Dad

My father taught me a lot of life skills when I was a child: tying my shoes, changing the oil in a car, and using a Maglite to incapacitate an intruder.

But there is one thing that I taught him, that he mentions frequently. He brings it up while making use of it. If your hands are greasy and you are without a napkin, wipe your hands on your socks, because nobody will ever notice a grease stain on your socks.

You're welcome, dad.

And happy Father's Day.

cleaning up my house

I'm going through old files, and shredding old pay stubs and tax documents.

Long after I'm dead, I would like to be remembered as, "A slow and brief transfer of an insignificant amount of wealth between corporations."

I grew up in a rural area.

One Summer day, when I was teenager, my friend Chris called me and said, "Hey, come over with the truck. I just got a deal on a sheep."

I went to Chris' house, and we drove across town to another farm.

I was a late bloomer. At the age of 16, I was 90-something pounds and under 5 feet tall. I struggled to see over the steering wheel of my father's truck. When Chris called about the sheep, I think I had entered puberty earlier that day.

Chris was a little bigger than I was, but the sheep was bigger than both of us. As soon as we approached the animal, it panicked. When we tried to grab her, she spontaneously developed nervous diarrhea and started frantically bleating and flailing her limbs in protest. It took over an hour for us two kids to drag and push her into the truck, and she somehow never stopped pooping during the entire ordeal.

We drove back to Chris' farm and unloaded the poor creature. There was sheep diarrhea on my jeans, my sneakers, and in the truck.

It was possibly that very day that solidified my future plans, of moving to a city and going to university. And I did eventually finish puberty.