The lunch lady noticed him, sitting in the corner. He always ate by himself in the cafeteria. He never interacted with the other students. There were holes in his shoes.

The older woman approached his table. She knew her presence embarrassed him. She knew he didn’t want the attention.

But hey, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

He was skinny. And in bad need of a haircut. The boy had body odor, too.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked.

He just looked at her.

“Well?” she said. “Is it?”

Without asking, she took a seat. She ate her own lunch beside him. It is a little known fact that lunch ladies actually eat lunch too.

It didn’t take long before she became his friend. They sat together every lunch period. The other kids poked fun at him for eating lunch with an elderly woman. But then, his fellow students could often behave like turds.

She learned a lot about him

that year. She learned that he lived in a broken home. His dad left when he was a baby. His mother had bad habits that occasionally landed her in legal custody. Oftentimes he didn’t have enough food at home.

“What did you have for supper last night?” the lunch lady once asked him.

“I didn’t,” he replied.

That year, on Christmas Eve, the lunch lady had an idea. She got the others in the school kitchen involved. Then she got her church friends involved. It was a covert operation. Hush hush.

One night, under the cover of darkness, a group of older women—dressed in dark colors—crept up to the boy’s home. On his doorstep, they placed a battalion of foil-covered casseroles, with Post-It-note cooking instructions attached. There were sacks of homemade Christmas candy. Peppermint bark, Christmas-tree cookies, gingerbread, salted nut-butter cups, taffy. There were groceries.…

The hospital room was decorated for Christmas. The young man was sitting in his bed, wired up to a horde of machines. The kid was watching something on the television mounted on the wall. Barely able to keep his eyes open. He was 8.

“Are you in any pain,” the nurse asked.

The little boy was weak. His neck was gaunt. His head was covered in bandages. Beneath his cap was a large crescent-moon scar on his scalp, from where doctors had operated on his brain.

“I’m not in pain,” the kid said drowsily.

He was watching some Christmas movie in black and white. His mother remembers this specifically.

His mother was right beside him, reading a book. She was a single mother. She worked full-time as a night waitress, and she worked on a landscaping crew in the daylight hours.

She didn’t notice, but she fell asleep. Because when she awoke, there were medical staffers gathered around her son’s bed. The heart monitor

was as flat as a prairie highway.

They rushed her son away.

“What’s happening to my son!” she screamed.

“Ma’am,” said one staffer. “Try to calm down.”

She called her son’s name. But her boy was already being whisked down the hall by a team of scrubs and lab coats.

She found herself in a waiting room. No family to support her. No parents. No husband. No nothing. She felt as alone as anyone had ever felt. And she needed a cigarette.

That’s when she noticed a guy walking into the waiting room. Jeans and a light jacket. He sat beside her. He started talking with her. A nice guy. Cheerful and easy going. He asked about her son. And she talked to him. She opened up to him. She let him hear it all. She told him everything until she started crying. She…

Winter. The year is 1949. The war has been over for a while, but it’s still fresh on everyone’s minds. Which is why people are having babies like crazy. War does that to people.

This new generation of babies will be known as the Baby Boomers, and each day they are being born by the truckload. These children will grow up one day and change the world by inventing revolutionary things such as DNA fingerprinting, the World Wide Web, the portable dialysis machine, and Donny Osmond.

But not all babies are lucky enough to be born into good lives. By which I mean that some babies have fathers who don’t want them. One woman—I will call her Macy—was pregnant with a baby like that.

So Macy’s mother did what lots of small-town mothers did in those days, she sent Macy away. Macy was supposed to go live with her aunt in Illinois, but it didn’t work out. So Macy tried Kansas City. That didn’t work either. And this brings us to the

beginning of our story.

Macy was alone. And penniless. Without a friend in the world. If we were to describe her situation with the blunt terms that my grandfather might have used: “Macy didn’t have a pot to [ugly word] in, or a [ugly word] window to throw it out of.”

She used her last few bucks to buy a bus ticket to Omaha, because she believed that this was a place where she could make a better life. Maybe nobody would ask questions about illegitimate babies in Omaha. Maybe nobody would bat an eye if she told them she was a widow.

So her bus was purring along when some very crummy weather hit. The weather went from snowstorm to deathstorm in only a few hours. History would later remember this weather system as one of the century’s worst blizzards to hit the Plains.

The bus rolled…

I am not sure whether you understand English, but I’d like to think you do.

I’d like to think that you know exactly what I’m saying to you. I’d like to think I speak fluent dog.

Heaven knows, I speak to you non-stop. Because you’re blind. Because you need me to keep talking. When I talk to you, you don’t feel so disconnected. That way you’re always part of what’s going on.

So I’ve been talking a lot since I brought you home. I say anything and everything to you, so you feel involved.

I tell you when I’m going to the bathroom. When I read a book, I read aloud. When we go for walks, I describe what I’m seeing. I talk to you about the green crabgrass, the particular shade of blue in the sky.

Yeah, I know it’s silly. You probably can’t understand me. Although sometimes I’m not sure.

Sometimes I think you actually know what I’m saying. Because there are occasions when I tell you how much I love you. And when you hear this, you sort of

lean into me like you know precisely what “I love you” means.

Other times, when I tell you “It’s going to be okay,” after something frightens you, you tuck your head into my chest because I think that, on some level, you know. You know what I mean.

I can only imagine how scared you get when a loud sound occurs nearby. I can only guess at how disoriented you feel when you stumble off the curb.

I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to teach a blind dog. I am learning as I go. I have so much more to learn. I’m reading books. I’m watching videos. I’m trying. I promise you, I am. But I am an inadequate trainer.

Any troublesome issues lie within me, not you. You’re doing perfectly. You have…

It’s weird. Standing on this stage. In this arena. I’m looking at a thousand faces. Many of them are about to be college graduates. And they’re all looking back at me so hopefully, so full of wonder, so wide-eyed and eager, as if to say, “I hope this idiot’s speech isn’t too long.”

Right now, I am making a commencement speech at Northwest Florida State College. I am wearing a suit. Also deodorant. Everyone is sitting in the basketball arena, clad in big robes and flat hats, staring directly at me. I believe many of the graduates are also wearing deodorant.

Most of the graduates are young. Their parents are present, quietly reading through their programs as I speak. Scanning the alphabetical list of graduates' names printed on the program. I can see many parents are just now realizing how many graduate names are on the program today. If, by chance, someone’s last name is, for example, “Williams,” or “Zimmerman,” these people will be stuck in

this arena until the installation of the next pope.

Funny thing. This basketball arena wasn’t here when I attended the school, long ago, shortly after the end of the Spanish-American War. Back before most of these graduates were born.

Northwest Florida State wasn’t even called that. We were Okaloosa-Walton Community College back then. We were just a couple outdated brick buildings, some double-wide trailers, and a drinking fountain that didn’t work.

I attended this school as an adult. On a whim, I walked into Admissions Building C, and I told the ladies behind the desk that I wanted to go to college. I told them I was a middle-school dropout. I told them I had quit school in the seventh grade after my father died.

I told them we were poor folks. My mother lived in a FEMA trailer. I drove a vehicle that predated the Carter Administration.…

I’ve been receiving lots of urgent emails. “Where are your stories on Facebook, Sean!?” one email reads.

“Sean, you’re not on Facebook, are you in a coma?!” “Sean! Our pills are guaranteed to enhance your love life, call today!”

People on Facebook have theories about where I’ve gone. Some are asking whether I am ill, whether I’m on vacation, or whether I am still, technically, alive.

Like this Facebook message:

“I recently heard Sean is not on Facebook because he is dead. I was heartbroken, is this true? Will someone please let us know if there is an estate sale?”

The truth is, I did not quit Facebook. I am in Facebook jail. This means that, among other things, whatever I post on Facebook is either deleted or suppressed so that only my uncle sees it.

It’s unclear why Facebook banned me, since I never talk politics, I don’t use foul language, and I do not post naked pictures very often.

But the

truth is, since I was booted off Facebook, I’ve found enormous freedom without it. I still write every day, and I still share my work on my website and via email, but I feel less restrained.

I’ve been posting on Facebook every day since this column started 10 years ago. That’s 10 years of posts, never missing a day, like a clinically insane person.

What I didn’t realize was how the platform, over time, has molded me into its own image. Facebook trains its users with rewards and punishments. If you post something Facebook agrees with, the algorithm awards you with TONS of likes. It’s exactly like playing slot machines, only no free drinks.

This is why at one point hundreds of thousands of Facebook users started making videos of things they KNEW the algorithm would like. Things like cute puppies. Because it was a well-known fact…

It’s hard to choose my favorite Christmas movie. Each time I try to pick one, I’m afraid I’ll shoot my eye out.

There are, of course, obligatory holiday movies which bring to mind one’s parents and grandparents. A period in post-war national history which featured Buicks Roadmasters, Hula Hoops, and pineapple upside down cakes made almost completely of mayonnaise. This era features movies such as “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947); “A Christmas Carol” (1951); and “White Christmas” (1954).

Those are all great movies. But what about the spiritually inspired cinematic manifesto of the Great American Dysfunctional Family, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989)? A film which, over the years, has brought me more joy than nearly anything including most major religions.

Somewhere at the top of my movie list sits “A Christmas Story” (1983). Perhaps because, not unlike the movie’s protagonist, Ralphie, I too grew up among folks who believed no Christmas gift better embodied the True Meaning of Christ’s Birth than an

American-made firearm.

There are also many popular holiday movies which, in my opinion, suck. Such as “Home Alone” (1990). If that kid had been in my house, my mother would’ve wore his butt out. And “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), directed by Tim Burton, the man who ruined “Dumbo” (2019). Or “Gremlins” (1984), a Christmas movie about a horde of malicious demons invading a small town and murdering the townspeople.

Do what?

No holiday movie discussion, however, is complete without mentioning the dozens of stop-motion animated TV movies by Rankin and Bass. These movies are pure childhood. “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” (1964); “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” (1976); “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas” (1979); “Rudolph Develops a Nasal Polyp”, etc.

I’m also a big fan of the multiple retellings of Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge. For my money, George C. Scott delivers a prize-winning performance in 1984’s “A Christmas Carol.”

Still, it is the Dickensian musical…

“You can open ONE present tonight,” my mother said. “But ONLY one. Since it’s Christmas Eve.”

My feet only touched the ground twice.

I ran to the Christmas tree like a squirrel on illegal stimulants. Our tree was pitiful. Charlie Brown had nothing on us.

Beneath the tree was one, skinny, oblong box with my name on it. I selected this box. I tore the paper.

It was a telescope.

“It’s not much,” Mama said.

I looked at the box. “It’s a telescope.”

Mama smiled. “So you really can read.”

It was a 40mm refractor called a Halleyscope. It must have cost my mother all she had. My mother cleaned condos and threw newspapers for a living.

This was her the coupe de grace of her Christmas bounty. The rest of my gifts would be cans of smoked oysters, jars of mayonnaise, or Haynes underpants.

“I know you like looking at stars,” she said.

It was true. I loved the stars. Every week I watched “Star Gazers” on PBS, hosted by Jack Horkheimer, the Star Hustler. The

world’s only weekly television series on naked eye astronomy. Still on the air today. I rarely missed an episode.

I took the telescope into the yard. I set up the tripod. I knew exactly what I would point the scope at that night. I aimed the lens at the moon.

Namely, because it was Christmas Eve. And the moon was full that year. For the first time on a holiday weekend since 1977, the moon was full. The next time the moon would be full would be 2015. After that, 2034. This was a big deal in the Metonic Cycle. A big, big deal.

I aimed my Halleyscope at the sky. There were 5,185 craters on the moon looking back at me. Crisp and clear.

I nearly cried. But then, of course fatherless boys don’t actually cry. Children of suicide don’t cry. Especially…

“In prison,” said Charlie, “all you want is to know someone loves you.”

Charlie had been inside for 22 years. Nobody ever came to visit at Christmas. Never. Not even once. Sometimes he wondered if anyone remembered him.

Usually, Charlie’s Christmas consisted of going to the chow hall—it was the only time of year when the kitchen actually made an effort to give you decent food.

A lot of the guys just hung out in the TV rooms, watching the NBA. Others drank prison hooch. Some just stayed in their cells and stared at the walls.

Christmas morning in prison is quiet. Uneventful. For most, it is a reminder of how crappy your life is. How forgotten you are. Another calendar day.

Families rarely visit inmates on Christmas. What would you rather do on Christmas? Stay home and eat ham? Or get dressed and go to the clink for visiting hours?

Most guys inside don’t see any family members unless they’re locked up with them.

But this Christmas morning was different. They woke Charlie and told him he had

visitors.

“Visitors?” said Charlie.

“Get dressed,” said the guard. “They’re already here, waiting for you.”

“Who is?”

“You’ll see.”

Who could be visiting? Charlie had gone inside when he was in his 30s. He was in his 50s now. His frame was gaunt. His hair was white. The other inmates called him “Pops.”

The guard led him to the visiting area. They called the visiting area the “dance floor.” You only went to the dance floor, if you were lucky. Most guys never got to go.

If you were, however, taken to the dance floor, you lived like royalty. You ate from vending machines. You could play around with your kids—if you had any. And you felt like a human being for a little while.

Charlie followed the guard to the dance floor with a lump of clay in his throat.…

I almost didn’t write this because I swore I’d never tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. But I have to.

A few weeks ago I received a letter postmarked from Nunavut, Canada. An invitation said that I had been selected along with a few other writers for an exclusive, one-on-one interview with a very important person who wears a red suit and owns a lot of reindeer and is not Oprah Winfrey.

The next day, I was on a plane from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, flying to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Our plane landed in a bunch of Midwestern gray snow. And I mean a bunch of snow.

Milwaukee was as cold as a witch’s underwire. I don’t know why anyone would choose to live in Milwaukee in the winter. Which brings up a joke my mother’s friend Judy, from Milwaukee always tells:

“What do you call a good looking man on the streets of Milwaukee?” “Frozen to death.”

So the layover wasn’t too bad. Neither were my other connecting flights to Tacoma,

British Columbia, and Fairbanks International Airport.

When I reached Alaska, things were touch-and-go. I caught a commuter flight to Deadhorse Airport, near Prudhoe Bay—which is basically the edge of the world where the temperature drops to forty below zero sometimes.

The next commuter plane was piloted by a Norwegian guy named Arvid who, while we were flying through a heavy blizzard, remarked, “I have never flown in an actual blizzard before.”

So things were going great. When we finally touched down, Arvid made the Sign of the Cross, and I changed my trousers.

We were on the remote Fosheim Peninsula at a research facility on Ellesmere Island. This facility has been continuously manned since 1947 and was covered in about ten feet of snowdrift. But the men who run the place are very friendly. Which is remarkable considering they are isolated from modern civilization and most of…