Dear Young Writers,

You know who you are. You’re reading this on your phone, computer, tablet, or maybe a soggy newspaper you found in a gutter.

Maybe you’re in college or in high school. Maybe you’re a middle-schooler with a munificently grandiose vocabulary.

Either way, you’re a writer. And you know you’re a writer, deep inside. So I’m writing you. Because you’re confused. You don’t know what you’re doing with your life. You’re embarrassed to talk about who you are.

Writers are viewed as oddballs in our American culture. And it’s a shame because it’s not this way everywhere.

In Europe, for example, if you tell someone you’re a writer, the Europeans get dreamy eyed and converse about “War and Peace” and “The Brothers Karamazov.”

But in America, when you tell someone you want to be a novelist, they look at you as though you have just broken wind in a school board meeting. To many people, wanting to be a writer is like wanting to be an astronaut.

Thus, I am going to share with

you a few thoughts about the field of professional writing. Things many writers don’t want you to know. Such as, how to find a complete three-course dinner by rummaging through the municipal garbage.

Because, you see, professional writers are sort of like stage magicians. It’s all an act. These “magicians” continually try to pull literary rabbits out of their hats. Only, instead of calling them “rabbits,” they obsess over whether they should use the word “bunnies,” “hares,” “cottontails,” “lagomorphs,” or in extreme cases, “chinchillas.”

Thus, the first thing I can tell you about writers is that none of us know what the hellfire we’re doing.

I don’t want to generalize, but this is true for every single writer alive. Don’t trust any author who says they know what they’re doing. They are full of chinchilla.

Writers are not nuclear engineers.…

A few years ago. I met her in a hospital room. I arrived early, with my Scrabble game in tow.

I’ve owned this particular game board since my youth. My mother owned it before me. Her mother before her. This game is older than Methusala’s fixed-arm mortgage. The date on the box is 1949. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

I come from word-people. My grandmother was a voracious reader. My mother read Michener novels the same way some people pop Tic Tacs.

Often, in my family, we played Scrabble for money. Meaning, if you were to play Scrabble against the women in my household, you would have quickly found yourself humiliated, in financial debt and—in many circumstances—naked.

I knocked on the hospital room door. The girl was lying in a bed. She was 16 and lovely. Her head was bald. Her body was weak and lean. I’ll call her Ariel.

She began suffering from headaches a few days after her 16th birthday. It was glioblastoma. The prognosis was bad.

“She’s good at Scrabble,” her mother told

me in an email. “She read in one of your columns that you liked Scrabble, too. She would love to play a game with you.”

So I brought my game board.

But here’s the thing. In 20-odd years, I had never been beaten at Scrabble. Except once. And it was my wife who beat me.

Don’t mistake me. I’m not saying I’m “good,” per se. I’m only saying that, in many circles, I am a legend.

I set up the board. The girl opened with “cosmic.” A 24-pointer, and she used almost all her letters. Not a bad beginning.

“Your turn,” said Ariel.

Everyone thinks Scrabble is about large words and triple-word scores. Not true. The trick to the game lies in the two-letter words. Words like: “Aa,” “oe,” “id” “ka” and “xu.” You lay an “xu” down in just the right…

Dear Kid,

Don’t grow up. Don’t turn into an adult. That’s my advice. Resist adulthood. Be a kid forever.

Right now, a lot of adults are angry in America. To be fair, we have a lot to be angry about. But adults can behave badly when they are angry. So please forgive us.

Because the truth is—and I shouldn’t be telling you this—adults can be pretty stupid.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean we’re “stupid” in a negative sense. Truly, I don’t. After all, just because someone is stupid doesn’t mean you can’t love them. Take dogs. Dogs can be very unsmart, but we still love them. Hallmark Channel movies can be ingloriously stupid, but they are also wonderful.

Still, this doesn’t change the fact that we adult humans are, in fact, giant dipsticks. The problem is, of course, that we adults think we are brilliant.

Oh, sure, our species occasionally does some brilliant things. Beer is only one example. Humankind has also, for instance, learned to manufacture smartphones with touchscreens capable of flushing our toilets

from outer space.

But this doesn’t make us smart. Because we still don’t know how to listen. We don’t empathize. And even though our parents taught us, we still don’t know how to share.

You know what we DO know how to do?

We know how to kill each other. Again, I’m not being pessimistic. This is just a fact. We are among the only mammals who kill one another.

Tigers do not kill tigers. Squirrels don’t kill squirrels. When was the last time you saw cows killing each other?

But look at history. The Punic Wars in (164 B.C.), 2 million killed. The Jewish-Roman Wars, (66 A.D.) another 2 million. The Crusades (1095-1229) 3 million.

The Mongol Invasions, 40 million. The Conquests of Timur, 20 million. Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire, 2.5 million. Spanish Conquest of the Incan…

Tonight, I am in a band. I am only a guest musician. But the guys on stage are my friends.

It’s a great night. Bright lights are shining in my face. There are happy people in the audience. And I can’t think of many things I love more than playing music with my friends. I am playing piano.

There’s an old saying about bands. The quickest way to get the band to sound good is to shoot the piano player.

Old joke. One I’ve heard many times. But then, I’ve heard them all throughout the years.

Q: What do you call a piano player without a girlfriend?

A: Homeless.

Q: What do you throw to a drowning piano player?

A: His piano stool.

I’ve been playing piano since age 9. The way I started playing piano was, my father bought an old spinet from the classified section.

One December afternoon, Daddy and three of his fellow ironworkers hauled the piano into our home and put the instrument into our dank basement, just beside the water heater, beneath

the framed embroidery which read:

“Watch ye therefore: ye know not when the master of the house cometh.”

My father bribed his friends to help him move this piano by paying them with beer. His friends were feeling no pain. As a result, by the time the piano got to the basement, the thing looked as though it had fallen down three flights of stairs. Because, of course, it had.

But it sounded great. I was over the moon to have MY VERY OWN PIANO.

Mama asked Daddy whether he was going to buy me piano lessons. He replied, “If the boy wants to play bad enough, he’ll play.”

Because that was the old-school way. It was an “if you build it they will come” sort of mentality. Daddy supplied the piano, it was up to me to do the rest.

So…

Don’t shoot the messenger. But in America, one third of children have never handwritten a letter.

And it’s not just kids. Nearly 40 percent of adult Americans haven’t written a letter in the last five years, while 43 percent of Millenials have never sent one in their lifetime. Whereas recent studies show that Generation Z can’t read cursive and has no idea what the heck Grandma’s letters say.

The New York Times says that “The age of proper correspondence writing has ended…”

“Letter writing is an endangered art,” The Atlantic said.

“The death knell of written correspondence has been sounding for years,” said the Chicago Tribune.

This is not new information, of course, unless you’ve been living underneath a slab of granite. Letters have been replaced by emails and texts.

But texts and emails are not letters. An email has no charm. A text message does not not feel private. You cannot smell the paper. You cannot feel the weight of stationary in your

hands. An email is temporary. An email will only last as long as your device is charged.

Fact: Around 92 percent of working Americans feel anxiety when they see an unread email in their inbox.

But a letter. A letter is real. A letter exists in physical space. A letter will not disappear unless you burn it.

There are letters that still exist from 500 BC. Letters from early Romans. Letters from kings and queens. Letters from soldiers in the American Revolution.

A letter is artwork. It is culture. It is language. A letter represents years of handwriting practice in Mrs. Burns penmanship class, as she peered over her cat eye glasses at you, barbarically swatting a ruler in her open palm.

A letter is a moment of time. It is rewrites, spelling corrections, merciless editing, and the act of keeping one’s lines straight.

You can…

Red Mountain Park is cool. Especially if you’re blind. Namely because they have a sensory trail, which is an offshoot from the main trail at the park, specially designed for hikers with disabilities. Such as hearing disabilities, vision disabilities, or for those using wheelchairs.

The sensory trail terrain is compacted, but not paved. Free of roots and boulders, but still rocky enough to be considered a REAL trail and not an imitation. Meaning, you’re REALLY hiking.

The trail is lined with ropes, on both sides. So if you are blind, you can use the guideline and find your way along independently.

The trail was designed and constructed by Birmingham Eagle Scouts. And I wish these young Scouts knew how much their hard work means to a 12-year-old little girl who is blind.

And so it was, one beautiful Friday afternoon, the aforementioned 12-year-old and I came upon the sensory trail.

Becca, the 12-year-old, and I have been hiking a lot lately. Our normal system of hiking

is simple. She grasps a five-foot rope which is attached to my backpack, keeping tension on the rope so she can feel which direction I am going. She follows that direction, using her white cane as a kind of modified walking stick.

But when we came upon the sensory trail, everything changed.

“What’s a sensory trail?” she said reverently.

So I told her.

Her mouth dropped open. “You mean they HAVE things like that?”

“Apparently so,” I said.

We walked the trail, Becca held the guidelines. Her face was alight with ten thousand smiles.

“I can’t believe I’m hiking on my OWN!” she said. Her little voice reverberated throughout the woods. Birds flitted away from us. People were staring.

“Look at me!” she said. “I’m hiking by myself!” She was practically running. At times, she was singing even though we were not…

DEAR SEAN:

Hi. I am 9 years old and I have always wanted to meet you because my mom has been reading me your stories since I was little. Can we meet? Can I be in your truck and see your dogs? I’m a nice girl and smart and I have a pet turtle named Milton and I am learning to play ukulele. I am good in school, especially P.E. My hair is brown. Are you a big talker because I am. I love macaroni and cheese, what do you like? Will you write me back? I know you’re busy, but my dad died just like yours did. So we are really simular.

Thank you,
WAITING-FOR-YOUR-REPLY-IN-PHILADELPHIA

DEAR PHILADELPHIA:

I would love to meet you. You are welcome to come for a ride in my truck provided you (a) bring a parent, and (b) have had all your shots. A little about me:

I am middle aged, goofy, and not super smart. My hair is red.

I was never very good in P.E.,

which my generation did not call “P.E.” We called it “gym” because that’s the location where it took place. The gymnasium.

Our gym teacher was a part-time middle-school football coach and a part-time heavy equipment operator who often forced us to do the same activities that inmates are compelled to do in prison camps. Such as dodgeball, tight-rope walking, or climbing the 100-foot rope. Which is an archaic form of torture, especially for kids who were deemed “overweight.”

Which I was. I was a chubby child. Being chubby and having red hair at the same time is like having a bullseye tattooed on your buttocks.

So whenever I climbed the 100-foot rope—also known as the Rope of Death—I was only able to climb about three feet off the ground before I gave up and let go and fell belly-first onto the flimsy wrestling mat, which was a…

You were a friend. And I’ll miss you. You were sort of my writing partner.

Just yesterday morning, you were entwining your little body around my feet while I was working on a writing project. I was sitting on my porch, laptop balanced on my lap, and there you were. We often wrote together.

Your method of getting affection was simple. You’d slip past me, just out of reach. And it was only when I quit paying attention to you that you’d wander back casually, cautiously, and lay at my feet. You’d stay there all day as I tapped away.

Your ears were mangled. Your tail was chewed up. I could tell you were scrappy. But I always got the impression that you were gentle at heart, and you seemed to know something about the nature of reality that I didn’t.

You weren’t mine. You belonged to Mister Bud, our next-door neighbor. The old man who loved you. He lives alone, and you two were the best of friends. You were always at his side. You followed him

everywhere.

But in a way, you sort of belonged to the whole neighborhood.

The thing I remember most about you was how you were always here to greet those who came and went. You sat right in the middle of the street. That was your perpetual spot. The middle of the street. Watching cars.

I’ve seen you there at midnight, beneath the streetlamp, as the taxi dropped me off after a late flight in from New York.

“Uh, there’s a cat in your street,” said my Uber driver. “He’s blocking my way.”

“It’s only Cat,” I’d say.

That was your name. I don’t know how Mister Bud started calling you Cat, but the name stuck. We all called you that.

I got home today around lunchtime to find a police vehicle in our neighborhood, along with an animal control vehicle. All the…

I have a thing for Norman Rockwell. When I was a kid, I collected Rockwell memorabilia in the form of calendars, picture books, and posters. I clipped illustrations from books and plastered them upon my bedroom walls.

I have a few favorites.

“Shuffleton’s Barber Shop” (1950). A group of old men playing music in a barbershop. Everyone is smiling. Someone’s sawing a fiddle. Classic.

“The Runaway” (1958). A cop sits in a diner alongside a little boy carrying a hobo’s bindle. They’re on stools. You just know the cop is urging the kid to go back home.

“Saying Grace” (1951). A crowded restaurant, a big industrial city, maybe Pittsburgh. A mother and son. They sit at a table. People in the restaurant are gawking at the mother and son because Mama’s hands are folded and the boy’s head is bowed.

Every time I start thinking about this painting I feel something. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because Norman saw the world differently than most. He found his masterworks in the commonplace.

Still, I always wondered whether Norman Rockwell’s depictions of a

benevolent America were true. Can human beings really be as kind as they are in his universe?

Early on, I decided the answer was no. When I was a kid, I did not believe people were THAT nice. Life was not THAT charming. For crying out loud, read the news. Everyone on this planet wants to either get rich or kill each other trying.

I was a young man when the Rockwell exhibit passed through Birmingham. I had never seen a Rockwell painting up close. When I heard the exhibit would be closeby, I had to go.

I called in sick for work.

“What do you mean you’re sick?” screamed my boss. “You don’t sound sick.”

“It’s a gallstone.”

“A gallstone?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because my galls hurt.”

I packed a backpack. I fixed peanut butter…