When I’m in the doctor’s waiting room, I’m inevitably faced with a moment of truth ... or, more exactly, a bunch of them. It has to do with those forms we fill out. You know the ones — they ask all kinds of questions that should be easy to answer, but aren’t. They’re about my ...

Though it happened over 70 years ago, I still remember it vividly. My mother had taken my brother and me to the Pontiac theater to see Disney’s latest release — “Alice in Wonderland.” I knew the story well, having had it read to me since I was hatched. Still, I was completely ...

The term “it’s a gas,” meaning it’s a great thing, is a fairly recent addition to the language. We know it was first recorded in print in 1953, so it had already been spoken for a while, mostly among jazz musicians. What etymologists don’t know is its origin. But I can tell ‘em ...

According to Alfred Lord Tennyson, spring is when “... a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Assuming that’s true, what about an old man’s fancy? I don’t know about the rest of ‘em, but what I think about is boot camp. On the 20th of April, 1969, I arrived ...

History is full of people whose lives were changed by sudden insights. A famous one is Saul on the Road to Damascus, who was so overwhelmed he not only got knocked off his ass, but fell on it as well. That said, for most of us, the opposite seems the rule: We learn incrementally, in dribs ...

As a wee poppet, my favorite season was spring. Once it hit, any concentration and common sense I had vanished as surely and swiftly as The Lost Tribe of Israel. Meanwhile, school was just a place my body was stuck in while my mind wandered and gamboled about in the woods, hills and verdant ...