We walked into a packed Waffle House. All booths taken. Two cooks and two waitresses running offense.

“Let’s sit at the bar,” said Morgan.

Morgan is a 20-year-old UAB student. She is beautiful and slight. Her hair is violently red.

We sat on stools and looked at menus.

“Let’s split a waffle,” said Morgan.

There was an elderly couple at the bar beside us. You could tell they were married because they weren’t talking to each other.

Meanwhile, Morgan was swinging her legs on the stool and talking a blue streak.

She has spent the last few years in and out of the hospital. When she is in a hospital, she is not usually talkative. Usually, when I visit her hospital room, Morgan is too exhausted to talk.

But today she’s talking. Happily. Excitedly. Cheerfully. And I’m just trying to keep up as her conversation jumps topics.

“...And did you know dinosaurs were so big because there was WAY MORE oxygen back then, and…?”

“...In my sorority, one time we had this dance party where everyone had to dress up

like a…!”

“...Okay, there was this time in the car, and like, my friend was driving, and like, something just felt wrong, and guess what? We were driving the wrong way on the interstate, and…!”

Birmingham is her oyster. This city suits her. She is blossoming here like a hibiscus.

When I first met her, Morgan lived in Locust Fork—a town so small both city-limit signs are nailed to the same post. Birmingham is Morgan’s great adventure. She thrives on the energy of this city, the vitality of its people, and the rapture of afternoon gridlock on Highway 280.

The waitress brings our waffle.

“Will you cut the waffle for me?” she asks.

Morgan is paralyzed on one side of her body. She has blindness. She is diabetic. She has gastroparesis—meaning her intestines are paralyzed. She lives on TPN, which…

The year was 1939. The month was September. Only days after World War II broke out.

The woman was so moved to tears when she read the headlines of war in the papers. Her first thought was, “Another war?”

She was 59 years old. She’d already survived one World War in her lifetime. Now another? When was it going to stop? When were the men in suits going to quit playing chess by slaughtering the innocents?

They say she sat down and cried. Actually cried. Cried for all those people. For the horrors being committed. For all those young soldiers dying. For all those innocent families, wretchedly caught in a whirlwind not of their making.

The first thing the woman did was wipe her eyes and go into her office. She sat down and typed a letter. She had to stop typing a few times and dab the tears.

This is her letter:

Dear Friends—I have been following the news of the past few weeks with a heavy heart. I

know that the night is dark, and that the shadows are deep. But I also know that the sun is still there, and that the light is still stronger than the dark.

We are all blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to the truth of our own souls. The news may be bad, and the reports of world strife are indeed a sorrowful burden, but the spirit of man is good.

Let us not be discouraged by the reports of the world’s strife. Let us rather be the light that we wish to see. It is in times like these that we must hold fast to the belief that the wrong which seems so strong is but a passing shadow.

The real map of the world is not the one drawn in blood and boundaries; it is the one drawn in the hearts of those who still believe…

In 2012, Greg Thomas was diagnosed with cancer. Stage Four. He was sent home to get his affairs in order.

Against medical advice, Greg spent his dwindling energy on renovating a 150-year-old abandoned church. He spent entire days refinishing pews, scraping paint, or sanding floors.

After months of labor, Greg went for a follow-up exam. The tumors had vanished. The doctors called it “spontaneous remission.” Which is medical shorthand for “What the…?”

In 2004, a 60-year-old Japanese man named Shinshū Kōda was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. The abdominal tumor was the size of a softball.

Kōda refused chemo and retreated into meditation and prayer, sometimes for upwards of 12 hours at a time.

Months later, doctors found no tumors. The mass had liquefied. Doctors theorized this was due to a rise in Kōda’s interleukin-2 levels, immune system protein levels in the body associated with prayer. Nobody knows how these proteins work, or what they are exactly.

So, doctors called it “spontaneous remission.”

In 1986, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was in his mid-80s. On

a whim, he began a weekly tradition. Each Sunday, he would pass out crisp $1 bills to anyone who came to visit. He would give a blessing, then the dollar. Each recipient was supposed to give his or her dollar away to charity.

One day, a man visited Schneerson. The man was scheduled for high-risk heart surgery to repair a ruined valve. He was actually on his way to the hospital when he stopped to see the Rabbi.

Schneerson gave the man a dollar and told him, “The doctors are looking at the wrong map.”

One hour later, surgeons opened the man up. They found his cardiac valve wholly intact. Medical staffers checked the man’s identity bracelets, certain this was the wrong patient.

But no.

The scans which had been taken only two hours prior showed a destroyed valve. But new echocardiograms showed the valve had corrected…

With everything going on in the world, with all the wars, international conflicts, and high-stakes political maneuvers, I’m sure you’re all anxious to hear about what’s going on with the problem of legalized raccoon ownership in Tennessee.

Well, actually, a lot is happening. In the Sixteenth State, a new proposed legislation, sponsored by Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) and Representative Kip Capley (R-Summertown), would lift the permit fee currently required to own a pet raccoon.

Finally.

Personally, I can sleep better knowing that Tennessee’s lawmakers are FINALLY putting the people first.

Especially since Tennessee is one of the fastest growing states in the nation, with inflation hitting harder than most states. In the last five years, inflation has driven the cost of Tennessee housing up by $100 per month. In some regions it’s closer to $400. And that number is only growing.

Moreover, 87 percent of Tennesseans say their wages do not keep up with the cost of living. Almost 789,000 Tennesseans admit difficulty just maintaining proper housing and food security.

So

the raccoon bill comes at just the right time. The pressing problem of raccoon pet ownership has been ratified. I’m proud to say that as long as your raccoon was obtained from a legal source; has been vaccinated; is non-native to Tennessee; was not captured in the wild; and has a current possession permit issued by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, you’re good to go.

There are some other great laws in our nation worth mentioning.

Foremostly, there is the pickle law in Connecticut. This is real. State lawmakers banned soggy pickles by passing a law which says, “a brined cucumber cannot officially be called a pickle unless it bounces.”

This law was passed in 1948 after two pickle packers were arrested for packing expired pickles to the general public. A laboratory test was developed involving dropping pickles from a height of 12 inches. If the pickles don’t bounce,…

I’m in a hotel lobby. It’s breakfast. We are waiting in line for our gruel. Guests congregate around the coffee urn like puppies at the teat until they drain the urn and leave nothing but dregs for us tired, huddled masses.

The dining room is full. There are people everywhere.

A group of businessmen at a table, eating their “eggz.” They are talking with important-sounding voices, the way guys do when they’re en masse. Trying to establish who is alpha by public urination contest.

They’re talking about the eclipse.

“This eclipse is no big deal,” one guy says in a macho tone. “I’ve seen an eclipse before.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen dozens,” another guy says.

“Oh, yeah?” a guy adds. “Well, I used to watch eclipses every weekend, back when they used to play for Miami.”

There is a young family nearby. A mom, dad, and a few kids. One kid is wearing his glasses, looking at his mother.

“Mom, look!” he says. “I’m wearing my glasses!”

Mom does not even move. She is staring straight ahead, like maybe it’s been a long road trip.

“Mom, look! Mom, look!

Mom, look!”

The woman takes a sip of coffee. She does not look.

“Momlookmomlookmomlookmom…!”

There is an older couple. They are, evidently, in love. They can’t keep their hands off one another. The older woman is mid-70s, wearing cutoff shorts à la Daisy Duke, cut so high they are showing her her everlasting aspirations. The guy is wearing a tank top and it appears that his upper body hasn’t seen the sun since the early Carter Administration.

They are groping each other. They are kissing passionately while waiting in the serving line.

“They’re definitely not married,” says one elderly lady in line, using a walker.

“How can you tell?” I ask.

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see where he grabbed her?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been grabbed like that?”

“No.”

The old man was in Walmart. He was wearing pajama bottoms and an Eagles T-shirt. The band, not the football team.

He also wore slippers. I knew they were slippers because they were fuzzy and white. Ballcap, crumpled and stained with sweat and grime. He hadn’t shaved in a while. Gray stubble covered his cheeks and chin.

There were tattoos on his forearms. Not the new kind of fancy tats, multi-colored and expensive. These were a few grades below battleship tattoos. Crudely done. Almost like the inkwork inmates give themselves with guitar wire and BIC pens.

He wore an oxygen tank, contained in a fanny pack, strapped around his waist. A rubber cannula snaked from his pack, securely set beneath his nose.

The old man checked out at the self-checkout kiosk. He loaded his own plastic bags. The machine spit out his receipt. He grasped his aluminum cane and began shuffling toward the door to present his receipt to the receipt checker.

I remember

the days before receipt checkers. I remember the days before self-checkout kiosks, too. In fact, I remember a time, boys and girls, when—hard as this is to believe—you walked into a store and there was an ACTUAL person behind an ACTUAL cash register, who, after they rang you up, ACTUALLY told you to have a “blessed day.”

Those days are gone.

The old man, unsteady on his feet, walked toward the door. I was afraid he was going to fall. By the time he reached the yellow-vested sentry, he was teetering badly, on the brink of collapse.

He fell into the Walmart employee, holding the employee’s shoulders for support.

“God, I’m sorry,” the man said to the employee. “I’m so sorry.”

The man at the door looked like a manager of some sort. Maybe even a high-level guy, stuck working the door. He was well dressed. Pressed…

I was blue. I had just watched the news. Wars were raging. Bombs were dropping. People dying. All God’s children were bickering over the price of rice in China in the rain. And each onslaught of horror was only interrupted by pharmaceutical commercials which all tell you exactly how (a) this drug can save your life, and (b) this causes suicidal thoughts.

So there I was, approaching the pinto bean aisle when I met her. She was five years old, about three feet tall, following her mom’s buggy. She was Chatty Cathy.

“Hi,” she said.

Her face was cheerful. Her hair was dark, and her smile was catching. She wore a pink skirt and T-shirt. And draped around her neck was a gold medal.

“I have a gold medal,” she said, brandishing the medal.

“Really?” I said.

“I got it from gymnastics. Two years ago.”

“And you’re still wearing it?”

“Yes.”

The girl’s name was Evelyn, she said. Evelyn’s face was round and full. Her brown eyes were the size of washtubs.

“I got this medal in gymnastics for doing this. Watch…”

Whereupon Evelyn demonstrated

a dance position that can only be described as a cross between a ballerina’s second position and a pointing English Springer Spaniel.

“Hey, know what?” she said.

“What?”

“I get to play Mario Kart Rainbow Road.”

“What’s Mario Kart?”

“It’s a game. But I can’t play it very much because my brain is still developing and playing too many video games or being on computers makes my brain go like this…”

Evelyn then made a gesture not unlike a crazed Frankenstein’s monster who was short-circuiting in the pinto bean aisle.

“I like Mario Kart. I play it on Saturdays. The game has Mario and Luigi, they’re brothers, did you know that? I just learned that about them. All this time I didn’t know they were brothers. And Mario Kart has princesses, too. I will tell…

I have here a letter from Randy. “Sean,” the note begins—people are always calling me that. “Do you have any words of wisdom I can give to my son?

“My son, Jason, is getting married on Friday, and I am responsible for his wedding toast. I’d like some wisdom to pass on, the only problem is, I don’t have any.”

Well, Randy, I asked a handful of friends for words of wisdom from elders in their lives.

The rules were simple, the wisdom giver had to (a) be over 75, and (b) they had to be—technically—still alive. The deadline for submission was yesterday. The maxims and folk expressions came in from all over the US.

Here are some:

LINDA, 91—Being frugal doesn’t mean you have to be cheap. Being cheap doesn’t help anyone, and it takes the fun out of life. My late husband was so cheap he wouldn’t have paid a nickel to see Jesus riding a bicycle.

SIMON, 82—A lot of people are into fitness, and that’s great, I guess. But you can’t live longer, you can only

live deeper.

BEVA, 89—Happiness is a town halfway between Too Little and Too Much.

RITA, 83—American girls need to eat real food. Eat until you have to unbutton your pants now and then. Heavensake, there are girls on TV so skinny you can’t even see their shadow.

JERRY, 80—Being rich isn’t the same as being comfortable. My uncle was so rich, he bought a new boat every time the other one got wet. And he was miserable.

ROBYN, 78—Even if someone is ugly to you, don’t be ugly back.

DANNY, 91—This is a generation of workaholics. On the farm, we stopped work every day at three to enjoy our life. But young people today are busier than a cat covering crap on a marble floor. Slow down.

SAM, 88—Being humble don’t mean you ain’t got your pride. But a Rolls-Royce…

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. We confusedly type words…

My mother always told me to smile. Especially when I didn’t want to. She often told me to smile when I was sad, when trying on school clothes, or whenever I was forced to eat beef liver at gunpoint.

“Smile,” she’d say. “You have a lot to be thankful for, young man.”

A mother knows how her child is feeling by looking at their face. Are you in pain? Upset? Angry because your Little League team lost the opening game? Your mom knows. Because your face tells the story.

Turns out, you have 43 muscles in your face. Your face contains more muscles than any other body part. The only anatomical region coming close to having this many muscles is your back, which has 40 muscles, excluding the muscles of your bootyus maximus, which are the heaviest muscles in the body. This is totally true. Your buttocks, skin and muscle combined, weigh 33 pounds.

So, why is your face so muscled? Because. Your face was not just made for

photographs. Your face is a precise signaling system.

You can communicate entire paragraphs with only your face. It’s how you were designed. Don’t believe me? Try getting lost in a foreign country without cell service or a functioning GPS. By the end of the day, your face will be tired.

As it happens, the default mode of your face, according to research, is smiling. Recent studies discovered that we are born smiling. Doctors used 3D ultrasound technology to find that developing babies smile in the womb.

Once born, babies continue to smile. Even when crying, they are flexing their smile muscles. And babies keep smiling throughout childhood. A child smiles, on average, 400 times per day. Whereas the average adult smiles fewer than 20.

Something else researchers discovered is that a smile is catching. It’s called the “yawn effect.” Just seeing someone else smile stimulates your empathetic reflex system. If one…