It’s strange how birthdays change meaning over time. Growing up, your birthday is the best day of the year — presents, cake, everyone’s attention on you. You have a party with all of your friends. You feel special and important.

But isn’t that all true when you’re grown, too? The fanfare is all the same, and yet we feel bad about our birthdays. They fill us with dread. Another year older just means we’re getting further away from our youth and closer to the tough, painful years of elderliness. And I suppose this is true, but why do we turn so pessimistic about our birthdays when we used to be so optimistic?  read more

For several years, my dad rented an office space owned by a man he somewhat affectionately called “Hack Boy.” Hack Boy owned this dated barber shop just a street over from Main in our little town. The barber shop itself was small, only holding a few chairs for haircutting, but the building was a bit bigger, housing two small, rentable office spaces and an upstairs apartment. Those lucky enough to visit the office spaces got to pass through Hack Boy’s hair studio, featuring ghastly taxidermied animals and that classic old person smell. The furniture was all from the eighties, unquestionably. read more

I’ve always been drawn to the sound of a piano. That’s not to say that I can play the piano, however. After watching my siblings both gnash their teeth, throw themselves from the piano bench, and burst into tears countless times, I decided piano lessons weren’t for me. Instead, years later, I’d sit at my father’s piano and study my siblings’ instructions books, essentially self-teaching. When I’d encounter a note or symbol I couldn’t decipher, I’d call over my father, an accomplished pianist from childhood, to clarify. And so, I learned some basic piano, though I never really mastered the building blocks, the scales and keys. read more