The instructor grabs the rope with both hands and leans back, sits down into a low squat. The metal ring pulls away from the wall, the knot tightens, the rope goes taut. I swallow, wipe my hands on my pants, picture him stumbling backwards. He stands back up.

“Like that, that’s how you test it.”

He hands me the rope.

“You try.”

It held his body weight, it will hold mine, I tell myself. My body doesn’t listen though. My mouth goes dry and apparently the added available moisture lets my palms sweat even more. I picture myself falling on my ass, imagine the smirks, the expressions of pity.

I lean back, squat down.

“Really pull on it, like you’re trying to pop the pin out of the wall.”

The rope stretches slightly.

“Go ahead and stand up.”

I do.

“That test puts enough body weight that you know you tied it right. You don’t have to do this every time but it’s good when you’re first...

On a road trip for work recently I drove through the area where I grew up. As I got closer bad memories crowded in like a thunderstorm over the highway. Flash! - my mom following me from room to room again, shouting - boom! - the time my dad punched me in the face for cursing after I tripped and split my toenail and bled all over the stairs - flash! me slapping my brothers so they wouldn’t wake up my mom from her nap - boom! my mom flinging her bedroom door open screaming just wait until your dad gets home and - flash! - my dad - boom! - gets home and we run out the backdoor pretending we just wanted to play and hoping she’d forget to tell him. I typed this at a rest stop and remembered many times when my dog trembled under the covers in my bed, I petted him, whispered that it would be okay, trying not to jump at the storm outside the house or the bellowing in the hallway or both.

...

I used to hate Christmas cards. I still don’t send them, but that’s because I’m lazy and busy, not because I object to them on principle. I used to think something like “the people I see regularly won’t get anything from a Christmas card that I can’t just say to them in person and that will be more meaningful anyway, and if I don’t see people regularly then what’s the point?” I was young then, though I didn’t think of myself that way at the time (I suppose maybe I’ll someday say that about the me of today as well) and the most important relationships in my life were based on spending a lot of time together on a regular basis. I saw my loved ones and close friends often. I had some other friends I saw rarely, and I wrote them letters. I was once an avid pen-pal. I had some objection - snobbery I would have denied was snobbery - about how it was insincere and inauthentic to buy a car to...

I had to get home for dinner. My stomach felt empty and so did my head after a day of staring at spreadsheets. Plus it’s important to my daughters that I’m home for dinner (I once had a work dinner, I went home beforehand for about an hour, I told my kid I had to go back out, she said “you’re going to work at night?!” I said “I have a dinner I have go to for work.” She said “no you’re going out for a snack, you have to have dinner at home with us, it’s not dinner unless we’re all together.” So I ate dinner of a few bites of soup, then went out for a snack of a veggie burger, fries, a salad, and a beer). And what’s important to my daughters is important to me. Especially because they will scream and cry when they don’t get their needs met. This is even more likely when they’re tired at the end of the day and when they’re hungry. I pictured my wife trying to stir a pot of pasta sauce while...

My mom came to visit a week or two before we moved this summer. This was our first move in five years, our first move to a new city in close to ten years, our first move ever with kids. We were not prepared for the awfulness of this move. My mom said she would come to help us. When I picked her up at the airport I said “we’re really stressed out from the move so I apologize in advance if we’re crabby and less fun to be around than usual.” “I understand, moving is hard and it’s hard having little kids, I won’t take it personally.”

My mom came with me and the kids to the library one night. She read a novel while I played with the kids. When it was time to go I gave my older kid a heads up that we were leaving in five minutes. She said “I don’t want to leave yet.” “We’re not leaving now, but soon. Finish up the activity you’re doing, then we’re going home to have dinner.” Then I realized...

Maybe ten years ago I bought this car for this job and I paid too much money for it - well, actually I took out a loan. I never needed a car until I had to drive all the time for work. Then the job and I broke up and once again I didn’t need a car. But I still needed to pay for it. And for the motherfucking parking tickets.

One time I went to the car after a few days and found three different violation stickers stuck on it because my license plate had expired. Two of those three were issued on the same day, which means one of those traffic cops is an extra special douchebag even for a traffic cop. That pissed me off even more than usual because I bought the stickers for the plates online but they hadn’t arrived yet.

I contested the tickets by mail. Two of them came back waived, but I still had to pay one of them. The one I had to pay was the one on the morning when I got two tickets...

I just finished a collection of columns Nick Hornby wrote for the Believer over a ten year period. I am near the end of a collection of short pieces E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker over a span of fifty years. I enjoyed both books and am glad I read them - I would do it again if I had it to do over - but I wonder if I read them wrong. I don’t mean I misread them so much as I got the rhythm wrong. These pieces were never meant to be read together all in one go like other books. They were meant to be read with a break between them, and alongside other writing. They’re olives, they’re raw onion, they’re great with other things and they’re less suitable for being the sole substance of a main course. I should have read them one piece day, or maybe two, alongside other books.

Three vultures floated above the highway as I drove to the hardware store to pick up my newly usable lawnmower. I hunched over the steering wheel, craning my neck to watch the raptors, their posture like that of dancers, straight and graceful. Low on the food chain, bird-watchers are easy prey to people in need of quick points in a game of consolatory one-upsmanship. Before anyone swoops down, I am not much of a bird-watcher, though what keeps me out full membership in that club is laziness more than coolness. I am a bird-not-quite-watcher, a birdlooker. I enjoy birds when I look at them; I look at them when I notice them; when I remember to make an effort I try to notice them.

I started birdlooking when my older daughter grew into that stage of old baby and new toddler. One of the first words she said was “birdie.” She buzzed her lips to make the ‘r’ – “brrrrrdee!” We loved hearing...

We read The Trumpet of the Swan a few months ago. My kid liked best of all the scene when the father swan dives through the plate glass window at the music store. She laughed and laughed about it, when we read it, after we read it, while recounting it several times to several people.

We finished Charlotte’s Web a few days ago. My kid got quiet when Charlotte died, snuggled in closer to the my shoulder, insisted she wasn’t sad. When we finished the final chapter she said “That book gets sad but then it doesn’t end sad. That’s good.”

I realized late that the E.B. White who wrote Charlotte’s Web was the White in Strunk & White, a delay encouraged no doubt by my having never read either book. I enjoyed Charlotte’s Web so much that I got a copy of White’s collected essay from the library and read the online-available introduction to a book about White as essayist. I found White’s intro to...

My daughter plays tough. Yesterday at the park she made friends with another child. She circled a while, walking up to this girl, talking a moment or playing nearby, then running off, circling back. After half an hour she took the girl’s hand and they sprinted in a loop around the slides then split apart to climb ladders. Later the other girl took my daughter’s hand and they ran the same loop. As they walked past a climbing pole my daughter stepped left around the pole, the other girl stepped right and tried to let go of my daughter’s hand. My daughter held on and pulled her new friend face-first into the metal pole. The girl’s face crumpled, she paused for a big in-breath, and sobbed loudly. My daughter stopped, stared, backed away as the other girl’s mother picked up the crying child. I walked over and said “you should tell her sorry.” “I didn’t mean to do it.” “I know you didn’t, but...