There are three or four neighborhood cats who sit on my porch each morning as I write. They are feral animals. They were here when we moved in. Nobody owns them. But they are fixtures in our neighborhood.

My morning writing routine is pretty predictable. I awake early. I go out to the porch. I sit in my patio chair and work on writing projects while my neural networks, still hazy from sleep, struggle to spel wurds corectly.

Meantime, the cats just sit there, perched on a ledge, looking directly at me as I tap a laptop. Sometimes I have to stop typing because I can feel their gazes weighing on me.

“Are you hungry?” I sometimes ask them.

They don’t even blink.

“I said do you want to eat?”

Nothing.

So I stand up to go inside and get some cat food and they all skitter away as though I am going to fetch an axe.

Cats are funny. Entirely different from dogs. I am a dog lover. I have been owned by 16

dogs in my lifetime. And what I’ve learned about dogs is that they are mostly fun-loving creatures who—and I mean this with all sincerity—have the intelligence of potato salad.

Dogs are cheerful, trusting, and generally get excited about almost anything. I could hold up a head of expired iceberg lettuce and talk in a high-pitched voice and my dogs would start wagging their tails. “LOOK! HE’S GOT OLD LETTUCE!” they would be thinking.

I am convinced, dogs will be the first creatures admitted to heaven because they are guileless. After all the dogs have been admitted into heaven, if—and only if—there is any extra room up there, cats might get in. Because cats are streetwise and worldly creatures.

If cats had cellphones, they would never text you back. Not even if your house was on fire. You would text a cat all day long and…

“You are feminist moron...” one email read. The next cheerful message read, “You’re a woman hater…” Another message said, “Why don’t you take a new Barbie doll, remove it from the box, and wedge it in your…”

I won’t finish the previous sentence because this is a family column. I will, however, say that Matel would not be thrilled about what the author suggested.

These messages were in response to a column I recently wrote about seeing the movie “Barbie.” At the time I wrote the column, I had no idea mentioning one movie would stir up such consternation.

So I would like to apologize.

I also want to say that I am actually a Barbie doll fan. Not a huge fan, mind you. But Barbie dolls have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

As a boy, my sister played with Barbie dolls. My mother had an old collection of vintage Barbies from her own childhood. Flight Attendant Barbie (1961), Career Graduate Barbie (1962),

Astronaut Barbie (1965).

So there were lots of Barbies in our house. And we neighborhood boys were very curious about these dolls. Which is why we boys performed all sorts of experiments with our sisters’ Barbies.

You must understand, of course, that we were guys. Guys are naturally curious. We boys, for example, learned that the limbs of Olympic Skier Barbie (1975) do not bend unless they are first prepared in an oven preheated to “broil.”

We also discovered that Aerobics Instructor Barbie (1984) hair is highly flammable. My cousin Ed Lee also stumbled on the amazing possibilities of combining Barbie dolls with over-the-counter bottle rockets.

My sister even had Shaving Ken; you could actually shave Ken’s five o’clock shadow with a sponge-tipped razor. Although Shaving Ken was not true to life. At least not in my experience, inasmuch as men in my family had hair on their backs, not…

Recently, it came to my attention that I was one of the remaining four Americans who had not seen “Barbie.” In case you’re one of the other three, “Barbie” is a wildly popular movie that is making waves in all the headlines.

The New York Times recently said that “Barbie” is “...about becoming your own hero.” CNN stated that “Barbie” is “...Important for normalizing women’s health.” Toisto Magazine called “Barbie” the “most important film of the year.”

“Barbie” has reportedly impressed the Hollywood establishment because it proved that, to produce a hit movie you don’t need computer graphics, elaborate CGI effects, and a huge production budget to create hype. All you need is a huge promotional budget to create hype.

So I decided to see “Barbie” with my friend Dan, a former law-enforcement officer, who asked me to accompany him and his two daughters.

I haven’t been to the theater in a long time. I think the last movie I saw was “Steel Magnolias.” Mostly, because my people weren’t big movie goers. We were sanctified Baptists who

did not believe in going to the movies for fear that it could lead to mixed bathing.

When we got there, the first thing I noticed was that lots of young women were there to see “Barbie.” I could tell this because they were all dressed in neon pink.

“I’ve seen ‘Barbie’ four times,” one 22-year-old woman told me. “It’s just a great movie, with an important message.”

I asked the young woman what this message was, exactly.

“Um,” she went on, “like, it’s about, like… Like. I don’t know. You just have to see it.”

Another group of teenage women stood in line with their boyfriends. The young women had already seen “Barbie” twice. This was their boyfriends’ first time.

“We made our boyfriends come with us this time,” said one the girls. “Because it’s a super good movie.”

“Oh my God,”…

“Sean, when are you going to say something about America and the pitiful state we’re in…? A lot of people are speaking out… Have you heard the song “Rich Men North of Richmond”? It’s about American oppression… But you have remained silent and are thus part of the problem.

“...The longer you turn a blind eye to our national troubles, the more respect I lose for you. When are you going to call out what’s wrong with this country?

“Respectfully,
—Jan”

Dear Jan, I’d like to tell you about a scene I saw about four years ago.

I was at a Piggly Wiggly in a no-name U.S. Southeastern state. I was traveling on business. I was almost to my hotel when I stopped to buy some Chili Cheese Fritos and, God willing, a six-pack.

As I was wheeling into the store parking lot, I noticed a young woman and her two kids standing on the corner. They were begging.

I have a policy. I give to people who beg. Not because I am a good guy.

I’m not. I am a selfish American who spends more money on streaming video services than I do helping the needy.

But I once had a cousin who was addicted to meth. This cousin commonly resorted to panhandling on street corners.

My cousin once told me the amount of cars that passed by when he begged was staggering. He once said, “You never feel more invisible than you do when you’re on that street corner holding that stupid sign.”

This mother was holding a cardboard sign. She had scabs all over her face and arms. I don’t know much, I know what the scabs are all about.

The sign read, “My kids are hungry.”

The woman’s kids were standing directly beside her. And she was dressed in rags. I parked in the parking lot and I watched her for a while.

Finally, I…

You don’t find places like this anymore. You just don’t.

Brenda’s Kitchen sits off Highway 45 in Chester County, Tennessee. It’s a tiny restaurant, located next to the Tractor Supply. The kind of under-the-radar joint that serves country food. Not “country-style” food. Not “home-style” food. But real-people food.

It’s an average Wednesday. Lunch rush. The parking lot is full of muddy Fords and Chevys. Which is a good sign. You couldn’t fit a bicycle in this parking lot edgewise.

I walk inside. Paneled walls. Vinyl tablecloths. The place is adorned in Chester County High School colors of blue and white. Go Eagles.

Most customers either have white hair or none at all. There are several pairs of Velcro shoes. You see a lot of camouflage. Boots galore. I count six pairs of overalls in this joint.

Six.

This room smells like coffee and bacon and chocolate cake. Pie coolers hum. A TV plays the news. Old men in the corner are dog cussing politicians. There is a sign on the wall which reads, “No profanity.”

Miss Brenda

is seated at a table, sipping tea, watching it all. She is lean, with cotton hair and an easy smile. Whenever a customer enters, she greets them only with her eyes.

This is a little town. Everybody knows everybody. The servers know what customers want before they enter. Because that’s the thing about towns like this. In a small town, whenever you don’t know what you’re doing, everyone else does.

Brenda’s Kitchen has been around for 17 years. She started this place after she retired. She had always wanted to have a restaurant.“Guess I just like to feed people,” she says. “Or maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.”

The menu is elegant, but uncomplicated. All the classics are here. Today Brenda is serving pot roast with potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Greens. Black eyed peas. She even has chess pie.

You have to drive a…

My favorite hymn is the one about leaning on everlasting arms. I got to thinking about this song today when I was sitting on the porch with my sister. We were both singing.

“Leaning, leaning,
“Safe and secure, from all alarms…”

My sister is a 33-year-old woman. She is beautiful. Funny. And she’s got a way about her. She’s meek. And you can just tell that she’s been humbled in her life.

I know a thing or two about being humbled. Which is a very different thing than simply “being a humble person.”

Being a humble person, for example, means that you don’t cut in line, take the last biscuit, or sing karaoke.

But being “humbled” (past-tense non-restrictive intransitive verb) is a thing that is done to you. Usually, without your consent. Being humbled is an experience that feels a lot like getting your head shaved.

I have been humbled a lot throughout life. In fact, I will be humbled as soon as I submit this very column when a reader with an English

degree writes to me and says there is no such thing as a “past-tense non-restrictive intransitive verb.”

My sister has been humbled too many times for anyone’s good.

It all started when my father died in a traumatic way, an event I’ve written about enough. When this horrible thing happened to my family, my sister and I both quit going to school.

At the time, I was 11, and had no use for sentence diagrams dealing with worthless concepts, such as, to pick a concept at random, intransitive verbs. My sister, however, was in kindergarten when she quit school.

As a result, my sister didn’t learn how to read until she was 20 years old. She became highly skilled at hiding this. Some people never knew she couldn’t read.

When you get older, it gets harder to learn how to read. And once you miss…

DEAR SEAN:

I have tickets to see you at The Ritz Theater in Talladega in September. I was so excited to see you were coming that I secured five tickets. I’ve since broken the news to my husband who is now obligated to attend instead of fishing. I am also bringing my sister, and her boyfriend.

That leaves one ticket.

That fifth ticket is the one I want to ask you about.

The fifth ticket is for my son. Our one and only son is a beautiful, brutally honest, extremely complex, soon-to-be 13-year-old. His name is Owen.

I had Owen when I was 28. Little did we know what the next 13 years held. I first knew something wasn’t right when he had feeding issues in the hospital. His doctors wrote us off as naive first-time parents.

We weren’t. We had no idea, but at some point Owen had a hemorrhagic stroke. His stroke caused left unilateral obstructive hydrocephalus, which is spinal fluid inside the brain. I had to force feed him—holding

his jaw shut so he’d latch onto bottles.

For four weeks I took him to the pediatrician to voice my concerns, only to be brushed off as an anxious mother.

I finally broke down and did what doctors hate, I consulted with Doctor Google. I told the doctors, “It’s hydrocephalus.” The doctors thought I was crazy. Until they measured his head, which had grown two inches in four weeks. His brain was under so much pressure that the CT scan looked like a big black hole.

Owen’s first brain surgery was at 4 weeks old. Suddenly, I was transformed into not just a mom but a mom to a medically complex child.

His second brain surgery was at 5 months. Then came physical, occupational and speech therapies. Owen has right sided hemiplegic cerebral palsy. He can hardly use the right side of his body. He also has central…

I have a friend who was recently asked by his employer to use a different name in his workplace. My friend’s nickname is “Tater Log.” But mostly, we just call him “Tater,” “Tater Bug,” or “Sweet Tater Pie.”

Tater’s employer, however, felt this name was unprofessional to use when dealing with high-level clients. He said it sounded, quote, “hillbilly.” (“Hello, ma’am. Your loan officer today is “Sweet Tater Nugget.”)

Sadly, Tater has had to start using his legal name, which is Marian. So you can see why this is so tragic.

When Marian was a boy, we used to give him a hard time about his legal name. He hated the name Marian. Any time the name was invoked, you had to run because in a few seconds a glass object would be hurled in your general direction.

Well, all this got my dander up because forcing someone to change their name is discriminatory. Moreover, it raises important ethical questions:

Such as (1) why, exactly, is “Tater” less fit for the workplace than

other names such as, for example, Hubert or Archibald? And (2) what precisely does it mean to get one’s “dander up”?

Furthermore, in this part of the world we have a cherished tradition of nicknames. I don’t know how other regions such as, say, Ohio, approach nicknames, but to us a good nickname expresses lovable personality traits and characteristics. Nicknames are often given by family members and friends. They are terms of endearment.

When I was growing up, for example, I had several nicknames. My initials are S.P.D. So my Little League coach called me “Speedy.” Which I did not care for because “Speedy” is what is known as a “reverse nickname.”

A reverse nickname expresses the opposite of the truth about its titleholder. It’s like calling a big person “Tiny,” a bald person “Curly,” or saying a Congressperson “has strong family values.”

If you would have…

I was a kid. I was riding in Daddy’s F-100. Forest green. Rusted fenders. Oxygen canisters on the back. Welding hoses, dangling. He was a young man. It was nighttime.

It was Saturday evening. We were leaving prayer meeting. We were often at church on Saturday nights because sometimes Daddy sang in the choir for prayer meetings.

And each week, on the ride home, after our Baptist congregation had prayed thoroughly enough to severely constipate themselves, we listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio.

That night, the Oak Ridge Boys were singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Daddy’s favorite. I remember my father turning it up. I remember those flimsy radio speakers distorting.

Then, the truck made a noise. A loud noise. A tire had blown out. Daddy gripped the wheel with both hands and guided the truck to the shoulder of the rural two-lane.

He left the doors open and the radio playing. He removed his church-shirt so that his scrawny, pale, bird-like torso was bare. And as his beloved

hymn played, he taught me how to change my first tire. He let me do all the easy parts.

Afterward, we sat together on the truck bed. The stars were above us. Minnie Pearl was telling jokes.

She told the one about the little boy who once said a cuss word in front of his mother. His mother was aghast.

“I’m going to give you a whippin’!” his mother said. After the mother administered corporal punishment, the boy looked at his bare hindparts in the mirror. “Look what you did, Mama!” he said, “you cracked it.”

I remember the pleasant feeling of being together with my father that evening. And I always think of him just that way. Young. Shirtless. Skinny. With the Opry playing.

It wasn’t long thereafter that one day the preacher visited our house. He was wearing a necktie, although it wasn’t Sunday. And…

I saw him when I got to Chattanooga. He was an old man, in the restaurant, seated in the booth directly across from mine. He was just sitting there, drinking coffee. His clothes were crumpled. He was unshaven. He wore a ratty cap.

When I am an old man, I will wear a ratty cap.

The waitress stopped by and asked if he needed anything. He said no, he was waiting for his daughter to arrive. But she was running a little late, he explained.

“You want some more coffee?” the waitress asked.

“Yes, please, darling.”

When I am an old man, I will call waitresses “darling.”

The waitress topped off his cup and scooted into the booth beside him. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanaion why she’s running so late.”

“Like maybe she’s stuck in traffic?” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Or maybe she’s in trouble. Maybe she’s had an accident.”

“I hope that’s not the case,” said the waitress.

The old man reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone. He was checking for any missed text messages. There were none.

The waitress just smiled

at him. “She’s just running late, that’s all. Lots of people run late.”

The old man smiled weakly. “We agreed on a time and a place for lunch. She said she’d be here. She always forgets me. Crime in Italy.”

When I am an old man, I will say crime in Italy.

“Just give her a few more minutes,” the waitress said. “Your daughter would not forget you.”

“Yeah.”

My lunch break ended. An hour passed. I was watching the old man as he played Wordle on his phone. Hell hath no greater torture than Wordle.

And when I was finished, paying our server, I could see the old man was still seated at the table. Waiting.

The waitress came by his table again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to order lunch while…