I receive a lot of questions. They come in the form of emails, private messages, subpoenas, etc. I cannot answer them all, but I am able to answer a few.

Q: Sean, I am moderately offended. You mentioned the ongoing debate over saying “merry Christmas” and “happy holidays.” Saying “merry Christmas” can be offensive in the wrong context. We say “happy holidays” because we respect others. What if I’m someone who chooses not to celebrate Christmas? What if I’m someone who celebrates Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, or Bodhi Day?

A: What if I’m someone who doesn’t celebrate happiness?

Q: I was a fan of your writing until you chose a side and advocated saying “merry Christmas” instead of “happy holidays.” Saying happy holidays is inclusive for all religions and lifestyles. Whereas Christmas was invented by dogma. I am an atheist, Sean, I don’t want a corporation forcing religious holidays on me. Don’t I deserve a holiday, too?

A: How about April 1st?

Q: I am 74 years old and have been in a three-month long

relationship with an impostor claiming to be Sean of the South. This man told me that his wife left him and that he wanted to have an intimate relationship with me.

We talked every day for many months. When he finally asked for money I realized I had been scammed and he was not Sean of the South. Now I’m so hurt because, even though I’ve been scammed, I feel like I’ve lost a friend. His writing was just like Sean’s, except he seemed to know how to say all the things a lady truly wants to hear, and how to make me feel like a woman.

A: My wife requests this man’s email address.

Q: Sean, your longform content is becoming outdated and boring. This isn’t 2011, buddy. Nobody wants written articles anymore. We want VIDEO! TikTok features video content that’s more snackable, instead of…

She was a foster kid. Grew up in a group home. A place where you basically lived in a bunk. If you were lucky, you got to shower before the other kids drained the hot water tank.

Christmastime was especially difficult. Everyone else was with families. Meantime, you got various Dollar Tree toys and food on paper plates.

Our story takes place when she was 14. She was tall and gangly. Brunette hair, bad teeth. Her mom and dad were incarcerated. Neither family wanted her.

As it happens 14-year-old foster kids are not easily adopted. Potential parents would visit the home, meet the kids, and they never even asked her name.

Men wanted sons. Women wanted babies to cuddle, someone to call them Mommy. A 14-year-old was like a geriatric dog at the shelter. Too old to adopt.

It was one December when she was taking an after-school class that life changed. She was in Spanish club. She was pretty good at the

languages, but really, Spanish Club was just a way to prevent herself from going back to the group home for a few hours each week.

She was exiting the school, on her way to the carline, when she saw something by the dumpster. It was small and fuzzy. A little animal. Not a newborn, but a puppy nonetheless.

The animal was eating from a discarded fast-food container. One of those paper boxes a Big Mac comes in. I’m lovin’ it.

She approached the feral dog, which—let the record show—is a good idea. You never approach a strange canine who is involved in eating unless you want to be dessert.

But the animal was so little, so cute, she wasn’t scared, and the dog didn’t seem to know how to be aggressive yet. The puppy walked right to her.

It was a girl puppy. Brown all over with white…

I was eleven. I was invited to try out for the Christmas community choir. A lady visited our church to conduct the auditions.

I had been practicing for three weeks, learning the lyrics to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

My father, the welder, took me to the audition after work. Before it was my turn to sing, he gave me a pep talk.

“Knock it outta the park,” he said.

I sang for the lady in the wire-rimmed glasses who held the clipboard. She was less than impressed with me.

“Stop singing!” she shouted, interrupting my song. “We’re looking for something else, I’m sorry. Next please?”

My father stormed forward from the back of the church. He looked like he was on his way to pick a fight with an umpire.

“Now wait a minute, Lady,” he said. “I demand you let my boy finish his song. He’s been working on it for weeks. What kind of heartless woman doesn’t let a kid finish his song?”

The woman’s mouth dropped open. She looked at my father like he’d lost

his mind.

She sat down and asked me to sing it again. I cleared my throat. I sang. I did much better than before. It wasn’t a home run, per se, but more like an infield single.

I got the part.

I was fifteen feet tall. Until that day I’d never done anything special with my life—unless you counted the noises I could make with my underarms. I was a chubby kid with awkward features, I was neither handsome, nor athletic.

But now I was a soloist.

It took months of preparation to get it right. Each day after school, I would rehearse for my mother in the kitchen while she made supper.

On the night of the performance, my father arrived home an hour late. He wheeled into our driveway, kicking gravel behind his tires.

My mother flew off…

The Cracker Barrel is slammed. And loud. Inside, there isn’t much in the way of elbow room. There are heaps of people. And I am trying to master the wooden Triangle Peg game.

The object of this game, of course, is simple. Leave the fewest pegs remaining on the triangle as possible. Finish a game with only one peg is left; you are a NASA-level genius. Two pegs; you are moderately clever. Four pegs; your parents are first cousins.

I love Cracker Barrel. But then, I have a long history with this institution. I’ve eaten at Cracker Barrels from Beaverton, Oregon, to Prattville, Alabama. I’ve eaten here on Thanksgiving, the day I graduated college, the morning after my wedding, and the day after my father died. The food suits me.

The overhead music always has steel guitar in it. The people in the giftshop always ask how you’re doing. And if you’re bored, you can always embarrass your wife by buying a Davy Crockett hat and wearing it into the dining room.

Today, an elderly couple

is sitting next to me as I fiddle with the peg game. The old man is skinny. She is frail. They are shoulder to shoulder.

The man is wearing a hospital bracelet. His entire lower leg is in a medical brace. His face is bruised purple. There is dried blood on his forearms. He is resting his head onto the old woman’s shoulder because it looks like he’s been through hell itself.

She is helping him drink his Coke with a straw.

“Thank you, Judy,” he says between sips.

She just pats his head.

On the other side of the dining room is a table of paramedics. They are young, wearing buzz cuts, cargo pants, radios mounted on their shoulders. Their eyes are drooping, the coffee evidently isn’t helping. It looks like they’ve had a long night.

I eavesdrop on their conversation:

“What’re…

You’re going to make it.

I know you don’t feel great right now. I know you’re having a crappy day. A crappy month. A crappy decade. I know this isn’t your best life.

I know your whole world is falling apart. I know your father is dying of pancreatic cancer. I know your daughter just passed away from a drug overdose. I get it.

Your grandchild has life threatening bone cancer. Your car was repossessed last night. Your dog died. You’re ill.

Your husband cheated on you with a younger woman. Your dad has a neurological disease. Your mother passed away. Your mom died by suicide. Your son is going blind.

You have breast cancer. You’ve lost everything. You’re a young man who was convicted by a jury of your peers, and now you’re probably going to prison. You are an alcoholic, and you don’t know what to do about it.

You’re scared. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. The doctor is suggesting chemo.

At night, sometimes, you lie there wondering what the point is. Why keep living? Why live a life that’s nothing but pain? You’re starting

to lose steam. You’re starting to get tired.

I don’t blame you. But—and I want you to listen to me closely here—you are going to make it.

I actually believe this. Wholeheartedly. In fact, I would bet a million dollars on it.

Sadly, I don’t have a million bucks because I am an English major. So—let just me empty my wallet here—I will happily bet $11 cash that you are going to be okay.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“This schmuck doesn’t even know me. How the heck can he know whether I’ll be okay? He’s just writing a bunch of hyper-emotional B.S. He doesn’t know my life.”

And you know what? To be frank, you’re absolutely right. For starters, I DON’T know anything, so how can I know whether you’ll…

I joined social media in my thirties. Back then, social media was still a new, exciting frontier. Sort of like outer space except no zero-gravity toilets.

In the early days, I used Facebook to communicate with friends. I reconnected with schoolmates and marveled at how everyone had gotten old except me.

Your deepest interaction with social media was sitting at a keyboard and tapping out something clever, or important, then hitting “Publish.” Posting important stuff was the whole point of social media.

Sometimes, I would spend hours just thinking up devastatingly important sentences, such as: “Due to inflation, the FDA says you may now eat food which has been on the floor for 8.9 seconds.”

These sentences were posted as “status updates.” Back then, your statuses were a kind of headline to the people within your inner circle.

“Today, I had math finals…” “This morning, I’m gonna ask her to marry me…” “I have a nasal polyp.”

But then, inevitably, your family

members started joining social media. People such as your aunt Eulah, who has a life-threatening humor disability. The same aunt who cannot visit a restaurant without developing a strong need to speak to the manager. Suddenly, this aunt could comment on everything you posted.

YOUR STATUS: Ugggh! Going to a job interview is the worst thing EVER!

AUNT EULAH: What about cancer?

Social media became a normal part of our lives. We were using social media all the time. Even in public.

Then, along came the era when people started taking pictures of their meals. This was followed by the era of mandatory family photos wherein everyone wore matching outfits for each major holiday, including Easter, Christmas, and the onset of daylight saving time.

This was briefly followed by the era of memes, when nobody actually posted anything, we just shared memes of Gene Wilder.

Then came the…

On Highway 67, atop Priceville Mountain, stands the Cross of North Alabama. The 121-foot cross stands proudly in a flawless blue sky, overlooking a rural Morgan County.

The base of the enormous cross is peppered in Post-It notes. All sizes, all colors. Flapping in the autumn breeze. These notes are prayers from those who visit the cross.

The prayers are written with differing standards of penmanship. Some prayers, you can just tell, are written in a teenage hand.

“God, why do I feel like I am not enough for myself or for anyone? Help me.”

“Help me not feel so ugly.”

“Help me make good decisions, not hang out with a bad crowd, help me love me for me.”

“Bring my family back together, God.”

Many prayers are written in Spanish. Others are written in memory of the deceased. A lot of prayers—a whole lot—are written in childish handwriting.

“My brother killed his self.”

“Dear God, I prying 4 u cause who prys for u?”

“For my kitten to get better.”

I met a young woman at the

base of the cross when I was visiting. It was a clear November afternoon. We were the only visitors in the giant pasture beneath the towering monument.

She was writing a prayer on a Post-It notepad. She said she was on her way to the Dollar General, but she had too much on her mind to go to the DG. So she came here.

“I come here a lot,” she says. “I only started coming a few weeks ago.”

She is a meek woman. Soft spoken and kind. She finishes writing on the Post-It and sticks it to the base of the cross.

“We’re going through a rough time right now,” she says. “When I come here, I write my prayers down, and I just leave them. That’s the whole point. To leave it all here.”

She tells me her son has…

I’m backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, in my dressing room. Tuning my guitar. They tell me Dolly Parton used this dressing room once. What sacred visions this mirror must have seen. My cups runneth over.

Someone knocks on my door. “Twenty minutes until soundcheck,” they say.

I’m warming up my voice. Hoping the crowd will be hot tonight and laugh at the jokes.

The first time I visited the Grand Ole Opry, I was a little boy. We were living in Spring Hill, Tennessee, at the time. My old man was with the ironworking crew that built the GM plant. Local Number Ten.

We were rural people who did not use a P to spell “potatoes.” My clothes came from thrift stores and yard sales. I wore shoes that were hand-me-downs. We drove second-, third-, and fourth-hand Fords. It took me 30 years to finally realize we were poor.

When we wandered into the Opry Theater, we were following a throng

of theater goers. I was riding high on Daddy’s shoulders. I always rode on his shoulders. From up there I overlooked an ocean of heads in the lobby. Audience members filed into the auditorium like a herd of musk oxen.

I remember that electric feeling of anticipation. Straddling my old man’s shoulders. I felt like I was flying.

We took our seats in the nosebleeds. The room smelled of popcorn and hotdogs. My father was working on a cup of beer and my mother was busy praying for his eternal soul.

Jerry Clower was onstage. There was a fiddler who tore it up. I think the announcer was Keith Bilbrey.

I remember exactly which pew we sat in. I remember standing through most of the performances, shaking my little butt to the steel-guitar solos. I remember I was wearing red courduroy overalls. My mother called me Dennis the Menace.…

Next week is the birthday of a dear friend. He looks pretty good for his age. He’ll be turning 189. Which makes him almost as old as Keith Richards.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, 1835, late November. It was colder than a witch’s underwire.

His mother was not expecting him. She wasn’t even close to being ready, so she tried to squeeze him back in. But it didn't work. And now we have “Huckleberry Finn.”

During childlabor, Halley’s comet was passing overhead. The comet frightened a lot of rural people, causing many to either pray in tongues or drink whiskey. Sam says that his mother did both during childbirth.

Sam was a lot of trouble as a kid. He was sickly. Nobody thought he’d make it past infancy. Being born premature in 1830s was no cakewalk. He was tiny. His complexion was pale.

“When I first saw him,” his mother recalled, “I could see no promise in him.”

But he was smart. And talented.

And he could lie incredibly well. The kid was such a good liar he received annual Christmas cards from Satan.

He got in trouble a lot. The best humans always do. He started smoking in elementary school. He skipped class so often his teachers sent flowers to his mother and asked when the funeral was.

He grew up in Hannibal. He spent his idle hours beside the Mississippi, catching catfish, sleeping in the sun, or making up stories. Although his highest aspiration was not to be a writer.

“When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.”

He apprenticed as a pilot at age 22. He became a steamboat captain. He learned every twist and bend of Old Man River. Every submerged log. Every snag, sandbar, and…