“Your reading comprehension is improving, but you need to use a dictionary if you’re not sure how to spell a word like ‘comprehensiveness.’”
-- Mrs. Van Dusen, Fifth Grade Teacher

“Strong thesis statement, but I think you’ve misunderstood the primary motivation behind Dickens’s use of the first-person narrator in regards to the key themes in chapters 47 and 48.”
-- Professor Byrd, UC Davis

“Dear Mr. Howard: We appreciate the chance to review your manuscript.  We found it very interesting.  Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at the present time.”
-- Editor

”I like your site.  If I link to you, will you link to me?
-- Private email sent in regards to GeeseAplenty.com

“Great press release. But you need to use a dictionary if you’re not sure how to spell a word like ‘comprehensiveness.’”
-- Former Boss

1. Interviewing badly in a bad economy. So I finish interviewing this person for my department, and I ask if he has any questions for me.  He says, “Well, where were you before you joined the company...”

[assesses my still-boyish features as well as long tenure at my current job]

“...grade school?”

Survey says BZZZT.  I absolutely will recommend this candidate receive a job offer on the spot...to sling fries, that is. Still, I guess it was a backhanded compliment of a sort, and I did go ahead and cancel my weekly botox appointment.

2. Excessive display of Obama fervor.  Look, I like the guy too, and I’m particularly fond of his ability to speak in complete sentences as well as the fact that he used to collect Spider-Man comics. But he is not going to single-handedly save our economy, bring peace to the Middle East, defeat the terrorists, and invent flying cars. At best, he’ll get around to one of them. And I know the one I’m betting on, and will continue to watch the skies until I see it brought to fruition.

3. People who send me an email at work and then come over and ask me if I’ve read the email.  Couldn’t you have just come talk to me in the first place if you were so motivated to gaze upon my beatific features? Why send the email and give me the spanish inquisition?  Here’s a surefire way to know that I’ve read an email (that you just sent five minutes ago): you get a reply.  The Interwebs, is there nothing they can’t do?

4. People who say ‘you know’ like it’s going out of style. There’s nothing wrong with verbal tics; I personally begin every sentence with “Listen up, bozo.” But if you can’t get through three words without saying “you know,” I’m happy to go make some chamomile tea while you relax and collect your thoughts. And then if you start up again and keep doing it, I can dump the tea on your head.

5. People who nominated Benjamin Button for Best Picture.  That movie definitely gave me the sense of a someone’s complete lifetime...mine.  Slipping away hour after hour after hour.  I didn’t even like it the first time it swept the awards.

6. People who allowed sub-prime mortgages to go on for years. These guys totally messed it up for all of us, and have you noticed that we haven’t even heard an apology?  They’re all just trying to blend in, saying “Gosh, times are sure tough” like they had nothing to do with it. Let’s all gang up and, say, not invite them to any parties this year.  That’ll send a stern message.

7. People who find a two-hour window in the weekend to do their taxes insanely early so they can use the refund for beer money. Oh wait, that’s me.

ME: Yeah, lately I’ve been feeling my age.

HE: Oh, you’re starting to get some aches and pains?

ME: Nah, physically I feel great.  Best I’ve ever been.

HE: Then you’re starting to forget things?

ME: I’ve always forgotten things.  Now is no different.

HE: Then why do you feel your age?

ME: Because I realized that in a few years, if you were to travel back in time and attend the world premiere of Back to the Future, you’d be traversing the same span of years that Marty McFly did when he visited his parents in the ‘50s.

HE: ...

ME: My ‘80s is like the ‘50s to the kids of today, see.

HE: ....

ME: ....

HE: ...maybe you should be very selective about the people you make that analogy to.

ME: I know!  I don’t want to just randomly depress people.

My parents both joined Facebook recently. It was kind of a strange experience being “friended” by them. I thought, hey, my parents could be my friends, that could work.

But in attempting to work the system, my mother ended up de-friending me, and I suddenly recognized a whole world of untapped trauma facing today’s millenials and pre-teens:

PSYCHOLOGIST: “What seems to be the problem, young lady?”

YOUNG GIRL: “My Mom de-friended me on Facebook.  I feel that I am worthless in this world.”

PSYCHOLOGIST: “You can’t place your sense of self worth in whether your mother is part of your Facebook network. You must self-actualize.”

YOUNG GIRL: “But she not only did she friend my brother--they also exchange Superpokes on a daily basis.”

PSYCHOLOGIST: “Oh. Then you’re completely f@#*(&.”

However, my mother figured it out the system and friended me again, which I found very empowering.

Then she put up a photo:

Whoa!

My father, impressed with her choice of photo, offered this background to me and my brother:

“Your mom was cleaning the refrigerator. It was just before we were married or just after. She was 22 or 23. She was hot, tired and annoyed I was taking pictures. She was wearing old cut-off jeans, so far as I recall, that don’t show in this picture. I thought she was the prettiest and sexiest thing I had ever seen at that moment, so I got the camera, a plastic box brownie as I recall that used 120 film, and took several pictures.  It is still my favorite picture of her.”

I’m glad that it’s my father’s favorite picture of her.  I, however, am a bit more ambivalent.  Because, frankly, I’m forced to admit she’s a stone fox (by way of Elvis Costello’s eyewear), and admitting that aligns me a lot more to backwater Kentucky families than I’d care to admit.

Confound societal expectations; wear both boxers and briefs.

Slap hard anyone who utters the phrases “at the end of the day,” “it is what it is,” or “chillaxes.”

Never ever give you up, let you down, or run around.  And definitely don’t desert you.

Keep eating vegetables; it’s not impossible that I could have another growth spurt before I turn 40.

It’s against California law to talk on a blackberry or send texts while driving--so restrict driving activities to web surfing, downloading ringtones, and playing “Brickbreaker.”

For karaoke? It’s either The Cheetah Girls or stay home.

Spend more time with George W. now that his schedule has finally cleared up; suggest going back to frequent Paintball & Cocaine weekends.

Pedicures, pedicures, pedicures.

The joke is getting old, so stop referring to my penis as my “land line.”

This year, finally and categorically, once and for all--no parking on the dance floor.