Looking back with Lot's Wife

One of our favorite things to buy at a senior discount is a trip to the local Chuck-A-Rama on Monday night, family night. Tragically, we go to watch the kids. So far, we at least haven’t gone at four in the afternoon. We wait until grown-up dinnertime. Five thirty. Okay, it’s a little early, but you don’t have to wait in line. Really, it’s just great to sit down and eat your cooked mixed vegetables without having to scream at anyone. So we’re alone, who cares? We love each other. We’re interesting even without kids. It’s just that we have nothing else to talk about but our kids. We actually haven’t had a life for the last forty years that didn’t involve our kids. But, hey, so what? We can watch. We had that glazed smile dieters have at a bakery: “No thanks, we don’t want any.” But at the same time, there’s a little bit of longing there. Otherwise we’d go to a restaurant in Utah County where there weren’t so many kids (except no one has ever discovered that place.) The ...

If I were to tell you about my volunteer career, it might make you give up entirely on the idea of volunteering. But you and your charming self are really needed in the volunteer community. So I feel the need to share my thoughts here, even though there are probably hundreds of other folks who do a better job. However, you might be frightened off by their inspiring stories whereas, with me, I just do a so-so job, so you can feel really good about your chances. So far, they haven’t kicked me out of any program, which says a lot about the general low hopes organizations have for free help. Many of us deal with volunteers. Generally they come in two varieties: those who don’t show up, and those who do show up but want to take over. There is a third variety, those who have a high tolerance for making idiots of themselves and are willing to try again and again in the face of inevitable failure which comes from a lack of skill and the accompanying lack of training. I say inevitable becau...

I have always loved the idea of spontaneous combustion. It’s just always seemed possible to me in my fevered imagination. Intellectually I know we’re supposed to scorn those dolts in the Middle Ages who thought it was possible to hatch a patch of maggots from a pile of garbage, but there’s this disconnect somewhere in my brain that thinks…I don’t know what I think but it’s along the lines of understanding that Dumbo can fly and mice can make Cinderella a dress. If you can go to Narnia through a wardrobe, why not grow maggots at home in your rags? Or mice in your trash. I guess the reason we believe in magic is it appeals to the lazy houseboy in all of us. Who has not looked at their living room and thought about how easy it would be to throw up pretty, well-shaped upper arms and wave them around and have all the books go back in their bookcase and the dust swirl up in a whirlwind and dive by itself into the trash can? And mostly it’s pretty people who do magic. It’s never the fat ...