I remember going to a ball game with my old man. I remember the smells. Stale beer, human sweat, and the odor of unnaturally pink hotdogs that turned your bowels into stone.

I remember before the game, things got very quiet. All 30-odd thousand people rose. The throngs of stadium chairs creaking sounded like the world was splitting.

Everyone’s dad put down his non-evangelical beverage, SLOWLY, careful not to spill. Thousands of American grandpas removed lit cigars and balanced them, with surgical-like care, onto armrests.

The anthem was played.

Back in those days, the anthem was handled differently than it is today. Back then, guest artists did not take the mound, wearing asymmetric haircuts and crotch-revealing trousers. Neither did singers demonstrate 10 minutes of vocal gymnastics until their anthem performance resembled a febrile seizure.

No. Back then the organ played. And everybody sang.

We used to be a nation of singers. Remember that? Singing was just normal for us. Our childhood classrooms had upright console pianos, and our teachers knew how to

play them. Mrs. Moore would bang out “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” before each class. Mrs. Smith played “This Land is Your Land” every Friday after the Pledge.

Well, that was a long time ago.

Recently, I attended a modern baseball game. It was a very different experience. My wife and I ordered $34 nachos from a kiosk, and the cashier asked whether I wanted to leave a 25-percent tip. Beers were $18 apiece.

During the game, a huge LED timer runs between pitches so TV producers can fit in more commercials on broadcasts. The bases are now bigger, the distance between bases is now shorter. They’re changing our game.

But none of that bothered me. Not really. A Major League park is what it is. Get over it. At a ball game, you get what you get, and you don’t pitch a fit.

What I was most…

A moth landed on me. It was a big moth—about the size of a baseball. It was purplish, with a beautiful set of wings, two bulbous eyes, and delicate antennae.

I was sort of mesmerized. Nothing beautiful has ever landed on me before, unless you count the way local pigeons have sometimes used me for target practice.

The moth would not fly away, so I presented my hand to the moth. It crawled onto my finger.

Then, it just looked at me.

I spent several minutes admiring the insect from all angles. I lifted it up to the light and inspected its thorax. I observed its dainty forewings and its magenta hindwings, my nose only centimeters from its body.

It just kept staring at me.

“You can fly away if you want,” I said, since all moths speak English.

Then, I gently flicked my wrist to help launch the moth into the air. But the moth did not let go. It just stayed perched on my finger. I flicked my finger a few more times, but

the moth was making it clear, it was not interested in flying away.

So I named him Mo. I went back inside with a moth attached to my finger.

I made supper, one-handed, with Mo firmly affixed to my left index finger. Mo was just hanging out as I made mac and cheese on the stove.

With my free hand, I texted Roxie. Roxie is an 11-year-old moth expert, and we are also cousins. She is deeply into moths. She raises them from baby larvae.

I took a picture of Mo and asked Rox what kind of moth he was. She said that Mo was a huckleberry sphinx moth, which is a variety of hawkmoth. They only live for a few weeks.

“You’re a huckleberry sphinx moth,” I informed Mo.

He didn’t seem impressed.

Mo and I ate supper together. I ate with my…

“DEAR SEAN,” the email began in all caps. “PLEASE COMMENT ON THE CRACKER BARREL LOGO CHANGE! THIS IS A BAD THING!”

As it happens, I have a story about bad things. The story is about an old man. He lived during in the Great Depression. He was a very poor farmer. His home was a ramshackle shotgun house. He drove a rusted truck that predated the Punic Wars.

His truck, you see, he needed very badly, because he was raising his teenage grandson, who lived with him. That truck was what carried them into town.

One day, his truck gave up the ghost. It was devastating. All the neighbors visited to see if they could fix it. But it was hopeless. The old truck was deader than disco. The neighbors offered their condolences.

“THIS IS SUCH A BAD THING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU!” said his neighbors.

Neighbors always spoke in all caps back then.

But the old man did not seem worried. In fact, he just shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, it’s not for me

to say whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.”

A few days later, several of the local farmers banded together and donated a vehicle to the old man. It was a Packard. Brand spanking new. It was a LOT nicer than his old truck. Leather seats. Chromework galore. White-walled tires. Hood ornament of a disproportionately gifted naked lady on the front.

All the neighbors stopped by to congratulate him on the new wheels. Once again, they spoke in all caps.

And, once again, the old man replied, “Oh, it’s not for me to say whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.”

How could the old man say this? IT WAS A NEW CAR FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! DIDN’T HE UNDERSTAND?! AND WHY WASN’T HE USING HIS CAPS LOCK KEY?!

But then, a few weeks later, that car broke down on…

I had a dream. I was walking on the beach with God. We were the only two on the shore. God was very tall.

The first thing that struck me was that God was nothing like I thought he’d be. He was different, somehow. Much more complex. Much vaster. He was not merely some bearded guy in a tunic.

He was here, but also over there. He was up, he was down, he was above, below, inside, and out. He was the fabric of the air itself. When he walked alongside me, space-time seemed to bend as we passed by, making allowance for him.

As we walked, the waves of the ocean were crashing against the shore. Scenes from my life were playing overhead. Just like the old poem my mother used to have imprinted on a magnet stuck to our refrigerator. The one about footprints in the sand.

The scenes overhead were snapshots of my life. When I lost my first tooth. When I bought my first car.

My wedding day. The time I got fired from my job. The times when my loved ones died. Each time my heart had been broken. Things like that.

I looked behind me and saw footprints in the sand. Two sets of footprints. One set belonged to the Great Artist. The other set belonged to me.

But I noticed something odd. During the low periods of my life, I saw more sets of footprints. First a few. Then dozens of them. The footprints were all walking alongside my own.

Soon, there were so many prints that they obscured mine. In some places, the sand looked like an entire football team had been performing drills on the shoreline. The throngs of prints carved deep trenches into the earth, filling with the water after each incoming tide.

The amount of footprints kept increasing as my life went on. During the most difficult periods of…

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Goodbye, Man of Steel
Sean Dietrich
Aug 23

READ IN APP

First, a little about me.

I’ve been a Superman fan since I was old enough to fill up a diaper. I used to attend school wearing Superman pajamas beneath my civilian clothes, posing as a mild-mannered first-grader. My mother made me stop this in college.

So when opening credits to Superman began, I was actually excited. We in the theater audience applauded. I was wearing one of my Superman T-shirts. I own three.

I, like many other working stiffs my age, have been waiting to see the new Superman movie—the highest grossing box office hit of the year. Which was why most of us in the theater were middle-aged.

Of course, we all knew the movie would suck. That’s just Hollywood. But maybe the movie would have SOME redeeming qualities.

Um…

When the movie ended, nobody was applauding. Most of the people, young and old, were just sitting there, blinking.

I left the theater wondering what the

name of Christopher Reeve we had just watched. Not only because the movie was, perhaps, the worst movie in the history of human civilization. Not only because the film featured a beat-you-over-the-head political message involving fictitious Russian presidents, refugees, and—I’m serious—social-media spider monkeys whose sole job was to post false political information online.

It was because of what the movie says about the American Kid.

This is the world our kids live in. THIS is the bleak reality we’ve given them. It’s no longer a world where Superman stops bank robberies, or rescues fair maidens from the railroad tracks.

Neither is it a world with bicycles, baseball cards attached to the spokes, building forts, or playing in the woods until dark.

In short, the Superman movie was all about technology. The heroes all used smartphones. Heroes and villains alike used social media…

The little dog beside me is curled into a ball, huddled against me. We are smooshed as closely as we can be without being one person.

She is a petite dog. A black and tan coonhound. Floppy ears. Loose skin. She is blind. There is a scar where her eye used to be.

There are other scars on her body, too. On her face. Her chest. We don’t know for certain where those come from.

What probably happened, is that she was purchased from a breeder, by a hunter. Coonhounds aren’t cheap. They cost more than some people’s trucks.

The purchaser was a terrible dog owner. He likely kept her in a cage with other hunting dogs. Likely, none of these dogs saw daylight until it was time to hunt—once every couple weeks. This is just how dogkeeping is practiced in less-than-respectable circles.

So the dogs sat in a cage. In their own waste. They weren’t fed regularly, as is the custom of the abusive sportsman, who keeps his dogs hungry so they’ll be mean.

Dogs aren’t meant to live in confinement. A dog was meant to run 30 mph. Thus, dogs in pens can be vicious. They learn to gang up on each other. Fight until bloodshed. Establish dominance. It really is a dog-eat-dog world.

That’s where her body scars come from.

Her missing eyes are a different story altogether. The veterinary doc told us her face had undergone blunt trauma. Her muzzle was fractured.

It was probably the butt of a rifle, the vet said. Or maybe a piece of rebar. No way to know. Either way, she was struck so hard she lost her vision.

The hunter probably took the pack running. He fired his weapon and figured out that she was gunshy. A gunshy dog is a waste of $700.

So he took out his frustration on her face. He probably didn’t mean to make her…

We were sitting on a plane. Awaiting takeoff. I am convinced that if you live wrongly, if you treat your fellow man poorly, if you are selfish, if you are not a good person, you will die and wake up in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

You will be condemned to find yourself in the TSA line on a major holiday weekend. Officials will compel you to remove your shoes, belt, jacket, eyeglasses, insulin pump, pacemaker, and you shall be frisked.

You will hold up your pants with one hand while a stranger who is exhibiting signs of severe occupational depression gropes your groin region. And everything will be going fine, until your wife trips the metal detector with her Swiss Army knife.

But, thankfully, we were all finished with TSA. I was bound for the Frozen North. I was sitting in my Barbie-sized airline seat, practicing good armrest etiquette.

Across the aisle was an elderly woman. She had a boy with her. He was maybe 15.

You could tell she was nervous because she looked pale. She was sort

of hyperventilating. Trembling. She looked like she was about to vomit, which worried me because I have a strong involuntary empathetic regurgitation reflex.

“Nervous?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“First time?” I said.

“No, I’ve been nervous lots of times.”

I liked this woman.

The boy held her hand tightly. He kept saying, “It’s okay.”

“I’m fine,” she kept saying. Which is what people who aren’t fine always say.

Then the boy started singing. It was only light humming at first. But then he sang slightly louder. His voice never grew loud enough to bother the passengers, but it was enough for her to hear.

She sang along. Her voice was low. They were squeezing hands. The woman’s eyes were shut tightly. She kissed the boy’s hand.

We underwent the launch sequence. It was a jarring takeoff. Lots of shaking. Lots of rattling. A…

Do this. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And remember what it was like to be a kid. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Dive deep into your brain and locate your mental elementary-school yearbook. Flip through the pages. Find that cute black-and-white photo of yourself with that gap-toothed smile and enormous ears.

Now hold that yearbook picture in your mind.

Look how precious you are. Look how happy.

Remember how great it was? Remember how uncomplicated it was, being a kid? Remember how your only occupation in this world—your highest ambition, your ultimate purpose, was to seek out and locate refined white sugar?

Remember sitting in Mrs. Welch’s Sunday school class as she played an upright piano and everyone sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” as Charlie Waters picked his nose so aggressively he was literally touching his own brain matter? Remember how you actually believed the lyrics you were singing?

Recall how nothing bothered you. Even big stuff, serious stuff, it barely affected you. Sure, you had pain sometimes. But mostly, you didn’t

worry. Even critical injuries didn’t bother you.

You could fall off your bike, lose a tooth, or break your arm until a jagged piece of your humerus was poking through the skin. You’d cry. Then get back on your bike and start pedaling home to Mama.

She’d hold you. Kiss your head. And somehow, deep in your heart, you weren’t that worried. Because you knew it was all going to be okay.

If you’re having a hard time remembering how immune to fear you were, try remembering chicken pox. Chicken pox is a life threatening illness. But you never knew that back then.

Whenever you or your friends got chicken pox, you never thought “death.” Chicken pox simply meant you got to stay home from school and watch reruns of “I Love Lucy.”

But then you grew up. Then you got wise. You…

The little seagull built her nest beneath the train tracks. She was huddled over her squeaking chicks. Her nest was only inches from the steel rails.

Two railway track maintainers stood at a distance watching her. Their neon vests, reflecting in the early morning light. Their hard hats pushed upward on their heads. They weren’t sure what to do with the bird.

“What is a bird doing on the tracks?” said one employee.

“How in the world did she get there?”

The mama bird looked so snug. So content. And she made it clear, she wasn’t leaving.

“We should probably move her,” said one employee.

“You can’t move a bird nest. If you move the nest, the mama might abandon her chicks and they’ll die.”

“But we have to move it or the train will kill them. A bird’s nest can’t survive this close to the tracks.”

The railway employee removed his helmet and ran his hands through his hair. This was the last thing he needed this morning.

Just then, a train was coming. Oh, no. The horn blasted.

Two long. One short. Standard warning blast for a train approaching a crossing grade.

“Crap,” said one employee.

“What’ll we do?” said the other.

“I don’t know.”

The two railway employees just stared at each other. Unsure of what move to make next. They could either move the nest and probably kill the chicks, or leave it alone and watch them all die.

Nobody made any moves. Soon, it was too late. The booming CSX diesels were already roaring along the rails.

The two employees stood at a distance watching in mock disbelief as the monstrosity of iron and steel passed, with screams of metallic thunder.

It took a long time for the train to finally complete its crossing. The approximate length of a freight train in the US is 1.5 miles long. Sometimes it can be even longer, stretching…

“Dear Sean, yesterday’s column disappointed me. You cannot be a true believer and believe in ghosts at the same time. God simply doesn’t work that way.

“...I wonder if you know that ghosts are actually demons. …I’m shocked that you would entertain the subject of witchcraft in your writing. Please consider me a former follower. Thanks.”

Dear Former-Follower:

You won’t read any of this, since you no longer follow me. And, for the record, I don’t blame you for unfriending a witch. If I were you I wouldn’t follow me either. If for no other reason than because this witch uses way too many commas. So, believe, me, I, totally, get, it.

I guess I really demoralized the proverbial pooch with my last column about ghosts in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I should have known better. You are right. Ghosts are evil. Ghosts are not holy. There can be no such thing as a holy ghost.

Well. Wait.

Let me start over.

I’ve been in Gettysburg for the last three days with my friend Bobby. We are lowly

musicians, playing a week’s worth of Civil War shows at the historic Majestic Theater.

We dress in Civil War attire. We sing and fiddle 160-year-old music for visitors who come to Gettysburg. We play two shows each day. And I’m honored to say we are receiving many standing ovations. True, these ovations are usually moving toward the exits. But still.

So anyway, getting back to ghosts. Ghosts are a huge topic here in Gettysburg. This town is home to the most reported paranormal activity claims in the world. Several companies offer ghost tours. Ghosts are a big business here.

Moreover, many tourists report seeing weird things. I am currently staying in a historic hotel, for example, that is supposedly haunted.

Throughout the years, staff members and guests have allegedly seen a Civil War nurse roaming these hallways. Her name is Rachel. Others claim to…