It happened on a serene Tuesday morning. Perfect weather. Clear sky. Locals saw a Boeing 757 jerking through the air at an awkward angle and speeding toward Earth.

Farmers watched in slack-jawed amazement. Commuters pulled over to see a commercial airliner bounce from the sky and slam into the ground. When the plane hit soil it sounded like the world had come apart at the bolts. A mile-high column of black smoke rose into the air.

United Flight 93 had been due for takeoff from Newark International Airport at 8:01 a.m. But, because this is America (Land of the Free and Home of the Flight Delayed) the flight was late.

It started out as a normal flight. The passengers and crew were chatty. Forty-one ordinary people made conversations over Styrofoam coffee cups. It was usual talk. They chatted about kids’ soccer games. Work. The new fad diet that wasn’t making their thighs any smaller.

In the cockpit, pilot Jason Dahl was going through preflight

stuff. He was 43, cobby build, with a smile like your favorite uncle. Jason always carried a little box of rocks with him. They were a gift from his son. Directly after this flight, Jason was going to take his wife to London for their fifth anniversary.

In the passenger area you had folks like John Talignani (74), retired bartender, stocky, a World War II vet, a no-nonsense kind of guy. He was one of the millions of long-suffering, tormented souls who call themselves New York Mets fans.

Deora Bodley (20), a college junior. The vision of loveliness. They say she was one of those natural beauties that caused young men on sidewalks to crash headfirst into lampposts. Deora wanted to be a children’s therapist.

And Jean Peterson (55). She was traveling with her husband, Don (66). They were going to Yosemite for vacation. Jean was a retired nurse, but she didn’t want to take…

I was thinking about how all my grand plans for life never worked out.

Before I was a writer, for example, I was a night owl. I played music in bars for a living. I thought I was going to be a musician forever. But evidently there was another plan.

Our band usually started at 9 p.m. And you played music until various persons on the dance floor began removing articles of underclothing and throwing them at the bass player. Which was often around 1 a.m.

Then, you’d pack your instruments and go home. You’d eat a breakfast consisting of one gas station burrito which predated the Carter administration, then creep into your bedroom, strip off your sweaty clothes, and crawl into bed beside your wife.

You slept until about noon.

When you awoke the house was empty, except for your dogs. Your wife had already left for work. You both worked different shifts. Like two semi-trucks passing in the night.

You’d stagger from your

bedroom, hobble into the bathroom, and stare in the mirror. There was a huge, bloody gash on your nose.

How’d that get there?

Then you remembered. The night before, a 72-year-old woman had been overserved. She had approached the bandstand and asked whether she could give you a peck on the cheek. You said okay because you’re devastatingly nice guy.

So mid-song, she leaned in and bit your nose. Hard. Blood went everywhere. Before security escorted her away, the woman successfully managed to get the whole bar to sing “Sweet Caroline,” a cappella.

True story.

But now I’m a writer, which means I’m a morning person. I don’t play in bars anymore. Now, I only patronize them.

Each morning I wake up at fiveish. I sit on the porch, hot beverage in hand, and I watch the sunrise. I missed so many sunrises in…

The news is in. Less than one third of Americans have ever written a physical letter in their lifetime.

Which isn’t surprising inasmuch as studies find that 76 percent of American students lack basic writing skills such as grammar, spelling, and knowing what to call those three little dot thingies at the end of sentences...

Two thirds of American students are not proficient in math. Only one out of every 15 students scores above average in algebra. Twelve out of every five Americans still cannot comprehend fractions.

And there’s more.

Less than one third of American young people are able to write in cursive. The rest don’t write at all. Many Generation Z adults say they have gone months, even years without using a pencil.

In other news, 54 percent of college students admit to using AI to accomplish academic writing.

According to the Center for Academic Integrity, 80 percent of college students have cheated at least once. Seventy-five

percent of undergraduates admit to cheating more than once. Over fifty percent say they cheat frequently.

But then, what’s the big deal? After all, the US ranks only 16th in education. We are 10th in science, 34th in math, 60th in life expectancy. We are 38th in literacy, ranking below countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and many other goat intensive nations.

Almost 80 percent of school children cannot name more than three US presidents. The most commonly named presidents among those under age 12 are: George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Samuel L. Jackson.

In a recent survey, 70 percent of American students were unable to name a single American war.

Although, as it happens, it doesn’t matter. Namely, because a study conducted by the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight or using drugs.

Two out of…

Someone is impersonating me. They have created a fake account with my name. They’re going around asking for money on Facebook. And worse, they’re using excellint grammer.

A few things you should know:

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 with my cousin Ed Lee. We told our mothers we wanted to attend a special Bible camp in Coconut Grove.

“Bible camp?” my cousin’s mother remarked. “And does this Bible camp also have wet T-shirt contests?”

So we asked my mother next. I asked Mama for expenses and gas. Mama laughed so hard she had to be calmed with buttered Saltines.

But getting back to the impersonator. The first person to bring this scammer to my attention was my wife. She thought this guy was hysterical. She located the imposter’s Facebook profile and howled with laughter.

WIFE (laughing at computer screen): Look at his picture! He isn’t even cute! Look at that cheap haircut, and

that stupid grin! He looks like a weirdo!

ME: He’s using MY actual photo.

WIFE: Oh.

Moreover, it turns out this hoaxer is trying to sweet talk innocent people into giving 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.

In fact, remembering passwords has become a full-time job. Do you remember when we only needed one or two passwords to get along? Now we need hundreds.

Whenever my wife and I try to watch TV, for example, our streaming service always tells us we need to Re-Enter Our Password.

And since I am the tech-guy in our house, it’s up to me. I don reading glasses and use a tiny remote to painstakingly enter my password via televised keyboard. A process which takes about as…

The four of us were at the Chinese restaurant to celebrate the official anniversary of this column. Me, the unlikely writer. The middle-school dropout.

One decade ago, I posted a humorous story online and thus began a journey that would change my life.

So anyway, it was a small dinner party. Our waiter was a cheerful guy with an exoticly foreign accent. He was originally from—this is why I love Asian restaurants—Mexico.

We knew this because he could not pronounce the Chinese dishes, such as “zhá jiàng miàn,” and “zìchuān huǒguō.”

He had an even harder time understanding English words. For example, I ordered a tea, but he brought me a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“I ordered a tea,” I pointed out.

“I’m sorry, señor,” he said, “I will take your beer back.”

“Let’s not react in haste,” said I.

We had spring rolls. We ate Krab® rangoon. Egg drop soup. And when it came to the calamari, we were enjoying our appetizer when my cousin informed the table that this might not be actual calamari.

“What do

you mean?” we said.

My cousin went on to tell a story. He knew a guy who used to inspect meat processing plants for a state agency. One day, the man was at a farm and he saw several boxes stacked and labeled “artificial calamari.”

“What is artificial calamari?” he asked the manager.

“Hog rectums,” the manager replied.

We all stopped eating mid-bite.

Everyone at the table stared at the plate of puckered calamari. Whereupon my wife brought out her phone and started Googling the validity of the claims.

Come to find out, there is such a thing as my cousin’s unsavory theory. However, it would be illegal in the U.S. to serve pork parts and call them “calamari.” Moreover, the USDA reports they’ve never heard of anyone trying to pass pork parts as squid.

So before you…

Dear American School Kid, I don’t know what your name is, but I’m sorry. I am deeply, wholeheartedly, and emphatically sorry.

As I write this, at least four were killed and nine were injured in Barrow County, Georgia this morning. Apalachee High School was having a normal day when a person with a gun stalked the halls, taking lives.

Although to call the suspect a gunman is inaccurate. It was a gun-kid. The suspected shooter was 14 years old.

But this occurrence isn’t anything terribly shocking to you. You’ve seen shootings on TV before. Robb Elementary, Sandy Hook, Uvalde. The shooters, I can only assume, want their name in print. They want to be on TV. Why else would they do it?

Consequently, school kids now practice lockdown drills. Sometimes on the same days they do fire drills, or tornado drills.

I wish you knew how much times have changed, kid. When I was a child, sometime after the close of the Civil War, we

didn’t have lockdown drills. Namely, because we didn’t have school shootings.

We were, after all, just kids. When at school, we did kid things. We had kid interests. Our biggest problem of the day was whether we were going to be served chicken-like nuggets or whether the meatloaf was made of actual meat.

We passed notes in class. We cared deeply about who was “going out” with whom. The worst thing our teachers had to contend with was whether the boys were passing around the latest edition of M.A.D. Magazine during homeroom.

But now you worry about bullets.

We failed you. Therefore I am sorry you have to grow up in an age where you must face the real possibility that an unstable person will harm you while in a classroom.

I’m also sorry that a recent study said that most school kids worry about shootings…

My first concept of robots came from watching The Jetsons before school in my underpants. My boyhood morning routine consisted of sitting on the sofa in my tighty-whities, eating Cap’n Crunch, watching television, and listening to my mother say, “Get those underpants off my couch!”

Rosie the robot was the Jetsons’ fun housemaid who skated from room to room, wearing an apron, completing important daily tasks such as vacuuming, cooking, and using her mechanical claws to forcibly administer baths to Elroy.

I liked Rosie. In fact, I think Rosie was one of my favorite cartoon characters with the exceptions of Yogi Bear and Farrah Fawcett.

Back in those days robots were a faroff idea. They were sci-fi. This was pre-internet. Pre-cellular phone. The only computers anyone ever heard of were the size of an average Chuck E. Cheese.

Robots weren’t real back then. They were imaginary concepts. Like the Tooth Fairy, or the Department of Agriculture.

Which is why, yesterday, I was stunned to

have an actual conversation with a robot.

This all started when my brother-in-law downloaded an app called ChatGPT onto my phone.

Now, I’ve heard of ChatGPT before. I have even used this program when doing research for a piece I wrote on AI. During my research, I remember asking ChatGPT to produce a well-written 500-word column, and to do it in the style of the writer, “Sean Dietrich.”

In seconds—this is an astonishing display of intelligence—ChatGPT replied: “I thought you wanted something well-written.”

But now they’ve taken things to a new level. When my brother-in-law told me you could have a realistic, vocal conversation with ChatGPT, I had to experience this for myself. So I downloaded the app.

When you first set up the app, you must select a voice. They offer a male voice, female voice, and a voice that sounds like a real teenager except…

“I started choking,” said Jennifer Yakubesan.

It was a typical evening, some years ago. The family was eating supper before church, somewhere in the wilds of Michigan. It was spaghetti. The flagship food of happy families.

“I looked at my husband and my son, and I started to make this kind of patting on my chest.”

Enter her son, Andrew. He was 13. A Scout.

Jennifer was about to lose consciousness when she felt her son’s arms wrap around her. He wedged his fist below her sternum. He squeezed.

The Heimlich maneuver is not simple. It requires strength. The Heimlich didn’t work. So Andrew slapped his mother’s back. Someone taught him to do that.

Andrew was given the National Merit Award by the Scouts.

Which leads me to my next story, approximately six states away. Scout Troop 1299, of Allen, Texas, was on a bus trip to Wyoming.

They had a few days to kill in Yellowstone National Park.

“We were on our way to lunch,” said Brian, an adult volunteer. “We

were passing by these falls, and we were like, ‘Let’s just stop real quick and let the adults take some pictures,’”

They parked. Deboarded. Everyone’s dad stretched his respective lumbar region. A stranger ran up to the group and frantically asked if there was a doctor on the bus.

A doctor, no. Scouts, yes.

In moments, scouters found a woman having an emergency on the trail. She was lying in the dirt. It was cardiac arrest. An off-duty nurse was already performing chest compressions.

The Scouts fetched the automated external defibrillator (AED) from the bus.

Why did a bunch of average kids from Texas have a piece of expensive portable medical equipment on their bus? The answer is: Because they were Scouts.

Today, the woman is alive and well.

Here’s another. In Claiborne County, Tennessee, Crystal Thacker took meds and had an allergic…

The unofficial last day of summer is here. And here, on the last day of summer, I start remembering things. The memories get so thick you have to swat them away like gnats.

My favorite thing about summer is tomato sandwiches. I can still remember my first tomato sandwich. I was young, just out of diapers, maybe 14 years old.

No, I’m only kidding. I think I was three or four. I remember my mother used to buy her tomatoes at a farm stand on the county line. Way out in the sticks.

The farmstand was in a barnyard that smelled of mud and dirt and horses. There were bales of hay everywhere. Goats walking around, unknowingly dropping pellets from their backends.

There were vegetables of every kind. Bright colors galore. Collards, yellow squash, ginormous zucchinis, piles of corn, onions the size of regulation volleyballs. And there was a huge vat of tomatoes.

I was drawn to the tomatoes first. I can’t explain

why. Some things are just meant to be.

Maybe it was their brilliant red color. Or maybe it was their R-rated shapes. Or maybe it was that the tomatoes came in all dimensions, all shades, all varieties. A vivid palette of reds, pinks, yellows, oranges, purples, and zebra-striped greens. Misshapen, exploded-looking things, with prickly stems, and blemished skin.

There was the marvelous smell of tomato vines. Grassy and green, like fresh lawn clippings. Sweet and peppery.

My mother bought several pounds of heirlooms in a brown paper bag. Then, she walked to the station wagon, carrying the bag in one arm and me in the other.

There were groceries in the car, cooking in the backseat of the old Ford. The ice cream had melted. The butter had gone to be with Jesus. And right then, right there, she prepared a tomato sandwich.

Wonderbread. Duke’s Mayonnaise. Salt and…