My Life As A Hobby

        Pop! BOOM! Ohhhhh!     That, my friends, is the sound of two very distinctive holidays: the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.     Sure, we’ve got  more important ones. Like Thanksgiving, that glorious holiday of food, football, and silently thinking, “how can I be related to these people?” The thing most of us are truly thankful for is the sight of their relatives backing out of the driveway.     And of course, there’s Christmas, which isn’t really a holiday so much as a season, the season of overspending. Fun fact: the day after Christmas is a holiday that is quietly celebrated at Amazon headquarters. That’s when all their executives hold hands and sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”     However, the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve stand alone because they’re the only holidays we celebrate with fireworks.     I was about 12 years old when I was allowed to light real fireworks. Not those sissy ...

  I just got back from Tractor Supply, where I picked up a big ol’ chunk of rock salt. Don’t worry - it’s not for attracting deer. It’s for me. Here’s why. As part of preparing for my radioactive iodine therapy to finish off Tyrone the Tumor, I’ve been on a sodium-free diet for almost ten days. Ten of the most miserable days of my life, excluding my honeymoon. If all goes well, tomorrow is the last day, after which I’ll happily return to my old salt-snarfing ways. For all you wannabe doctors, here’s the Wikipedia version. The thyroid uses iodine (from salt) to produce hormones. To destroy what’s left of my tumor, I’ll take a radioactive iodine pill. The low-sodium diet essentially starves the cancerous thyroid tissue. When I swallow the pill, Tyrone will greedily gulp it down like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet - and should be the end of him. Who says you can’t be a doctor? Now, let me tell you: eating no sodium ranks right up there with prepping for a colonoscopy ...

Our teacher walked in, sat down among us, looked around the room, and said: “If anybody in here can name all the Kardashian sisters and can’t name a justice on the Supreme Court, then you probably don’t need to be in my class.” If he wanted my attention, he got it. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never heard a teacher begin a first class that way. My fellow pupils, an assortment of seniors and graduate students, gave each other short, uneasy glances. Truthfully, I thought, “Uh oh. I’m not sure I know the answer to either one. I hope he doesn’t start asking questions.” Welcome to Advanced Magazine Writing with Rick Bragg, the graduate class I’m auditing at the University of Alabama. Before I enrolled, I asked my niece, who had taken the course, what to expect. She said, “It’s very good, but he can be intimidating.” I suppose that’s true if you’re a 21-year-old worried about your GPA. But since I’m older than the professor and not getting a grade, I found Rick’s curmudgeonly antics ...

It was quite a scene at the Dollar General store in Margaret, Alabama. People rushed out the doors carrying poster board, silver balloons, and rolls of crepe paper. The party supply aisle looked as if a mob of looters had swept through. Outside, throngs of white-haired grandparents frantically taped their hastily made decorations onto cars, trucks, and even motorcycles. Some might call it excessive, even a little crazy. We call it something else: the Grandparents Day Parade at my granddaughter’s elementary school. Fortunately, we were spared the Dollar General chaos. The night before, I bought a hot-pink sheet of poster board and cut out a crude heart using my wife’s good scissors, of course. After writing my granddaughter’s name in large letters, we secured it to the car window with strapping tape, then took our place in line with the other parade participants. And waited. And waited. And waited. There must have been hundreds of decorated vehicles, ranging from modest to downright ...

It was my first day of school and I was bit unnerved. After all, it’s been 50 years since I’ve taken a class at The University of Alabama .  And in that half century, everything seems to have changed. The campus has sprouted enough new buildings to make a second college. And while the core of the campus is familiar, I’m uncomfortable with a lot of  the new academic sprawl Every empty space, no matter how small, seems to have a new structure  on it. I’m sure that’s because the student population has more than doubled since I last wore a fraternity jacket . Streets I drove on don’t exist anymore; instead there are new ones that take me to parts of the campus I’ve never seen before.   Even some of the old buildings have been refaced to give the campus an  uniform look - but they’re  almost unrecognizable to me.  At least the Quad is  still untouched - for now.  The whole campus teemed with students  pouring in and out of classrooms, remindi...