I was 5 years old. I was with my friends, loitering behind the Baptist church. We sat on the concrete retaining wall overlooking the creek bed. We were practicing our spitting.

Mark Anderson arrived in a rush, rosy-cheeked, struggling to catch his breath. He held a cookie tin in his hands.

“I got’em,” Mark said.

Mark opened the tin and distributed the precious contraband. We knew he’d risked his life to smuggle this delicacy across the frontlines of his mother’s kitchen.

They were orangish strips, seasoned with cayenne. I took one bite and my world exploded.

It was like looking directly into a leafblower. The entire universe opened in a singular moment of spiritual oneness. All of a sudden, the work of Brahms, Webern, and Bartók immediately made sense. Suddenly I understood 19th century French poetry. All at once I grasped the transitory nature of existence, although, technically, I was still at an age where I peed the bed.

“What are these?” a newcomer asked with a mouthful.

“These,” said Mark sagely, “are my mom’s cheese

straws.”

Cheese straws.

If you’ve never had cheese straws, I hope you get some this Christmas. They will blow your hair back. Imagine a crumbly, savory, buttery, floury concoction, baked with enough cheddar to turn your bowels into stone.

Mark Anderson’s mother delivered her cheese straws to our doorstep every Christmas season. Her straws would inspire fistfights within my household.

No sooner would her biscuit tin arrive than my old man would confiscate the container like a purse snatcher. My mother would cut him off at the backdoor, threatening to alter his anatomy with a melon baller.

One year my mother actually tried making cheese straws, but it was a disaster. Her straws came out like briquettes of Kingsford charcoal, only with less flavor. Because as it turns out, cheese straws are fragile things to prepare. Almost like a fine soufflé, or a batch…

Today I had a phone interview with a 6-year-old from Wyoming. The reason for this interview was because this boy has alleged magical powers. I had to get to the bottom of these claims.

Of course I was excited to meet someone possessing supernatural abilities. But if I’m being honest, I was more excited to meet someone from Wyoming. I’ve never met anyone from this state. I was beginning to wonder if Wyoming existed.

Have you ever seen satellite images of the United States at night? The photos show lights from major cities, stringing across North America like a giant glowing vascular system. There is always a huge dark spot over Wyoming.

This is because Wyoming only has 579,000 residents. And to give you an idea of how few that is: the Atlanta metro area has 6 million.

To put it another way: Wyoming is 97,914 square miles, but within the entire state there are only two escalators. This is absolutely true. They’re both located in the town of Casper, and they’re both in banks.

So it was important to investigate these magic claims. You can’t have 6-year-old Wyoming residents going around professing otherworldly capabilities. Next thing you know, you’ll have 6-year-olds in Michigan claiming Detroit has a professional baseball team.

This whole thing started last week when an ordinary 6-year-old boy learned that his uncle was going through a painful divorce. The boy became so concerned about his uncle that he told his mother he wanted to use his “magical powers” to make his uncle feel better.

“Magical powers?” his mother said. “What?”

The boy’s powers consisted of dictating a message to his mother who typed an email that read:

“You’re an awesome uncle and I love you so much because you’re the best! I’m thinking about you today!”

The uncle was so touched by this magic that he almost cried. Except that men from the Cowboy State don’t…

Carol was depressed. Long-term isolation does that to people. She has a compromised immune system, so she’s been isolating for about a year.

Lord, has it been that long already?

Her groceries come by delivery. Her dinners are microwavable. She watches a lot of TV. Many of her friendships have fallen by the wayside. So have activities like church, shopping, volunteering, holiday potlucks, and exchanging Christmas gifts.

So when Carol saw the furry creature on her porch last Monday night, it made her feel something warm inside. She felt a little less isolated. The kitten was tan-colored, curled beneath one of her porch chairs, meowing.

The irony here is that Carol is not a cat person. She normally dislikes cats. But then, this wasn’t a cat, was it? This was a friend.

She stooped to pick up the kitten. She fed it. She stroked its fur. It was an instant love connection. She told the cat there was one simple rule to be observed: no sleeping indoors. The animal was to sleep only in

the garage. But cats aren’t big on rules. So currently, each night the kitten sleeps on Carol’s forehead.

“I think this cat saved me,” she said. “My house isn’t empty anymore.”

Meanwhile, in Southern Illinois, Larry’s mother passed away. The funeral was socially distanced, only 11 people attended. The family took no chances with its elderly. People spaced themselves apart. The preacher wore a respirator.

After service, Larry was cleaning out his mother’s bedroom when he found boxes in her safe. They contained love letters between Larry’s mother and late father. Hundreds of them.

Each letter, written in perfect penmanship. Each one, using the poetic, flowery language that American lovers once used before they eventually discovered the lyrical qualities of, for example, the pile of poo emoji.

Larry read all the letters in order. He was able to recreate the entire romance between his parents. He…

MOUNT AIRY—It’s chilly in North Carolina. But not too bad. A light jacket will do. I am walking downtown. Hands in my pockets. It’s my birthday weekend.

I remember seeing Jack Lalane’s 70th birthday special on television. I’ll never forget it. He dove into the water of Long Beach Harbor, handcuffed and shackled, and towed 70 boats containing 70 passengers for almost two miles from the Queen’s Way Bridge to the Queen Mary.

Jack was always doing strongman stunts for his birthday to demonstrate that health and fitness wasn’t just a hobby, but good for TV ratings.

Which is why this year for my birthday, I’ve decided to follow this healthful tradition by doing something similar. Something I can really be proud of.

Namely, I will eat a fried pork chop sandwich.

In many ways, fried pork is far more dangerous than what Jack Lalane did. Ask any cardiologist and they’ll agree. Sure, towing 70 boats for a couple miles through treacherous waters is fine if you’re trying to impress your grandmother. But batter-fried

pork chops? This is for men who look death in the eye.

The particular pork chop sandwich I’m talking about is world famous. It comes from a cafe called the Snappy Lunch in downtown Mount Airy. The Snappy Lunch has been around for almost a hundred years, the building has been here even longer.

The place is a small nondescript storefront eatery. A Coca-Cola sign hangs out front beside an old-fashioned tin awning. There are a few antique cars parked on the curb. The restaurant sits at the rear of North Main Street. There is always a crowd huddled by the front window, and a long line.

They tell me visitors gather here almost daily to watch the grill-cook fry the pork chops. These are mostly tourists who come from all over the U.S. to visit this well-known little township. And if you don’t already know…

DEAR SEAN:

All I want this year is for this girl in my third period class to go on a date with me, but she’s way out of my league.

Please help,
FIFTEEN-AND-PATHETIC-IN-BIRMINGHAM

DEAR PATHETIC:

I’ll put this in the nicest way I can: If you’re asking me for advice, you are officially up the proverbial creek without a roll of toilet paper.

I am the last guy to ask. When I was fifteen, there was this girl named Chloe. I liked her. And I mean “liked” with a capital L. All I wanted was for Chloe to look longingly into my eyes and utter those few words every boy wants to here: “Let’s purchase real estate together.”

But I didn’t have a chance in twelve hells because I was—follow me closely here—an idiot. Certainly, I wanted to be the sort of guy who could approach a girl, but whenever I was in the same room with even one microgram of estrogen my IQ was reduced to that of a water-heater.

So I asked my older cousin Ed Lee

for advice. As it happened, Ed Lee had extensive experience with the opposite sex and had even talked to a girl once in first grade. His suggestion for getting Chloe’s attention was simple:

Let the air out of her mother’s tires.

My cousin’s actual idea was to slightly deflate Chloe’s mother’s tires. Then, when Chloe’s mother drove her to school, one of the tires would go flat. Once the tire flattened—I think you’re catching my drift here—my cousin and I would “happen to be cruising through the area” in my uncle’s 1972 Ford Country Squire station wagon. And we would be heroes.

We would pull over, stride to their car triumphantly, tell the ladies not to be afraid, then like the mechanical-expert beefcakes we were, we would call AAA Roadside Assistance.

Or even better, WE WOULD CHANGE THE TIRE. It…

I’m going to say this now: I’m proud of you. That’s it. You can stop reading here if you want. I know you’re busy. So take the kids to karate class, scrub your bathroom mirror, schedule a dentist appointment, wash your dog, live your life. Just know that I’m proud of you.

The thing is, I don’t think we tell each other how special we are. I don’t think people get enough handshakes, back-pats, or five-dollar beer pitchers.

So I’m proud of you. For not giving up. For eating breakfast. I’m proud of you for remembering to breathe. Really.

I’m also proud of Billy. He emailed me. He’s forty-nine. He’s been working in construction all his life, and he couldn’t read until three years ago.

His friend gave him reading lessons every morning on the ride to work. And on weekends. They practiced on lunch breaks.

Billy started with elementary school books. This year he read the Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

He reads aloud sometimes, during lunch break to the fellas. He said he’s been practiced reading the same stories so many times, he’s almost memorized

them.

I’m proud of Leona, who had the courage to check into addiction rehab last week. She’s a young woman, and she needs someone to be proud of her. So I guess I’ll have to do.

I’m proud of her aunt, too—who is helping to raise Leona’s daughter with Down’s syndrome.

And Michael, who just asked Jessica to marry him yesterday—on Christmas morning. He squatted down onto one knee in front of seventeen family members, one woman, and her three children.

He gave Jessica and each of her children a ring.

He said, “Will you be my everything, forever and always?”

Jessica’s oldest—Brooke, age 11—got so excited she blurted an answer before anyone else.

“YESYESYESYES!” Brooke said.

I’m proud of Boyd, who got his first job as an electrician. And Lawrence, for…

It’s Christmas night, I am thumbing through some old college essays I wrote for English class long ago. Oh boy. These are truly god-awful.

When I first seriously began writing it was during my community college years. All eleven of them. My English teacher read one of my early papers and paid me a compliment by saying, “This paper is terrible.”

“Ma’am?”

“This essay, it’s WAY too polished, Sean. There are NO mistakes in it. Where are the mistakes?”

“I don’t understand, ma’am.”

“I WANT you to make mistakes, Sean. I don’t want perfect papers, why would I want perfect papers?”

I was starting to think this woman had suffered a minor neurological event. A stroke perhaps. I expected to see Allen Funt walk from the back room with a TV crew and shout, “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!”

She went onto say, “Write how you talk, and don’t be afraid to be messy, make a lot of mistakes.”

So I rewrote my story for this woman. An essay which was supposed to be about childhood.

I wrote about my first bicycle. I was six or seven when I first attempted to ride a bike. My father’s idea of teaching me to ride a bicycle was:

1. Place me on a bike.
2. Drink beer.

Before he let go of my bike my father reminded me “DO NOT TURN LEFT!” Because we were on top of a hill. On the left was a valley that looked like the sloping descent of Mount Vesuvius. And of course, anyone who is familiar with situational comedy already knows what happened next.

I veered left. And instead of learning to ride a bike, I learned how to roll down 3700 feet of treacherous rocks and I lost forty teeth.

After that, I was big-time scared of bikes. Sometimes, I would even wake up late at night to check beneath my bed for bicycles.…

It is only seven hours until Christmas. I am buying a last-minute present for my wife. And apparently I am not alone.

There are males all over this store, crawling on top of each other like hungry grizzly bears. Some men grasp for last-minute gifts in such desperation that they don’t even know which items they’re carrying to the cashier.

I overhear a conversation between a man and his teenage son in the checkout lane:

SON: Dad, I think you grabbed the wrong box.

DAD: What do you mean? This is a robot vacuum for your mom.

SON: That’s a deep fryer.

DAD: Well I’ll be a [non-family-friendly word].

While I wait in line, I read a magazine article entitled “The War on Christmas.” The article is about whether it’s culturally correct to say “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy holidays.” And don’t even get the article started on “God bless you.”

As it happens, most of the article’s multicultural experts say that these holiday phrases are non-offensive just as long as you never say them, write them, read them, or think them.

Another expert

recommends using neutral alternative Christmas greetings in public such as, “Merry winter,” or, “Happy Solstice,” or “Here’s my wallet, ma’am, please don’t be offended.” So in other words,—and this is a classic example of today’s journalism—huh?

So I put the magazine down.

You should see the males in this store. They are going totally ape for gifts. There are hundreds of men elbowing each other, racing, panicking, and in some cases, biting.

An older man in my checkout line says, “This is madness, isn’t it?”

I smile at him and answer “Merry Solstice, sir.”

He frowns. “Merry what?”

He’s a nice guy. Tall. White hair. Slender. We have a conversation. He tells me his wife died six years ago. They were supposed to retire and do some intensive traveling in an RV. But ever since she died,…

I am at my sister’s house. Our families are having an early Christmas. Kids are running around barefoot. Music is playing. Family pictures are everywhere. Chocolates. Cookies. Meatballs. My mother roasted some some nuts. My wife cooked fifty pounds of egg casserole.

I see an old picture of myself on a side table. I am maybe four years old in the photo. God, I looked like a little goober. Thankfully, I am all grown up now and have blossomed into a much bigger goober.

On my sister’s Christmas tree hangs a homemade ornament. I made this ornament when I was in preschool. My mother sees me looking at it. She smiles because she is happy to have her family in one place today.

She says, “My cup runneth over.”

Which is a cheesy phrase I never really understood. When someone says this, it means they’re supposedly happy. But if my cup were runnething all over the place, I’d tell the bartender to bring me a new one.

I remember the first Christmas after my

father died when I was a child. There were no overflowing cups. Nobody felt like celebrating. Still, somehow my mother managed to put up a tree.

This felt pointless. Why? That was my main question. Who gave a rip about Christmas when we weren’t sure what was going to happen to our family? My father had just removed himself from the world. We were a local charity case.

Don’t get me wrong, people are very nice when you go through something bad. But people can only be so nice without getting weird. After a while, you’re tired of weird people.

All you want is for everything to go back to the way it was. You want your dead father to burst through the door and say, “Surprise! I’m alive! It was all a joke!”

But getting back to my story. On this particular Christmas, my mother…

About twenty years ago, Luís wanted a miracle at Christmas. He wanted Jessica to fall in love with him. The only problem was, in Luís’s own words:

“I was a big dork.”

Hey, it happens to the best of us. Many of us spend half our lives being dorks. Though Luís believes he was a dork simply because when it came to ideas for winning Jessica he had none.

Luís was Jessica’s friend. They weren’t close, but they were casual pals. Sometimes he would give her rides home after work. He took her out to the movies occasionally, but that was pretty much it.

“Somehow,” says Luís, “I felt like I had become her brother. I was stuck in the friend zone.”

This is not uncommon for people whose DNA comes from Dorkish descent. Luís was experiencing what many of us dorks have suffered before. Namely, Luís wanted Jessica to see him the way many women might see George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio. Instead, she viewed him as Norm from “Cheers.”

But everyone has to start somewhere. So that’s what Luís did. He developed a plan.

This romantic plan was called “Operation Woo Her.”

Luís’s thinking was: “Hey, if I’m gonna ask Jessica to be my girlfriend, I’m gonna go all out. If I fail, I’m failing BIG TIME.”

It was a plan of dork-like proportions, a little juvenile, very off-the-wall, but romantic nonetheless. Here was his plan:

Late one night, Luís would arrive on Jessica’s lawn with a mariachi band. He would sing a Spanish song until either his lungs popped or Jessica agreed to bear his children. I asked Luís where he got this level headed idea.

“My mom is Mexican,” he said.

Luís goes on, “All the leading guys on her Mexican soap operas sing to girls outside their windows, and it always works on TV.”

Always.

The only problem was—and this was just a minor issue—Luís…