One thing I often heard from my dad growing up was, “If you want an easy way to do something, give it to a lazy person.” He usually said it right after I proudly demonstrated I had figured out an easier way to do something. This, of course, annoyed me to no end. Continue reading →
One Saturday morning while I sat and watched television with my family, my eyes felt a little more squinty than normal (people tell me to open my eyes wider all the time, as if I’m doing it on purpose). I didn’t think much of it until my wife and daughter took an interest. When they started looking at my face more than the TV, I knew I might have a problem. Continue reading →
My wife and I greatly looked forward to our daughter being born long before we even knew she was our daughter. Once we did find out she was a girl, we already had a name picked out. The name we chose was Autumn and it was the favorite of both of ours for a variety of reasons (it also happened to be the only name on which we agreed). We made many plans for the big day. As it drew closer, Chrisie packed a bag and I started backing her car in so I could drive straight out without turning around. Everything was in place and we were ready. I thought I was prepared, but of course I wasn’t completely prepared at all. Continue reading →
People really are creatures of habit. We like, for the most part, when things remain the same and unchanged. We like doing things the same way repeatedly. I don’t know if it’s the calming familiarity of a set pattern, or that we’re too lazy to do something a different way once we have established our way of doing it, but we generally do repeat what we have done in the past. That’s why I when I had an hour-long commute for work, I also had a set routing on the days I stopped for gas. Continue reading →
My father has taught me many things in my nearly 40 years. Some of them were things he directly said, and some lessons came from how he lives. Some he meant me to teach me and some he may have had no idea I was learning from him. What follows is a list of some of the things I have learned from him over the years in no particular order. Lessons that were intentional, unintentional, directly spoken, or observed. All well worth learning. Continue reading →
There are several things in life I’ve never figured out and probably never will. To an extent, I’m okay with that. To an extent. The things that get under my skin and defy explanation are usually ones that others seem to have no issues with. Or worse, an explanation is offered, but it makes less sense than the question. At any rate, here are a few things I need explained, in no particular order. Continue reading →
It was a gorgeous Wednesday evening, I was fifteen, and driving. We were in our ’65 convertible Mustang tooling down Highway 79 on our way into town. The top was down and I relished the wind in my hair and the feeling of almost freedom. Then someone had to come along and ruin it. Continue reading →
I was born in Blacksburg, Virginia. Though we moved to Tennessee when I was three, I still have many fond memories of it. I remember the last house we lived in there being built, the amazing large rock I played on in the backyard, the stream that flowed down from the mountains, and the people who asked permission to catch crawdads in it. I also have at least one bad memory from Blacksburg, though I didn’t form it until many years later after we went back for a visit. Continue reading →
It had been a long day. A wonderful day to be sure, but still a long one (weddings are like that). More went right than went wrong, but I couldn’t help but think about the singing fiasco, that we forgot to eat at the reception, that the person responsible for fixing us a platter to take with us if we forgot to eat forgot to give it to us, that we were extremely hungry, and that the hotel lost our reservation. Every little annoyance evaporated the moment I carried Chrisie into our room. Of course, that doesn’t mean new ones didn’t appear. Continue reading →
My heart hammered as I looked through the crack between a set of doors to the auditorium of the church I was about to be married in. I wasn’t particularly nervous about getting married, but I was extremely nervous about a surprise I had planned for my bride. I didn’t like singing solo in front of large numbers of people and the sight of what ended up being a little over four hundred people streaming in to the auditorium thoroughly dried my throat. Continue reading →
Stories Now Told