And then there was the time a friend and I were arrested for being Peeping Toms.
 
Now, to be fair to my already diminished reputation among decent people, I should note that we were innocent of any crime.  Yes, I know “I didn’t do it,” is what guilty people say, but it’s also what innocent people say. It’s Schrodinger’s Plea.

I should also clarify that we were arrested in the sense that we were stopped and taken to the police station without having any choice in the matter. It’s not exactly like the cop said, “Hey, you guys wanna come down to the station with me? Totally your call.” Nope, he did not say this or anything like it, unless you consider, “Get in the car,” to be a request.
 
Anyway, to the story… We were home on summer break and we planned to get together one evening with no particular plans in mind. I was at a cousin’s house, so we came up with the goofy idea—which, I swear, seemed really sensible at the time—to drop my car off at my parents’ house and walk back to where his car was parked. Then he would drive me back to my parents’ house, drop me off and go home.
 
No, looking back on it, I can’t come up with any reason why this seemed like an enjoyable experience, or why it appeared to make sense, except we were exceedingly lame, but not lame enough for miniature golf.
 
So we drove to my folks’ house, dropped my car, and started what was going to be a 5-mile walk back to his car. (As I type this, it sounds even stupider than it sounded when I typed it in the last paragraph, as if such supreme stupidhood is possible.) Anyway, at about the midway point in our amble, a suburban squad car rolls up and the cop asks us what we’re doing.
 
This is where the cop should have known we were innocent, because even the dumbest of the dumb among criminals could come up with a better story than, “We’re walking five miles from my car to his car, so we can drive back in his car to drop me off by my car.”
 
The cop says a woman called in a Peeping Tom complaint from a nearby motel and he wanted to know if we had been in the area. The reason he was curious, he said, was that the woman described the peepers as a Mutt & Jeff combo and we fit the bill. Being the Mutt part of this pairing, I was slightly offended, although it was hard to argue that I didn’t need to drop a few pounds.
 
He takes us in his car to the cop house (which is what we hardened criminal types call the police station) and puts us in a room where he asks questions. No, we’re not under arrest, he says, although we can’t leave, either, and there’s no need to call a lawyer, or dad, because we haven’t been charged with anything.
 
Yet.
 
I’m taking all of this really, really seriously, since I presume this to be a crime of moral turpitude and it could blemish my reputation, if I ever got the chance to build a reputation. It’s one of those things that would absolutely go on my permanent record and follow me through life.
 
Ever since grade school, I had been warned about things going on my permanent record, which was chiseled in stone and locked up in the principal’s office, documenting everything you did wrong…ever. Like when it was the student assembly and you farted and Billy Kamden laughed and some of his spit landed on Sally Wunderlich and then everyone started laughing and now you can’t get good job, because they will look at your permanent record and see that you farted in the school assembly and ruined it for everyone.
 
And now we’re stuck in the police station and they’re going to add Peeping Tom to the whole farting thing and I would never get a good job or drive a cool car or even be allowed to order a pizza.
 
So, as I said, I’m taking this really seriously, but my friend had just a bit of disdain for everyone who was not at his level of brilliance, so he mouthed off more than a bit to the constabulary. It was like we were playing a game of good suspect, bad suspect, but at least I was the nice guy.
 
About a half hour goes by and they move us into another room, a room with a large mirror on the wall. Hmmmm. What could be behind that mirror? The cops have us sit there, someone has a conversation in the next room, and the senior cop comes in to tell us they are going to have to let us go because the woman was unable to identify us.
 
He didn’t say that we were innocent, of course. Clearly, we were guilty, since my friend was tall and I was fat and we were walking near the scene of the crime. The words he used were, “She couldn’t identify you,” which meant we were guilty but we were going to get off because of a technicality.
 
After a while, they agreed to take us back to where they picked us up, which was still about two miles from where had been going, and we were let out of the car with a warning not to do it again. Because it was clear to them that we had done it and we had gotten lucky, but we wouldn’t be so lucky next time.  That also meant they weren’t going to look for the actual Peeping Toms. They found their perps, it didn’t work out, but this case was closed.
 
We really dodged a bullet that night. What if the woman had been drinking and we looked familiar enough for her to accuse us? What if she had simply assumed the police had done their jobs, so we must be the guys who looked through her window? We’d be running around today with arrest records, possibly convictions, and the minor consolation of knowing it all happened before Facebook.
 
I’ve thought about that night quite a few times over the years, recognizing how close we were to a very damaging journey. The memory is triggered, often enough, when someone is accused of a crime and claims to be innocent. Having been on the wrong side of the table, I find myself more skeptical of the criminal justice system. I give the cops the benefit of the doubt, most of the time, but they don’t get my blind faith.
 
I’ve also given some thought to the decisions we made that night. After careful consideration, I’ve concluded that miniature golf was not our lamest choice.
 
 
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So now that everyone is working from home and Friday is pajama day, what do kids buy instead of ties for Father’s Day? So many mysteries to being a dad, including…

1. You can’t be afraid in front of your kids. You can tell them that you get scared sometimes, which is actually healthy, but you cannot be frightened in the moment. Whatever is going on, you have to hold it together until it’s over.
   
   
2. No matter how good a dad you are, there will come a time in your kids’ lives when the smartest, coolest, funniest, bravest, handsomest guy in the world is…someone else's father. Anybody else’s father. Everybody else’s father.
   
   
3. Dad reassured my sister by saying, “I’m always on your side.” We can’t always agree with our kids or support each of their choices, but at least they can know that we’re looking out for them as best we can.  
   
   
4. There are a million things we know as adults that we cannot tell our kids, hurts and harms that we cannot prepare them for without making them fearful and distrustful. The best we can do is be there to offer comfort after the fact and assure them they can handle it.
   
   
5. No matter how hard the kids stomp on your nerves, you can’t blame them when you lose it. Yeah, it’s an impossible demand, but too bad. That’s the job.
   
   
6. Your kids are like your doorbell camera, always on and always monitoring the situation. Whether you intend to or not, you’re making memories for them right now.
   
   
7. The only real way to judge your own performance as a dad is to watch how your own kids act when they become parents. It’s too late then, of course, but at least you’ll know. (Hint: if they’re willing to leave you alone with their kids, you probably weren’t the worst dad in the world. Or else they’re really desperate for a babysitter.)
   
   
8. Every so often, I think about writing a letter to my kids, apologizing for the many ways I let them down over the years. The only thing that stops me is the hope that they have forgotten some of it and I’d only be opening old wounds.

 
Being a dad is the best job I’ve ever had, and the most rewarding, even if I had no clue what I was doing most of the time.  I think the kids knew this, or at least suspected, but they let me off the hook and I appreciate it a ton.
 
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Suddenly, I’m having intimate conversations with (nearly) total strangers and I’m learning new things about myself in the process. Or, maybe, I am learning things about myself that they recognized a long, long time ago and never mentioned to me.
 
Plus or minus a few years and a couple of Covid delays, I’m marking the 50th anniversaries of high school and college, which seem like yesterday and forever ago in the same flashback.
 
One of my high-school classmates puts together a reunion lunch every month so we can compare our “memories” and I’ve traveled down to the University of Illinois twice in the past eight months to share “memories” with old friends from The Daily Illini. I’m putting “memories” in quotes here because I remember almost none of the things they talk about.
 
Well, there are a few snippets here and there, more from college than from high school, but I begin to wonder if I actually went to the same school as they did or, maybe, this is a diabolical gaslighting plot to convince me I once had a life. What if they’re just telling me all these things to convince me I was there and merely forgot all about it? When will they reveal the trap in this impossibly long con?
 
To be fair, this is five decades ago and a lot of stuff has happened since then. Grade school friends are supplanted by high school friends, college friends, whoever our friends are at whatever job we have at the moment, the parents of our children’s friends, the group at the synagogue, neighbors, new neighbors and, ultimately, all the people at the assisted living center.
 
We stay connected to few dozen people for a decade or two and maybe hold onto a handful for a lifetime. With most people, though, we’re sharing a moment. That moment might be measured in years, but it’s still a potted plant without permanent roots. We move on to new soil, as do they, and the relationships begin anew.
 
It’s a totally natural progression. Every relationship is built on some foundation and, when the foundation shifts, the relationship needs a new anchor. Maybe we end up in the bowling league with our kids’ friends’ parents and we stay connected through our love of rented shoes. Perhaps we end up in a movie group with a few co-workers and that cohort survives after the latest round of “rightsizing.” More commonly, the relationship disappears as its foundational supports are removed.
 
In a very real sense, all the people I’m reconnecting with are strangers. We knew each other once, then fell out of touch, and we spend a lot of time asking each other, essentially, who we are, or were, way back when. There’s a dead spot in my brain where I should be remembering more about other people or more about the times we shared, so I need a ton of reminders.

Meanwhile, as disconcerting as it is to realize how much I’ve forgotten, and how much I missed while I was with these people a half century ago, there is something truly glorious in these gatherings.
 
Even for those of us who have become strangers over the ensuing years, we come to the table as friends, as people who’ve shared a formative experience and recognize our common history. There is an assumption of good will and shared values that creates a foundation for our conversation. We don’t share all the same views, of course, but we walk in with an openness to hear what the other has to say and to treat them with kindness. We want to hear about their lives and their stories more than we want to drone on about our own.
 
Of course, we could do the same thing with any stranger we meet. We aren’t going to have the same views or priorities, but there is undoubtedly some formative experience we have in common, some starting point to launch a friendly and respectful conversation. What if we walked in with an openness to hear what those strangers have to say and we treated them with kindness? What if we wanted to hear about their lives and their stories more than we wanted to drone on about our own?
 
And what if we didn’t let another 50 years go by before we chose to approach all our strangers that way?
 
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A guy rolled up on my right in traffic and yelled, “I will blow your *%^&!## head off,” if I didn’t let him cut in front of me. In the old days, I would have dismissed that as a slight exaggeration and kept going. Those days are gone, though, so I made space for him and lived to drive another day.

Fortunately, I haven’t met many people who would even think of killing someone as a merging technique, but I do know a ton of people who appear to be closing in on that benchmark. They live in a state of constant agitation, on guard and aggrieved by all kinds of things that, to be honest, have nothing to do with them.

They are infuriated by something that is being done/ignored by/to/with/without the approval/participation/absence of somebody they never met, will never meet, and whose life is none of their *%^&!## business. The more remote the connection, the more agitated they are, or so it appears.

Even some of the most docile creatures in my IRL community are ready to gird their loins and do battle with the enemy that’s making their lives harder, if only they could figure out who it is. My contacts can’t identify the source of the mischief, but “they” are plotting 24/7 to make matters worse.

Mostly, my contacts complain about challenges that are truly mundane, the stuff of long lines or late mail or canceled deliveries. We used to absorb all these slings and arrows without flinching, just rolling with the punches that life throws at us every day. Now, though, the obstacles are more personal, more intentional, more infuriating, and we need someone to blame.

Politicians and talk show hosts make $millions encouraging our anger, raking in ad revenues or campaign contributions or book deals by telling us how “they” are out to get us. When it's an officially recognized sector of the economy, Anger will be the largest industry in the United States. If we weren’t angry all the time, cable news, talk radio, most of the internet and half of Big Pharma would collapse.

And, maybe, that could be a good thing. If we weren’t angry all the time, we could solve some of the problems that cannot be addressed in echo chambers filled with land mines. If we weren’t angry all the time, we could live happier lives. We might even live longer, or at least enjoy our lives more.

The craziest thing about our chronic aggrievement is that we control most of it. We had just one day of sunshine in six weeks in Chicago this spring, but I didn’t even notice. I got soaked when the skies opened up on my walk back to the car the other night, but I laughed it off because, well, it’s only water.

That’s me on a good day. Put me in a car with a destination, though, and I will get offended by everyone who is going too slowly or too quickly or failing to signal or sitting for more than 0.002 nanoseconds after coming to a stop at a stop sign. Traffic is always a mess and I should expect the same thing every day, but somehow I get so caught up in the personal affronts that I actually thought about challenging a guy who threatened to, “Blow your *%^&!## head off.”

Clearly, he needs to calm down just a bit. So do I.

We’re not even going to ask you to click here to subscribe this week, because we might take it personally if you ignore our plea and we don’t want to go on a rampage over the whole thing.
 
 
 
 

After so many people made a fortune by following my investment advice a few weeks ago, I’ve been getting all kinds of inquiries about how to deal with inflation.

Well, you’ve come to the right place. I waited in line to get a 12% mortgage back in 1985, and I once had a CD that paid 16% interest, so I am absolutely the guy to teach everyone how to deal with rising prices. Unlike all those so-called “experts” with their fancy “degrees” and years of “experience” in financial markets, I am a self-taught genius who does my own research. So, what do you want to know?

What’s the real cause of all this inflation?

Covid vaccines.

What? How could Covid vaccines cause inflation?

Just look at the facts here and it’s obvious. We were all dealing with Covid in 2020 and inflation was low, sometimes negative. Then, we started getting all those “free” vaccines in 2021 and, BAM!!! Suddenly, the CPI jumped 4% in March, 6% in May, 7% in July. The more people got vaccinated, the more inflation soared. Coincidence? I think not.

Wait, what if  it was a simple matter of people getting out more and spending more and overloading the supply chain?

Hah! You’re one of those people who still believes in supply and demand? Where do you guys come from? In fact, there were a ton of shortages in 2020, but the only one we noticed was toilet paper. Nobody cared that the shelves were empty until they took the vaccines and, then, it was like Wile E. Coyote suddenly looked down. Shortages didn't cause inflation until they started forcing us to get vaccinated.

Well, maybe, but didn't all those $trillion budget deficits play a part in creating too much demand?

Absolutely not. Yes, the federal government has spent $6 trillion more than they took in since the pandemic began, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that swollen pustule of largesse had anything whatsoever to do with raising demand and prices for anything whatsoever. Whatsoever.

On the other hand, I heard from a friend of a friend that it’s all Joe Biden’s fault.

Your friend is 100% right. Donald Trump pushed for Operation Warp Speed to create the vaccines, but he was smart enough not to create a distribution plan for them once they were developed. Then Biden got in and ruined the whole thing by distributing vaccines and causing huge inflation.

No, I meant I heard it was his fault because oil prices are higher.

Well, oil prices are higher across the world because people are getting out more, driving more, flying more, and buying more fuel. But that would never have happened without those dagnabbed vaccines, which are absolutely Biden’s fault.

So when will all this inflation subside?

Not for a long while, because we’ve added several new problems to the list. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is affecting global food prices and there’s a new avian flu that’s killing millions of chickens, and we can expect more supply chain problems because China is closing half the country due to a new Covid outbreak…so don’t expect lower prices for food or any of the crap you buy on Amazon.

Oh, and you should know that OPEC and major oil companies have decided to keep supplies low so they can maximize their prices, so don’t expect a ton of relief at the pump either. Basically, consumers are screwed.

But what about investors? Maybe I could make some money off all this economic turmoil by buying some stocks.

Absolutely not! When inflation goes up, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow demand, which is bad for business and causes stocks to go down. Sell, sell, sell.

Okay, I will sell all my stocks.

Absolutely not! When the Fed overshoots and causes a recession, Congress will pump an extra $trillion or two into the economy to boost demand and stock prices will soar. Hold on to all your shares and buy more, more, more.

Will do! Should I also buy bonds to take advantage of higher interest rates?

Are you crazy??? When the Fed raises interest rates, bond prices go down and you’ll lose money.

So I should sell my bonds?

Are you crazy??? When the Fed overshoots and causes a recession, interest rates will plunge and the price of your bonds will skyrocket. Hold on to all your bonds and buy more, more, more.

All of this is getting way too confusing. Isn’t there some simple way for me to make a killing right now?

Did I mention that I’m selling NFTs of my kids’ old art projects? Absolutely guaranteed to be worth ten times as much in 2023 as they're worth today and I guarantee you will never owe capital gains tax when you sell them. Even better, you can buy as many as you want, since quantities aren’t limited at all. Just send me your cash and I’ll handle all the details.



I only think I’m supposed to mention that your results may vary and that you should ask for a prospectus before investing, but I definitely know to tell you that you should click here to subscribe.
 
 
 
 
 
 

So this is mom’s life, reduced to a dozen boxes on the garage floor, remnants and relics from a 93-year journey that touched eleven decades and, somehow, ended prematurely.

Not everything in the boxes was even hers, really. At least a few containers hold the photos and memories she inherited from those who preceded her, keepsakes for her to preserve and, ultimately, relinquish to another generation.

I keep thinking there should be more, although it’s not likely that any added possessions would fill the empty space. In the end, it’s just stuff. Even the stuff that seems important, the stuff I’d want to hold onto, only has meaning in the context of memories. Like the photos on my wall and the resale-shop rejects on my desk, they remind me of a story that I like to retell, even if it’s only to myself.

There’s the owl figurine from my old partner, the clock from my grandmother’s apartment, the binoculars dad brought back from the war…and now, a porcelain monstrosity from mom’s collection of giraffe figurines. This one is truly hideous, but she liked it and it reminds me of her fixation with the original vegans.

That’s the thing about possessions. They have function, most of the time, but they don’t have any meaning until they tell a story, spark a memory, or preserve a connection between people or lands or eras. I’m beginning to appreciate my kids’ view of all this, resistant to my offers of all the incredibly  valuable, heirloom-quality stuff that has no emotion, no blood, for them.

I felt that way, as well, when we went through the curio cabinet, wondering why she chose some of the stuff that made it to the display while other items served their solitary confinement in the back of a drawer. Why are these Match Box cars in here, and what’s the deal with that clown figurine? Why is this vase so special,  but not that one over there in the kitchen cabinet? Without that insight, there is no connection.

No meaning.

No value.

That’s why he most important thing you can make in life isn’t money. It’s memories. Family dinner, vacation trips, visits to the zoo, or pretty much any other shared time will do the trick. Time is the greatest gift and some of the best stories begin, “Do you remember when…?”

In the end, it’s all about the memories, the experiences, the images that set us off on a journey to a long-ago time. This isn’t a drafting table; it’s a visit to my dad’s office. This isn’t an owl figurine; it’s my friend, Ron. This isn’t a mechanical toy; it’s my brother, David.

And now there’s a really, really, really weird looking giraffe.

Hi, mom. Say, do you remember when...?

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