We went for a walk. Becca and me. Yes, I know that's bad grammar. But oh well. Whenever my 12-year-old goddaughter visits, we take walks through old Birmingham neighborhoods at dusk. We talk, laugh, and climb impossible hills with our pale, middle-aged, pathetic chicken thighs.

Becca uses one arm to hold me and the other hand to brandish her white cane. She’s gotten pretty good at using the cane.

I remember when Becca had just gone blind, and she wasn’t adept with her cane yet. Now, she can find her way through even the most confusing, disorganized, dangerous, and possibly fatal mazes. Such as, for example, my office.

But mostly, she likes to use her cane to whack me in the shins as we walk. She does this on purpose. She places her cane before my feet and I walk right into it and it always stings like a mother. This gives Becca great pleasure.

The rhythm of our walks usually goes:

Step, step, WHACK! Step, step, WHACK!

“Does that hurt?” she will say with a smile.

“Yes.”

“How bad

does it hurt?”

“I don’t know. Bad.”

“Scale of one-to-ten.”

“I need a baseline. How bad is ten?”

“Being burned alive.”

“Then it’s about an eight.”

Step, step, WHACK!

We met a lady who was playing with her grandson on the playground. The kid was on the swingset, swinging next to Becca.

The lady introduced herself. Then the lady asked what I did for a living. I was about to answer but Becca beat me to it.

Mid-swing, Becca shouted, “OMIGOSH! HE IS A WRITER! HE IS MY FAVORITE WRITER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD! AND HE IS THE BEST WRITER OF ALL TIME HE…

Becca and I walked inside the nail salon, which was located in a stripmall that was almost completely obscured by a giant cloud of estrogen.

We were walking across the parking lot when a lady noticed Becca using her white cane. The woman rushed out of the salon to open the door. Although, frankly, I don’t know how this sweet woman managed because her hands were wrapped in tin-foil and Ziploc bags.

We were welcomed into the nail parlor by many smiles.

“This is, literally, so cool,” said the 12-year-old.

“Becca,” I said, “you don’t need to say ‘literally’ after every word.”

“Why not?”

“It’s redundant.”

“I, literally, don’t even know what ‘redundant’ means.”

There were women everywhere, undergoing medieval beautification rituals. Some women’s fingernails were being treated with power sanders. Others had feet submerged in tubs of what appeared to be melted industrial plastic.

“How may we help you?” said the lady cashier.

“I have no idea,” I replied.

She looked at Becca. “Would the young woman like a pedicure?”

“Yes, please,” said Becca.

The woman showed us a menu. “Would you like the

deluxe package or the basic French pedicure?”

“We want the el-cheapo package,” I said.

The woman smiled at me, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Soon, Becca was sitting in a ginormous massage chair which had more features than a tactical combat helicopter. Becca liked this chair very much. She set the chair to “knead” and the chair started gyrating.

“You should try this chair,” said Becca. “It’s, literally, blowing my mind.”

“Literally?” I said. “Or figuratively?”

Becca gave me a look.

The pedicurist was named Hai, an older man with grandkids Becca’s age. Hai is a big believer in pedicures. Hai believes Americans have the worst feet in the world because Americans neglect toe health. This is a problem Hai considers a national crisis, registering somewhere on the threat-scale between U.S. tax-code reform and…

The Scripps National Spelling Bee was broadcast a few nights ago on the Ion network, drawing a staggering 14 viewers not including nursing-home residents unable to reach the remote.

And I don’t know about you, but I was spellbound.

The winner was a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Saint Petersburg, Bruhat Soma, who attacked 30 words in 90 seconds and became the best speller in the English language. His winning word was “abseil,” a mountaineering term.

Bruhat received $50,000 in cash prizes, and had to beat away the ladies with a Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

I was not a good speller in school. Every year we had a spelling bee and I always bombed. One particular spelling bee sticks out in my mind. My losing word was “purple.”

I never forgot that day. Namely, because nobody let me forget. Other kids were eliminated from the spelling bee with hard words like “onerous,” “munificence,” and “honorificabilitudinitatibus.”

My word was purple.

I knew how to spell purple, of course. Everyone knows how to spell this word. Even many forms of

inanimate fungal life know how to spell purple. But in my defense, I was nervous.

And in the heat of the moment, when powerful stage lights are shining on you; when the whole school is assembled in the gymnasium, staring at your face; when Arnold Williamson is making flatulent noises with his hands, that’s a lot of pressure.

Also, my main problem spelling “purple” was that I couldn’t remember whether this word ended in -EL or -LE.

I’ve always had a problem with the stupid -EL, -LE-, -AL rule. Even now, this spelling rule confuses the hele out of me.

And before you write me off as a dork, I looked up this unique spelling rule on a respected grammar website, and here’s what they said:

“...If the letter before the suffix (the ending) is a small or “wee” letter (ACEMNORSUVWXZ) then the ending is usually…

Today I read an article my friend sent to me. The article was something that went viral on social media. When I finished reading it, I felt so bad that I had to take some Pepto-Bismol and lie down.

It was depressing. The writer complained about nearly everything. Politics, religion, pollution, crime, taxes, pesticides, SUV’s, pop stars, the price of gas.

And worse, thousands of people agreed that this world is a terrible place.

Well, who am I to say that it isn’t? Nobody, that’s who. Even so, all that reading left me asking myself an important question:

What about chocolate?

Can this world be all that bad as long as we have milk chocolate? Have you ever had a Hershey’s bar when it’s room temperature? It’s a little soft, and it tastes sweeter than a Gaither Homecoming DVD.

It’s hard not to believe that everything is going to be okay while you’re eating chocolate.

And how about pimento cheese? Has the writer ever tried homemade pimento cheese? If he hasn’t, he ought to. Today, my wife

just made a fresh batch. I took one bite and I started shaking my leg like Elvis at a revival.

What about daylilies? Or peonies? Or tulips? The colors of summer are almost overwhelming. A pink peony is reason enough to believe life is good.

And there are also the mystical things of life. Things so beautiful that they are hard to name because they are too vast, too immense, and too wistful. Namely, I am speaking of beer.

Have you ever tasted a Budweiser after spending an afternoon mowing your lawn? Mowing the lawn in the heat is brutal and will make even the strongest person weak. But suddenly, here comes your wife with a beer that’s cold enough to crack your teeth. She hands you a beer and you say “Thank you, sweetie. Thank you for mowing our lawn.”

How about…

The Carolina mountains are covered in a down quilt of fog. It’s summer, but the temperature is a crisp 55 degrees.

The distant mountaintops look like blue humps in the hazy foreground. There are trees everywhere, trees so green they look fake.

The mountain highway winds back and forth like a half-inebriated copperhead, climbing upward, constantly twisting, turning, dipping, whirling, then doubling back. The Western North Carolina the scenery couldn’t get any more beautiful if it were made of golden bricks.

We pass a steep mountain pasture, not far from Mount Mitchell. The grass is so richly verdant, it’s lime green. The hillside is peppered with goats of all colors, grazing in haphazard formation. The goats are surrounded by a wooden fence that was at one time white, but is now weathered wood.

There is no traffic on this old highway. If you were to pull over, you could lie down in the middle of the road for half the day and live to tell the story.

It’s quiet out here. There are no vehicles. No overhead commercial airliners. No noisy A/C unit compressors. No ambient music. No nothing. Just the bleating of goats. Choirs of woodland birds. Light percussive rain, pitter-pattering on the leaves of the forest. And your own heartbeat.

I was reared in the country. Long before I moved to the city, it was the sticks that were my home. I was not raised in the mountains, but this place sort of reminds me of those early days.

My wife and I stop at a mountain gas station. The joint has seen better times. I’m not even sure whether this station is actually open for business, or whether it remains here as a shrine to the days of yore. The pumps are old, with spinning numbers. No credit card readers. No overhang.

I went for a walk with my niece, Lucy. Lucy is 5. We were in the forests of Equality, Alabama. Which isn’t the Middle of Nowhere, but you can see it from here.

The sun was low in the pines. The frogs were inheriting the earth. There were lightning bugs, which some Midwesterners call fireflies because—God love them—they’ve never been taught any better.

The only flowers in the ditches were black-eyed Susans. A few daisies. But not many.

“I want to pick flowers for my mama,” said Lucy.

Lucy’s Mama is my sister. My baby sister. She used to look just like Lucy.

My towheaded niece darted back and forth, grasping handfuls of wildflowers, reminding me of my kid sister.

My baby sister was impulsive. Hardheaded. Cocksure. I never worried about her when she dated boys. Because when my sister liked you she liked you. When she didn’t, you’d better be wearing a protective cup.

“Do brothers and sisters always love each other?” asked my niece.

“Yes. They do.”

“Do you love my mama?”

“Si.”

My sister and I grew up hard. It wasn’t the kind of childhood depicted in Hallmark Channel movies. Our father died by suicide. I dropped out of school in seventh grade. My sister quit attending class in Kindergarten. She finally learned to read in her mid-twenties.

But still, our childhood had its moments.

We watched a lot of TV together. We played games. We had our own short-hand language, which only we could interpret. She imitated me because there was nobody else to imitate.

I was a pitiful example. But what I lacked in fatherly behavior, I made up for in ice cream.

That’s right. Ice cream. My sister and I once worked at…

It was a classified ad in one of those nickel newspapers. It read:

"Gray Ford. Half-ton. Stick-shift. Some rust. Needs TLC. Sneads, Florida. $800."

My pal called about it. He needed a truck in a bad way. His old one had gone to be with Jesus, his wife was pregnant, and he'd just lost his job.

And in the days before texting, the only way to do business was to use the interstate.

Before we left, he went to the bank. He liquidated his account into a wallet full of eight hundred dollars.

I gave him a ride. We stopped at a gas station outside Cottondale. He filled my tank, then paid inside. He bought two sticks of beef jerky, two scratch-off lottos.

Thoughtful.

After a two-hour ride we hit a dirt road leading to a farmhouse that sat on several acres of green. Out front: an old man, smoking. He was bony, friendly, tall.

The truck was ugly, painted primer gray to hide rust. The bumpers were missing, the interior smelled like oyster

stew.

“Runs good,” the man said.

“I'll take it,” my buddy answered.

He reached for his wallet. And that's when it happened.

His pocket was empty.

My friend went ape. He retraced his steps. We tore apart my truck interior, dug through seats, and cussed. When he finally gave up, he sat cross-legged on the ground. He cried until his face looked raw. It was a lot of money to lose.

The elderly man sat beside him. He wrapped his arms around him. It had been a long time since a grown man had done that sort of thing to my pal. My friend was a fatherless orphan, like me.

When things calmed down, the…

Dear Random Dad in Walmart, who was smacking his little boy. You are my brother. And I’m disappointed in you, Brother. You weren’t spanking your child.

I saw you. And you know I saw you. You weren’t disciplining anyone. You were taking out your aggression on a little boy. And it broke me.

I was walking through the aisles when I happened upon you. You were wailing on your son, Dear Brother. You were smacking his face repeatedly. You were smacking the back of the head. You were shoving him. The boy lost his footing. He fell.

I started walking toward you, and you stopped. You whisked your child away and disappeared. But the damage was already done. Because when your son looked at me, he had that look in his eye.

I know that look.

I wanted to chase you down. I wanted to say things to you. Maybe ugly things. Maybe I would have cussed you out. I don’t know.

But, you see, I couldn’t.

Because, for one thing, you were rip-roaring

mad. For another thing: I’m a total wimp. And the reason I am a wimp is because I had a dad like you.

It took me a long time to admit that I was an abused child. Even now, writing these words makes me feel like a Grade-A idiot. Like a whiny baby.

The truth is, I didn’t know I was abused until my mid-thirties. A therapist told me, point-blank, that I came from an abusive family.

I didn’t believe him. This was news to me. I thought everyone’s dad hit them. I thought everyone’s mother hid her bruises with makeup before going to the supermarket. I thought every boy explained his busted lip by saying he “fell.”

But my story doesn’t matter,…

I watched Gary nearly get hit by a truck. That’s how I met him. Gary is a baby turtle. He fits in the palm of my hand. Smaller than a can of Skoal. Bigger than a silver dollar.

I am staying at a cabin on Lake Martin. The weather was nice. I went for a walk on the empty, rural two-lane highways.

I saw Gary crawling across the vacant road. A speeding truck approached. Roaring its engine.

Now—believe me—I know what I’m about to say sounds insane, but I seriously believe the truck was trying to run Gary over.

I think this because Gary was on the yellow line, and clearly visible from a distance. And when the truck shot past me, the teenage driver was laughing wildly, evidently intentionally swerving toward Gary.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

“No!” I shouted.

It was one of those teenager trucks. Tires the size of kiddie pools. Tailpipes loud enough to change the migratory patterns of waterfowl.

The windows were down. The stereo was pumping “bro country”

music—songs about cutoff shorts, barefoot blondes, pickups, and beer. Pop music sung by grown men stuck in high school.

Thankfully, the truck missed Gary by nanometers. Then, the vehicle screeched away in a fog of blue exhaust.

I jogged across the highway and held up oncoming traffic, waving my hands. I lifted Gary into my hands. He was tucked tightly into his shell.

A lady in traffic stepped out of her car and started shouting at me. She was irate.

“Why are you stopping traffic?” she asked.

“It’s a baby turtle,” said I.

“Are you [cussword] kidding me?” she shouted. “You stopped traffic for some [cussword] turtle!?”

She sped around me. The…

A lot of important news has happened this Memorial Day weekend. A fraudulent company tried to foreclose on Elvis Presley’s Graceland home; tornadoes ripped across the West South Central U.S., leaving thousands without power; and the Indy 500 was delayed because of violent weather.

But instead, I’d like to talk about how I’ve been without a phone.

I feel guilty talking about my phoneless state while many Americans are suffering storm-related catastrophes. But something changed my mind on TV.

When I turned on the news, the first image I was confronted with was an eerie photo from the tornado aftermath. The image showed a Texas man sitting among rubble, and he was checking his phone.

“We check our phones 400 times per day,” said one researcher I talked to.

His name is Daryl, he attends the University of Alabama, and has been studying the ravaging effects of phones on human memory.

“Phones are making our memories worse.”

His name is Daryl, he attends the University of Alabama, and has been studying the ravaging effects of

phones on human memory.

“The worse our memory gets,” says Daryl, “the more we use the phone. The more we use, the worse our memory gets.

For years, research has been showing how phones affect the brain. Elizabeth Dunn and Ryan Dwyer, doctoral researchers from the University of British Columbia, have noticed a trend.

“You see people in restaurants… sitting across the table from each other, and instead of staring at each other, they’re staring at their phones. We were really curious: Is it having an impact on people…?”

The short answer is: Wait, what were we talking about again?

Oh, yes. Phones.

If you’ve been reading this column then, frankly, I’m surprised. But some of you might…