When I was a little boy, I thought both of my parents were brilliant. Does everyone assume that of his own parents? Or was that just me?
Both of my parents had college degrees and both had started their careers as teachers. (Mother spent her entire career teaching.) They both seemed to know everything — at least compared to me — so I guess I thought they had been good students, especially because they expected me to do well at everything in school.
I figured out a long time ago that my mother had been both more creative and more academically gifted than he was. My father wasn’t stupid — and his head was actually stuffed with an impressive array of facts — but he wasn’t brilliant.
As I went through some of his remaining things to throw away today, I came across his college transcript — and I was shocked. He was a terrible student, far worse than I had imagined.
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
Police won’t do their job, but they’ll ticket you for doing it for them
We rarely have wisdom we need ’til it’s too late to avoid mistakes
Loving heart, willing spirit can turn burdens of parenting into happiness
Idiotic idea of the year: Turn email over to the U.S. Postal Service
Life has a brutal habit of forcing us to confront our own hypocrisy
At life’s end, who we’ve loved will matter more than what we’ve owned