My Life As A Hobby

On the morning of my second thyroid cancer surgery, the surgeon pulled back the curtain and said, “Hey, how are you doing?” From where I was lying, I felt the question really should’ve been directed the other way. “Actually, Doc,” I said, “how are you doing?” Without missing a beat, he held up his hands and began shaking them as if he had Parkinson’s. “Other than this, fine.” We both laughed. “Cut away,” I said. “I’m glad you finally get me.” And now - after two surgeries and a round of radiation - I’ve been declared cancer-free. Obviously, I tried to keep my sense of humor through the whole ordeal, as scary and frustrating as it was. Jokes have always been my way of coping. I even gave my tumor a name: Tyrone. I figured if something was going to live inside me uninvited, it at least needed proper identification. My friends, of course, did not allow me the luxury of self-pity. Snide, snarky remarks were their version of compassion. Or maybe it was just cruelty - with these guys it’s on...

  “Hey, I got a good ideer! Instead of going to Sunday school, let’s sneak behind the church and smoke cigarettes.” Eventually, grandparents come to understand that entertaining the grandkids isn’t optional - it’s mandatory. Somewhere between their first juice box and their first chicken finger, you either become interesting… or you become invisible. That’s why I invented Nipper. Nipper is a character birthed from my fertile imagination - an irritating hand puppet without a puppet. No felt. No googly eyes. Just my hand moving in sync with a raspy, overconfident voice.  He spews aggravating, arrogant commentary and consistently makes terrible decisions. Looking back, he was undoubtedly influenced by those old skits I saw on  The Soupy Sales Show . I come by this honestly. My father, with all his flaws, had an incredible imagination. As a teenager, he’d call me to his bed almost every night and spin improvised, hilarious, R-rated stories about the Red Roach and the Pu...

  As if by magic, he pulled a folded one-hundred-dollar bill out of a pile of gray lint. “Look what I found,” he said, waving it in the air with a flourish. My wife and I stared at him the same way we did when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. You know the look - mouth slightly open, eyes fixed, brain scrambling to processes what the eyes have just seen.  Talk about money laundering.  It’s a rare day indeed when an appliance repairman comes to make a service call and hands me money before he leaves, but that’s exactly what happened. My wife Carol had called an appliance repair company, and at the appointed time, Gabe the repairman, came to look at our dryer, which had  begun producing an annoying, high-pitched wail. The sound was somewhere between a smoke alarm with an attitude and a teakettle experiencing emotional distress. It was so bad that the last time we dried a load of clothes, about two dozen howling dogs showed up on our front porch. O...

                            Every boy needs a hero. And if he doesn’t, he should. Heroes prove that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. They show what strength and courage look like. Whether real or fictional, a hero gives every boy something essential. Growing up, my hero was the same as thousands of other kids in the South: Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant . Bryant was almost as much myth as man. One of his players once said, “This is what God must look like.” And he wasn’t wrong. Standing 6 foot 4 inches, he commanded every room he entered. He got his nickname because he once wrestled a bear. His teams at the University of Alabama terrorized college football like a coyote in a henhouse . I devoured every story I could find about him in newspapers and magazines, feeding my obsession. I will never forget the one time I met him. Like so many of his players, he nearly scared me to death. In March...

  I walked about seventy-five yards from the visitor center, stepped to the railing, looked both ways, and I gawked. I’m not a big gawker. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I gawked. But the Grand Canyon will do that to you. It isn’t something you merely see. It’s something you behold. It is truly awesome. Which got me thinking about the word awesome. It may be the most abused word in the English language. It applies to the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge. It does not apply to a waitress who got your order right at Cracker Barrel. That isn’t awesome. That’s being competent. Later that day, I climbed into my rental car, started the engine, and programmed Google Maps to take me back to Phoenix. As I pulled onto the highway, I began to wonder what else in our lives deserves the kind of awe we reserve for natural wonders and tall buildings.  We live in an age of awesomeness and we barely notice it. We carry in our pockets a slab of glass that can summon the w...