I have written a lot of stories about pediatric cancer. Hundreds, actually.

When I started writing for newspapers, I visited lots of children’s hospitals. I sat in lots of waiting rooms. I conducted lots of bedside interviews.

I embraced too many weeping parents, skeleton-thin from stress. I fell in love with too many bald children.

There was Benny, who vomited throughout most of our interview. He was crying while vomit trickled down his chin, saying, “Help me, Jesus.” He died two weeks later.

I wrote about Lydia. She was a middle-schooler. Glioblastoma took her from this world. We played Rook at her bedside. She lasted another year.

So when they found cancer on my 12-year-old goddaughter’s ear, I was a wreck.

All I could think about were those waiting rooms. Those emaciated parents. And the words spoken to me by the mother of a child who died of kidney cancer.

“My life is split into two parts,” the mother explained. “BC and AD; Before Cancer, and After Death.”

Our Becca. Precious Becca. The same Becca

who was born to drug-addicted parents. The same Becca who’d been shuffled around foster care until being adopted by two loving parents. The same Becca who went blind. Who has lost some of her hearing. The same Becca who did me the honor of becoming my godchild.

The same Becca who has been my best good friend. My constituent in crime. The same Becca who sends me text messages every 8 to 10 minutes. The same Becca who used to crawl into my lap so I could hold her like a baby.

That Becca.

The worst part has been watching sadness overtake her. She would never admit to being sad, of course. She NEVER tells anyone she’s sad. But you could just tell.

There have been few smiles. Fewer laughs. She doesn’t even laugh when I make poot noises with my hands. That’s how bad.

It was late. I was leaving South Carolina, where I’d just made a speech in Columbia. I had an all-night drive ahead of me.

I stopped at a gas station off the side of the road. Middle of Nowhere. There was nothing around for miles except a few shotgun houses with couches on front porches. The frogs were singing a nightly chorus.

I walked inside. The bell over the door rang. I was buying vittles for the ride home.

I tossed a few bags of Chili Cheese Fritos on the counter.

The girl behind the register was pretty. She was tatted up. Rings in her nose. Rings on her lip. Her hair was a shade of purple not found in nature. Her name was Angela. I know this because her nametag said so.

She was crying. She used a hand to mop the tears from her face. She approached the cash register. She scanned my bags of Fritos and said, “I love these chips.”

“Me too,” I replied.

“I could freakin’ live on these things,” she said, sniffing her nose.

“Some of

us do.”

Her makeup was smeared.

I knew it was none of my business, but I just had to ask. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

She smiled. It was a pretty smile. She could have been a homecoming queen. A very purple homecoming queen.

“Can I show you something?” she asked.

We were alone in the old convenience store. Nothing but the hum of old coolers working overtime. This was not the question I expected her to ask.

“You want to show me something?” I said.

She nodded. “That okay?”

“Depends,” I said. “Is it something that will send either of us to prison?”

She reached into her pocket and showed me a picture on her phone. “Do you know what this is?” she said.

“Yes. It’s a phone.”

She smiled. “No, on the screen.”

The girl pinch-zoomed on…

Q: Sean!!! Are you going to write anything about how poorly Ingrid Andress sang our national anthem at the Home Run Derby? It’s an attack on our country!!! If you stay silent on this you are a complete wuss!!!!

A:

Q: My dad let me read one of your books, I finished it and gave it a one-star review on Amazon... It was so hard to get through such a weird mess... I left you a bad review and, believe me, I don’t enjoy leaving bad reviews.

A: I can see how hard this is for you.

Q: How do you write something new everyday? Or the better question is, WHY do you write everyday when nobody *#$%ing cares what you have to say? Who even are you?

A: I think you meant “every day.” Maybe you should turn autocorrekt of

Q: Sean, your a fool. You wrote that you believed God rescued you from a traffic accident. If that were true, then God chose NOT to save millions of other people who have met tragic ends, such as

the passengers on the Titanic?

A: It’s you’re, not “your.”

Q: I saw your band playing on Facebook, and you guys really suck.

A: You should see us when we drink.

Q: I don’t know how I stumbled on one of this author’s books… But I wish I had those three hours of my life back.

A: Just think. You could’ve been watching “Titanic.”

Q: You are fond of saying how much you love America, I wonder if you realize how screwed up this &*$# country is? How can you still love something so $%&*ing dysfunctional?

A: You should meet my family sometime.

Q: I just have one word of criticism: Your work is all the same. Someone told me you were a columnist, but I disagree. A columnist finds something new to talk about. All you do is repeat yourself…

God bless the Great Smoky Mountains, so majestic their beauty could kill you. God bless the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevadas at sundown.

The same goes for the Tetons, the Blue Ridge, the Bighorns, the Elks, the Adirondacks, and the Appalachians, which were carved by the pocketknife of God.

And the Missouri River, seen from 34,000 feet above, moving like liquid silver across a green patchwork. The Mississippi, the Rio Grande, the meandering Columbia, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado.

God bless the Gulf of Mexico at dusk. The Chesapeake Bay. God bless the geese overhead, on any Great Lake. Or any body of water for that matter.

And Ellis Island. If you visit Ellis, you begin to visualize the hundreds of thousands of congregated souls, dressed in drab rags, holding tight to their entire lives, crammed into duffle bags.

And it all makes sense, why your old man was such a tightwad when it came to buying your Little League uniform.

And Savannah. On Oglethorpe Avenue, where

the home of Juliette Gordon Low stands. Low, a girl who was deaf in both ears, who founded a humble youth organization for girls in 1915. And although they were laughed at by high-society, these Girl Scouts would predate the American woman’s right to vote.

Mount Vernon, Virginia, overlooking the whitewater. And Moab, Utah, within the mysterious Arches National Park, where ancient remnants of time stand like archaic ruins.

God bless each Waffle House, where many of the waitresses just seem to know how to make you smile.

Bless the south rim of the Grand Canyon, staring at an itty-bitty, mercury-like river, miles beneath you, just before a 12-year-old tourist almost knocks you over the edge because he is playing tag with his sister.

And the serenity of the Great Plains of Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The remains of North…

The cardboard sign on the highway said “Hot Bulled Pee-Nuts.”

I pulled over out of pure instinct. For there are few things I love more than a pee-nut that has been properly bulled.

I parked. I stepped out of my truck and walked toward the smell of steaming Cajun spices. The man boiling peanuts was older, seated beneath an Auburn University tent.

He was dressed in Levis and square-toes. He wore a belt buckle the size of a hubcap. He used a canoe paddle to stir a kettle seated atop a roaring blue propane flame.

Beside him was a 50-pound bag of Sam’s Club salt. He removed handfuls of salt and tossed them into the boiling water like fairy dust. Then he licked his fingers for show.

And the line grew longer.

Soon, there were six of us standing there, on the side of a rural Alabamian highway at noon. We were sweating in the violent heat until our clothes were translucent and our hair was matted.

“He does good peanuts,” said a guy in line.

The man looked as though he had come directly from work. He wore a necktie. His shoes cost more than my truck.

“They’re worth it,” said another woman balancing a baby on her hip. “My husband says his spicy peanuts are the best he’s ever had.”

So we waited. And waited.

And waited.

Now and then the old man would remove a hot goober pea, crack it open, and sample it. Then he’d spit it out, shake his head, and announce that they weren’t ready yet.

A few kids on BMX bikes showed up. They ditched their cycles and joined the line. And we became 8.

Then a truck with Florida tags stopped. A man and his wife got out and assumed a place in line. And then we were 11.

“First time I ever had a boiled peanut,” said a guy in line,…

Four guys. Four ordinary guys. Our band arrived at the Oxford Performing Arts Center theater early for soundcheck.

The theater production crew was waiting for us. The soundmen were huddled onstage for a pre-show briefing. The ushers were looking over seating charts. The ladies in the ticket booth were smiling. The beverage vendors were icing down the Mick Ultra.

The first band members to arrive were me and Aaron. We arrived in a 20-year-old Ford. Our instruments, in the bed of the truck.

We must have looked like quite a pair. I wore flip flops, carried a banjo, and a plastic tumbler of iced tea. Aaron carried a fiddle and a spit cup.

We knocked on the backstage door. The stage manager gave us an appraising look and said, “You sure you two are in the right place?”

“Yessir,” I replied.

Aaron spit.

The rest of our little band arrived. We had a guitar (GEE-tarr), an upright bass (doghouse fiddle), a violin (fiddle), and a five-string banjo (birth control).

We all played around a single microphone,

like they did in the old days. Four guys. Four painfully average middle-aged males.

Four guys, having a good time. Four guys who—hard as this is to believe—played at the Grand Ole Opry together.

Four regular guys who once congregated in an Opry dressing room, a few doors down from Ricky Skaggs and the boys, and kept saying things to each other like, “Are you nervous? Because I’m not.”

Four guys with families from wide-spot-in-the-road townships. Towns with names like Chelsea, Slocomb, and Freeport. Four normal guys, four dads and uncles, four guys with mortgages, guys who never quite figured out how to operate the revolving door in their Nashville hotel lobby.

Showtime.

We took the stage in Oxford. Aaron and I played twin fiddles. Each man took a solo by stepping toward the old-fashioned microphone.

When any man played particularly well, we all…

Fourteen-year-old Hayden from Maryland, sent me a letter asking what my favorite food is. Hayden says that her personal favorite food is apple pie with melted cheese on top.

All I can say is: Hayden, you can enjoy that pie all by yourself. Because I’d rather lick a mule between the ears than put cheese on apple pie. But then, who am I to judge? Someone wise once said: “Just because we can’t agree doesn’t mean that you’re not a complete wacko.”

Anyway, to answer your question, Hayden, my all-time favorite foods have changed over the years. When I was a baby, my mother said that I would eat entire blocks of cheddar while in my high chair. My mother, who thought it was adorable to see a child gnawing on a brick of cheese, would take photographs of me, thereby documenting the origins of my longtime childhood weight problem. But I eventually grew out of the cheese fascination and I moved onto:

Mashed potatoes.

The women in my family make

delicious mashed potatoes using an ancient family recipe:

—1 potato.
—80 sticks of butter.
—Accidental bits of cigarette ash.

Also, my mother did not whip her potatoes with electric mixers like the pagans. She had an actual hand masher, covered in rust so that it looked like a tiny tetanus-covered farm implement. I would always lick the masher when she finished. This explains a lot of my developmental problems.

Also, I love collards. And the only way to cook greens is with the ugliest, most deformed ham hock knuckle you can find.

And, bacon. I do not believe that all bacon is created equal. The bacon I like is the hand-cut kind your granddaddy would spend his hard earned money on.

Let the record show that I also love fried chicken. Throughout certain periods of my life, this food was the only reason why I remained a…

“Hi, Sean…” the letter began—people are always calling me that. “...I just read your article in the newspaper about angels!

“No offense, but I laughed the whole way through. I wasn’t laughing with you, I was laughing AT you! I cannot believe in the 21st Century, humans still believe in angels. It’s stupid. I’ll take my answer off the air.”

I love it when people say “no offense.” It’s a lot like when the doctor flicks his syringe and says, “You won’t feel a thing.”

The truth is, friend, I used to doubt the existence of angels, too. But then I realized I was in the minority.

Did you know that nearly eight out of every 10 Americans believe in angels? For the math challenged, that’s a whole dang lot of people. When it comes to global figures, seven out of 10 humans believe in angels.

This is remarkable when you figure that only 33 percent of humans classify themselves as Christian; 10 percent are Protestant, and only 3 percent call themselves SEC

fans.

What I’m getting at is that more humans agree on the existence of angels than they do on any other topic, with the exception of their mutual hatred of Miracle Whip.

I know this is true from first hand experience. When I started writing this column, about a decade ago, I was much more handsome, and my metabolism was like a hummingbird’s.

But also, back then I was on the fence about angels. This all changed when I wrote my first column about the supernatural, based on stories sent in by readers.

After the column ran in our local paper, my inbox was flooded with angel stories. The stories have kept coming in from all over the U.S. Just this week, I have received nearly 40 stories on angels. They have come from people all over. Including Canada.

For example, I received a story from Francis,…

It’s the last day of vacation. You can tell a little girl has been here. All you have to do is look around, the little lake cabin is covered in kid stuff.

There are tiny wet swimsuits, draped over chairs. Wet beach towels, over each bannister, each sofa, and hanging from the chandelier.

Enough floaty pool noodles to span the equator.

Dead Gatorade bottles. An army of crushed water bottles, half empty—or half full, as it were.

Popsicle sticks, stained blue and orange, fallen in the line of duty, adhered to the countertop.

An empty pimento cheese container, with houseflies socializing on the rim. A jar of pickles with no pickles in it.

An abandoned smartphone, in a girlie purple case, sitting in the middle of the den. Random toys, scattered.

Board games, stored beneath the coffee table, apparently put away in haste, with Monopoly money poking from the box lids. A lonesome pair of dice on the floor, just waiting to break someone’s C4 and C5.

And oh, the shoes. We’ve got shoes. Tiny

girl-sandals beside the doorway, with slightly elevated heels. Water shoes, with bits of lake moss clinging to the soles. Tennis shoes with sweaty socks stuffed inside. And a host of other specialty shoes for females. There is probably a pair of shoes specifically designed for checking the mail.

A sunhat, soaking wet, hanging by its chinstrap over a barstool. Six different kinds of sunscreen on the kitchen counter. Count them. Six.

The labels say the sunscreens are “100% vegan.” I shudder to think of how many innocent vegans had to die to make this sunscreen.

Hair brushes galore. Heaven only knows why anyone would need more than one.

Tiny bottles of smell-good stuff, littering the bathroom vanity. Lotions, moisturizers, sunburn creams, ointments, and at least four products featuring aloe.

A conditioner bottle in the shower, which claims to smell like strawberry milkshake. Special lotions, scented…

“There’s a bug on my leg!” said Becca.

“There’s no bug on your leg,” I said confidently.

“Are you SURE?”

“Absotively,” I said.

My 12-year-old goddaughter, Becca, and I were on the shores of Lake Martin. I was unloading groceries into an old cabin.

Becca had used her white cane to navigate into the yard while I unloaded. She was wearing her swimsuit, standing in the grass, listening to nature.

I was certain there were no bugs on her because there are NEVER bugs on Becca, although she is always insisting there are.

Becca does not like bugs. She is more afraid of bugs than, say, the threat of nuclear war.

She is constantly searching for invisible bug life on her person; perpetually feeling herself with both hands; occasionally freaking out whenever she happens to detect, for example, a raised freckle.

“There is DEFINITELY a bug on my leg.”

The stupidity of Becca’s godfather is staggering. Because when I inspected Becca’s legs, there was a bug.

Actually, there was more than just “a bug.” There were maybe millions of ants swarming

her legs. She was standing atop an anthill.

Becca’s calves were covered in tiny black dots. The ants were crawling up her thighs, burrowing into her shoes. There were ants all the way up to her waist.

And so it was, the middle-aged man, who has never had a child of his own, who has no earthly clue what it means to be parental, who still watches “SpongeBob SquarePants” and eats red-white-and-blue popsicles, started swatting the child’s legs with a towel.

I removed her shoes and socks and brushed the ants away. Soon, Becca was free of bugs, but a million ants had found their way onto the middle-aged fool.

Throngs of ants were crawling on my arms and hands and neck and armpits and even—seriously—into my underwear. And they were the biting kind.

Becca sprang into full-blown rescue…