I was an older college student. Early 30s. Bad at math. A dropout, going back to get his degree. I sat in the back rows, with plumbers and Hooters waitresses. I had fun.

As an older student, most professors were part of my peer group. Many teachers had attended the same wild high-school parties I did. Most of which I can’t remember.

But there was one teacher who was different.

She was older. Past retirement age. She was small. White hair. Skin like tissue paper. And in an era when female professors wore T-shirts, she wore tweed skirts.

Between classes, she smoked Marlboro Lights and read books. I often hung out with her on her breaks, because I liked the way she saw the world.

She introduced me to O. Henry, Jane Austen, and Victor Frankl. The woman loved the written word. She told me to read Robert Frost. Nobody ever told me to read Robert Frost.

Once upon a time, she wanted to be a writer. But being a writer is hard business.

It’s not about skill, or depth of prose. It’s about your marketing department.

So she stuck with teaching.

For one class, we were supposed to write an essay about our hero. I am not an experienced man, I don’t have many heroes. So I chose her. The unassuming woman, who could have been great, but chose to make other people greater.

She chose to teach night classes to raggedy adults with full-time jobs. She chose a life of anonymity. I didn’t know much about her, so I drew on what I knew from her lectures.

She was born in the Dismal ‘30s. Her daddy (“deadie”) walked five miles to a factory to support a big family. She attended school in a two-room schoolhouse. One room was a classroom. One was a bathroom with a broken toilet.

There were no college graduates in her family. But her…

My granddaddy said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat a dog. Someone who treats a dog badly, is a bad person. A person who treats a dog with regard and deference is a good egg.

Right now, my wife is holding our blind coonhound, Marigold. She holds our rescue adoptee like a baby. Not like a dog.

Marigold’s face was struck with a blunt object. Her optic nerve scarred over. She lost her vision. The doctor removed one eye. 

“What probably happened,” the vet said, “is that someone paid a lot of money for this hunting dog, but Marigold turned out to be gun shy.” 

Her abuser wasn’t happy about shelling out thousands of bucks for a dog who doesn’t like noise. So he took his frustration out on the animal. He used a hard object. Perhaps the butt of a rifle. 

My wife is softly humming to Marigold. “I love you,” she is quietly singing to the animal.

We’ve had our dog several years now. Life with

a blind dog was tricky at first. Not like having a regular dog at all. When we feed Marigold treats, for example, you have to touch her to let her know you’re near. Then, Marigold simply opens her mouth widely, gyrating her head back and forth. 

“I don’t know where you are,” she’s saying, “but I’m opening my mouth to make it easier for you.”

Marigold’s internal schedule is all screwed up, too, because blind dogs can’t sense light or darkness. So they have no idea what time it is. Sometimes Marigold wakes up at 1 a.m. and starts licking my face. And I start cussing and I say, “Please go back to bed.” Whereupon Marigold barks with glee. Because there is nothing half as fun as 1 a.m.

But, we love this animal. Namely, because we don’t have kids. As a result, my wife…

Dear Lynn,

It’s weird. Weird knowing that you won’t be reading this today. You always read my stuff. It’s how we met. Which only raises questions about your taste in literature.

Directly after you’d read my stuff, you’d email me. You did this nearly every day. For many years.

Your emails were updates on your life. You told me about places you visited. Foods you ate. Ideas you had. About the thousands of medical appointments you endured. About the throngs of doctors in your life. About your hospital stays.

Those emails became part of my daily routine. Jamie and I both read them. Daily. We’d get a little worried whenever we didn’t hear from you for a few days.

The first time you and I actually hung out, we went to see George “Goober” Lindsey’s grave. You, me, and Jamie. It was a big roadtrip. Jamie drove the van. You sat in the passenger seat, navigating. I was in the back seat, providing the helpful service of

eating Chili Cheese Fritos.

The next time we hung out, we went to the ACTUAL Mayberry. We visited Mount Airy, North Carolina, for an Andy Griffith Rerun Watcher’s Club reunion. We spent the weekend together, watching reruns, at the Mayberry Motor Inn, along with hundreds of fellow Andy fans from around the US, who are all—and I mean this with all sincerity—clinically insane.

One time, you went to Waffle House with Jamie. The waitress thought Jamie was your date. You blushed like a schoolkid. You invited us to Thanksgiving. You were always checking up on us.

You came to many of my shows. You heard my jokes over and again. I don’t know how you weren’t sick of me. I’m sick of me.

You sat front and center the first time I played the Grand Ole Opry. I took the stage, and I could…

It was an average weeknight in Birmingham when I stood atop the Vulcan statue. Snow on the ground. I was looking at the city below, standing beneath Vulcan’s massive butt cheeks.

From atop the monument, I looked at my little town, laid out before me like a quiltwork of lights and streets. There was a young couple touring the statue at the same time I was. They were maybe 19. The boy was very affectionate with her, but she didn’t seem that into him.

“I love you, darling,” the boy kept saying.

“What time is it?” she kept saying.

I leaned on the guardrail and watched 1.11 million folks beneath me, buzzing like ants in an anthill. And I wondered what they were all doing inside their little homes down there.

Were they happy? Or were they all too busy running around to figure out whether they were or weren’t? Do these people watch reality television? If so, why?

Also, why do Americans fill up their garages with worthless junk, but park expensive

cars in their driveways? Why do hotdogs come in packs of 10, but buns come in packs of eight?

Some questions will never be answered.

Vulcan’s statue stands at 180 feet tall, altogether. He stands atop a pedestal high above Magic City. You can see him from all over town.

He is the Roman and Greek God of fire and the forge. Which is why the statue is made entirely of cast iron. This is also why he is butt naked. He is the largest metal statue made in the United States, which makes his buttocks the size of a small subtropical continent. 

When I first moved to Birmingham, friends all kept asking me, “Why Birmingham? What’s so special about Birmingham?”

At first I didn’t know how to answer them. Because I can’t explain it. Whenever people move to a new city, they usually choose a place…

Newspapers have a smell. If you’re lucky enough to find a physical newspaper in our digital world, you’ll notice the smell first. Fresh newsprint paper. SoySeal ink. Still warm. It’s a unique scent.

I grew up throwing newspapers. Not on a bicycle. My mother and I threw newspapers, riding in her beat up Nissan. We threw papers every day of the week. Weekends. Holidays. Rainy weather. Snow. Thanksgiving. Christmas Eve.

Our mornings went as such:

We awoke at 2:30 a.m. We arrived at West Marine at 3. Whereupon a delivery truck would pull up, carrying a pallet of the “Northwest Florida Daily News.” The pallet was about the size of an average Hardee’s.

Then, Mama and I would hole up in her car, wrapping newspapers while eating breakfast. Usually, Pop Tarts, or ham sandwiches.

Wrapping was the hardest part. You had to roll each paper into a tight tube. Then you shoved the paper into a tubular plastic sleeve which was about the same circumference as a No. 2 pencil.

Once a newspaper was wrapped,

you tossed it into the backseat, where your kid sister sat. She had pigtails. She was busily wrapping newspapers of her own.

Your hands would look like a coal miner’s.

There’s not much on the radio at 3 in the morning. But if you didn’t mind AM, you could listen to classic reruns of Paul Harvey. We were big Paul Harvey fans.

When we finished, the backseat was so weighted with newspapers, the rear axel sagged against the pavement, shooting sparks into the night at full speed.

My sister rode in back, buried in rolled-up newspapers. I rode up front, reciting the current list of subscribers.

And this is where the real work began. We all had roles. Mama was pilot. Kid Sister was munitions. I was tail gunner.

I would crank down the window and throw newspapers across Northwest Florida. We delivered several hundred…

The transmission of her car has given out. Every day, she hitches a ride to work because she is broke.

She works hard. Too hard. And when she’s not cooking in the kitchen of the medical rehab, delivering trays to patients, she’s a full-time single mother.

Sometimes, her kids visit her at work. They get thirty minutes for supper. Her breaks are never long enough.

The strain of day-to-day living is wearing her thin. She is overworked, underpaid, vehicle-less.

One day, she meets a patient. An old man.

In the three months he’s been in rehab, nobody has seen him move or speak. Most days, he faces the window with his jaw slung open. Empty eyes.

She’s delivering food to his room. Her emotions get the best of her. She collapses on a chair and has a meltdown.

She bawls because life is unfair. Because a busted car sits in her driveway and she can’t afford to have a mechanic look at it.

The old man stirs in his wheelchair.

His facial muscles move. And in a few moments, he looks like a man who’s

never suffered a traumatic brain injury.

He stares straight at her. His eyes sparkle.

And in a voice as clear as a bell he says, “God sees you.”

Then.

His face goes slack. His eyes become hollow. His mouth falls open, he begins to drool again.

All day, she thinks about him and his words. In fact, she thinks about it so much she can’t sleep.

The next day, she’s delivering food again. She speaks to him.

He doesn’t answer. He is completely unalert. So, she tells a few knock-knock jokes.

His face cracks a slight grin.

It moves her so much that she hugs him until she is crying into his chest. She tells more jokes.

She eventually gets a strained laugh out of him.

Then, he surprises her. He hugs her with rigid…

Birmingham. I met the old woman for coffee. She was small and slight, with a mane of white. She spoke with a thick Latin accent.

“I have a story for you,” she said.

I’m a sucker for a good story.

She worked three or four jobs. Sometimes more. She cleaned hotel rooms. She worked as a seamstress. She worked on construction crews. She was a dishwasher at a little restaurant. She was a house painter. The worst job she ever had, however, was working with a plumber. She dug ditches. Literally.

“I was not so very happy digging the ditches.”

No kidding.

Her lowest point came when her ‘83 Toyota gave out. It was the day of her son’s 12th birthday. She had been picking up extra gigs lately so she could afford a birthday present for her boy.

This meant she was working more hours. Which meant she was never home for more than 10 minutes at a time. She got used to sleeping in her car. “It was no so much fun.”

One

day, the woman was on her way to a cleaning gig. Her car sputtered and stopped on the side of the highway. It was rush hour. And her car was deader than disco. She sat in her front seat crying. This was in an age before cell phones.

The woman stepped out of her car and looked heavenward. “Don’t do this to me,” she said in Español, as cars whizzed past her by the dozen.

If you’ve ever had an automotive crisis, you know how many highway vehicles pass you by. Hundreds. Thousands even. Motorists will lock eyes with you from behind windshields, smile curtly, then fly by at 75 mph without even glancing back.

She was about to give up any prospect of help and start walking home when a truck pulled over.

Enter the mysterious stranger.

The driver was male. Bearded. Longish hair.…

The New York Times recently published an article stating that librarians are facing a “crisis of violence and abuse.” So I just thought you’d like to meet your local librarian. 

WENDY—I earned my masters in library science in 1970 and got my first job. There was a little girl who came to our branch every day at the same time. She would read exactly the same book, and she did this for months. She never checked the book out, she only read the same few pages every day. We all wondered what she was doing.

One day I asked her why she came in to read the same pages. She told me she was teaching herself how to read by memorizing pages of the book so she could recite them to herself for practice. I told her she could take the book with her and keep it with her all the time, but she said she’d rather memorize.

Then the girl recited the first chapter to me. I knew

I was dealing with a gifted child.

I was able to get her tested academically and she was accepted into a school for advanced students. I don’t know what happened to her, but I think about her all the time.

MISTY—My dad went to libraries all his life, he always kept a stack of books by his bed. He taught himself Spanish by reading a book from Stanislaus County Library, just so he could communicate with his Spanish-speaking coworkers and make friends with them.

When his friends asked how he learned Spanish they were all shocked when he told them the library. This brought him into all kinds of homes and situations, helping Spanish-speakers in need.

EMILIO—I was 19 years old and bought a 1969 MGB I wanted to restore, and I literally knew nothing about cars. My brother was a talented mechanic, he could bring any engine back to life,…

Someone emailed me and said I was an idiot. Which is true, but not for the reasons they cited.

“How can you believe in angels and still consider yourself a smart person?” the letter began.

Oh, I haven’t always believed in angels. And truthfully, I wish I didn’t believe. It would be easier.

It all started in third grade. My teacher, Mrs. Shield, told a story of her own.

She was a little girl. She fell through a second-story window. She was bruised and battered. The paramedics said she would die.

But a man came to her. A man who only she could see. He said she would be in the hospital for a while, but she would be all right, if she could just hold on. She eventually taught third grade.

Yes, Mrs. Shield was as crazy as a sprayed roach. But I believed her. And I still do.

There is another guy I know. He talks about being in the hospital, after an accident. The doctors said he

was going to die, too. He was in his bed in a coma.

A nurse came into his room. She was a large woman with ebony skin and white scrubs. She leaned over his bed, held him tightly, and sang to him. She sang, “God is going to deliver you.”

When he woke up, nobody believed him. It was a hallucination, they said. He asked medical staffers who the woman was. They said no employees fit her description.

I know a guy from Alaska. He wrote to me and said that his son suffered brain stem damage after a hunting accident. The kid was going to die. No doubt about it.

When his son was unconscious, a strange woman found him and kissed his face and said he would not die, for he still had work to do on earth.

Today, that kid is 46 years old and…

It’s the New Year and, judging by people’s resolutions, they think they’re supposed to be doing all sorts of impressive things like losing weight, saving more money, training for marathons, etc. 

Well, I’m making some changes this year, too. Only I’m making little changes. Big changes never last for me. It’s little ones that stick. So I’m going to start by making my bed every morning.

When I was a kid, my mother believed, firmly, that making the bed set a positive tone for each day. I firmly believed that. So each morning I let my mother make my bed.

But now that I’m older, I’ve decided to make our bed every morning.

Another change I’m making: I’m going to play with my phone less. Phones are time-suckers. So I’m not going to play on my phone. Instead, I’m going to spend quality time playing on my wife’s phone.

I’m going to eat more bacon. Life is too short to deprive oneself of bacon. A woman named Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York, lived until age 116. She

was skinny and healthy and she ate a serving of bacon every day. But frankly, I don’t want to live to 116, so I will also eat queso dip to offset things.

I’m going to give to homeless people more often. Every time I drive past a homeless guy I think to myself, “He’s just looking for drugs.” But my conscience knows better. And addicts need lunch too.

I’m going to run some 5Ks or 10Ks, for good causes. I’m going to do this because I enjoy running, because I like meeting people, and above all, because there is often free beer at the finish line.

I’m going to have more fun, and not apologize for it. More fishing trips. More camping trips. And I’m finally going to get around to making that honey-do list. In fact, I’m going to write…