I was at a place that served good burgers and cold beer. There was a Labrador running around, begging from customers. Dolly Parton’s voice was overhead.

The old man beside me was eating a burger.

“You aren’t from around here,” he said.

“No sir,” I said. “Just stopped for supper.”

“Well, you picked a good place, they got decent food.”

Things went silent. The gentle quietness that passes between two patrons at a bar is sacred. You don’t interrupt a man and his ground beef. It’s irreverent.

The Labrador showed up at our feet. The old animal sat right on his haunches. He wagged his tail when the old man made eye-contact.

“Dadgum dog,” he said. “What’s a dog doing in here anyway?”

The old man removed a piece of bacon from his hamburger and tossed it to the dog. The dog ate it in one bite. Fido indicated he was willing to go for two.

You can tell a lot about a man by the way

he treats a dog. And you can tell even more by the way the dog treats him back.

My grandfather used to attract local dogs and small children. They followed him wherever he went.

So he’s originally from Chattanooga—the old man, not the dog. I don’t know where the dog is from. We pump hands and introduce ourselves.

A long time ago, he was an EMT. He spent the better half of his life saving people in the backs of ambulances.

“Started in EMS back in the early days,” he said. “Back when we had low headroom vehicles that looked like white hearses.”

The dog is still staring at him.

The old man tosses the stray a few French fries.

“Yeah,” he went on, “I’ve seen a lot in my time.”

When he was a young man, he…

She was a tough woman. Forty-some years ago, she was a single parent who'd raised her daughter into adulthood on nothing but pennies and late shifts.

She and her daughter were tight. They lived together until her daughter was in her twenties.

Then, her daughter got pregnant by a man who did a disappearing act.

The pregnancy was a painful and complicated one.

Doctors said something was wrong. When her daughter went into labor, things got ugly. They say there was a lot of blood.

It was a boy. The baby almost died, but he pulled through.

Her daughter didn't.

It was a small funeral. She said goodbye to her daughter and stayed until the end. She watched a front-loader dump fresh soil over an expensive casket.

She could've been angry. Angry with doctors. Angry at the deadbeat who got her daughter pregnant.

Angry at life. Or at God.

But she had a newborn, there wasn't time for anger. Instead, she fed him, bathed him, and stayed up late, whispering into his ear. She changed dirty diapers, sang

to him, and taught him to speak.

She smoked cigarettes and rocked him to sleep on the front steps, watching the moon.

She wasn’t a young woman. She had gray in her hair and lines around her eyes. She wasn’t far from retirement age, but she was lightyears away from retirement.

She joined a local Methodist church. Not because she was spiritual, but because they offered free daycare. She dropped the boy there while she worked a day shift.

They say she received weekly church assistance—brown sacks of baby formula and groceries.

She was a mother all over again. She did all the maternal things. She packed sack lunches, paid for field trips, attended PTA meetings, and hollered at baseball games.

And during the high-school years, she took an extra job at a supermarket to pay for all the pleasantries that teenagers…

We came bearing gifts. Nothing fancy, it was a T-shirt with Andy Taylor and Barney Fife on the front, with the words “Nip it in the bud!” in bold print.

I showed up to a nine-year-old’s birthday party. I was with my friend, Chubbs. I felt strange being there.

I knocked on the door.

A blonde boy answered only to find me and Chubbs standing on the porch, singing an energetic rendition of “Happy Birthday,” while doing the Tango.

Before we finished dancing, Chubbs said, “Quick! Dip me!”

The crowd went wild.

We came bearing gifts. Nothing fancy, it was a T-shirt with Andy Taylor and Barney Fife on the front, with the words “Nip it in the bud!” in bold print.

The shirt was an extra-large because that was the only size the novelty store had in stock. And it was either the Andy T-shirt, or a shirt which read: “F.B.I. Federal Bikini Inspector.”

A few months ago, Bailey’s mother emailed to tell me that her son likes me. She told me he listens to my podcast each week, and reads my stuff even though some of the words are too big.

I was touched.

Bailey removed the T-shirt

from the gift bag and held it against his shoulders. The thing hung down to his feet.

“Look, Mom!” he shouted. “It’s a shirt with weird guys on it!”

“Sweetie, that’s Andy and Barney,” his mother explained.

“Barney?” The kid frowned. “But, where’s his purple dinosaur suit?”

His mother asked me not to share too much of their story, and I won’t. But I will tell you that Bailey’s parents divorced last year, and it was traumatic. The stress has made Bailey sick. He has developed medical problems because of the anxiety.

“He internalizes everything,” his mother told me. “It’s been a rough year.”

Anyway, the party was nice. I sat on Bailey’s back porch with his friends to watch a talented husband-and-wife magician duo from Birmingham. The magicians dazzled the crowd.

During their performance, they selected Chubbs as…

Listen, I’m not a particularly smart man, friend. But then, you don’t have to be smart to know what I know. Life evaporates. It rises toward heaven so quick that you’re lucky if you catch a glimpse.

DEAR SEAN:

My dad died last year and I just don’t really know what to do with myself anymore. I know your dad died when you were my age I think, so how do I be like normal again?

Really hope you write back,
FOURTEEN-IN-VIRGINIA

DEAR FOURTEEN:

I’m the wrong guy to ask about normalcy. I haven’t been normal since the third grade when I peed my pants onstage at a school assembly.

Even our school nurse remarked, “That child’s one rung short of a step ladder.”

She was right. But then, I don’t believe in “normal.” It’s a made-up word. And not that it matters, but I don’t believe in magic beanstalks, pop-stars, Florida Powerball, high cholesterol, or daylight saving time, either.

Years ago, while driving through South Alabama, I saw something. It was an overcast day and the world was colorless. My wife and I had just left a funeral. There was a sadness over our vehicle.

We rode through miles of farmland. My wife yelled, “LOOK!”

I glanced out the window. It was spectacular. I pulled into a cow

pasture. We stepped out. We ran through acres of cow pies and green grass.

A rainbow.

And so help me, the colors were touching the ground. The tail was diving into the dirt like a spotlight. I’d never seen anything like it.

The cows watched us with big eyes while we behaved like six-year-olds. We took turns swatting the colors. I don’t know exactly why we did this, but I would’ve regretted not doing it.

Here’s where it gets somewhat magical.

The colors disappeared when I got too close. They reappeared when I took several steps back.

Closeup, they were gone. Far away; voila! The colors were there, but not always visible.

Eventually, the sun came out and the rainbow vanished completely.

We hiked back to the truck. I took in a breath of morning air and…

Clemson scores. Alabama is falling behind. This is difficult to watch. Our team is making mistakes.

The NCAA National Championship. Alabama is playing Clemson in a fight to the death. I am in a living room with my elderly mother-in-law, Mary, preparing to watch the big game.

Mother Mary sits beside me, sipping seltzer water. Mother Mary is eating ice cream. Mother Mary is hard of hearing.

The phone rings.

She answers the phone.

“HELLO?!” she hollers into the phone. “YES! THAT’S RIGHT! WE’RE WATCHING THE GAME! HOW ARE YOU, EDNA?”

Brief silence.

“OH, ISN’T THAT NICE?”

Kickoff.

I’m tuning her out and focusing on the television. This is, quite possibly, the most pivotal game of all time. These are the best teams in the—

“HAAAAAAAH! IS HE STILL ALIVE? OH, I REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS A YOUNG MAN, HE WAS HANDSOME! REMEMBER WHEN HE USED TO WEAR THOSE BASKETBALL SHORTS! REMEMBER? THOSE REALLY TIGHT SHORTS? LORD HAVE MERCY, I DIDN’T HATE THOSE SHORTS.”

Shoot me now.

“YES! THAT’S RIGHT! THEY WERE SUCH SKIMPY SHORTS FOR SUCH A WELL-BUILT, STRONG BOY!”

The Lord is my Shepherd…

Clemson scores. Alabama

is falling behind. This is difficult to watch. Our team is making big mistakes.

“UH HUH! I JUST SPOKE WITH BEVERLY YESTERDAY! YOU KNOW SHE HAD THAT GOITER CUT OFF HER NECK LAST WEEK? DO YOU KNOW THE DOCTORS CUT IT OPEN AND FOUND SOME TEETH AND HAIR INSIDE IT? BLESS HER HEART!”

This game is tense. In fact, I am so nervous, I am about to make a puddle from all the stress. But the important thing to remember here is—

“OOOOOHHH NOOOOOOOOO! SHE DID?! REALLY? OH, GOD LOVE HER! I HEARD SHE HAD HIP SURGERY! HOW IS SHE? OH, SHE IS? THAT’S WONDERFUL! ISN’T SHE JUST THE SWEETEST THING? BUT A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME HER POTATO SALAD TASTED LIKE FERTILIZER!”

Halftime.

Alabama is still behind. Their defense has been drowning. We are falling. I don’t…

I am hiking a trail in the North Floridian woods. My dog is beside me. The longleaf pines go on for miles. I am here to walk my dog, take in the fresh air, and, God-willing, pull a hamstring.

The weather is cool and dry. The sky is so clear you can touch it.

A young couple is ahead of me. I have been trailing them for a mile and I have formed some opinions about them.

For one: they are in love, I can tell by the way they hold hands and lean onto each other.

Second: they are in fantastic shape—I have been trying to keep up with them and I am exhausted.

My dog and I pass a swamp. There is a sign beside it that reads: “Beware of alligators.”

I pause to observe. After a few minutes, I see something in the water. It’s a dark shape that sort of looks like a shiny log.

We keep walking.

Gators don’t scare me.

Once, I lived in an apartment that had a pond behind it—actually, it was more of a drainage ditch. There was a hand-painted warning sign next to it that read:

“YALL MEMBER BOUT THE GATORS.”

Rumors claimed that a gator once crawled out of the pond and ate a Yorkshire Terrier named Izzy. Everyone in the apartments retold this horrific story, but nobody knew if it were true.

Until one day, when my uncle came to visit. I came home one evening to find him out back, sitting on an upside-down five-gallon bucket, holding a fishing rod with a raw chicken breast hooked on the end.

“Are you outta your mind?” I said.

“Ssshhh,” he said. “I wanna see if there’s really a gator out here.”

There was. After an hour of tempting fate, the thing came crawling out of the water faster…

I considered bolting, but that would’ve been childish. Instead, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and recognized me. His nose was running, and his eyes were puffy, his hair was a mess.

I was fired from the only retail job I ever had. The important thing to remember here is that I wasn’t fired because I was a bad worker, or undependable. It wasn’t because I was a crummy person, incompetent, tardy, or lazy.

It was because—and I will never forget this—I didn’t iron my shirt.

The bossman came into work and looked at me with disgust. “God,” he said. “Don’t you ever iron your shirt?”

At the exact moment he said this, I was eating a ham and swiss on rye—heavy on the mustard. And it’s impossible to defend yourself intelligently with a mouthful of ham and swiss on rye with mustard.

He fired me. I packed my things and I was gone in fifteen minutes.

So yeah, I’m messy. I don’t mean to be, but I am.

My truck, for instance, is a mess. A few days ago, I found a small oak tree sprout growing in a pile of decomposing trash in my floorboards. I couldn’t bring myself to uproot

the thing because I love greenery.

My office is a mess, too. I have fifty thousand books. Tall stacks sit on every flat surface so I can always see them, and one day when I am gone, God-willing, someone will think I actually read them all.

I don’t know how I became so messy. I didn’t take a special course to learn how. It’s just a gift.

My mother is tidy. My father polished his lawnmower engines for kicks. My sister keeps a house so clean you could eat supper off her toilet seat. My wife irons our dog-bed covers.

Me? I have a tree growing in my truck.

Yesterday, I was in the post office. I stood in a long line. The room was full of folks with violent winter colds.

After every cough, I covered my nose and…

When I was a boy, I remember my father would look at the stars and say, “Maybe this is the year, Tiger. Maybe this one will be the best ever.”

The stars are out tonight. It’s the fourth day of a new year, and I’m waiting for my dog to finish her business so we can go back inside.

But she’s wandering. And I’m thinking.

One of my first published columns was about going water skiing with my cousin. There were lots of people on a pontoon boat—my aunt, cousins, a pastor, innocent children, nuns, etc.

I wasn’t able to stand up on the skis after several attempts. I was dragged face-first through the water like a limp trout before finally giving up and crawling back aboard.

I clambered up the swim ladder, I shook off like a dog, and announced to the group: “Aww, waterskiing is for losers.”

After I said it, I heard gasps. My cousin covered his eyes. My aunt fainted. The pastor’s wife started praying in tongues. The nuns dove overboard and started swimming for Key Largo.

I realized I was not wearing swim trunks.

That story ran in a tiny magazine. And I can still remember hitting the

“send” button to email it to an editor. It was as though I were pressing the “detonate” button on a nuclear reactor.

I had written an actual “column.” That sort of made me an actual “columnist.” And it was like being born again.

The story tanked. The editor wouldn’t return my calls.

Even so, my life was never the same after that.

The next gig I landed was writing for a magazine in Georgia. My assignment was about the history of baseball in Savannah.

For a week, I camped in Richmond Hill, with my dog. I was there to research baseball. I interviewed elderly residents, one historian, one city official, and one former shortstop. I wrote an eight-hundred-word column.

The editor read my words and said, “Sorry, kid. This is basal writing.”

Kid? I was in my thirties. And…

But the little boy is just that. He is little. He sees a fiberglass horse, adorned with a shiny saddle. And what boy on earth doesn’t want to be a cowboy?

He’s old and gray. His skin is like used tissue paper. He has liver spots.

I see him seated on the bench in front of a supermarket. He is the quintessential old man. Boots. Plaid. Suspenders. Hearing aids.

There is a blonde child riding one of those coin-operated horses that cost fifty cents per ride. The old man is watching over the child. His hands are resting on his cane.

“Ain’t it fun, Benny?” the old man says.

“Yeah, Grandpa!” says the blonde kid.

Another boy wanders toward the ride. This child is Hispanic. Black hair. Dark skin. Two adults are with him, parents maybe.

They are a handsome young couple in ragged clothes, covered in dust and plaster. They look tired.

The kid points at the horse. “Qué chido, Papá!”

I don’t speak Spanish, but I know childhood wonder when I see it.

The young couple starts speaking rapid-fire. I can’t understand them, but I know what they’re saying. It’s universal parent talk:

“Get away from that

horse,” the Hispanic man is saying to the boy. “Come inside, we have shopping to do.”

But the little boy is just that. He is little. He sees a fiberglass horse, adorned with a shiny saddle. And what boy on earth doesn’t want to be a cowboy?

The old man seems to know this. He smiles at the child. “You wanna take a ride on Trigger, son?” he says.

The kid doesn’t answer.

The man taps his cane on the horse. “Trigger? You wanna ride Trigger?”

“Trigger?” the boy says.

As it happens, when I was a child my father and I watched every Roy Rogers melodrama ever made. For most of my life, my father called all horses either “Trigger” or “Silver.”

“Porfa, Papá!” the kid says. “Porfa, porfa! Trigger!”

“No,” says Papá.

There will be…

This was her highest aspiration for my life. She wanted me to use a soft voice, good manners, and to treat people the way I’d treat Pope Francis.

I saw a man in a gas station scream at a cashier. The cashier was a young girl. She made a mistake and overcharged him for gas.

The man lost it. I watched the whole thing happen. He stormed out of the convenience store and sped away, leaving skid marks.

She was embarrassed.

“Oh, man,” she said. “I really screwed up.”

“No you didn’t,” said a man standing in line. “He did.”

Be nice. That’s what my mother always told me. And I never knew her to be wrong.

This was her highest aspiration for my life. She wanted me to use a soft voice, good manners, and to treat people the way I’d treat Pope Francis.

Admittedly, I have failed her many times.

There was the time I was watching the Iron Bowl at a tavern in Columbus, with friends. I was seventeen, but I managed to sneak into the joint.

There was a man at the bar in an Auburn T-shirt

who kept shouting ugly things to my pals. When he tossed a glass of beer into my friend Arnold’s face things went crazy.

Arnold weighed a buck five, soaking wet, and had a stutter, he could not seem to defend himself. It took three of us to pry the man loose.

The rowdy hit me beneath the jaw so hard I bit my own tongue and said a word that is not approved by the Southern Baptist Convention™.

In the heat of the moment, I sat on the man’s chest. That wasn’t very nice. My other friends joined me. Three of us sat on him. My mother would’ve disowned me.

The bartender, a graduate from the University of Auburn, splashed a glass of ice water in the man’s face and shouted “You schnoz-whistle! People like you give Auburn folks a bad name!”

“LET…