I have a bad ankle. I don't know what I did to it, but it's been nagging me for months. I visited the doctor. He looked like a twelve-year-old.

He frowned at me, then said—and I quote: "Sucks getting old, doesn't it?"

I paid a lot of money to hear Junior say that.

The nurse fitted me with an ankle brace. She was elderly. Skinny. Everything she said sounded like sorghum. In the short time she helped me, we made friends.

There's a tattoo on her hand. Two interlocking hearts. I asked about it—you don't see many tattoos on someone who looks like Granny.

“My daughter made me get this,” she said. “We got matching ones when she graduated last year."

I did the math. This woman seemed awfully long in the tooth to have a child so young.

She must've known I was confused because she laughed. "She's actually my granddaughter."

Well, as it happens, her granddaughter is her daughter. When the child was a one-year-old, her mother shot herself. Nobody knew who the father was.

"It was

traumatic," she said. "When we found her, she was laying on her mama's body, asleep."

She speaks without flinching.

She adopted her granddaughter. And since babies are expensive, her husband went back to work. But it was a struggling economy. There wasn't much work.

They agreed she'd come out of retirement and go back to nursing.

Her certifications had expired, the medical world had advanced. They told her she'd have to complete nearly as much school as entry-level students.

“Lord,” she said. “Didn't think I'd been gone THAT long. But things had changed. When I's in school, we didn't have Google.”

Her husband wasn't sure if it was a good idea. Neither was she. Hard studying, odd hours, clinical shifts.

She enrolled anyway.

As it happened, the refresher courses weren't bad. Not for her. She had more experience than some of…

Girls. The world owes you an apology. The television, the magazines, the news reports, and all mankind. They've done you wrong. And I, for one, am sorry about it.

They're trying to kill you. And once they've finished, they're going after your daughters.

Don't believe me? Just flip on the TV. They say you're not sexy enough. You're overweight. Your swimsuit isn't tiny enough. Your hair should be blonder, darker, straighter, and you need more volume.

Not only that, but you're dowdy. Your lips are too small; hips too big. You've got bags under your eyes, your teeth could be whiter, chest bigger, arms less flabby, midsection tighter.

I'm just warming up.

You need new clothes, new shoes, and it'd be nice if you could find a pair of better-fitting, more expensive jeans. Your skin is old-looking, you need a tan, a firmer hindsection, lose that baby-weight, and wax those forearms.

You talk too much. You don't cook enough. You're not strict enough with your kids. You need regular exercise twice per hour.

You need

more school, more credibility, more accredited classes, more professional know-how, management skills, leadership training, certifications, administrative growth.

And for God's sake, get a little confidence.

You drink too much coffee, not enough coconut water. You consume too much butter, not enough palm oil. You don't eat quinoa, pomegranate, kale, bone broth, kambucha, brewer's yeast.

What's wrong with you? Are you trying to kill yourself?

You eat too much bacon, butter, ham, beef, cheese, potatoes, and fried chicken. Clean up your diet. Clean up your potty mouth. And fold that laundry.

Read this book—everyone's reading it. Go see that movie—it's the most important film of our decade. Keep up with current events. Sign your boy up for every sporting team available. Make sure your daughter practices piano.

Hate these people, they deserve it. Don't talk to her, she's got a bad reputation. Never give handouts to…

10:40 P.M.—New Year's Eve. Hank Williams is on my radio. My wife is sleeping in the passenger seat. My coonhound is in the backseat.

To bring in the year, we've gone for a drive on county roads that weave along the Choctawhatchee Bay.

There are no cars out. The highway is vacant—except for police cruisers. I've never welcomed in a year like this.

As a boy, my father and I brought in holidays with shotguns. We'd march to the edge of creation and fire twelve gauges at the moon. Then, I'd sip Coca-Cola; he'd sip something clear.

Another year goes by without him.

11:02 P.M.—my tank is on E. I stop at a gas station. The pump card-reader is broken. My wife is still out cold.

I go inside to pay. The clerk is a young girl with purple hair. She wanted to be with her kids tonight, but someone called in with a sinus infection.

I buy a Coca-Cola in a plastic bottle.

I also buy a scratch-off lotto ticket. The last few minutes of the year, I'm

feeling lucky. I use my keys to scratch the ticket. I win five bucks. So, I buy another two. I win another dollar.

"Lucky you," the cashier says. "Wish I could buy one, but it's against store policy."

To hell with policy. It's New Year's Eve.

I buy her one.

She swipes a coin from the take-a-penny tray. She scratches. She wins ten bucks. We high-five.

It's only ten bucks, but seeing her win makes my year.

11:28 P.M.—I'm driving. My wife is still sawing pinelogs. I'm riding though the North Florida woods, sipping Coke. Trees grow so high you can't see the moon. It's almost like poetry.

Long ago, my college professor told us to choose a poem to recite in class. Students chose lofty selections from the greats. Whitman, Dickinson, Frost.

I consulted Daddy's Hank Williams songbook. He'd given…

Foley, Alabama—I'm sitting in Lambert's restaurant. This is the "home of throwed rolls." Servers stroll the dining rooms, tossing yeast rolls at customers like four-seam fastballs.

A waiter lobs one at me. It hits me square in the teeth. He laughs. So does my wife.

It leaves a mark.

Our waitress brings our plates. Chicken-fried steak, collards, fried potatoes. She wishes me a happy New Year's and asks, "Have you had a good twenty-sixteen?"

You bet your suspenders I have.

While I haven't done anything noteworthy this year, I did get rid of our rusted 1974 mobile home. That was a biggie.

It got hauled to the county dump by a team of highly specialized ambulatory demolition experts with names like, Delmar, and—I'm not making this up—Willie Joe Mavis.

When the lovable single-wide left our property, it bore a yellow banner, reading, “oversized load.”

Willie played “Taps” on the bugle.

Another 2016 highpoint: I kept a New Year's resolution. A little over three hundred days ago, I resolved before King and country to go fishing every weekday at 2 P.M.—even

if only for ten minutes—and if need be, to include beer.

It wasn't always easy, but the Lord provides.

The truth is, this has been the best year of my life. And I'm not just saying that.

Let me tell you about Randy.

We grew up together. He was a kindhearted soul who raised four kids on a millworker's salary. He and his wife were salt-of-the earth folks. They ate healthy, abstained from alcohol, sodas, sugar, and barbecue.

He was raised as a foot-washing Baptist and could quote the Old Testament backwards—eyes shut.

I once watched Randy get caught in a fistfight outside a beer-joint. Randy wasn't drinking. He refused to throw a punch and he got beat to a pulp. His soft-spokeness was something to see.

Randy died this year. Doctors never saw it coming. Nobody did. His wife…

I had been sixteen for under twenty-four hours. I sat in my truck. It rained. I stared at my new, hot-off-the-press driver's license.

Big nose. Goofy grin.

I hated birthdays with a purple passion. Three years earlier, Daddy died. Birthdays lost their punch.

Anyway, that day my driver's exam had been easier than I thought. I weaved past orange cones like a kid who'd grown up on a Ford 2N tractor.

After the test, I showed the license to Mama. She was proud. She fired up the skillet. While she battered chicken, I decided to take the truck out for my first legal driving experience.

“Don't be long,” said Mama. “Supper will be ready.”

I never left the driveway. My dog, Cody, sat in the seat beside me. The truck was off. It rained like hell.

My chest ached. Birthdays were supposed to be fun, dammit. Friends, family, parties. They weren't. These days were hateful reminders that happiness is a white-headed dandelion in a hurricane.

I was changing. My body was turning against me. At night, my

shins ached something fierce. The doctor said my bones were growing too fast.

Stubble appeared on my cheeks. I'd tried to teach myself to shave using Daddy's old cutthroat razor. It was like shaving with a barn axe. Blood ran all over the bathroom sink.

Sixteen.

Big stinking deal. I was sitting in a truck, in the rain, with nothing but a snoring dog and a new license.

A figure walked toward me wearing a raincoat. Flashlight in hand. The door opened and Mama crawled in. She handed me a plate wrapped in foil.

“You shouldn't have,” I said.

“No trouble,” she said. “I didn't want it to get cold.”

My shirt was greasy in a matter of seconds. Cody watched my every bite with sincerity.

“You know,” Mama went on. “One day, you're going to get a second chance at all this.…

"My mother's wedding ring was aluminum," she says, showing me a ring.

The gray band is not a perfect circle, the metal is too cheap to hold its shape.

"I wish I had more pictures of Mother when she was a kid," she goes on. "They say she was a knockout."

A knockout and a tobacco picker. She and her sisters picked 'bacca during harvest seasons near Butler County. They'd been doing it since childhood.

They worked long hours, earned pennies, lived in bunk-cabins, and made new friends. Think: summer camp for poor folks.

By age seventeen, she was still picking each season. On weekends, she and her girlfriends hiked into the woods with the other workers. They lit bonfires, laughed. Some folks brought instruments and jelly-jars. Others wore Sunday shoes.

There she met a skinny boy. He caught her eye. There was something about him. He asked her to dance. She said yes.

It didn't take long to know him—they both worked in the drying barn. She'd string blanket-sized leaves onto pine

rods. He'd climb the rafters, hanging them.

He was her first boy. For two summers they kissed. And two summers they picked side by side. When he asked her to marry, her answer was no surprise.

Then, the worst.

Only one day before their courthouse wedding, she and her sisters went into town to buy a skirt-suit for the ceremony. She walked up a flight of steps, carrying her sister's baby. She slipped.

She dropped the infant on the pavement. The baby was fine, but she wasn't. She busted her neck. They sent her to Tallahassee. Doctors said she might never walk again.

They say he refused to leave her bedside. Not even for food.

After staying motionless for weeks, her temper wore thin. She hollered, told him to leave. She said he deserved a girl in good health, not someone who might need a wheelchair.

I'm breaking promises I made long ago. Once, I swore I'd never write anything that smelled even faintly like a Gimme-The-Good-Old-Days sort of story. The kind with sentences like, "kids, when I was your age."

I've given up the fight.

Today, I went fishing. It was chilly. A skiff trolled around my beat-up boat.

It was a teenage couple. They were supposed to be fishing. Instead, they argued loud enough to beat the band. Their screaming voices traveled across the water.

Their fight ended with a round of name-calling. The young man called the girl a horrid name beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet.

She fired back something worse.

After the fight, they spent the next hour playing on cellphones. No talking.

And just like that, my promise went out the window.

The first thing I'd like to say is:

I'd rather cut out my liver with a dull melon-baller than call a lady a name that rhymes with "truck-face." Such an act would be an affront to the woman who raised me.

Second: put

your phones away, kids.

A few days ago, it was Christmas. I visited my buddy's house. After his kids opened gifts, the children hibernated on the sofa. There, they interacted with Apple products, thumb-tapping, for three hours.

Three.

I asked if anyone wanted to play cards. They looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out my pants. Thus, I played solitaire.

That's too bad. Cards were a big deal during my childhood. I remember playing poker on the kitchen table with uncles who kept spitting into paper cups.

Back then, we had no smartphones. We had big stupid ones with cranks and four-digit phone numbers. The smartest device in our household was Mama—who could expound on anything from navigating to the interstate, to curing black lung using baking soda.

So, even though I swore I'd never say this: I miss the days…