughter would be mad if I didn’t have a Taylor song on here. And I love Florence’s voice.

You might be asking yourself, is there a joke about a dead body in a lake/swamp in the book? You better believe there is.

Favorite lyric (naturally): “So I did my best to lay to rest / All of the bodies that have ever been on my body / And in my mind, they sink into the swamp / Is that a bad thing to say in a song?”

“Carmina Burana: O Fortuna” by Carl Orff and the London Philharmonic

Did I mention Caleb’s primary hobby is sword fighting? You know, the kind where you dress up in medieval regalia and go to town on each other?

Why did I choose this hobby? Well, I think I was taking that writing advice you see everywhere to be unique and create memorable characters. Of course, everyone is probably shouting, “No, not like that,” but live and learn, I guess. Next time I’ll just make everyone writers. But this time, the world gets HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts)!

I’ve seen a troupe at my local park several times over the past few years and my friend in high school used to go sit on the monkey bars and watch sword fighters do their thing way back in the late twentieth century (I never joined him because I didn’t do things with friends and it seemed way too awkward).

Any way you slice it, sword fighting truly is a timeless pastime.

Favorite lyric (obviously): “O Fortuna / velut luna”

“Give Me Novacaine / She’s a Rebel” by Green Day

I always forget these songs are paired together on the original album but that works perfectly for me here. LOVE’S A DISASTER is a funny book, yes, but there is also a lot of emotion, personal loss, and sadness. To me, “Give Me Novacaine” is a song about this need humans have to escape and feel dead to the world when it all gets to be too much. Every character in the book (and probably every person on the planet) understands this need.

On the flip side, “She’s a Rebel” is vibrant and delves into what it means to live dangerously. This is a song for Sadie. It exemplifies who she is… or more accurately, who she’s always wanted to be.

Favorite lyric: “Give me a long kiss goodnight / And everything’ll be alright / Tell me that I won’t feel a thing”

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day

Simply one of my favorite songs and one that features heavily in the book. I’m not going to get into it here because it would give away too much, but it’s very important to the story.

Favorite lyric: “My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me / My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating”

“The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World

Another banger that is super important to Sadie’s character arc.

Favorite lyric: “You know you’re doing better on your own / So don’t buy in”

“Voyager” by boygenius

This one’s a bit out of left field but it is a haunting little song and it has one key lyric, which I’m marking as my favorite, that ties into a side story in the book. It’s not a perfect match but it’s a bit eerie having discovered this song after the book was complete.

Favorite lyric: “Then there are nights you say you don’t remember / When you stepped on the gas and you asked if I’m ready to die”

“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day

Another key one in the book for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s a classic breakup song. In Billie Joe Armstrong’s words, “It’s about trying to be cool, accepting that, in life, people go in different directions. People come into your life, and it’s wonderful, but they seem to go out of your life as quickly as they came in.”

This is a central theme of LOVE’S A DISASTER. The transitory nature of relationships, love, and life itself.

Second, this song features directly in one of my favorite scenes in the book when Sadie plays music in a park. It’s a very pivotal scene in Sadie’s storyline.

Favorite lyric: “Tattoos of memories, and dead skin on trial / For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while”

“Church on Sunday” by Green Day

I’ve always loved the visual of the phrase “mascara tears” that I first heard in this song. I flipped this idea around and gave the mascara tears to Caleb in the first chapter of LOVE’S A DISASTER, which you can read right now!

Favorite lyric: “Making your mascara bleed / Tears down your face / Leaving traces of my mistakes”

“Here to Forever” by Death Cab for Cutie

I happened to hear this song on the radio late one night when I was driving. I was drafting the final portion of the book at the time and I knew I needed to reference one particular lyric.

Favorite lyric: “In every movie I watch from the ’50s / There’s only one thought that swirls / Around my head now / And that’s that everyone there on the screen / Yeah, everyone there on the screen / Well, they’re all dead now”

“Call Your Mom” by Noah Kahan

I discovered this song well after I finished writing the book and it kind of blew me away. There is an important sequence involving Caleb’s sister, Lauren, that occurs late in the book. When I picture that scene as a movie, this song is playing in the background.

Looking at the bigger picture, this song captures the dynamic of Caleb’s entire family. How hard it can be to keep moving forward when things get dark. How it sometimes feels impossible to keep living. How important it is to have someone in your corner who will make that call when you need it most.

Favorite lyric: “Don’t let this darkness fool you / All lights turned off can be turned on/ I’ll drive, I’ll drive all night / I’ll call your mom”

“Tear in My Heart” by Twenty One Pilots

This song starts with the lyric “Sometimes you gotta bleed to know / That you’re alive and have a soul” which is an objectively amazing opening line for a song and one that encapsulates Caleb and Sadie’s relationship. And then later there is this gem: “My heart is my armor / She’s the tear in my heart / She’s a carver / She’s a butcher with a smile / Cut me farther / Than I’ve ever been.”

I mean, the armor reference is too good to pass up.

Favorite lyric: I’ve already given you two so let’s move along.

“The Only Exception” by Paramore

The take-home message for this song is that, basically, love is a complete disaster but it’s worth it anyway. That’s pretty much also the life lesson that LOVE’S A DISASTER tries to deliver. I feel like every single character would relate to this song, particularly the favorite lyric listed below. I picture this song playing during the penultimate scenes of the book leading into this last song…

Favorite lyric: “And up until now I had sworn to myself / That I’m content with loneliness / Because none of it was ever worth the risk”

“Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran

Schmaltzy? Yes. A good pairing for the book? Also, yes!

Maybe instead of looking for love in unexpected places, it’s better to find it right where we are.

Favorite lyric: “Take me into your loving arms / Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars / Place your head on my beating heart / I’m thinking out loud / Maybe we found love right where we are”

Whew, this feels long! But we made it. Or at least I did. If anyone is still reading (congrats on your perseverance), I would love for you to read LOVE’S A DISASTER. And if you do, stop back by and tell me which songs I should add to the playlist!

Andrew Knott is a writer of essays, humor, and now, a novel. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel is Love’s a Disaster (Bayou Rose Press).

It’s the last day of school before Spring Break starts. You’ve just attended your child’s Field Day or Picnic Day or It’s Not Break Yet But It Kind Of Is Day and all that time spent under the blazing sun surrounded by 800 screaming children has made you a little punchy. Your body feels a bit foreign. Tingly around the edges. You’re still pumped about the girls beating the boys in tug-of-war. You may have momentarily slipped through a wormhole into a parallel timeline. The typical rules of time and space don’t apply here or at least it feels that way. 

DON’T BE FOOLED!

The neighborhood children have descended on your house even though school shouldn’t be out yet and, together with your children, they are hatching a plan. The plan involves a sleepover. And they’ve already scheduled it for tonight.

Before you get swept up by the tiny and extremely enthusiastic mob, STOP. Review these five sleepover mistakes you can’t afford to make… at least if you want to stay married.

1. Letting your guard down when you ask your spouse about hosting a sleepover and they say it’s fine

You’re not an idiot. You obviously asked your spouse if it was okay to host a sleepover before agreeing to it. 

Sure, all the children in the neighborhood were in your living room chanting “SLEEPOVER! SLEEPOVER!” while you asked causing your smartwatch to alert you that your environment could cause hearing damage, but still… you did ask for and receive verbal consent.

It’s not enough.

If you don’t want to receive a subpoena in the wee hours of the morning, follow up with a quick question about your spouse’s work schedule just to make sure. 

2. Mixing boys and girls

All you really want is to be the cool parent. The one all the local children like. Their admiration fills a hole in your broken and battered soul. Totally understandable, but don’t let your neediness land you in divorce court!

If your household and the neighborhood friend group includes a mix of boys and girls, it might be tempting to invite everyone to the sleepover that starts one hour from now. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. You don’t want anyone to feel left out. 

That’s all fine and good until you see this…

And by the time you see this, it’s too late. It’s way past bedtime and the doors to the bedrooms keep opening and closing and opening and closing. The giggling is cataclysmic. Incomprehensible thumps rattle the floor. 

Suddenly, you’re the one that’s left out… out in the doghouse.

3. Inviting more than two children, and specifically, exactly six children

Inviting too many kids is an easy mistake to make. It comes from a place of generosity and an abject desire to be popular because you never were when you were a child.

When Parker and Emory are standing right in front of you with their pathetic brown muddy puddle eyes saying, “We want to come to the sleepover, too,” you’d be a monster to say no.

Be a monster. 

Particularly if the addition of Parker and Emory brings the guest count to 6. Let’s just say there’s a reason 6 is the first, second, and third digit of the mark of the beast. 

4. Keeping Takis in the house

No one saw this one coming… except for maybe Violet.

Your kids just found out about the spicy chips known as Takis a few weeks ago and they have since become a staple of your snack closet. 

Unfortunately, they’re not just going to burn your mouth, they’re going to burn this whole sleepover to the ground.

At 11:30 p.m. when Violet gets a hankering for some habanero and leads her horde of hungry, hungry hippos down the stairs, the whole house will tremble. To quiet things down, you’ll be handing out Takis while your spouse, who is trying unsuccessfully to sleep in the downstairs bedroom, will be hounding the call center at 1–800-DIVORCE headquarters. 

5. Agreeing to a sleepover when your spouse has to get up at 4 a.m. the next morning for work

Okay, so the other mistakes are important to avoid but this one you need to underline, circle, highlight, and then underline again.

If you can avoid only one sleepover mistake, or really, life mistake — start here. End here. Burn it into your brain until you know it backward and forward. 

Until you won’t forget it even when you’re curled up on the stairs, covered in Takis dust, preparing to fend off nighttime sieges or Taylor Swift flash mobs. 

Otherwise, you might wake up to find your wedding ring missing from your finger. 

Eh, never mind. You won’t sleep long enough for that to happen so it’s all good… probably.

Andrew Knott is the editor of Frazzled and a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.

The children demolished our playground this week. It graced our backyard for nearly a decade and now it’s gone. All that’s left is empty space and a pile of rotting wood planks.

The destruction was a collective effort. My two youngest kids participated while my middle schooler watched from the sidelines (in his VR headset). My kids didn’t act alone. They assembled one of the top demolition teams in the history of mankind.

The Pyramids of Giza may be 5,000 years old, but even they wouldn’t stand a chance against this crew. Once The Pyramids got a look at the group of 7- to 11-year-olds wielding an electric screwdriver that didn’t work, a metal bar they found somewhere, several hammers, and a saw (wait, what?), they would’ve pre-emptively crumbled to the ground to save themselves the humiliation of being methodically and systematically deconstructed*.

To alleviate some concerns you might have, yes, this was a sanctioned activity. The children had mostly outgrown the playground and the Florida humidity had eaten away at it so that it was no longer stable. We had been planning to take it down for quite a while but shockingly hadn’t gotten around to it.

So when the neighborhood mob turned violent one afternoon, it seemed like as good a time as any to rip the bandaid off and say goodbye to the playground our entire family (siblings, parents, in-laws, nieces, nephews, a couple of dogs) had gathered to assemble just months after we bought our home. My middle child was an infant when we built the playground so it was only fitting that when he was on the verge of turning ten years old, he helped hack it into oblivion.

The playground was no longer safe to use. Therefore, the only prudent course of action was to allow the children to design, manage, and execute a very safe and orderly destruction plan. I was a bit hesitant to turn this task over to them at first, but then I realized the children had one pair of plastic Nerf glasses to share amongst themselves and at least half of them were wearing some type of footwear.

I honestly didn’t think they would go through with it, but once it started, I was as helpless and resigned as Aaron Burr.

The demolition team quickly established a hierarchal organization to optimize efficiency. The 8-year-old who lives behind us was tabbed as Boss #1 or the Top Boss. This decision was inexplicable—she doesn’t even live here and she’s squarely in the middle of the group agewise—but it seemed almost pre-ordained. Perhaps she just has more rizz than the rest of them or a sparkling LinkedIn presence that really stands out.

Boss #1 quickly got to work and appointed fellow second graders including my daughter as Bosses #2 and #3. They then proceeded to conduct individual interviews on the trampoline to make sure prospective crew members had the right stuff to move the project forward.

The entire project took three afternoons. Progress was halting because Boss #1 was mostly unavailable on the second day, arriving unannounced at 5:50 p.m. A skeleton nightshift crew was able to work 30 minutes or so until dusk.

On the third day, the entire team assembled in the early afternoon (thankfully, it was early-dismissal Wednesday** at school).

The 8-year-old boy who lives up the street arrived several hours late. He was sternly reprimanded and subjected to a one-on-one with Boss #1 on the trampoline. There was talk of expelling him from the crew, but he was ultimately allowed to remain because he could swing the hammer pretty hard. Pound-for-pound, he’s probably one of the top hammer swingers east of the Mississippi.

After much deliberation about support beams and discussions about who should be standing where and what pieces should be wailed on next, the remaining structure was pushed to the ground at around 4:30 in the afternoon when the sun was still high.

Several crew members jumped up and down on the carcass. I had to look away. I couldn’t bear to see the old girl in such a state. Boss #1 got a popsicle out of the freezer in the garage and asked if we could make snow cones.

We made snow cones.

It all happened so fast that I didn’t have much time to reflect on the passing of time and how nothing is permanent. Anyway, now is my chance. Isn’t it wild how nothing lasts, children grow older, and even the most regal of mid-value wooden playgrounds ultimately become heaps of neglected wood sitting at the curb?

That’s something for you to consider. Mull it over. I would, but I don’t have time.

My son and one of the other crewmembers are already hard at work designing a new structure to build in the backyard. They’ve drawn up a blueprint and priced out materials online.

If their construction skills are half as good as their demolition skills, this new building will truly be a sight to behold.

I’m sure it will stand the test of time… at least as much as anything does.

* Indiscriminately hammered to bits.

** Yes, early-dismissal Wednesday is a thing… EVERY week.

These three words shouldn’t go together. If something or someplace is chaotic and loud, by definition, it has to be filled with life, with movement, with energy.

And loneliness is supposed to be the absence of all that. It’s silent rooms with the shades drawn, dinner for one, talking to yourself just to hear the sound of a voice.

But this stage of parenting I’m in right now—my three children are in elementary and early middle school—is all these things combined.

Chaotic. LOUD. Lonely.

Of course, everyone’s experience is different, and my particular mixture of seemingly incongruous characteristics is perhaps largely attributable to my personality, my location, and how I do parenting.

First, I’m socially anxious and introverted so I never seek out friends. For example, my children have been playing with the same group of children in the neighborhood for at least three years now and I just exchanged phone numbers with one of the friend’s parents a few months ago. I know all the kids around here very well but I know next to nothing about their parents.

Which brings me to location.

My neighborhood seems to be populated with parents who follow a somewhat late-twentieth-century parenting philosophy. I’m not sure if it’s “free range” exactly, but it’s at least free range adjacent. As far as I can tell, children in the neighborhood play together and the parents do not interact. The children are friends and the parents absolutely are not.

It’s honestly kind of ideal for me since I’m much more comfortable around kids than adults, but it takes some getting used to. I’ve studied this dynamic closely for years, always on the lookout for personal slights directed toward me, but I’ve ultimately landed on the conclusion that all the parents have their own things going on, and interacting with neighborhood people is simply not on their agenda.

And finally, there’s the issue of how I do parenting.

I’ve softened over the years, letting loose of the reins little by little, but I remain more vigilant than other parents in my neighborhood. It would be hard for anyone to argue this point. I mean, the 7-year-old up the street was playing at our house one day, left to presumably go back to his house, and his mom texted about an hour later asking me to send him home. I was like, uh, he left a little while ago—phrasing it carefully because I always think I’m going to end up in trouble somehow (remember, I basically don’t know these people at all except for the gossip about them their children share with me… like, if you need to know which neighborhood parents are the most flatulent, I’ve got you covered). The mom texted back a quick “ok” in response. About fifteen minutes later she texted again: “I found him asleep in his bed” with a facepalm emoji.

We all parent differently.

For me, parenting is pretty all-consuming. Saying that feels a bit weird because I’m not a PTA super parent, I don’t volunteer at the schools much (tried that… too much anxiety), and my kids don’t do a lot of activities outside of the home. I mostly do the basics of parenting but I do them in a more hands-on way than some parents in my orbit do. That means when my kids have their friends over and they ask me to bounce them on the trampoline* or play pickleball with them in the driveway or throw the football to them so they can play a game called Moss**, I almost always say yes.

Most afternoons after school, there are between one and seven additional children in or around my house. They play inside and outside, and if underside existed, they would play there, too. There is constant noise and movement. Slamming doors, trampoline springs squeaking, balls thudding against the concrete, screams, laughter, arguments, chalk scratching on a chalkboard in a makeshift classroom in my living room because, for some reason, children love recreating school at home right when they get home from school.

I spend the afternoon hours frantically closing doors to keep the bunnies from escaping, filling countless water cups, soaring into the air on the trampoline as children scream around me, playing cards, throwing footballs, setting up a pickleball court on the driveway so the kids can say “Hey, look at us! We’re retired and playing pickleball,”*** and taking math tests created by my daughter and her friends (yesterday’s had about 50 questions that were all like 97 x 97… it took me forever).

It’s loud, it’s chaotic, it’s exhausting, and I freaking LOVE IT.

It is one hundred percent my favorite part of the day. It’s when I feel the most alive. It’s when I have the fewest doubts.

It’s also extremely lonely.

When parenting is your main deal, I guess it’s to be expected that loneliness creeps in when your kids are at school. That makes sense. You have a little person or people with you all the time for years, so when suddenly they’re gone for several hours a day, you can’t help but feel the absence. However, I didn’t anticipate how lonely parenting can be even when your kids are with you. I’ve felt this for many years (I mean, spending all day alone with a baby is a famously isolating experience), but for me, it feels like it’s become more noticeable as the kids have gotten older and less dependent.

I’m fortunate that my wife is doing well in her career (apparently AI hasn’t replaced nurses… yet) so my freelance writing work taking a nosedive is not as financially devastating as it could be. But, I do feel the loss in other ways. Lately, it feels like I don’t have a thing other than parenting. I mean, I have this, whatever this is… creative writing, newsletters, etc. I have a novel coming out. I still edit a parenting humor publication.

It seems like plenty when I type it all out, but all of it feels auxiliary except for the parenting. Like, the rest is just filler. The extra paper and packing material stuffed into a box to fill the space around the real item.

I do what I can to fill the space and time I spend alone, but when my kids return… and the neighborhood descends… it’s surprising that it still feels lonely.

Those two or three glorious afternoon hours before the day dissolves into dinner prep, homework (ugh), and bedtime routines feel lonely, I think, because I’m the only adult present. I’m the outlier. The interloper. In some ways, I’m a prop rather than a person. I’m most valuable for the services I can provide: entertainment, food and water, two-digit multiplication.

But that’s not the only reason.

Sometimes when I’m bouncing on the trampoline for what seems like the fiftieth time in the day, when the sun drops low and the air feels cool, I become untethered. The laughter and screams drift away on the breeze. The sound of the screeching springs recedes. It feels like it’s just me.

Alone.

I begin to think about what it will be like when all these children careening around me are grown up, gone. When the trampoline is rusted away by the Florida humidity. When it’s quiet. Always quiet.

A different type of loneliness begins to creep in. Future loneliness. Because it’s practically impossible for me to exist in the moment. My brain always looks forward. Always. Constantly thinking about tomorrow is almost as exhausting as bouncing for ten straight minutes on the trampoline or doing a set of twenty child tosses onto the giant beanbag chair.

But then, when I’m on the precipice of spiraling too deep inside myself, a tiny flailing fist or foot or forehead connects with some part of my body, knocking me squarely back into the present. Into this moment. The only one that exists right now.

I realize this type of loneliness isn’t so bad—this chaotic and loud loneliness. I’ll take it. I’ll hold onto it.

Future loneliness can wait.

* Fun fact about this game called “Moss.” My kids and their friends have played it for years at my house. I assume they learned it at school. Basically, one person throws the football and everyone else gathers in a crowd and tries to catch it. Whoever catches it becomes the thrower and the game continues in that manner. I could never understand what the name of the game was, it always did sound like they were saying “Moss,” but that meant nothing to me. Until one day it clicked: Moss… as in Randy Moss the famous wide receiver from the late 1990s and early 2000s known for outjumping defenders to make spectacular contested catches. Brilliant name for a game, but I do wonder how many children playing it have any clue what it means.

** If my insurance company is reading this, I don’t have a trampoline. The trampoline is a… uh… metaphor. Yes, definitely a metaphor. Think about it.

*** Believe it or not, this is a real quote either by my 9-year-old or one of the neighbor girls. I can’t remember who said it.

For some reason I can’t quite pinpoint, I have been having a really hard time finding any type of rhythm in my daily life lately. I wake up early, get the kids ready for and off to school (in two different shifts because my younger two go to school almost two hours earlier than my sixth grader), and then just kind of waste time until the kids get back four or five hours later. I mean, I do stuff like laundry and dishes and cleaning the bunny cages and the NYT Mini-Crossword, but it mostly feels like nothing. And then once the kids start getting home, it’s managing after-school stuff, homework, sweeping off the trampoline, dinner, bedtimes, etc. Repeat the next day.

I was feeling kind of bad about my lack of productivity and then my family got COVID and I was like, “Whew, now I have an excuse!”

My relief didn’t last long, however, because I remembered that getting COVID in the supposedly “post-pandemic era” is mostly just embarrassing, confusing, and stressful in, like, an entirely different type of way.

Back in the early pandemic days, there were at least a few rules and protocols to follow. Now, there is nothing but vibes.

How long should anyone stay home? Should kids who seem fine and are testing negative go to school? Who freakin’ knows?!?

Also… who freakin’ cares?!?

There is such a disconnect for me because I exist in online social media circles where people care about COVID and remain rightfully terrified about what it can do to people. Just because we’re now told by the powers that be that it’s fine to catch the virus once a year, every year, forever and forever, doesn’t make it true. COVID is dangerous for what it can do in the short run, and perhaps more importantly for many, what it can do in the long run.

I know all this on an intellectual level, but when almost everyone you come across in your daily life has moved on, and frankly, could not care less, well, it’s hard to know what in the world you’re supposed to do. And if I’m being honest, my actions certainly suggest I’ve moved on and don’t care either. It’s so much easier not to care. I like to cling to this idea that because I’m still aware that COVID is bad and dangerous, I’m morally superior to the mindless zombies who are blissfully oblivious, but maybe it’s the opposite?

Maybe I’m morally inferior because I know better and I don’t take the necessary actions because those actions are too inconvenient or too embarrassing?

Anyway, that’s a fun thought experiment. Also, I fell down the stairs last night.

First COVID, then a tumble down the (thankfully) carpeted stairs I was traversing while my daughter was in the bathtub.

Life comes at you fast.

And when you’re wearing slippery socks and carrying a large bottle of shampoo in one hand and conditioner in the other, so does the third step from the top of the stairs. And then, in very fast succession, the fourth step from the top, fifth step, sixth step, seventh step, the bunny gate your feet crash into at the bottom of the stairs, and so on.

Fortunately for you, my beloved newsletter readers, I did not die. Although I will admit while I was careening downward, the lyric from one of Green Day’s new songs called “Saviors” immediately came to mind: “I’ve gotta chuckle what a dumb way to die.”

I have a bruise and a couple of nasty rug burn scrapes on my back, my head was a little woozy for about an hour (not sure if that was from the fall or the COVID), and some shampoo and conditioner splattered on the steps, but otherwise, the stairs and I escaped without much damage.

Come to think of it, falling down the stairs and not getting seriously injured is much like getting COVID in the “post-pandemic era.” You feel a sense of relief at first then a wave of confusion and embarrassment washes over you. You sit in a cushy recliner under a blanket and feel vaguely bad for yourself.

Then, you write a newsletter about it with a sensationalized title to try to get some clicks because nothing really matters.

I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for more than a decade, and I have to admit that trying to reenter the job market after so long has been even more daunting than I expected. I guess it should come as no surprise. The last time I held a full-time office job, Obama was president, I had a flip phone (yes, I was a late technology adopter, but still), and my interviewer did not ask me to pantomime ripping my heart out of my chest and displaying it to her like I was a gladiator in the Colosseum.

So much has changed in the last twelve years.

Admittedly, my experience with job interviews is not extensive. Although I’m on the depressing side of 40 now, I can probably count the number of in-person interviews I’ve had in my life on my fingers. And before my most recent interview, all of them had been mundane and uneventful. I always got the boilerplate interview questions about strengths and weaknesses, future plans, work history, and what I would do if I had a disagreement with a coworker or some other such nonsense. Prior to my interview last week, I had never once been asked to name my favorite meal to prepare or what I would do if a customer tried to bring a pet rat into the restaurant. I’ve never interviewed for a kitchen job before, though, so maybe that’s just how restaurant interviews go?

One nice thing about this unexpected interview was I didn’t have to dress up. I was pulled unceremoniously into the dining room from my kitchen where I was doing the New York Times Mini Crossword on my phone, snacking on chips and salsa, while pretending to unpack the dishwasher. I was clad in the same T-shirt and shorts I’d been wearing for a couple of days, probably, but it was fine because the interviewer was dressed in pajamas and her hair was a bit tangly.

She asked me to sit in a chair at the end of the scratched and paint-splattered dining room table and I pushed several dolls and a pile of markers out of the way to make space to rest my hands. I always get fidgety during interviews.

Things started out somewhat normally. My interviewer asked why I wanted to work at her restaurant, and I launched into a heartfelt soliloquy about my love of the culinary arts and my passion for customer service. I don’t know much about interview strategy, but I do know that stupid stuff like this is exactly what interviewers love to hear.

She looked pleased with my answer and wrote something down in the notebook that was splayed out on the table in front of her. I couldn’t tell exactly what she wrote, but from my vantage point, it most resembled a squiggly line.

Next, she asked what my favorite dish to prepare was, which if I’m being honest, was a very insightful question. I didn’t hesitate. I waxed poetic about my grandmother’s eggplant parmigiana and how I used to putter around at her feet when I was just a small boy and dream of one day creating magic like grandma did.

This was a lie, of course, but everyone lies in interviews. As far as I know, my grandmothers never cooked eggplant parmigiana, and I don’t think they were even Italian.

The interviewer cut me off after about ten seconds because she had heard enough but I still felt like I was nailing it. However, things suddenly took a dark and unexpected turn.

“Act like you’re pulling your heart out of your chest with your hand and show it to me,” my interviewer whispered to me.

From the change in the cadence and volume of her voice, I could tell she was breaking protocol, but she was clearly trying to help. Even though I was a bit taken aback by the request, I complied. Anything to land this job. I must feed my family.

I put my heart into it (quite literally), groaning a little to add some pizazz as I pried my chest cavity open and plucked out my heart. I held my hand out to my interviewer, presenting the symbol of my passion for restaurant and hospitality management.

I was expecting a positive response. I did not get one.

My interviewer looked shell-shocked. Her eyes went wide. I think she let out a small gasp. Then she took to her notebook with great intensity, scribbling away furiously.

Well, that’s it… I was finished. My hopes of landing my dream job were circling the drain. I might as well have torn my real heart out of my chest because I was pretty much dead anyway. I was about to slink away in shame and then…

“OK. Follow me to the kitchen. I’ll show you how everything works!”

My interviewer had finished writing her novel about my insanity and was looking at me again with an eager and not-quite-as-horrified expression on her face.

“Wait, I got the job?” I asked.

“Yes. Just no cooking eggplant.”

Deal.

I followed her around to the other end of the dining room table where the kitchen was. It was well-outfitted with a compact oven and a purple cauldron. Everything I needed to hopefully earn our humble establishment its first Michelin Star.

It was quite a rollercoaster of emotions. The interview process always is. I think?

But I guess the take-home lesson for any stay-at-home parent looking to get your career back on track is to be flexible. Go with the flow. Don’t be afraid to stretch the truth a little to highlight your unique experiences and skills.

And most importantly, if your interviewer asks you to perform a cardiectomy on yourself, just do it. What’s the worst that could happen? In late-stage capitalism, it’s work or die.

You might as well take care of it all in one go.

My daughter is only seven, but she’s already worked the worst job in the world.

You probably know that early elementary school students often have classroom jobs like Line Leader, Door Holder, and Chalkboard Eraser Clapper. I remember the last one being the crown jewel of the classroom job chart, and sadly, I’m sure it doesn’t exist anymore since chalkboards are mostly extinct. Many kids of my generation dreamed they could one day turn chalkboard eraser clapping into a lucrative and fulfilling career, but like many of our earliest dreams, that one has died a slow and painful death. It is a great loss for all of humanity.

What you may not know about classroom jobs is that in my daughter’s second-grade class, there is a job called Student Designated to Get Sick Next Because They Are Responsible for Walking the Actively Sick Students to the Clinic. This might not be the official job title (imagine trying to write that title out on a chalkboard… oh, the erasers that would need to be clapped after erasing all that!). Still, from what I’ve gathered, it is a fairly accurate description of the job’s duties.

My daughter was tasked with being the Clinic Escort (sure, let’s go with that… much cleaner and less likely to raise red flags in the OSHA office) a few weeks ago, very near the beginning of the school year. I didn’t know she had been awarded this illustrious position at the time — we would’ve thrown her a party or something, maybe even bought her a gold-plated watch to thank her for her service.

Anyone want to guess how I found out about her job? Go ahead. Try to guess. If you don’t get it in one try, you should never try to be a contestant on any type of gameshow. Save yourself the trouble and all of us the secondhand embarrassment.

Yes, the answer to the most straightforward question the world has ever known is that I found out about the Clinic Escort job when my daughter woke up one morning with a hearty cough and a burgeoning fever. As I was commiserating with her about her illness, she said between coughs, “I probably got it from one of the kids I walked to the clinic.”

After I blinked a few times to stop my eye from twitching, I asked a few follow-up questions to pin down the particulars. I learned about the existence of the job, and I also learned that my daughter had escorted “three or four” kids to the clinic during her term of service. As it turns out, my daughter was lucky enough to be on Clinic Escort duty during one of the busiest weeks of the school year. Check that. I probably shouldn’t make assumptions. For all I know, it might’ve been one of the slower weeks of the school year.

Either way, she ended up sick at home for several days. She missed a birthday party (really hate being sick on the weekend… such a waste of a good sickness) and didn’t have the energy to clap a single eraser.

Of course, it’s very likely she got sick from six hours per day of close exposure to sick kids in the classroom, but where’s the fun in thinking rationally like that? It’s so much better to picture her getting struck down in the line of duty. Much more heroic, as well. It also gives me something very specific to complain and/or joke about.

The good news is that my daughter has now recovered and almost certainly won’t get sick anymore this school year. Wait. Please hold; I’m receiving some breaking news.

Hmm…

My daughter has just provided the following report: “Two kids in my class threw up today.”

Oh well, looks like she’ll be adding a second page to her OSHA complaint. Hopefully, they accept forms filled out in crayon or rainbow pen.

Andrew is a writer of essays and humor and an editor of Frazzled. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates.

Orlando, FL — The sky was slate gray and there was a slight chill in the air on the Thursday afternoon when a young girl’s world was turned upside down.

Harper, 8 years old, was playing in a friend’s backyard after school, attempting to perfect her back handspring on the trampoline when she heard the unmistakable sound of “Love Story” by Taylor Swift emanating from a beaten and battered iPhone a short distance away.

“I’m a huge Swiftie, so I know ‘Love Story’ even though it’s not a song many people know,” Harper said while standing on her hands on the trampoline, legs resting against the safety netting.

The obscure song was being played by two much older girls, fourth graders Isabella and Violet, who were sitting together on a tree swing contemplating life and love. Violet had just that morning confided in her best friend that she liked one of the boys who lived at the house where the neighborhood had gathered to play that day after school.

The secret remained a secret for approximately three minutes.

When the song reached its emotional apex and the girls belted out Romeo’s proposal to Juliet, the dad of the house who was sitting on the back porch taking in the scene that seemed quite ominous in light of the news of Violet’s burgeoning crush, called out, “Hey, that’s ‘Love Story!’”

Violet and Isabella both pumped their fists in the air and shouted “Yeah!” in response. Harper, however, was so shocked she completely botched the landing of her backflip. After brushing the leaves out of her hair, she scurried off the trampoline and ran over to the dad.

“How do you know ‘Love Story’?” she demanded with wide eyes. “I didn’t know you were a Swiftie!”

“Well, it’s one of her older ones,” the dad explained. “And I know more of her songs from that era… get it, era.”

Harper smiled condescendingly.

“That one came out back when I had more time to care about music, and you know, life in general before the children came along and it seemed like I ceased to exist as a separate human being and became more of a vessel that everyone pours their ideas of what I’m supposed to be into… if that makes sense?”

Unperturbed, Harper exclaimed, “So you are a Swiftie! What’s your favorite album?”

“Um, I guess whichever one ‘Love Story’ is on?”

Harper let out a small “eeek” sound and said, “Fearless! High five!” She then skipped back toward the trampoline, her brown pigtails bouncing happily on her shoulders.

The last sound the dad heard before retreating inside to shuffle papers around on the kitchen counter was Harper shouting, “You’ll never believe this… Quinn’s dad knows ‘Love Story’ AND he is a Swiftie!”

“I’m embracing it,” the dad said with acceptance in his eyes. “The next time a child asks if I’m a Swiftie, I know what to do. Baby, just say yes…”

“Get it?”

I left my eyeglasses at a La Quinta Inn in Fort Lauderdale.

This could be the first line of a bad country song if you just added “and my heart” somewhere in the middle, but alas, it’s not. It’s simply a sad tale about poor eyesight. Or rather, a tale about poor eyesight and a mortified clerk at the eyeglasses store who might never recover from witnessing, up close and personal, the abomination that is my eyewear.

Before we get any deeper into the story, you need to know that my eyesight is famously bad. I don’t typically go to parties, but if I did, my inability to see anything without corrective eyewear would be my go-to party trick. Picture me mingling with a group of snazzily dressed professionals in a spacious penthouse apartment with hardwood floors, high ceilings, tasteful crown molding, and a piano in one corner. I clear my throat, tap my wine glass with a fancy fork, and ask for everyone’s attention. I then pop my hard contacts out of my eyes one by one, moving the contact case an inch from my face so I can tuck them safely away. I blink a few times, look around at the blur of shapes and colors, stick my arms out like Frankenstein, and stumble around, bumping into people jovially before collapsing dramatically into the back of the Steinway with a discordant clatter, the lid of the grand piano crashing down on top of the upper half of my body leaving my black tuxedo pant-clad legs exposed, wriggling about in the air comically.

It would be hilarious.

If the topic of vision ever comes up in casual conversation, I pounce like the big orange cat that lives outside my house does on unsuspecting squirrels and birds. (It’s honestly a bloody mess around here lately, but let’s not get into all that now because I don’t want to lose the thread.)

“Did I just hear one of you mention glasses or contacts?” I might inquire, appearing out of nowhere like a phantom ready to wreck your conversation and life. “Well, get this, my prescription is minus 12.5, AND…(pause for dramatic effect)… I have quite a bit of astigmatism in my left eye and slightly less in my right eye but it’s still not great.” Then, I just stand there waiting for everyone to shake their heads in amazement before I hurl a smoke ball at the ground and disappear into the haze like a myopic superhero.

When I’m at the eye doctor and I remove my contacts, I love it when the optician assistant hasn’t looked up my prescription beforehand because when they sunnily say something like, “OK! Go ahead and read the top line of the chart for me,” I reply, all slyly like I’m the cagiest guy on the planet, “What chart?”

It’s funny because it’s true. I can’t see the chart. I can see a shape that could conceivably be an eye chart, but I can’t come close to seeing any letters or even the idea of letters. I must use subtle context clues — the optician assistant’s words, the fact that I’m sitting in a chair in an optician’s office, etc. — to determine what I’m staring hopelessly at is most likely an eye chart. Regardless, the “What chart?” line kills every single time.

After I lost my glasses in South Florida, which left me unable to see or function in any real way after I took my contacts out at night, I hastily made a trip to one of those eyewear chain stores that promise new glasses in 24 hours. The eye doctor I’ve gone to since I was literally a small child is located about an hour away from my house, so I opted for something quicker. As it turns out, it actually took about a week and a half to get my new glasses and my old glasses arrived in the mail before the new ones, but at least I got to spend an exorbitant amount of money. And I got to witness the poor eyewear store clerk’s horror when she first saw my spectacles.

I arrived at the store to pick up my glasses right when the store opened at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning because I didn’t have any time to waste. I pick up my first batch of children from school at 2:15, so I typically call a lid on the day at around 11. The clerk was the only person in the store other than me, but she still seemed frazzled. She apologized for the wait and explained that she was the only person on duty, which I had kind of already deduced since our voices were echoing off the floors and walls. Things were about to get much worse for her.

She grabbed the glasses from a drawer that seemed to roll out of the wall somehow, undid the rubber band that was holding a paper label on the glasses case, lifted the lid of the case, and… her face dropped. Because I had my contacts on and her body and face weren’t just smudges of color, I could immediately see the change. She went from happy to perplexed to downright depressed in a matter of milliseconds. She picked up the paper label from the counter and flattened it with her hands, pressing down hard with her palms like she was thinking, “If I can just get the creases out of this prescription I can fix this nightmare.” After she studied the very flat and creaseless paper for several seconds, she took a deep breath to compose herself, plastered a smile back on her face, and looked up at me.

“So, with the minus 12.5 prescription… and the astigmatism,” she began, the pain evident in her voice despite her best efforts to hide it, “it’s a little… difficult.” Her eyes squinched closed as she said the word “difficult,” and she looked down hesitantly at the glasses resting peacefully in the case like she was looking at a hamster corpse at an open casket hamster funeral. “But! With the polished edges and maximum thinning and anti-glare you selected, I think they look quite…” She paused here for a very long time, her eyes shifting up like she was hoping to find an acceptable word hidden somewhere in the back of her brain. “…Nice. Yes, they look… nice!”

It took us a while to get there, but she absolutely nailed the landing. During the short pause before the second “nice,” I could sense she was on the verge of tossing out a word like “stylish” or “fashionable,” but she just couldn’t make herself do it.

I contorted my face into an expression that I hoped sent the message that I did not blame her for my blindness. Something between a grimace and the smile a raccoon makes when it’s perched on the edge of a trashcan, getting ready to topple it over and feast on the decaying delicacies within. After my little facial spasm, the store clerk asked if I was wearing contacts, which was objectively a dumb question, but her fight-or-flight response was still going strong so I couldn’t blame her for panicking. I just said I was, and she launched into her canned spiel about trying the glasses out at home and coming back within some number of days if there were any problems. I nodded along without paying much attention because I didn’t really care how well the glasses worked. I knew that, both best- and worst-case scenario, they would be good enough to allow me to walk around my house at night without stepping on a bunny or falling into a grand piano. This level of functionality is my only requirement.

Later that night, I tried my new glasses on, and voila! I could see moderately okay again. I did have to remind my wife that she should keep her hands to herself because I knew the Coke-bottle edges of my frames were completely irresistible, but we all have our battles to fight.

It’s nice to be able to see again and navigate the world safely. If you need entertainment for your next event or social gathering, I’m back on the market. You provide the piano. I’ll do the rest.

Andrew is a writer of essays and humor and an editor of Frazzled. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates.

Ah, man, this is tough… am I about to break my most sacred rule?

I’m still on the fence, but it’s very possible I will be hard launching my feet online at the bottom of this story. Let’s talk it through.

If you haven’t clicked away to some other seedy corner of the web yet (I don’t blame you if you have… but then again you wouldn’t be reading this parenthetical if you’ve bounced, so we’ve stumbled into quite the paradox, haven’t we?), you’re probably wondering what in the world I’m talking about.

Excellent question.

The short answer: my 7-year-old daughter painted my toenails a few days ago. They’re bright cherry red. Or blood red, if you’re morbid like me and prefer macabre metaphors.

Now for the longer answer.

On weekends when we have nothing to do and the neighborhood children are occupied with sports, family time, or other unacceptable excuses for why they aren’t playing with us, my daughter sometimes gets desperate and sets up a salon in our living room. She slides the tall black chairs, which reside next to the kitchen counter, out into the middle of the room, finds a box or stool to use as a footrest, and collects an assortment of make-up products, towels, brushes, and random liquids.

Her management style as a salon owner is dictatorial. She does not abide by the adage that the customer is always right. In fact, in her opinion, the customer is almost always wrong. Particularly if the customer happens to be me (spoiler alert: the customer is usually me).

So it came to pass on a sleepy weekend afternoon that I got my nails painted fire engine red and my hair brushed into a blocky fauxhawk. The hair part was fine because I butcher my hair into roughly that cut every few weeks anyway. Getting my hair brushed was soothing and I urged the stylist to brush harder to give my scalp a nice scratching. I even commandeered the brush briefly and really went to town to demonstrate the type of service I was hoping for. My daughter giggled and I thought this might win me some brownie points for later.

It did not.

When it came time to select a nail polish color, I asked for something darker, maybe in the purple family to better suit my skin tone. I was denied. Only the type of red you might find dripping from the fangs of a vampire was acceptable according to the salon proprietress.

I sat back in my chair and accepted my fate with dignity. Or rather, with as much dignity as a person can muster while seated on a bar stool in the middle of one’s living room, naked feet propped up on a cardboard box, hair styled like Vanilla Ice or Kid from Kid n’ Play.

My daughter knelt and methodically went to work on my toes. She did an outstanding job, even pausing to wipe away the bits of stray polish that leaked onto my skin. Her technique was flawless. You’ll see how great a job she did in a moment (maybe… I’m still weighing this carefully but there doesn’t seem to be any other way). Her slow and steady approach also gave me some time to relax, reflect, and ponder the absolute futility of existence.

I mean, think about it. Here we are, constantly bombarded by terrible news on all fronts: an expanding war, human atrocities in plain sight, climate change, homelessness, abject stupidity (or brain worms as I like to call it), you name it. On and on and on. Horror is everywhere all at once. But then again, it isn’t. Oftentimes, all that heaviness is nowhere.

It disappears.

Or at least it seems like it does. Particularly when I’m drinking iced coffee in my air-conditioned home or sitting in a makeshift salon chair watching my youngest child paint my toenails. Despite being poisoned by a toxic and unaccepting culture in my youth like all of us were, I’ve grown and matured enough to know that when your daughter asks/demands to paint your toenails midlife-crisis-convertible red, you don’t ask questions. And not just because you fear for your life if you get on her bad side.

You do it because it makes her happy. You do it because she’s seven years old, which seems young, but the years slip away so fast. You do it because, let’s be honest, wearing nail polish is fun!

It often seems like the world is ending. Particularly when you’re perpetually online. Even for those of us who are relatively safe, comfortable, and insulated (for now).

So, if it all could fall apart tomorrow, why wouldn’t I paint my toenails? Why wouldn’t any of us? The world is crazy; try to hold onto any tiny pieces of joy you can, friends. Do what makes you happy and try to make the people you love happy, too. That’s my little piece of wisdom for the week.

Anyway, I’m going to do it. There’s no turning back now. Here are my feet… (heavy sigh). Feel free to sell this picture if you can find a buyer (unlikely, but if you do, let me know what the going rate is). I don’t mind one bit. Go for it. Nothing really matters anyway.

I’m sorry and you’re welcome. After all that, I couldn’t go through with it. Please enjoy my new boygenius shirt instead. Look at those cute little guys!

Fine. Here’s one toe just to prove that I’m not lying…

Here’s a fun fact about me: Green Day song lyrics and melodies occupy about 37 percent of my brain. Sometimes more depending on my mood and the time of year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, toward the end of September, what I like to call my Green Day brain percentage ticks up to its annual peak of around 42 percent. I’m sure you’ve heard the song Wake Me Up When September Ends or at least heard of it. If you haven’t, I assume you’ve been asleep for the past two decades. In addition to being the eleventh track on Green Day’s iconic “American Idiot” album, the song was played extensively in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, including at an NFL game in New Orleans and at various benefit concerts. Billie Joe Armstrong played it again during a COVID telethon a few years ago. It has also turned into an annual internet meme.

Wake Me Up When September Ends isn’t one of my top Green Day songs (I promise I won’t subject you to a top Green Day songs list) but it is meaningful to me because it is about fathers and sons. Billie Joe, Green Day’s lead singer and songwriter, wrote the song about his father who died of cancer when Billie Joe was ten years old in the month of… you guessed it… September.

The lyric in the first verse, “Like my fathers come to pass, Seven years has gone so fast,” refers to the time between when Billie Joe’s father died and when Billie Joe moved out of his family home. In the last verse of the song, that lyric changes to “twenty years has gone so fast,” which represents the time between the death of his father and the writing of the song. Side note: I saw Green Day in concert in Miami last year and Billie Joe changed this last lyric to “forty years has gone so fast,” which was a real gut punch. The guy standing beside me who was at the concert alone definitely had tears in his eyes. I almost gave him a fist bump or hug or something but decided to keep staring straight ahead for obvious reasons.

My father died in 2019 right before COVID hit after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. It was December, not September, but of course, I still thought about the song sometimes. I definitely didn’t adapt it to “wake me up when December ends” or anything because I’m not that much of a weirdo and I was 38 years old at the time, not a child. Additionally, my emotions have also been effectively muted by years of antidepressants, so most life events, even huge ones, tend to be little more than blips on my emotional radar. My father’s death still feels strange to me, like it happened in a different lifetime or that I experienced it in a kind of secondhand way. Like when you’re in a dream and you’re outside your body watching yourself interact in a familiar and playful manner with members of the band boygenius (this is a hypothetical example, of course, not a real dream I have regularly). Maybe that’s how loss always feels. Like all you need is a good, long, preferably dreamless sleep, and everything will go back to normal. Or at least you’ll begin to forget. That’s probably more accurate. You just slowly forget and seek comfort and normalcy in your infinite knowledge of Green Day lyrics.

Anyway, I wrote an essay in early 2020 that was published online in the Washington Post’s parenting section. It’s hard to access now because of the paywall, but I’m proud of it and it’s much more cohesive than my ramblings here. I’m including the text of that essay below because I recently learned that I’m allowed to do that.

You can think of this newsletter as the music video for Wake Me Up When September Ends, which is completely off the rails and probably deserves its own in-depth analysis. In brief, it features recognizable actors (Evan Rachel Wood and Jamie Bell), and instead of being about the loss of a father, it’s about the Iraq War breaking up a young couple. I guess in some ways losing a loved one to war might be similar to losing a loved one to a protracted disease? The worry, the confusion, the sensation of losing parts of a person even when they’re not yet gone. Anyway, here it is if you’re interested.

My old essay that you can read below is, I hope, more like the song than the music video. It’s simple and to the point. Almost like someone else wrote it… or at least another me after a very long nap.

Keep Going, and Other Lessons I Learned While Chasing One Last Rocket Launch with My Dad

Washington Post, January 21, 2020

As I slowed to a walk, I was a bit more out of breath than I might’ve expected after a very short jog.

There was no two ways about it, I needed to get in better shape if I was going to be able to keep up with my dad and his walker.

Of course, this little jog was a bit unexpected so maybe my sudden fatigue was a result of my body not receiving adequate notice that its services were needed. And it was late afternoon in late July in central Florida, so the sun was hot and it felt like I was sucking in warm soup with each breath rather than air.

My dad was on the move again. There was a rocket launch scheduled for 6:24, so he slipped out of his bedroom, out the front door, down the driveway, and around the corner before anyone noticed. When I located him after a few minutes of frantic searching, he was halfway down the next street over. Pushing his gray, four-wheeled walker. Moving quickly, if erratically, at a stumbling and lurching jog.

I chased him down. Stopped a few paces to his right toward the middle of the vacant street, took a few deep breaths, and gave a little wave in his direction.

“Hey there,” I said.

I never knew exactly how to strike up a conversation in these situations. It’s a pretty unique social scenario. What is one supposed to say when chasing down one’s father who has Parkinson’s and shouldn’t be roaming the neighborhood alone?

“Where you heading?”

That seemed like as good an option as any.

“Well, to watch the launch!” my dad replied. His tone suggesting this was a patently ridiculous question.

Where else would he be going?

Verbal communication has never been the bedrock of our father-son relationship and it only got worse has his Parkinson’s deepened.

Once we had established the reason for this fun jaunt, we continued down the street, my dad hunched over, shoving his walker forward at a pace that caused me sufficient cringing, swerving around the edge of the road, splashing through puddles in the gutters left by the afternoon thunderstorms that had swept through an hour before.

We quickly arrived at the end of the street. The neighborhood’s main road left us with two options: left and right. It was not immediately clear which direction would lead us to our desired destination. At least to me it wasn’t clear.

My dad raised his hand in the air. Gesturing vaguely to the right.

“It’ll be that way,” he said.

And off we went. I didn’t see how going anywhere we could possibly reach on foot would result in a better launch view, but who was I to argue. He’s the one who used to work for NASA after all.

I continued cringing constantly as my dad traversed the small, grassy slope from the sidewalk down to the street we had to cross for some reason. I steered him subtly toward the sidewalk ramps that seemed slightly safer, but he eschewed my suggestions—perhaps I was too subtle.

Instead, he continued down the side—or more like middle sometimes—of the main street. It’s not a thoroughfare by any means, but does typically have enough traffic to make one nervous. Particularly when your father is swerving around on his walker, splashing through puddles and continually threatening to crash into mailboxes or cars parked alongside the road.

Finally, at the last street where we could conceivably turn toward home, I convinced him by some combination of magic and luck to turn toward the west. This was counterintuitive—the rocket launches to the east—but I reasoned that we should turn toward home eventually so he wouldn’t run out of steam.

My dad didn’t seem to agree, of course, but he begrudgingly headed in the direction I suggested. Picking up speed until we zoomed past the turn off toward home and continued down the dead-end street toward the swamp.

“There’s nothing but a swamp down there,” I pleaded.

His gait was getting more erratic now and his breathing more labored. I had to spot him constantly, ready to catch.

“Uh huh,” he replied noncommittally.

I made some hand gestures and continued to suggest turning toward home, but to no avail.

We reached the end of the street where three reflective diamond-shaped signs indicated the beginning of the swamp beyond.

My dad dropped to his knees, completely spent. I waited a few minutes before helping him up onto his walker. Fortunately, it was the type that doubled as a seat. After a few more minutes, we started back in the other direction. My dad seated in his walker, pushing himself with his feet while I attempted to push and steer away from the storm drains on the edges.

We managed for the most part—he only wandered off toward the drains a couple times, prompting me to throw my body in front of the walker to stop the momentum. As we reached the end of the street, my mom’s car appeared around the corner. My niece and mom stopped to pick us up and we made the short drive home.

It certainly seemed like a much longer distance just a few minutes before.

Dad spent most of the rest of the evening recovering, but there was some good news. We didn’t miss the launch. It was postponed to the next day. Six o’clock. And now we knew where to go to get a good view.

----

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it back to watch the launch the next day. When you have kids and family of your own, sometimes life gets in the way. It was the last launch my dad and I ever chased. He died about five months later from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Because he devoted most of his professional life to the space program, space shuttle and rocket launches were a big part of our shared history. Growing up in Titusville, Florida on the Space Coast meant that launches quickly became somewhat routine. They were something I could always count on being there. Much like my father.

And even though his physical and mental faculties were deteriorating in his last years, his consistency, fortitude, and sheer will to live never wavered. I like to think this outing, one of our last together alone, served as his final lesson to me. Even if it wasn’t one he consciously planned.

No matter how big the obstacles in front of you are in this life, he was telling me, you just have to keep going. Because living each day is worth it. Being present is worth it. Finding that perfect vantage point to see a rocket lift off into the heavens for maybe the five hundredth time in your life is worth it.

Back in July I felt like I needed to put some work in to keep up with my father. I was right. And even though he’s gone now, I have to keep putting that work in. Most importantly, as a father for my three children. Because in many ways, I will always be scrambling to keep up with the man who taught me what it means to be a dad.

I didn’t know if I’d be able to write this week because I was so busy volunteering at the elementary school Book Fair.

To be clear, I only volunteered on one of the five days for about an hour and a half, but still, the experience was extremely draining for me. Because I am the parent in my household who doesn’t have a formal job, I feel compelled to volunteer at the school from time to time for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on. I have this vague feeling that lingers like a phantom in the depths of my brain that at some point in my past I enjoyed volunteering at school, and in particular, at the Book Fair.

I remember several years ago, probably around 2019 right before COVID, putting my armor on and throwing myself into the midst of the battle without receiving any instructions or plans from the field generals (PTA Moms). After loitering around the periphery of the cavernous multipurpose room for an hour or so, aimlessly running my fingers across books about Roblox, rubbing my arms to keep warm because the temperature inside was glacial despite the early fall heat that was pressing against the windows and doors leaving thick condensation on the glass, I decided to take the bull by the horns and organize the checkout line. There was a crush of tiny kindergarteners and first graders, arms filled with books and gel pens and unicorn slime attacking the cash register and I made it my job to fend them off. I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was truly heroic. I almost expected the school to honor my service at halftime of a high school football game or something. Despite never speaking to or being acknowledged by any adult present that fateful day, I remember feeling fulfilled after my shift was up. I was tired and my feet hurt from standing on the linoleum floors for so long, but it was a good kind of tired. An exhilarating type of pain.

This year’s Book Fair experience was very different. I have to compliment the PTA members in charge because the changes they have made to the organization and set-up of the event have made it run beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that there is very little need for any volunteers. Each child got to pick out one free book even if they didn’t bring money to shop (which is truly awesome) and the free book selection was neatly arranged on two tables. Students didn’t even have to go to the register; they just chose their free book and moved on with their lives.

So, when I arrived at the Book Fair on a Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m., there was literally nothing for me to do. There was no horde of marauders at the cash register to subdue. No books to reshelve. No students to assist because they all seemed to know what they were doing. There was even another dad there, and the PTA Moms actually acknowledged his existence. I’ve seen this dad around before. I don’t know what his story is exactly, but he seems to hang out at the school all the time, wandering the halls looking for something to do. He’s fun, talkative, and energetic, and since I am none of those things, I have already lost. At each elementary school, there can only be one dad. It’s an unwritten rule.

When I entered the large room, I stealthily picked up a yellow volunteer lanyard off the front table and placed it around my neck. For some reason, I felt the need to turn my back to the moms at the register when I was putting on the lanyard because it felt like a very intimate act. It also felt like I was stealing something, and honestly, everyone else in the room probably agreed that I was indeed stealing something. The card dangling on top of my unofficial volunteering shirt—a classy pink and white checkered button-up long-sleeve number—read, “I’m a Volunteer! Ask me for help!”

No one asked me for help.

My son came through while I was there, and he didn’t even ask me for help. He shoved a Michael Jordan poster into my hands and told me to take it home so it wouldn’t get ruined. So, I spent the rest of my volunteer/standing-around-doing-nothing time holding a poster. All the adults in the room were like, “How brazen is this guy? Is there anything he won’t steal?”

I snuck out of the multipurpose room about 90 minutes after I arrived. During my entire stay, I only exchanged a few words with one other adult—a mom who seemed as confused as I was and also had no role to play. I think I might’ve also made eye contact with one of the PTA Moms for a few fleeting milliseconds, but I’m not entirely sure. It’s possible she was looking over my shoulder at a fly on the wall.

I exited this Book Fair volunteering session feeling drained in a very different kind of way. I sat in my car and used my phone to go online and cancel the other volunteer shift I had signed up for later in the week. What was the point of coming back? It’s a weird feeling when a chapter of your life seems to be closing sooner than expected. Even if the chapter is, of all things, volunteering at a stupid Book Fair.

Anyway, here’s to me taking some time to figure out what I should be doing next. I thought I would have more of an idea at this point in my life, but alas, best laid plans and all that. Like, I knew on an intellectual level that being a super school volunteer was not my calling for many reasons—not least being that I am hugely uncomfortable talking to new people when the parameters of our interaction are not well established in advance—but some part of me was still clinging to this fantasy. (I know, I know, it’s a very sad fantasy, but I have to work with what I’ve got here.)

The good news is that I think this failed Book Fair excursion has put an end to something. It feels like it’s provided a weird sense of closure. I guess we’ll see if that’s true.

Onward.