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A-holes, SOBs, and Morons

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A couple of months ago I took my aging Dad to the DMV office to get a new state ID. He uses a walker now, and I'd gone to the door to hold it open for him. He was still quite a way from the door, and another man was coming up the walk at the same time. I motioned for the fellow to come on in since Dad was moving slowly. So the man went ahead and went to the desk where you get your number before going to the waiting area. He received his number and sat down. Dad made it to the number station, and I went to find a couple of seats, knowing that he usually wants to sit close to the counter. I found two seats together at the end of a back row of seats directly in front of him. The row was too narrow for the walker to fit through, but Dad started to push his way through, shoving chairs aside as he went. I had pointed out to him that since this was the back row, there was plenty of space behind the chairs to walk without obstacles, but he insisted on pushing through the narrow aisle.

The Gift of Self Doubt

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"C'mon kid...JUMP!" the kids behind me on the diving board shouted. As their pleas became more urgent and demanding, I looked over the edge and trembled, partly because I was cold and wet, and partly because of the terror I was feeling in that moment. At 6 years old I was already a pretty good swimmer. I'd taken two summers worth of lessons, and I could easily get from one end of the pool to the other, but this was the latest in a growing string of false starts in my quest for conquering the diving board. I was the last of my group of friends to accomplish this particular rite of summertime passage. It wasn't for lack of desire; I'd wanted to jump off the diving board since at least the Summer before, and I'd been thinking about it almost to the point of obsession throughout the present Summer, which was nearing its end. I'd come close to jumping twice before this time, and I'd gotten as close as the end of the board before running back to th

Content Fatigue

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I listened to a podcast the other day in which two women were talking about their success online, which apparently had something to do with something called content. In the course of the 50 or so minutes they were talking, the word "content" was spoken between 5 and ten times a minute. Content, content, content. Creating content, content marketing, content, content, content, more content. This generic term has come to mean less and less, and it leaves a taste in my mouth comparable to that brought about by the generic beer I tried after the high school football game all those years ago. I can still bring the taste to mind, and it isn't a fond memory. It used to be that people wrote articles, or stories, or songs, or screenplays, or they made films, or wore out their dad's Super 8mm camera, spending their hard earned lawn mowing cash on getting those films developed, then splicing their masterpieces together on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors and Scotch