Lately I’ve been receiving my share of emails from people who don’t have many nice things to say. Today I received more of these messages than usual. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just one of those days.
I suppose since lots of people have been quarantining for well over 40 days now, folks are feeling kind of—and I’m sorry, but don’t know how else to put this—crotchety.
This is what my mother used to say when I would wake up in a bad moods. Crotchety. I was notorious for waking up in bad moods. I am what you’d call a Slow Waker Upper. I have NEVER crawled out of bed feeling like a million bucks.
In the mornings before school, my mother would always remind me, “Don’t be crotchety.” And she would say this in the same low-pitched tone that lions use when they eat the hindquarters of various antelopes.
The latest crotchety email was from a man in West Virginia, who wrote: “I don’t get why you're so obsessed with telling us about
your dogs.”
Then there was the sunny message from a guy in Tampa: “How disappointing, Sean. I thought you wrote about more relevant matters, who gives a [bleep] about baseball at a time like this? Really?”
But my favorite message was the one that came to me in all caps this morning. It went like this: “WHY DON’T YOU EVER WRITE ABOUT MICHIGAN!? YOU’VE WRITTEN ABOUT EVERYWHERE ELSE... WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST US?”
Let me state, for the record, I have nothing against Michiganites (Michigonians? Michigaintiles? Michigan Terriers?)
Actually, I like Michigan. The first time I visited Detroit, my Michigan friends were warning me that traffic was very dangerous. At first, I was inclined to believe them because—this is true—10 minutes after I exited the airport, my taxi got into a car accident. But the cab driver assured me that auto accidents were very…