It’s morning in Nashville. I am on my way to a recording studio. The traffic is awful. Locals call this the morning rush.

The locals also tell me that this frantic rush will immediately be followed by: mid-morning rush, pre-noon rush, noon rush, afternoon rush, and the halftime show.

And don’t even get the locals started on what traffic is like after everyone gets off work. In Nashville they don’t even call it “rush hour” because that would imply that it only lasts an hour.

There are cars gridlocked on the interstate that have been stuck in the same place ever since Gerald Ford was president.

I am recording my second audio book today. The first time I recorded a book, I had no idea what I was getting into. I learned a lot. Namely, I learned that when you read audio books you have to do character voices. Which was something I’d never thought about.

To give you an idea of what I mean: Let’s say that you’re reading a book about

pirates to kindergarteners. If you don’t say “Arrrgh matey!” in a graveled sailor voice before every sentence, the kids will have no idea you’re reading about pirates and might think you are reading about, say, the rise and fall of the Roman empire. It’s the same way with audio books.

The studio I’m recording in is not far from the famed Music Row, where all the famous studios are. Just down the street are world famous places that once cranked out groundbreaking albums from legendary artists such as Elvis, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, George Jones, and of course, the Backstreet Boys.

I remember how nervous I was the first time I visited this place. I was trying not to stammer into the microphone while reading. And when I got to the a dialogue section in the book, the audio engineer spoke over the intercom and said, “Hey,…

I love the way the sun hits the earth during this season. It’s hypnotic. I am listening to Johnny Cash and June Carter sing “I’ll Fly Away.” And I can’t seem to find anything to write about because I am too distracted.

I’m looking out my office-trailer window at the sun hitting my ugly dirt lot, and singing along with music about flying away.

This plot of land wasn’t always bare dirt. It used to be forest. But the man who owned it before me cut down all the pine trees because he was as crazy as an outhouse fly.

When I asked the man why he did this, he told me, “I just really hate trees.”

What kind of a depraved human—not counting real estate developers and New York Yankees fans—hates trees?

So mainly I just park all my junk on this ugly lot. Old boats, my truck, and I have a few dilapidated recreational vehicles. An old Airstream trailer (1969). And one Yellowstone camper (1956) which I gutted, renovated, and made into my office.

That’s where I am right now.

This morning I’ve tried to write but I keep losing focus because of the way the sun is shining. And this music. I’m a sucker for old-time hymns.

It’s also brisk outside and I have the doors to my office slung open. Something I rarely do because it’s usually hotter than twelve hells where we live.

This summer we had temperatures upwards of 127 degrees. That is not an exaggeration. I would check the weather on the internet, and the “feels like” temperature would read 127 degrees.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have feels-like temperatures. We only had thermometers and old men who talked about the weather by cracking jokes. I love it when old men cuss the weather.

“It’s so hot,” one man might say, “I saw a funeral procession pull over at Dairy Queen.”

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…