It’s after midnight. The plane spits us out at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport and we trot across the empty building. We stand before baggage claim with a bunch of weary passengers, staring at the large Roulette Wheel of Luggage with tired looks on our faces.

But the baggage treadmill hasn’t started moving yet. We are gathered around it, waiting, but it’s been thirty minutes.

There is a man next to me who is wearing a business suit that looks like it cost more than a three-bedroom-two-bath in Mountain Brook, and he is clearly ticked off.

“$%*#!” he says.

Over and over again.

He looks like the kind of guy who, whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, always asks to speak to the manager. You know the kind I’m talking about. You can’t take these people anywhere.

“$%*#!” he says again.

I’ll bet this guy was no day at the beach when he was a kid, either. I’ll bet when his childhood friends were busy playing cowboys and Indians, he was dressing up as Ted Turner and firing the butler.

My friend Darren used to be like that. Before he would come over to play, we all had to participate in group meditation just to prepare for him. Because we knew how things would go:

We would all want to play Lone Ranger, but Darren would want to play “accounting firm,” which was a make-believe game wherein we would pretend to be H&R Block professionals doing tax returns in cubicles. Darren would play the role of boss, patrolling the cubicles and shouting, “Come on people! Time is money! Chop! Chop!”

And eventually we’d tie Darren to a tree and scalp him.

So this guy is a lot like Darren. He’s pacing around, getting angrier by the second. He removes his watch and shakes it.

“$%*#!” he says again.

He sits on a chair and starts making loud sighs. People are looking at…

It’s a sunny day. The mall is busy. There are hundreds of people beneath the tall atrium. They have places to go and things to buy.

I am here with my wife, who is shopping for blue jeans at Old Navy.

Shopping for jeans with your wife is a dangerous gamble. In the Western world, the leading cause of divorce is shopping for blue jeans at Old Navy with your wife. Ranking second is chewing your food too loud.

It goes like this:

Your wife locks herself in the dressing room with eighty-seven pairs of jeans. While she tries them on, you, the husband, go to the designated detention area with other husbands.

Intermittently, you wife emerges from her room, modeling jeans that look exactly like the jeans she wore when she entered the store.

Then, she glances at her reflection and begins speaking in foreign tongues. She asks things like: “Does this chino inseam appear too constricting?”

And: “Do you think these boot-cuts too are too roomy on the calf region?”

We husbands have

no idea what our wives are actually asking. This is why we often mumble. Because we know our words don’t really matter when it comes to blue jeans. Our wives will make their own decisions.

We know that by the end of the day our wives will have at least two emotional breakdowns, and likely leave the store without a single pair of blue jeans because they hate blue jeans and they wish blue jeans would’ve never been invented and they hate anyone who wears blue jeans including members of Congress, anyone below age thirty, and Cher.

And instead of buying jeans, our wives end up getting something like a “cute little cardigan that was on clearance.”

Then everyone goes out for ice cream. The end.

The best thing a guy can do is give his wife a credit card and fake the flu.

Which…

The cashier at the convenience store just told me to “Have a nice day.” And it got me thinking.

I used to hate this little phrase. It can sound so insincere. But the more I think about it, the more it’s growing on me. After all, who doesn’t deserve a nice day?

So I hope you have a nice day. Why not? Shoot. Have two.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about a ridiculously happy day. No. Too much happiness can make you unhappy. That kind of elation is way too much stress. And stress is stress, no matter how you look at it. Even happy stress is still stress.

You can be gut-bustingly happy on the day of your wedding, but you will STILL be so stressed out that you will probably consume too many Bushwhacker cocktails, and—as in the case of my uncle during the 2002 incident—dance the Funky Chicken on top of the groom’s mother’s table.

So I wish you easiness. Relaxation. A very mellow, simple day. Like playing

table tennis without gravity. Like sitting in a comfortable chair and watching goldfish. Like sailing a boat on mirror-like water.

My father used to look at smooth water and always say, “That water’s slicker than owl snot.” I loved this particular phrase and often used it to impress my Sunday school teachers.

I hope you have an owl snot kind of day. I hope the woman who has eight kids she’s rushing to soccer practice eats a Klondike Bar. And I hope Jason, the kid with stage-four cancer, who has horrible headaches, has a very good day.

I hope your favorite show is on TV, or that you find something worth “binge-watching.” Which is a term I just learned. A twenty-four-year-old person taught this to me.

This twenty-four-year-old told me that he had been “binging” all weekend. I told him that they had AA meetings in…

DEAR SEAN:

I saw your show in Talladega last week and I really wanted to go up after and say hello to you to get one of those free hugs you were giving out to everyone in line, but I was so scared and nervous because I don’t feel good about myself right now. I am very shy. I have always felt like you get me. I wish I would have hugged you now.

Thank you,
YOUR FAN

DEAR FAN:

I was really looking forward to doing that show in Talladega. I know that sounds like an odd thing to say. Because Talladega isn’t exactly Disneyland, but it was to some of us growing up.

When I was a boy, I would have MUCH rather gone to Talladega and seen Dale Earnhardt Senior drive his Chevrolet Monte Carlo than take ride in a Magic Kingdom teacup.

Once when I was a kid we camped at the NASCAR Superspeedway, and it was life changing. Consequently, I’ve also shaken hands with Donald Duck. I could

take him or leave him.

But never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that someone would actually ASK ME to come to Talladega, of their own volition, to perform. The first thing I did after getting the call was to figure out precisely how to use the word volition in a sentence.

I am not the kind of guy who draws crowds. I am not a confident guy. I am the sort of man who often does his dog-and-pony show in rest homes, gymnasiums, and occasionally in front of eighth-graders who are more interested in grabbing each other’s butts than listening to a skinny redhead talk.

So there I was, backstage in Talladega’s Ritz Theater. The hallways were lined with headshot pictures from famous people. I’m talking: Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, Bill Monroe, Etta James, Tanya Tucker, and of course, Engelbert Hunperdink.

And I walked…

There are pureed pumpkin smears on my pants, and I have you to thank for this, sweetie. Whenever I see pureed pumpkin, I always think of you.

Because you are the only person I know who feeds their dogs pureed pumpkin, along with other nutritious human foods such as green beans, bananas, and special organic nitrate free cookies that cost $9.99 each.

Each.

The problem, of course, is that one of our dogs is a bloodhound with floppy jowls. Food gets stuck in these jowls. Especially squishy foods. So when you feed our dog pureed pumpkin, sweetheart, only fifteen-sixteenths of the pumpkin actually gets eaten. The rest gets smeared on my pants when the bloodhound rubs her face against my leg.

But it’s okay. Because I don’t know many people who love dogs as much as you do.

I remember when we first met, you told me that a member of your family had just died. You were a wreck. I was too embarrassed to ask who you were talking about. But, judging by your

emotional state, I sincerely believed that it was an uncle, or a grandfather, or maybe even—I’m sorry, I’m just being honest here—your little brother.

Then you told me this deceased loved one had been named Sarge. I thought it was perhaps a nickname for an uncle who’d served his country. I don’t mind telling you that I mourned for that patriotic uncle of yours.

Then, you took me to Sarge’s grave located in the front yard of your parents’ house. A wooden cross was poking out of the ground. I was starting to get the Willies because what kind of a deranged nut buries their uncle in the front yard?

Then you placed a chew toy on the grave, and I understood.

You cried so hard over this dog. Which made me cry. And I knew then that I would love you forever.

While I…