One time my little girls were on a playground and the oldest decided to make an imaginary birthday cake. She was so serious about it, so thoughtful about each decoration. It was touching at first, but then things got painful when she took her prized “cake,” carried it to a ten-year-old boy, and said, “Here’s a birthday cake I made for you.”
Last night, I traveled to the UPS Customer Service Center, where I had the opportunity to witness how quickly frustrated adults can start acting like children.
Back in college, I struggled to maintain healthy, close relationships. I was eaten alive with insecurity, which made it hard to have friendships without operating on a relational barter system that left people feeling used.
It’s amazing how quickly unintended destruction can happen to a home. A few years ago in my hometown, a family was shooting bottle rockets in front of their house on New Year’s Eve. Someone lit a rocket and accidentally tipped the bottle over. The rocket shot out, flew through the open door, and into the Christmas tree.
Recently, I was headed down Connecticut Avenue in the morning while it was still dark. There are several pedestrian crosswalks on that street that nobody uses at 5:20 a.m., so I was understandably surprised when I saw an old man standing in the middle of the street waving at me and yelling.
The last three months have been pretty hard on my family. A lot of it had to do with me traveling too much for work and struggling to find the time to complete a challenging feature article. Plus, the girls started school, which changed our whole routine, and my poor wife has gotten pretty sick a couple of times. And as much as I hate to admit it, somewhere in the midst of all that stress, my wife and I stopped being our best selves with each other.
The other day, I was walking through my neighborhood with my two girls, who are three and four years old, when we passed an older, serious looking gentleman. “Hello!” they both said, waving. He looked over at them and kept walking.
When I was 16, my mother and step-dad got married and we began packing our things to move into a new house. At one point, my step-dad came into my room and looked in my closet.
A couple of years ago, I was talking to a young fiancee who was upset because her future in-laws didn’t like her. As she shared her experience, it was hard to believe that these adults, who were otherwise decent people, could be so socially tone deaf, so oblivious to their own unkind words and actions.
A few months ago, I had to rent a car for a month. Unfortunately for me, it smelled like cigarette smoke, but it was the only one they had available, so I was stuck with it for 30 long, stinky days. As one who hates the smell of cigarette smoke, it was exceptionally unpleasant.
Right now, I’m sitting with my foot propped up and ice pressed against my ankle because I injured it, and it is killing me – not the ankle though; the ice. The thing is, ice is the one thing I really need right now, but I feel like pulling my foot away because I can’t stand the temporary discomfort that comes with it.
When I was in eleventh grade, the entire high school was summoned to the gym for what can be fairly described as an exercise in mass hypnosis.
There’s nothing like trying to get on a loaded city bus when there’s a mob of people waiting at the bus stop. When that happens, everybody just crams into the bus and surrenders their personal space – well, most people do.
When I was in college, I was extremely insecure. And because I was so afraid people didn’t like me, I demanded a high level of loyalty from anyone who claimed to be my friend.
The other day, my wife and I were driving down a two-lane road in the country when we got stuck behind a big ol’ Mack truck that was stuck behind a slowly-moving tractor. We figured we would be in for a long wait – we did not anticipate, however, that we were about to watch a truck driver nearly kill somebody.
Joshua Rogers 