Mount Airy. The Earle Theater was crowded, the room smelled of popcorn, and I was onstage shaking my butt. 

I don’t mean to say I was shaking my hindparts metaphorically. But worse, I was actually shaking them.

Namely, because derriere-shaking is an important element in the one-man trainwreck I perform in theaters around the country. 

So anyway, there I was, gyrating my natiform before an audience, when I had a moment of supernatural awareness. 

How did I get here? What career path led me to this moment? Why am I onstage, before several hundred, shaking my fundaments? 

Laughs, baby. That’s why. 

I will do anything for laughs. I would do a lot worse than shake my culet if it guaranteed a laugh. I would probably run around the theater in nothing but my socks. This is because I am in show business. 

Moreover, I genuinely LOVE the sound of people laughing. I gravitate toward laughter. Laughter is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Laughter is everything to me. 

I fell into the field

of comedy by accident. My career started over a decade ago when I was asked to speak to a local Rotary club. The Rotarians were so hard up for entertainment they called a fledgling local author. Moi.

The prestigious meeting took place in a steakhouse/catfish buffet. I ate enough fried catfish to alarm a cardiologist. I was trembling when I delivered a speech that had about as much warmth and charm as the Berlin Wall. 

One elderly man—this is true—had a gaseous expulsion during my speech. But it worked out because, as it happened, he received a more enthusiastic audience reaction than I did. 

The next speech I delivered—also true—a woman in the back row had a diabetic event. The paramedics were called.

When EMTs loaded the elderly woman into an ambulance, I overheard the lady’s daughter ask, “Are you in pain, Mama?”

The original holiday was called Lupercalia. An ancient Roman festival. A real scream. 

Picture this. The Roman town square was crowded. Everyone was buck naked. Even the old people, whose bodies were ravaged by gravity. 

Young women would line up, men would swat them with the hides of sacrificed animals. This supposedly made them fertile. It goes without saying that beer was involved.  

Women then put their names into a big jar. Whereupon, each guy would select a name. Then, everyone would go off together and, um, read the Bible. 

No. Wait. The Bible hadn’t been invented yet. So I’m sure they were all doing something else. Maybe playing Twister. 

Fast forward about 300 years after the death of Jesus. Rome was a cesspool. If you were a Christian, you were—how do I put it?—screwed. Christians were mass hated. Why were they hated? 

Politics, baby. Nothing arouses hate like politics. 

So you basically had two different groups in Rome. You had those who thought the emperor was a spiritual genius, sent by God—actually, they

thought HE WAS A GOD. And you had the other crowd who listened to talk radio.   

Christians didn’t fit into either group. They simply wouldn’t play the game. They met underground. They refused to worship Caesar. Not only because he was a tyrant, but because he made a crappy salad. 

Why was this such a big deal? Because to Romans, religion was a social and public thing. Refusing to sacrifice a goat to a Roman god was like disrespecting the flag. The role of a priest was a public office. Not playing the politics game meant you were unpatriotic. 

And this is why they started killing Christians. They had all kinds of ways to kill you. 

They would wrap you in the carcass of an animal and let dogs attack you. They’d put you into barrels with protruding spikes and roll you down hills. They…

I miss glass bottles. I come from a generation of glass.

And therein lies a fundamental difference between my generation and the current one.

Glass bottles were everywhere. Glass packaging contained everything from mayonnaise to Bayer aspirin. You walked into a restaurant, and there were glass Heinz ketchup bottles sitting on tables. You had to fracture your palm to get the stuff out.

We had no space-age plastic polymers. Just glass. It was reusable. It was substantial. Eco-friendly. And glass, somehow, just made us happier. It kept crime down. It made us American. 

Which reminds me, I was at a ball game when the national anthem was played. Everyone stood. But do you know what? Almost nobody sang. It was weird. 

The singer was a recording artist from Nashville with three Grammys. She performed two minutes of vocal gymnastics so that it sounded like she was undergoing an unanesthetized colonoscopy. The boy in the seat next to me leaned over to his mom and said, “When is this going to be over?”

When I was a kid, everyone sang the “Star Spangled Banner” at games. We sang it all the time. We sang it in SCHOOL. My veteran grandfather didn’t let Nashville recording artists outsing him at ballgames. 

Something else about my generation. We were not required to leave tips for every single blessed financial transaction completed.

Yes, we tipped. We tipped restaurant servers, barbers, bartenders, and talented professional dancers. But we did not tip our McDonald’s drive-thru attendant. 

Know what else? There were no video ads at our gas-station pumps, blaring 24-hour headlines at a volume loud enough to make your gums bleed, advertising everything from potato chips to marital aids.

Other things were different, too. People still held the doors for each other. Children were actually skilled conversationalists.

Music, movies, and TV were not streamed, they were shared, communal experiences, so everyone had something to talk about. 

I bought a flip phone.

One without a camera or a touchscreen. Without AI, facial recognition, video chatting, GPS, or the ability to flush my toilet from the other room.

It’s a “stupid” phone. A device with the same level of intelligence as a member of Congress.

Namely, because I’m addicted to my smartphone. The first thing I do each morning is check my phone. The last thing I do before bed is check my phone.

In fact, I checked my phone four times during writing these last few paragraphs, answered two texts, ordered cat food on Amazon, paid a bill, and what the heck was I writing about again?

I had an analog childhood. The only phone my family had was in the kitchen. The cord was nine miles long and the receiver was heavy enough to be used as a murder weapon.

As a kid, our only communication with other kids was riding a bike to a friend’s house, ditching

our bike in their yard, asking their mom if the friend could come outside and play, then dealing with the bitterness of rejection when their mom said no because our friend was at piano lessons.

We climbed trees, built campfires, and played kissing games with girls wherein girls would draw a circle on the floor and make a boy stand in the center. Girls could either kiss the boy or pay a fine. I once made $21.34.

Before my smartphone, I read books, used Rand McNally maps, listened to radios, engaged in face-to-face interaction, and memorized hundreds of phone numbers.

But now all I do is use a phone.

And I’m not alone. Yesterday I almost had a car wreck when a Toyota ran me off the highway.

When the Camry sped past, the motorist was holding his phone in his right hand, and with the other hand…

The math teacher and I went for a five-hour walk through town while wearing huge backpacks and yet we are not Marines. We are just middle-aged married people. 

This was our weekly “training walk.” That’s what hikers call them. Training walks. Namely, because it would sound weird to call these walks “walking for five hours while wearing backpacks the size of Whirlpool appliances.”  

“How are you doing back there?” the math teacher called out to me as we walked. 

“Yay,” I said in earnest. 

The math teacher and I must exercise like this because, in April, we are travelling to Spain to walk El Camino de Santiago—from one end of Spain to the other.  

Training walks are important before hiking the Camino. You would not want to walk upwards of 500 miles across the breadth of Iberia, traversing the Pyrenees Mountains, when the most intensive workout you have done previously consists of using your teeth to open a Butterfinger. 

On our walk, members of the general public gave us odd looks. Joggers weaved around us on sidewalks, giving

us lots of room, avoiding eye contact, clenching their pepper spray canisters. 

We felt ridiculous wearing large backpacks in public. But this is how you train for a pilgrimage. 

When we reached the corner grocery store, my wife went inside to get an energy bar. I waited on the curb, sitting on the pavement, dusty and forlorn, hair askew, sweaty, clasping my heavy backpack. Massaging my feet. 

An older woman with a little boy approached me. The woman looked concerned. She said, “How are you today?” 

“I’ve had better days,” I said. 

“Are you able to keep warm?” she said with a frown face.

“I guess.”  

“Is there anything you need right now, sir?” 

“I could really use a beer.”

The woman grasped her son by the hand and hurried away. 

When my wife got back outside (beerless) she found me half-sleeping…

I shouldn’t be braiding hair. But there I was. Giving it my best shot. 

We were in a hotel lobby. The 19-year-old sat with her back facing me. Her violent red hair in my hands. 

Hotel guests were staring at me, the middle-aged dork, unintentionally tying a young woman’s hair into knots.  

“I don’t really braid,” I explained. 

“You’re doing fine,” she said.  

Morgan cannot braid her own hair because she is paralyzed on her left side. Usually someone in her dorm braids her hair. But she’s not in a dorm. 

This weekend, she’s been trapped in a van with old people who still sing along with Brooks and Dunn.

I undid the lopsided braid. “This is a bad idea.” 

“It doesn’t have to be perfect.” 

The thing is, I used to be an okay hair-braider. This is because I had a kid sister who believed it necessary to wear her hair in a braid or else my mother would cut it off. 

My mother was obsessed with cutting hair. She owned a pair of scissors not sharpened since the Coolidge

administration, which was why my sister’s hairdo looked like she had fallen into a disagreement with a wood chipper. 

My own boyhood haircuts were even worse. My mother cut my hair by placing a mixing bowl over my head and making a series of abortive scissor cuts before finally saying, “Heck with it,” then using World-War-II-era clippers to shave me bald. My fellow Boy Scouts called me Uncle Fester. 

I unfurled the braid again. “I’m not doing a very good job.” 

“You’re doing great,” she said.  

Morgan has been a good sport this weekend. We have dragged her all over Tennessee and half of Georgia. She has let me write columns about her, even though she is painfully shy. 

We’ve spent most of our time in the van where she has been forced to participate in uninteresting old-person conversation,…

You never know how truly short life is until a 19-year-old girl, who is preceptive and sweet, and of exceptional intellect, a girl who made the university president’s list, stares at you sincerely, with warmth in her eyes, and with all her heart, calls you an “old person.” 

“I’m not old,” you almost reply. 

But she is 19, and she would not believe you. Because to this young woman, the definition of “ancient” is any person or object old enough to predate the iPhone 3G. 

Today, we went to the Tennessee Aquarium together. Three of us walked through the exhibit; the 19-year-old, my wife and my wife’s elderly husband who carried everyone’s purses.

And I watched the 19-year-old, who was genuinely impressed by the gargantuas and leviathans in the water.

We were in a room of glass. Eight hundred species swam over our heads, and another few thousand below us. 

Kids were running around everywhere. Parents were pushing strollers. Babies crying. It was your typical tourist attraction.  

But I was busy watching

the 19-year-old, walking with ease through the aquarium passageways. She admired the tropical fish, she posed for pictures on giant fiberglass turtle eggs, she fearlessly shoved her hand into the water to pet the stingrays. 

You would have never known that this girl has spent most of last year in the hospital, in critical care. 

You would never look at this red-haired marvel and notice that she is paralyzed on her left side. Not unless you saw her clutching my arm as we used the escalator. You would never know this girl is on a TPN feeding tube, which is a form of life support. 

You would only see a brilliant young woman, living her life. Living this life so fully, so everlastingly, that it almost makes you feel ashamed of yourself. 

For she knows how to live with a whole heart. She knows how to find…

Wake up. Start coffeemaker. Turn on TV. A panicky news journalist is saying America is doomed and only minutes away from exploding. And if not America, at least my house. 

Turn off TV. 

Coffee is ready. Pour said coffee. Check my phone. Look at emails. The first subject line attracts my attention. “YOU ARE NOT A TRUE AMERICAN IF YOU DON’T READ THIS!!!” 

I want to be a true American, but for the next few minutes I’ll have to settle for being a fallacious one. Namely, because it’s a little early to be reading anything in all caps. 

Sip coffee. Massage eyeballs. Leash up dogs. Take them outside for morning walks. It’s still dark.

My dog doesn’t want to pee. So we walk in tight, concentric circles through the neighborhood as I whisper-shout, “Go pee!” As though these two words have ever helped a canine successfully urinate within the long and noble history of dogdom. 

I check my phone. To give my dog privacy. Hop on social media. My newsfeed is nothing but

politics. What ever happened to cute kitty videos? 

The first post I see shows the picture of an American flag covered in mud, or perhaps it's a more organic substance. The first words are: “PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND TOTALLY FREAKING BLOWN AMERICA!” 

The user who shared the brain blasting patriotic item is my childhood Sunday school teacher. A woman whose wardrobe once consisted entirely of polyester. Her profile picture is a bald eagle wearing a bikini. 

Soon, I am walking through a dark neighborhood near my house. My dog is sniffing the millions of locations where other dogs peed. I’m encouraging my dog to leave her mark on this world so we can go back home. 

Surrounding me are yard signs galore. There must be hundreds, perched in everyone’s yards. Each sign has some urgent message. Some political aphorism or watchword, printed in bold letters.…

Suicide is a dirty word. Try using it in mixed company. Try using “suicide” at a dinner party. You wouldn’t. Because suicide is not something people talk about. 

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already quit reading this. I know I have.

Still, I grew up as a child of suicide. This word is at the forefront of my vocabulary. There were moments in life when people would ask the ever imposing question, “How’d your dad die?”

The air usually goes quiet for a beat. 

You look around because you know you’re about to kill everyone’s buzz.

At this juncture, you have a few ways of handling this question. There’s the direct approach. “He died by suicide.” Or you could use more passive language. “He took his own life.” Or you could get very florid: “He passed away of his own choosing.” 

Either way, the person who asked the question gets it. Which is why they are now edging away from you because they suddenly remembered an important dental appointment. 

Because nobody wants to

talk about suicide. We can talk about diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or any other cause of death. But suicide?

Filthy word. Conjures up too much mental imagery. Godawful things. And people just don’t want to talk about it.

So nobody does. Nobody talks. And as a result, suicide remains possibly the most undiscussed mental problem in the world. 

And yet each year upwards of 725,000 people die by suicide, worldwide. Every 40 seconds someone thinks about attempting suicide.

Or let’s put it like this: In America, someone takes their life every 11 minutes. Perhaps even people reading this right now are contemplating the act.   

I’m sorry to bring all this up. As I say, I know this isn’t a fun issue. But a few days ago, a friend of mine died this way. 

Ever since her death, people in her family have…

Americans are arguing right now. And believe me, I get it. There is a lot going on. Everyone has differences of opinion.

But I wondered if we Americans couldn’t put aside our disagreements for a moment, and agree on a few things we love. 

I’ll start. 

I love quilting. Quilting bees, quilting circles, quilting parties. Americans didn’t invent quilting, but it’s an American artform nonetheless. 

I used to watch my mother quilt with dogged persistence. Day after day. Month after month. She used birch-wood quilting hoops, and pieced recycled fabric together. She could take seemingly unrelated scraps and make art.

My mother always said, “When life gives you scraps, you make a quilt.” 

Also, I love jazz. American fiddle tunes. And the way New Orleans smells on a summer morning, after tourists have spent all night urinating in the streets.

Stetson hats worn non-ironically. Case knives, butter yellow, dual blades. Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly. Shemp is okay. 

The old men in cafes who still drink coffee in groups. And the young men who

still idolize them. 

Boys who still ask Santa Claus for BB guns. And their little sisters, who steal their GI Joes because Barbie needs a viable love interest. 

Kids who still ride bikes. Children who play tag in their backyards, screaming and laughing, without ever once checking their phones.  

I love Waffle House. An American institution. Yes, I realize eggs are expensive right now, raising the cost of an ordinary omelette to about the same price as a Range Rover Autograph. 

But I will continue to eat Waffle House fare until my end. Namely, because I have eaten at Waffle House to benchmark the most important moments in my life. 

I ate at Waffle House the morning after my own wedding. After the funerals of friends and family. God willing, I will eat at Waffle House the day after my own funeral. 

I love…