“The world’s worse off than it’s ever been,” said the man at the truckstop.

He was a young man. Maybe 25. A truck driver.

It was lunchtime. He was eating chicken tenders, and dipping them in yellow mustard, so I questioned his judgment right off the bat.

“I don’t think this world is in trouble,” I replied.

He laughed. “Respectfully,” he said. “I disagree, dude.”

Meantime, the waitress was using a remote control to browse the news channels on a TV overhead. She stopped on a 24-hour news channel which broadcasted a train of unspeakable horrors. And when the reporters couldn’t find enough horrors to broadcast, they made some up.

“This world is falling apart,” said the man, running his chicken through more mustard. “You can’t change my mind, dude.”

Still, I wonder if the venerable dude at the counter, or the waitress, knows about Deputy Bussell in Johnson County, Kansas.

A few nights ago, Johnson County Sheriff’s officer Bussell pulled over a man for a traffic violation. After being stopped for speeding, a driver told the deputy he was

undergoing some “personal challenges.”

After Deputy Bussell addressed the reason for the stop, he offered the driver words of encouragement and made sure the motorist was okay.

Whereupon the motorist began crying. Not just a light cry. But a heavy one.

The motorist timidly asked the deputy, “Can I have a hug?”

The deputy thought about it.

“I need a hug,” the driver added. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I'm sorry.”

Then they hugged. Long and hard. When the driver had sucked the snot back into his nose, he thanked the officer.

“The men and women of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office come in contact with people every day who are going through their own battles,” the department said. “We strive to be compassionate while serving our community. This is our pledge to you.”

I also wonder if…

Tonight, I met with my friend Peter at his home in Birmingham, along with a few of his other friends. Mostly, people I didn’t know. There were nine of us, gathering for a very important meeting.

A prayer vigil.

When I arrived, Peter’s two dogs started barking loudly when I knocked on the door. One of them tried to commit an immoral act on my leg. The dog, not Peter.

The dog’s name was Moose. “Moose loves people,” Peter explained. “He just wants you to know how much he loves you.”

Moose does more than love me. He is trying to start a family with my shinbone.

A few of Peter’s friends were still in work clothes. One man was dressed in an auto mechanic’s uniform. Another woman was wearing veterinary scrubs.

I, myself, had just gotten off the road after nearly 11 days. But Peter said tonight was important, so here I am.

Peter is a former resident of Butler County, Pennsylvania. He tells me that there are some 200,000 people in Butler County,

and many of them are praying for one person.

Make that 200,009 people.

We are all praying for a 17-year-old named Mason Martin, a high-school quarterback who remains in critical condition.

A few nights ago, in Karns City, Pennsylvania, something tragic happened at a football game. Karns City High School was playing Redbank Valley High School. Redbank was opening a can of kick-butt on Karns City. The score was 35-6. Mason took a bad hit.

In the third quarter, referee Mike Vasbiner noticed Mason was staggering on the field.

“I had to talk to him, and when I asked if he was alright, he told me, ‘No.’ So that’s when I knew something was wrong.”

Mason is suffering a brain bleed and a collapsed lung. The boy collapsed on the field. The game was called off. And Mason was rushed to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in…

I am a child. My father is young, shirtless. My grandfather still has color to his hair, although there isn’t much hair left.

We are outside. It’s Labor Day weekend. So it’s the last days of summer. School is about to start again, and we children know we will once again belong to communist dictators known as schoolteachers.

My father is getting ready for the shindig at hand.

Daddy is the kind of guy who works hard for a living. I have no memories of him that do not involve denim, Budweiser, or profanity.

My grandfather is always followed by children and dogs. He fought in two wars. Was wounded once. He was leading a charge, and he extended his right arm and was yelling, “Charge!” A bullet bit him in the armpit.

He was in R-and-R in “Itlee.” Where an Italian woman thanked him for delivering her people from Mussolini, and gifted him a mandolin. He impressed her when he played “Turkey in the Straw” and “Soldier’s Joy.”

Together, Daddy and Granddaddy are digging

a shallow pit in the backyard, with shovels. They are scrawny, bare chested. They are three sheets to the wind. Maybe four.

The pit is the size of a grave. Except nobody has died. At least not yet. Although my mother has insinuated, several times, that if I don’t go outside to play, and get out of her way, the pit will be my eternal resting place.

The men line the newly dug pit with concrete blocks. Then, they start a fire inside it with p’cawn and hickree.

Party goers arrive. First, my aunt: a woman who is such a staunch Methodist; she has to take Metamucil just to stay alive.

Next, my uncle, who wears overhauls, and smells like Old Spice.

More people come. Most have kids with them. We children are turned loose, without supervision. These are our final days of summer, which…

Q: Sean, I was wondering what your views are on politics. Do you mind sharing them with us all, so we know where you stand?

A: My thoughts are: There is nothing more terrifying than waking up and realizing that your high-school class is now running the world.

Q: Hi Sean, I am writing to ask if you have any Italian in your lineage. I am Italian and my mom and I were wondering what your race is.

A: I am a mutt. My dog has a higher pedigree than I do.

Q: Sean, who are your literary heroes? If you have any, will you share them with us?

A: When I was younger, I delivered the newspaper with my mother every morning. We awoke at 2:30 a.m. and wrapped roughly six million newspapers. But before I started wrapping papers in rubber bands, I always read what Gary Larson had to say.

Q: Do you believe that all denominations will go to heaven?

A: When I was a kid, my Granny used to tell

me to be good, and always behave, otherwise, when the Lord returned, with the last trumpet call, I might be left here on earth with everyone else, while all the fundamentalists would be evacuated, in heaven, singing hymns all day long, and going to Eternal Sunday School.

“You don’t want to be left behind, do you?” my granny would ask.

“Well, someone’s got to do it,” I said.

Q: Seriously, Sean, what do you believe? Do Catholics and Baptists and such go to the same place?

A: I don’t know. I suppose I believe there will be different rooms in heaven. Sort of like high school. I believe Baptists will be in their own room, playing harps. I believe the Methodists will be in another room, having a grand potluck, and laughing. I believe the Episcopalians will have a cash bar.

Q: Speaking of cash, are…

My first gig was at an all-you-can-eat crab leg joint, in Florida, where I’m from. I was a boy. This was shortly after the close of the Civil War.

I owned a guitar, but that was as far as my musical talent went. Even so, my uncle asked me to play my little guitar alongside him at a joint where he played on Mondays.

So one night, he drove me to the seafood joint on the beach. We rode in his beat-up Ford Ranger, with its three mismatched tires, missing windshield, no passenger door, and a little hula girl on the dashboard who was missing her grass skirt. And her coconuts.

We pulled up. This place was an authentic Florida dive bar. The real thing, such as you cannot find in Florida anymore. They served seafood, yes. But they also served beer. They even had an authentic malfunctioning neon sign which read “COLD EER.”

My mother would have killed me if she’d known I was here. And I am not speaking figuratively, but worse.

Metaphorically. She would have brained me with a 1611 King James Bible and buried me in my christening gown.

My uncle shut off the truck. “Welcome to heaven,” he said.

“This is where we’re playing?”

“Si, señor.”

I asked my uncle what kinds of songs we were going to play.

He slapped my back and said, “The kind that earn tips.” The he smiled. “Watch and learn, son.”

It was your basic Florida seafood joint. Sandy parking lot. Big deck, constructed of rotting wood and rusted tetanus nails. Waitresses stood outside, puffing Virginia Slims. The dumpster smelled bad enough to affect the weather.

My uncle sidled up to the bar and ordered a “cold eer.” I ordered a chocolate milk.

Then, my uncle plugged in his guitar to the PA system, sat on a stool, and announced, grandly, to the joint that his nephew would be…

Dear God:

It’s been awhile since we last talked. And I know you’re busy. But I have something I’d like to ask, if you have a second.

Please—and I really mean this—let the kid I saw in Walmart play baseball this year. You know the kid I’m talking about. He was wearing a surgical mask. He is small and bony.

He’s not well.

I heard him ask his mother about playing baseball.

His mother answered, “The doctor says you gotta wait until you’re better, sweetie.”

“Please, Mom,” he said.

Listen, I know there are droughts, famines, wars, and one billion people suffering from pop country music. But that boy wants to play ball, God. He was almost begging.

Please. Just do some magic. Make his body work again. If you could just surprise him. That’s all I ask.

Also, bless every person who feels unloved. Bless each soul who feels alone. Bless the ones who feel overlooked. And thank you that the Atlanta Braves don’t suck this year.

Baseball, God. That’s what I’m getting at. You know how much it meant to me

over the years. After my father died, baseball is one of the things that kept me going.

A few more things: help Miss Bonnie. Her husband of forty-nine years was everything to her before he died. She’s a wreck. Look in on her if you get a chance.

Help Skittles, the dog, find an owner. She was found behind Piggly-Wiggly. But then, of course, you know the story already.

Thank you for cheese. What a great idea that was. And for my friends—even the ones I haven’t met yet.

Thanks for Daddy. I only knew him twelve years before he ended his own life, but I feel lucky to have known him at all. Some kids never know their fathers.

And for my mother, who raised us on a shoestring budget, without the help of her late…

Today I read an article my friend sent to me. The article was something that went viral on social media. When I finished reading it, I felt so bad that I had to take some Pepto-Bismol and lie down.

It was depressing. The writer complained about nearly everything. Politics, religion, pollution, crime, taxes, pesticides, SUV’s, pop stars, the price of gas.

And worse, thousands of people agreed that this world is a terrible place.

Well, who am I to say that it isn’t? Nobody, that’s who. Even so, all that reading left me asking myself an important question:

What about chocolate?

Can this world be all that bad as long as we have milk chocolate? Have you ever had a Hershey’s bar when it’s room temperature? It’s a little soft, and it tastes sweeter than a Gaither Homecoming DVD.

It’s hard not to believe that everything is going to be okay while you’re eating chocolate.

And how about pimento cheese? Has the writer ever tried homemade pimento cheese? If he hasn’t, he ought to. Today, my wife

just made a fresh batch. I took one bite and I started shaking my leg like Elvis at a revival.

What about daylilies? Or peonies? Or tulips? The colors of summer are almost overwhelming. A pink peony is reason enough to believe life is good.

And there are also the mystical things of life. Things so beautiful that they are hard to name because they are too vast, too immense, and too wistful. Namely, I am speaking of beer.

Have you ever tasted a Budweiser after spending an afternoon mowing your lawn? Mowing the lawn in the heat is brutal and will make even the strongest person weak. But suddenly, here comes your wife with a beer that’s cold enough to crack your teeth. She hands you a beer and you say “Thank you, sweetie. Thank you for mowing our lawn.”

How about…

Someone is impersonating me. This person has created a fake account using my name. They’re going around asking for money on Facebook. And worse: they’re using bad grammar.

And I just think that’s tacky.

For starters, I don’t ask for money. The last time I asked for money I was 16. I was trying to get to Miami Beach for spring break along with my friends Ed Lee and Tater Log.

We told our mothers we wanted to attend a very special Bible camp in Coconut Grove.

“Bible camp?” Tater Log’s mother remarked, doubtfully. “And does this Bible camp also have wet T-shirt contests?”

So we tried my mother next.

I asked Mama for a modest $1,200, which I thought was an honest estimate for travel expenses and gas. Mama laughed so hard she had to be calmed with buttered Saltines.

So anyway, my wife was the first to bring this Facebook scammer to my attention. She thought this person was hysterical. She located the imposter’s Facebook profile and howled with laughter.

“He isn’t even cute!” my wife

announced, cackling at the computer screen. “Look at his cheap haircut and that idiot grin.”

The impersonator, as it happens, is using my actual photo. And it’s a recent photo, too, which features my current haircut and my current grin.

Moreover, it turns out this hoaxer is trying to sweet talk innocent people into giving them personal information and account passwords.

Well, let me reassure you, publicly, I do not want your passwords. I can’t even remember my own passwords, and I have thousands. In fact, remembering all my passwords has become a full-time job.

Whenever my wife and I try to watch TV, for example, our streaming service requires us to re-enter our password each time.

And since I am the tech-guy in our house, it’s up to me to remember this password. At which point I have to don reading…

A nice car stalls in traffic. Horns honk. People shout. Traffic backs up for miles. In the front seat is an old woman.

Four Mexican men leap out of a nearby dilapidated minivan. They push the woman’s broken down vehicle from a busy intersection.

In the front seat is Jocelyn. A 73-year-old lady with cotton hair. When she is out of harm’s way, one of the men says something in broken English:

“Chew need a ride, ma’am? We can take you wherever chew wanna go.”

They drive her home, across town. She offers to pay for their gas. They decline. So she offers to feed them. They accept. They become lifelong friends. They visit often. They help repair her house. They mow her lawn. Compléteme gratis. She always reimburses them with food.

Years later, Jocelyn dies. At her funeral, Jocelyn’s daughter sees a group of unfamiliar Mexican men standing in the visitation line. She’s never met them. They tell her the story I just told you.

Next, meet Chase. He is middle-aged and clumsy. He has the

idea to repair his own roof one day. Bad idea. He climbs on the house while his wife is away. He loses his footing. He trips. The shrubs break his fall—and his leg.

A neighbor’s 14-year-old son sees the accident. The boy calls 911, then performs first-aid. The kid even rides to the hospital inside the ambulance with him. When Chase awakens, there is a boy sitting at his bedside, mumbling a prayer. Chase is confused.

“Who are you?”

“I called your wife,” says the tearful kid. “I found her number in your phone.”

That might not sound like a classic tale of heroism to you. But that boy is an adult now and he is an EMT. And also, he is one of Chase’s best friends.

There’s a girl. I’ll call her Karen. As a child, she was abused by her father.…