Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 121

Dad jokes

I don’t like the phrase “dad joke.”

The phrase “dad joke” has been around since 1987 but gained in popularity in 2008 when it was used repeatedly on a popular television show in the United States.

In 2019, Merriam-Webster added the phrase “dad joke” to the dictionary.

I know a lot of dads. Most of my friends are fathers. Not once in my life have I heard any of them make a joke that would constitute a dad joke. They aren’t always funny, and some are never funny, but none of them make the anti-jokes that constitute the classic dad joke.

Perhaps there is a subset of fathers in the world who enjoy being less than funny and take great pleasure in awful puns, but if these dads exist, I don’t know any of them.

 

 

Rowling kind of nailed it

As Harry Potter walks to what he believes will be his death in the final book of the Harry Potter series, he thinks long and hard about life and death.

Author JK Rowling writes:

“Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.”

Also:

“Why had he never appreciated the miracle that he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?”

Rowling kind of nailed it.

For me, it required a gun pressed to the side of my head and the trigger repeatedly pulled for me to understand this truth about life and alter the way that I live forever.

Two near-death experiences requiring CPR to save my life when I was younger perhaps primed the pump, too.

But Rowling, as far as I can tell, has never come so close to death, yet she so clearly understands the immense feeling of regret at the end of your life if it has not been well lived, or even if it has been lived well.

I’ve lived my life since that terrible day in a desperate attempt to avoid that feeling of regret a second time.

My new book is called Someday Is Today because most people live their lives with the mistaken belief that there will always be a tomorrow. You can make that lifelong dream come true “someday.” There’s plenty of time to change your life.

What a silly thought.

As Rowling wrote:

“To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.”

It sometimes feels like the days are long and years even longer, but when you are standing on death’s door, the last thing you want to be thinking is how much time you wasted failing to do the things you always dreamed of doing.

Musician and pop icon’s last words before his death in 2017 were, “So much wasted time.”

Cassidy felt that same regret that I felt when I thought my own life was coming to an end. And he was David Cassidy. A musician and performer known throughout the world.

Cassidy understood the immensity of regret in his final moments.

Rowling somehow understands it, too. She gets it.

Or Harry Potter gets it, but as a novelist, I can tell you that the thoughts of my protagonists are almost always my own thoughts, too.

 

Hand a pride flag to the creepy man

Students at Seattle Pacific University handed rainbow pride flags to their college president and bigoted evildoer Pete Menjares during their commencement ceremony last week instead of shaking his hand in protest of a school policy that bars the hiring of LGBTQ people.

I love this.

Just imagine this bigot’s reaction to reaching out to shake a graduate’s hand and instead being faced with a rainbow flag. Placing immoral cretins like Menjares into forums where their cruelty, stupidity, and wickedness is on public display is brilliant.

When my students took the stage to shake my hand during their promotion ceremony earlier this month, many of them handed me a small ball of cotton, because they know that I can’t stand to touch raw cotton. It’s texture is the tactile version of listening to someone scrape their nails on a chalkboard.

I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. And I’m not alone. Other people have this same aversion.

But knowing that we were ensconced in a formal ceremony with an audience of parents, teachers, and students, they also knew that I could do nothing but accept their hideous cotton balls and suffer without complaint.

Also brilliant.

Seattle Pacific University is a religious educational institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church. Last month its Board of Trustees upheld a rule that prevents the school from employing staff members who engage in homosexual activity.

How do school officials even know who is having sex with who? Is this a question on their employment application?

Question: Please list your current sexual partners. Also, please indicate if your genitals and their genitals are matchy-matchy.

It’s creepy and gross to base employment eligibility on someone’s sex life. It’s creepy and gross to even inquire about such things.

Also, this buffet style of morality is just so stupid.

The Bible forbids homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to be exact.

But the Bible also forbids – in multiple places in multiple books – anyone from working on Sunday, and it specifically calls for those people caught working on Sunday to be stoned to death.

In fact, in Numbers 15:35 Moses and his congregant stone a man to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.

Just imagine: The guy who received the ten commandments from God also bashed in the skull of a man with a rock because he had been found gathering sticks on a Sunday afternoon.

Murderous bastard.

So it’s not God or the Bible or religious doctrine that causes these bigoted monsters like Menjares and his Board of Trustees to reject homosexuality or same sex marriage. It’s simply their creepy, perverse interest in the private sex lives of others. It’s their desire to control sexuality by determining what is right and what is wrong. And it’s their desperate need for everyone to behave in a way that makes them most comfortable.

I hope Seattle Pacific University students hand him pride flags all year long. I hope they plant pride flags on his front lawn every day. I hope Pete Menjares find himself awash in pride flags.

For my part, I’ve ordered a package of 50 small pride flags (just $14.99 on Amazon) that I will be mailing to Pete Menjares, one at a time, throughout the year.

I know it won’t change his bigoted mind, and I know it’s not a public act like the students at commencement, but it will make me happy and perhaps remind Menjares of how much his bigotry is despised by a majority of Americans.

Rich vs. wealthy

In the debate of time versus money, simply ask yourself this:

Would you rather be 91 year-old Warren Buffett, whose net worth exceeds $124 billion, or yourself?

I suspect that unless you’re close to Buffett’s age, you’d choose yourself, because time is almost always far more valuable than money.

Similarly, I like this graphic a lot.

I constantly tell my students that the most valuable thing to acquire in this world is not wealth but choice. When you can choose how you spend your time, you are wealthy beyond compare. Granted, money can often help a person achieve this goal, but not always. Many people end up working  jobs that they despise for longer hours than they would like simply because they have trapped themselves in a lifestyle that demands a certain level of income, even if it means being unhappy in their career.

Others forgo careers in fields where their income would be lower but their happiness higher in favor of a job that promises money and prestige. I know people who had dreams of making and building and creating things that are now essentially selling widgets. These people turn a great profit while exchanging cash for widget, but what will they think of their life when they finally take a moment to look back and evaluate their choices and accumulations?

I know people with beautiful homes, enormous bank accounts, and unhappy lives.

I also know people with very modest homes, living modestly, whose lives are filled with joy.

When you can be both rich and wealthy, that’s obviously a great place to be. But if that’s not possible, I’d choose being wealthy every time.

 

An unexpected night with the Sea Unicorns

When Charlie’s Cub Scout troop announced an evening at the Norwich Sea Unicorn’s game at Todd Stadium, I was not excited. I hoped that Charlie had not heard the announcement or did not care to attend.

We live about ten minutes from Dunkin Donuts Stadium, home of the Hartford Yard Goats. The stadium is brand new and beautiful. Earlier this year, Charlie and his Little League team practiced on the field prior to a game. We’ve had the pleasure of sitting in one of the luxury boxes rented by a magazine for whom I write. Parking is close, cheap, and easy to get in and out.

It’s an ideal way to see a minor league baseball game.

Todd Stadium is about an hour away. Why drive an hour to see a minor league team when we have one just minutes away?

Nevertheless, Charlie heard the announcement and wanted to go. So two h0urs after he had lost his championship Little League game, we were on the road to Todd Stadium for a Sea Unicorns game.

A lot of unexpected things happened that night.

First, the tickets that were supposed to be left at Will Call were not there, requiring me to purchase new tickers for the game. Granted, the tickets were only $8 each, but it did not bode well.

Second, as far as we could tell, Charlie was the only member of his Cub Scout pack in attendance. Admittedly, his fellow Scouts may have been sitting somewhere else in the park, lost in the crowd, except there was no crowd.

The stadium that seats 6,000 was empty.

Less than 200 people in attendance.

Charlie’s Little League championship game earlier that day was better attended.

It turns out that the Sea Unicorns aren’t even a minor league baseball team. In 2020, they lost their minor league affiliation with the Detroit Tigers and are now one of eight teams in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, comprised of college baseball players occupying their summer by playing against other college students throughout New England.

Needless to say the whole situation annoyed me. An empty stadium an hour away from home. Not a Cub Scout to be found. Unpaid college baseball players playing in a league without playoffs or a championship.

Not exactly baseball at its finest.

Charlie and I took our seats in a section of about 200 seats that we had all to ourselves and settled in for a long, painful, lonely evening of baseball.

Boy was I wrong.

Thanks to the absence of any fans, Charlie managed to collect two foul balls hit into our section before the third inning. Granted these were foul balls hit by unpaid college students, but in Charlie’s mind, these were just as precious as foul balls hit by a member of the New York Yankees.

He was thrilled.

When Charlie and I cheered for the Sea Unicorns or shouted to the first basemen, everyone in the stadium, including the players on the field, could hear us clearly, making our cheers and taunts public performances.

When the outfielders would back up for specific hitters, Charlie would shout, “That’s right! Back it up! Heavy hitter! Heavy hitter!”

I watched the right fielder crack up at Charlie’s taunts.

When a runner on first would attempt a steal, we’d both shout, “He’s going!”

I even taught Charlie the “We want a pitcher. Not a belly-itcher” chant.

We cracked ourselves up.

Because we could move around the stadium to watch the game and see every inch of the field, I was able to teach Charlie elements of the game that were much harder to explain in a packed stadium filled with distractions. We talked about scoring a game, balks, the infield fly rule, delayed steals, and more.

The sky overheard eventually became spectacular as the sun set behind right field and the moon rose. For a full half inning, we ignored the game and just stared at the sky overhead.

We also ate lots of junk food, purchased Sea Unicorns hats, and laughed a lot.

I have been to many minor league baseball games with Charlie. None will ever be as memorable as our bizarre, hilarious, fantastic night at the Sea Unicorns game.

Sometimes the beauty and joy in something can be found in its exceptional imperfection.

My great grandmother!

Someone posted this photo on a Facebook page dedicated to my hometown of Blackstone, Massachusetts.

Along with it was an image of the back of the photo, which listed the people in the photograph.

Included in this bunch is my great grandmother, Hilda Dicks.

Can you guess which one?

She’s standing front row center. Dark hair. White dress.

I knew Hilda’s husband, my great grandfather Arthur Dicks, quite well. My grandparents lived next door to me when I was growing up, and my great grandfather lived with his son, my grandfather, until the end of his life. He sat in a chair in the back living room, offering bits of wisdom to anyone who sat beside him.

But Hilda? My great grandmother? I don’t know when she died, but I have no memory of her. In fact, I’m almost certain that this is the first time I have ever laid eyes on her.

I find old photos like this remarkable. They are like frustratingly limited time machines, capable of taking us back to singular, stationary moments in time somewhere in the past.

31,744 days ago, my great grandmother, somewhere in the middle of her life, served on the Old Home Week committee and had her photograph taken.

I wasn’t sure what Old Home Week, was, but it turns out it’s something once celebrated throughout New England. It was an effort by towns to invite former residents — usually individuals who grew up in the municipality as children and moved elsewhere in adulthood — to visit the their hometown and become reconnected with their roots.

So back on July 24, 1935, my great grandmother was working to bring back former Blackstone residents for a week of reconnection and nostalgia. According to the sign on the left side of the photo, my great grandmother’s Old Home Week was to feature a clambake, a ball game, a special serve at the church, and entertainment of some kind.

I can’t help but wonder what her day or week or life was like back then. After this photo was taken, did she go home to tell my great grandfather about the meeting? Did she gossip about the lady whose eyes are closed in the photo? Complain about the man on the far right with the smarmy grin? Did she go to dinner with committee members to celebrate a job well done? Is her position, front and center in the photo, an indication of her social standing at the time? Was she the boss lady of this committee?

Was she the smartest, hippest, best looking member of this committee, or am I simply seeing what I want to see?

I’ve stared into her eyes, trying to discern something from her gaze. Some tiny scrap of knowledge of what this particular day was like for her.

The woman responsible for me being here 31,744 days later – someone I never met – was busy living her life, unaware that a photo taken on a summer day in July would someday be scanned and posted on a digital network that her great grandson would someday discover a hundred miles away.

I wish I knew more.

I wish I had known her.

I wish she was still here so I could ask questions.

So many questions and zero answers.

I have gratitude, though. Heaps of it. Hilda raised her son, Fred, who in turn raised my father, Leslie, without whom I would not exist.

Charlie and Clara would not exist.

If I could have just a few moments with Hilda, I’d tell her that in 2022, your great grandson is alive and happy, raising a boy and a girl who you would most assuredly adore. I’d thank her for holding her family together, navigating the struggles of life well enough to raise a family that would one day yield my own.

Scientists need to stop worrying so much about flying cars and our future robot overlords and work harder on time machines.

The Catholic Church doesn’t get to say this to children anymore

The students at Nativity School, a predominantly Black Catholic middle school in Worcester, MA, resoundingly expressed their wishes back in January 2021:

They wanted to fly a Black Lives Matter and a Pride flag over their school to signal inclusivity.

More than a year later, however, Bishop Robert McManus of the Diocese of Worcester told school officials to remove the flags, saying that the school would be “prohibited from identifying itself as a Catholic school” if it did not comply.

The school refused. They chose to rightfully ignore the bigot and continue to proudly fly their flags.

Last week, Bishop McManus wrote in a letter to the school that he had “no other option” but to declare the school as no longer Catholic.

I’d like to offer an alternative solution to this impasse:

Given that the Catholic Church knowingly concealed the longterm sexual assault and molestation of thousands of children and allowed those crimes to continue to be perpetrated for decades, perhaps Catholic Church leaders have lost the right to tell children what is right and what is wrong.

I’d like to propose that as a result of their criminal behavior, the Catholic Church has relinquished their authority over kids. Ceded the moral high ground. Proven themselves unfit to hold sway or influence in this particular arena.

Yes?

If you couldn’t protect children from being knowingly raped by the leaders of your own church for decades and subsequently covered up those crimes to protect your child rapist friends, then you don’t get to say a damn thing to kids anymore about what is right and just and good.

Fly those flags, kids.

Keep your Catholic school designation if that’s what you want.

Dare the Catholic Church to sue you. Double dare them.

Tell that bigoted bishop to go to hell.

I wrote a letter to Bishop McManus today saying exactly this on your behalf.

I wrote one to the Pope, too.

Both addresses, it turns out, are quite easy to find.

This is what teachers want, need, and deserve, as uncomfortable as it might make some feel

It’s a challenging time to be a teacher.

Coming off three years of teaching in a pandemic, children have enormous social, emotional, and academic needs. Many are struggling with trauma, the effects of prolonged isolation, and grief.

Teachers, too. For many of us, while our friends have been working remotely or in highly mitigated environments, we have spent our days in classrooms filled with children. Masked. Unmasked. Masked in highly unreliable ways. Some vaccinated. Some not.

Added to all of these pressures are the justifiably concerned, exceptionally anxious parents. Heightened emotions. Increased tension.

Many of my colleagues have also contracted COVID-19. Many of those infections undoubtedly came from students, since many of our students were and still are contracting COVID-19, too. Some of us have brought this illness home to our families. Many of us have struggled between taking care of our students and caring for our own sick children or children who are unable to access daycare or their own schools because of infections.

It’s all been incredibly, debilitatingly difficult.

It’s also been remarkably, joyfully, endlessly rewarding.

In the face of these unprecedented challenges and sweeping changes, I would like to offer this advice in behalf of my fellow educators:

If you are an administrator – principal, superintendent, or anyone else occupying some place other than the classroom – and you have not been a teacher for the past three or four years, please stop talking about what you think constitutes effective teaching and start listening to teachers. The pandemic has changed education – at least for a time – in deep and profound ways. If you’re not in a classroom – and especially if you’re not working in a school – your previous teaching experience has ceased to be relevant.

If you are an administrator who hasn’t been in the classroom for a decade or more – especially if you’re not working in a school – please by all means shut the hell up and start listening to teachers.

If it’s been longer than a decade since you’ve stood before a students on a daily basis, you honestly have nothing at all to say. You probably taught in an age before children carried cellphones. Maybe in an age before the internet became as ubiquitous as it is today. You’ve probably never had a class of students with laptops on their desks at all times. You probably didn’t teach during the extreme partisanship that has divided our nation. You may have been teaching in a time before Sandy Hook or Parkland or the recent murder of children and teachers in Texas.

If it’s been longer than a decade since you last taught in a classroom on a regular basis, your job is simply to support teachers by constantly and carefully listening to them and working like hell to meet their needs. Your own opinions on teaching are almost certainly irrelevant unless they have come from the people doing the job everyday.

Here’s the thing about teachers:

None of us went into this profession because we wanted to get rich.

None of us saw teaching as an easy job.

None of us want to fail.

If a teacher is asking you for a tool, it’s because we know – better than you could ever know – that we need that tool.

When we tell you that the curriculum is atrocious, it’s because we know – far better than you ever could – that your curriculum is atrocious.

If we tell you that an assessment is no good, it’s because we know – better than you ever will – that the assessment is no good.

When we tell you that a policy is not working, it’s not because we are trying to to make our lives easier. It’s because your policy sucks.

Plato Karafelis, my very first principal – who served for 25 years in the school where I am now approaching my 25th year – would often point out in faculty meetings that he had not taught in a classroom for 12 or 15 or 20 years. “How could I possibly pretend to know what your job is like anymore?” he would say. “I need you to tell me what I need to know. Tell me what you need so I can do to support you.”

My current principal – bless his heart – approaches the job similarly.

But that type of leadership is hard to find these days. Lots and lots and lots of administrators who once taught in bygone days – pre-pandemic  days, pre-digital days, pre-computers in your pocket days, pre-murder in the classroom days, pre-social media days – think they understand the job. They think that their opinions on pedagogy and curriculum and assessment are relevant in today’s teaching environment. They spout theories and opinions and policies from ivory towers when they know nothing about the realities of a classroom today.

I was named West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year in 2006. If that same 2006 version of me appeared in my classroom today, I would be a tragically ineffective teacher for my students. It would take me at least a year and a lot of work to become highly effective again. The world has fundamentally shifted since my first few years of teaching. If you’ve been teaching in the classroom during that time, you, too, have shifted along with it.

But if you’ve spent your time outside the classroom, in some office or ivory tower, you know very little about classroom instruction anymore. You know lots of other things, I’m sure, and some are probably very important and useful, but if you don’t work with kids, you don’t understand the realities of the classroom in today’s world, and that, more than anything, is what teaching is about.

So in these challenging times, I implore administrators – especially those not working inside schools – to stop thinking that you know anything about what is going on in the classroom and start asking teachers, relentlessly and religiously, what they need to be successful. Ask them all – the compliant ones, the nonconformists, the rookies, the veterans, and everyone in between.

Every teacher has a list of what they need to better help students learn. Ask them for their list, and don’t waste their time explaining why the items on their lists are unimportant, too expensive, unrealistic, or not needed.

Stop assuming you know anything and ask them. Listen to them. Act upon their requests whenever possible. When it’s not possible, find a way to make it possible. That is why your job exists.

If you can’t bring yourself to do these things, then just be quiet. Don’t become an obstruction to good teaching. Stay the hell out of our way. Send your emails, push your papers, and answer your calls in your office of one while those of us in the trenches, doing the real work, battle on.

And please don’t make the mistake in thinking this is the opinion of one person. There isn’t a teacher I know who doesn’t feel similarly. Teachers tend not to be boat rockers. Many are rule followers. Still more are people pleasers. Most are simply too investing in their students to fight against blind, incompetent administrative buffoonery.

But they all are feeling these pressures. They all want more for their students. They all need more support. They all wish people who have not occupied a classroom for 5 or 10 or 20 years would do a lot less talking and a lot more listening.

It’s not just me. I promise you.

Happy summer, teachers. You’ve earned it.

Learned from my mistake

On Tuesday night, I was in Boston while Charlie played in his first playoff game of the season. I was sitting in the audience at a Moth StorySLAM, waiting for my name to be called. A client based in Boston knew that I had planned to attend the slam and wanted to finally meet me in person and watch me perform.

I was annoyed about missing the game. It wasn’t on the original schedule, so I hadn’t known about it when I scheduled myself to appear in Boston. But I hadn’t missed a game in two seasons, and given Charlie’s team’s record, I didn’t think they had much of a chance of winning.

Missing one game wasn’t going to kill me.

But then Charlie’s team won. Charlie hit the ball better than he has hit all season. I received text updates from Elysha throughout the evening but missed the whole thing.

Later, on the phone, I told Elysha how upset I was about missing the game. Why had I felt obligated to attend the slam? I could’ve simply told my client that my son was playing in a playoff game and couldn’t attend. My sense of obligation – I said I would be there, so I needed to be there – overrode my desire to be sitting along the chainlink fence, watching Charlie play.

Elysha’s advice was perfect:

I’m sorry that you missed the game tonight, honey, but let’s focus on Charlie and not you.

She was right, of course. It’s always good to have am partner who can knock you back down to earth. I put my disappointment aside and spent my time congratulating Charlie and helping him prepare for the big game.

Then came the news:

The championship game would be on Saturday.

My book launch extravaganza was also schedule for Saturday. Elysha and the kids were going to play an important role in the festivities. Elysha wrote and recorded the foreword and deserved to be there. Tickets has been sold. The venue – The Connecticut Historical Society – had booked the night and scheduled employees to work the event. A bookstore – RJ Julia Booksellers – was sending an employee with books to sell. Lights had been rented. My production manager and intern were scheduled to work. The author of my afterword, Shep, and a friend, Jeni, were scheduled to appear, too.

I wouldn’t be able to cancel this. Too many people had already organized their lives on my behalf.

At first, all was well. On Thursday morning, it appeared that the game would be scheduled for Saturday afternoon, well before the book launch party. But later that day, the news came that the game would be played at 6:00 PM under the lights.

I was going to miss another game. A championship game. Elysha and Charlie would miss the book launch. I was so unhappy.

About an hour after resigning myself to missing the game, I was sitting at my desk at school when I thought, “Are you sure you can’t reschedule? You screwed this up once before. Maybe you can fix it this time.”

It would require the agreement of the venue. It would mean mean refunding dozens of people’s tickets. Canceling lighting. Asking the bookstore to reschedule. Finding a new date that would work for Shep and Jeni and my production manager. Disappointing a lot of people. Some probably hired babysitters for the night. Planned their Saturday around the party.

A lot of people would need to help me out in order to make it happen, so it was unlikely to happen.

Still, I had to try. I sent an email to Natalie, my contact at the venue first, explaining the situation and saying, ” I know it’s unlikely at this last minute that we can reschedule., but I have to ask.”

Her response, less than an hour later was this:

“That absolutely sucks. As a Little League mom, I feel this. In the age of Covid, cancelling an event isn’t something people are going to be shocked about. We have all our Saturdays in July open and could reschedule to that. The people who come to your events are Matthew Dicks followers, not CHS followers, so I’ll leave it up to you.”Just like that, the door was opened. Within an hour, the event was rescheduled. Within 24 hours, everyone involved, including the bookstore, had agreed to the new date.What once seemed impossible was suddenly done.On Friday afternoon, I sent an email to my newsletter list and posted on social media about the rescheduling, knowing that many people plan to purchase tickets the day of the show. They would need to be alerted to the change.The response was overwhelming. Instead of being annoyed, people were thrilled for Charlie’s team and incredibly supportive of my decision to reschedule. Kindness beyond compare.My favorite response came from a reader in Toronto who was trying to decide if she should attend the show:“I love your sense of integrity to walk your words. Enjoy and know that we support you in your decision.”Words like this meant a lot.Sadly, Charlie’s team lost last night. Charlie took it hard. So, too, did I. But I was so happy to be there for him, cheering him on during the game and cuddling on the couch later on, hoping to make him feel a little better.I’m thinking about all of this because today is Father’s Day.As parents, we make mistakes. Some of us make a lot of them.I think one of the most important things we can do as parents is avoid repeating mistakes. Learn, grow, and move on. I made a mistake on Tuesday night, allowing a business obligation to supersede a family obligation. I worried about upending the plans of a client instead of being there for my son.On Saturday, I upended the plans of a multitude of people. Surprisingly, they all supported my decision and made the rescheduling of my event almost seamless.But had they not, I still would be happy today. I still wish that I had attended Charlie’s playoff game on Tuesday night, but I learned from my mistake and reacted differently  the next time. I was a better father on Saturday night because I decided to learn from my mistake and do better.Parents are fond of beating themselves up for their mistakes. They can be incredibly hard on themselves.On this Father’s Day, I’d like to propose that we treat ourselves with greater kindness and accept the fact that mistakes will happen. Our decisions will not always be perfect. But allow those mistakes to inform us about how to be better next time.Our kids don’t expect perfection, but they expect us to do our best. Sometimes our best means learning, growing, and being better the next time.

Crayons

It’s not a restaurant’s primary or even secondary responsibility to provide crayons to its patrons, but when you’re kind enough to offer crayons to children, it takes almost no effort to get it right.

This is why Charlie was astounded by the selection of crayons offered to him last weekend:

Nine in total.

Five different shades of orange
One yellow
One black
One white
One unwrapped purple

In the words of Charlie, “No red? No blue? No green?”

Again, it’s not the job of the restaurant to supply crayons. And the meal was delicious and the service was excellent.

But still…

It doesn’t take much to get this right.

Right?