“Otis!” says the girl working the fast-food drive-thru window. “Gimme a kiss!”

I am in my truck, buying hamburgers. The drive-up cashier’s name is Shawnda. She is a notorious Otis lover.

Otis (alleged Labrador) crawls over the steering wheel to greet Shawnda, and his prodigious canine butt is wagging in my face. His tail is swinging like a Louisville Slugger. I think I’m going to have a black eye.

Shawnda scruffs his hair. “Can I give him some French fries?”

“Why not. He’s a growing boy.”

She gives him a single handful and says, “Gosh, I really want a dog of my own.”

I massage my sore eye. “Take mine, please.”

“You think I should finally break down and get a dog?”

I know from previous conversations that Shawnda lives with her elderly grandmother. Also, Shawnda works part-time while taking college classes.

Sadly, I am unable to answer her question because there is a pool-noodle-sized canine tail whacking me in the face, knocking off my hat.

So I change tacks. “How’s your granny doing?”

“Oh…” She sighs. “One day at a time.”

Shawnda is her grandmother’s

primary caregiver. Shawnda is the one who cuts the grass, pays the bills, cooks, cleans. Hers is not a simple life.

But I see a different side of the cheerful young woman whenever Otis is around. She leans in for the full-face lick. “I love you, Otis.”

Before we leave, Otis gives Shawnda a grandiose goodbye by licking every nanometer of her hands. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this is frowned upon in the fast-food franchise employee manual.

We pay for our food and off we go. Shawnda continues to wave farewell in my rear view.

I turn to Otis. “You have a new girlfriend.”

He says nothing.

“Hey, I get it. She’s sweet. Just promise me you won’t rush into anything.”

Otis blinks.

“So, where do you wanna eat today?”

Still…

Just before midnight. Somewhere on the Texas prairie. A 20-year-old named Mark was driving on a two-lane highway on his way home.

You have to be careful when driving on an empty prairie. It’s easy to develop “prairie foot.” On a flat landscape, without landmarks, your foot tends to get heavy on the gas pedal. It’s not hard to travel upwards of 200 miles per hour by accident.

Mark saw flashing hazards ahead. A brokedown truck with a horse trailer attached. He pumped his brakes and pulled over. And in the rural tradition of all who wear roper boots, he was ready to help.

“Need a hand?”

A young woman slid from beneath the truck chassis. She had grease smudges on her face. She was holding a scissor jack. And she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

Mark felt his breath get trapped in his throat.

She smiled. “Sorry. No speak’a the Inglés too good.”

Her truck had a flat tire. In her passenger seat was a silent elderly woman. The girl had been under the

vehicle looking for the jackpoint on the old Silverado, which can be dangerous business for the uninitiated.

“Allow me,” Mark said, already on the pavement.

It turned out to be a bigger problem than he’d expected. Her spare tire was shot, worn to the canvas. There was no way she was getting home on that thing.

Mark attached the horse trailer to his own truck and told her he’d take them home. But where did she live? Her jumbled English made it impossible to understand her directions.

So the girl drew him a map. And since there was no paper in Mark’s truck to write upon, she used a Sharpie to draw the route on Mark’s hand.

He presented her his hand, which was trembling when she wrote upon it.

It was 2 A.M. when he reached her aunt’s house. He led…

Dear Anonymous,

You wrote to me from the ICU waiting room at 1:37 A.M. this morning. In your email you told me about your daughter, fighting to stay alive. You told me that you were a mess. You said you needed a smile.

Then you finished by asking a simple question. You asked what I believe Hope is.

And you spelled it with a capital H.

Normally I wouldn’t answer a question like this because, I think we can all agree, I ain’t a very smart guy. In fact, I’m a putz. But you seemed desperate. So if my mediocre, halfcocked words can give you a few moments of calm, then, well...

Words you shall have.

So Hope. Capital H. I submit that, for this column, we pretend Hope is not merely a four-letter word or a positive feeling. Let’s make Hope tangible; a three-dimensional object. That way we can hold it. Touch it.

Let’s say that Hope (capital H) is actually a one-pound shaker of arts-and-craft glitter.

Have you ever fooled around with glitter? It’s messy stuff. Glitter is a clean

freak’s nightmare. Any second-grade teacher will tell you that glitter is a communicable disease.

Yesterday, for instance, my wife visited my cousin’s kid’s playroom where unsupervised children were playing with illegal quantities of glitter. Their sparkly hands touched my wife, who in turn touched me. And that was all it took.

Currently, there are stubborn pieces of glitter in my teeth, on my keyboard, and in my eye sockets. There will be glitter in my casket.

Because you can’t end glitter. You can’t fight it. You can’t eradicate it. Try washing your hands; glitter will laugh at you.

Hope is like glitter. It doesn’t take much. And it really hangs on.

Although I also believe Hope is fuel, like gasoline. To explain what I mean let’s use a hypothetical anecdote.

First, for this illustration, let’s pretend you have…

I’m a kid. I am in bed. Mama is up late. The kettle on the stove is whistling. The sound wakes me. I look at the clock, it is two in the morning.

I walk downstairs to see my mother at our dining table. The tabletop is scattered with paper, envelopes, an empty mug, and a calculator.

She leans over a mess of bills that might as well be a tablecloth. She punches numbers on the calculator and makes a grimace. I know my mother. I know that look.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

She runs her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I’m just robbing Peter to pay Paul, go back to bed.”

“Who’s Paul?”

“Paul Newman, who else? Now go to bed.” She buries herself in her hands.

“Have you been crying, Mama?”

“I’m not crying, now go to sleep.”

“But, I can’t sleep.”

“Upstairs, now!”

“But...”

She points at me. “I don’t wanna hear about your ‘but.’ I want you to go to bed.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Well,” she says with a sigh. “Then just pretend to sleep, I don’t care what you do. Go upstairs

and count your blessings.”

This is what all Baptists do. We do not count sheep, or listen to meditative sleep instructional CDs by Deepak Chopra. That stuff is for Methodists.

“Blessings?” I say to my mother with my trademarked rebellious tone. “WHAT blessings? We’re probably gonna STARVE to death aren’t we?”

I don’t know what has come over me, talking like this. I storm upstairs, slide beneath the covers, I stare at the ceiling. I can’t sleep because life has dealt my family nothing but lemons. And I’m worried. We have limited means, tall debts, and a car that leaks oil like a colander. And now my mother is having to pay this Paul fella.

My mother comes into the bedroom. She sits beside me. She touches my hair and doesn’t say anything.

“Listen up, class!” The ninth-grade teacher is using her powerful, no-nonsense voice. “Eyes up front! I want everyone to hush and give Mister Dietrich your full attention.”

It is a weekday afternoon. I am staring into my computer webcam. I am a thousand miles away from their classroom, on a video conference call with Mrs. Barry’s ninth-graders.

I see my face on the computer monitor. I resemble a doe staring into the highbeams of an oncoming Peterbilt semi.

“Hi,” I say.

I am greeted with mumbles. I don’t know what it is about ninth-graders, but they are expert mumblers.

Mrs. Barry is unsatisfied with this communal muttering. “I couldn’t hear you, class.”

The class repeats the greeting, and they sound like grim robots. “Hello, Mister Dietrich.”

I don’t like it when they call me Mister Dietrich. I have spoken in many schools over the years, teachers always insist on students using this salutation. “Mister Dietrich” makes me sound like the defendant.

I can tell the kids are bored. I briefly consider whipping up some “technical difficulties” on my end

and signing off. But a deal is a deal. And I promised to speak to Mrs. Barry’s class of remedial students, most of whom are falling behind in their studies.

We are supposed to be talking about English. The students have prepared written questions, which they will recite from index cards, addressing the giant head on the projector screen.

My giant head.

A boy stands. He reads his question. “I like your story about church potlucks. What’s your favorite casserole?” He sits.

I clear my throat like a guy under oath. “Chicken divan casserole.”

The class gives no response. Crickets. I am dying.

So I expound upon the finer points of the finest chicken-curry casserole to ever be perpetuated by the fundamentalist women of my childhood, then I invite more questions.

A girl stands. “How long did it take to grow…

Someone once told me that in northern Ohio ice cream is religion.

That might sound utterly silly to city mice, but if there is one thing I know it’s that in the rural parts, ice cream always follows life’s big benchmarks.

Think about it. Where do you take Little Leaguers after winning the game? Ice cream.

Where do jayvee offensive linemen bring their first dates? Ice cream.

Where do you go after high-school band concerts? What do you eat at the county fair? What do you serve with your birthday cake?

It doesn’t matter what the question is, the correct answer is always ice cream.

Geauga County, Ohio, happens to be a leader on the American ice cream front. Recently the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation held a statewide ice cream battle to locate the best ice cream in the Buckeye State. Geauga County ranked in the top five.

The King Kone ice cream stand became the pride of the county by earning fourth place in the state. The owners, Gail and Mitch Hewitt,

opened their salt-of-the-earth business eight years ago. Their slogan was simple:

“May all your memories be sweet.”

Geauga County is your classic pie slice of Americana, with roughly 400 square miles of hayfields, small townships, pickups, and shiploads of annual rain. Geauga County receives more rainfall than any county in northern Ohio; nearly four feet per year.

Population-wise, Geauga is tame; about 94,000 folks. Twenty percent of the county is Amish. The other 80 percent is currently stuck in standstill traffic behind a horse-drawn carriage.

Also, Geauga County was home to one of the great ice cream connoisseurs of our time.

His name was Dan McClelland. Dan passed away last Wednesday from a brain tumor, but you would have liked Dan. Everyone did.

He was 67, nice looking, with an easy smile, and a deep affection for his grandchildren, dogs, and the national pastime of sweetened frozen…

Jacob was a foster child. He grew up in the Foster Pinball Machine. Birth to graduation. He was never adopted by a family.

He and I weren’t close friends, but we knew each other. I lost track of him at age fifteen. He moved away to a group home.

We got in touch a few years ago and I expected to learn he had a wife and kids, but that wasn’t the case. Instead Jacob has animals.

Six dogs, three cats.

I don’t think Jacob would mind me saying that he marches to the beat of his own tuba.

He’s had little choice in the matter. His childhood was spent bouncing from family to family, looking after himself, remembering to eat regularly. It was a hardscrabble childhood.

Today he leads a good life. He’s a restaurant cook, he likes to hike, camp, and he’s had the same girlfriend for ten years.

Yesterday, we talked about all his animals.

“I dunno,” he said. “Just love animals.
Growing up, I was never allowed to have any. And I had so much love

I wanted to give.”

Jacob found his first dog after work one night. It was late. A stray black Lab was sniffing trash cans behind a restaurant. The dog bolted when it heard footsteps.

So Jacob tried to coax it with food. The dog wasn’t interested. Then Jacob resorted to heavy artillery.

Raw ground beef.

No dog, not even Benji, can remain civilized in the presence of a raw hamburger. Jacob left an entire package on the pavement then backed away slowly.

The dog still wouldn’t come. So Jacob gave up and piled into his car to leave.

But before he wheeled away, he glanced in his rear mirror. The dog was eating a pound of sirloin in one bite.

“Started feeding him every day,” Jacob said. “I just wanted him to know somebody cared.”

And you already know…

DEAR SEAN:

Do you ever write anything not about gooey, syrupy love?

Thanks,
MARK-IN-ATLANTA

DEAR MARK:

I have a story for you.

It starts with a woman who pulled her Chevy Blazer alongside an ordinary Georgia gas pump. There, she noticed a teenage girl seated on the curb. Head resting against the pump.

It was the early 1980s. Blondie was still on the radio. Crimped perms were still a thing. Aqua Net hairspray was obscenely over used.

The girl at the gas pump was late teens, wearing a sweat-laden sundress, and eating an ice cream cone.

The woman in the SUV wasn’t sure whether to approach the girl and offer assistance, or whether the girl even needed help.

What was obvious, however, was that this vagrant child was on foot.

The woman thought for a few moments. Conventional wisdom says you’re not supposed to approach vagrants or down-and-outters. “Be cautious” is the mantra of all responsible suburban people.

So the woman in the SUV was telling herself to be smart. “You don’t know this young woman. She could be dangerous. Be cautious.”

The woman pulled alongside the

pump and lowered her window. “You okay?”

The girl nodded and gave a quiet, “Yes, ma’am.”

But something just felt wrong.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“My boyfriend’s supposed to come get me,” the girl said, blowing her nose, dabbing her eyes.

Oh, yes. Something was definitely wrong.

“How long have you been waiting here, sweetie?”

“Since six this morning.”

The woman turned to look at the horizon. The sun was sinking behind the treeline and dusk was approaching. “You’ve been waiting here all day? Where is he?”

The girl finished her cone, then stood to stretch. She placed a hand on the small of her back and extended her very, very pregnant belly.

So apparently the girl was eating ice cream for two.

“I don’t know where he is, ma’am. He just…

He sits beside me on the bench beneath a clear sky outside the doctor’s office. My wife is having a routine checkup.

The guy and I are spaced apart. He wears a mask. I wear a mask. Occasionally he lowers his mask to take a draw from a vaping pen before exhaling a cloud that smells like Chanel No. 5.

He is bone thin. He is late-50s. His skin is all freckles. His ratty ballcap reads, “Presbyterianism: Est. 33 A.D.”

He inhales. Holds. Exhales. Then speaks. “S’posed to be nasty weather tomorrow.”

And already I know where this conversation is going.

Floridians have been cussing the weather since our ancestors first crawled from their prehistoric caves to get their real estate licenses.

The weather is an easy subject in the Alligator State because it’s common ground. Everyone experiences weather. Everyone gets sick of weather. To discuss weather is a grand tradition. And like all traditions, there are obligatory phrases often exchanged between participants.

Such as: “Hot enough for ya?” “Supposed to come up a storm.” And the all-time classic: “We could shore use

the rain.”

This is the stuff that makes us human.

The old man opens with an old standard: “S’posed to rain sideways this week.”

I play my role. “We could use the rain.”

Although technically we don’t need rain. Last week it rained like a son of a gun; my yard had two feet of standing water and became one with the Choctawhatchee.

The man uncrosses his legs. “You here to see the doc?”

“No, my wife’s seeing him. You?”

“Waiting on my wife to finish her checkup. Had my own appointment last week.” He thumps his chest. “Doc says I’m good to go.”

Silence.

He sucks on his pen again and laughs. “Nice to be told I’m healthy for once. I’m used to hearing the opposite.”

I take the bait. “Really.”

He tugs his shirt collar…

I’m sitting on the Walton County beach, I am sipping a beer with my wife, eating Chili Cheese Fritos directly from the bag. She is hogging the bag.

The spring-break teenage rowdies have finally gone home and the median age of our town population has risen to over age fifty again.

As a teenager, I used to sit on this beach a lot. When I needed to think I would sit alone, long past sunset until I would get so cold I was no longer able to biologically have children.

Sometimes I would sit for hours after the sky went dark and stare at an endless Gulf of Mexico. The sound of wind and water does things to me.

One night, I was on the beach in the dark. I was sixteen, and I was sad because of something that truly doesn’t matter now—though, back then it felt like the end of the world.

I felt overlooked by the universe, unexceptional, and unloved. They were feelings I couldn’t shake.

I was wondering why people act

ugly toward each other. I was wondering if anything existed in the distance besides waves and foam.

That’s when I saw two shapes approaching.

Two elderly women were walking the shore, I could hear them laughing. They wore heavy jackets, wool caps, and carried backpacks. They were wiry, and athletic.

One woman was Puerto Rican, with white hair and a dark complexion. The other was from Australia. I will never forget them.

The women said they were traveling the world together on a shoestring budget. They had already visited four continents, walked hundreds of miles on foot, and relied on the kindness of strangers.

They had been sleeping in tents, riding in cabs, living out of backpacks, frequenting motels and hostels, and eating like royalty.

Then, both women sat next to me in the sand. One woman removed a hip flask. She asked if I…