It’s been a tough start to 2026 in the land of the free. All the stocks you thought were too expensive are up another 4,000%, citizens are being pulled off the streets and loaded onto planes for Guatemala, and the weather has been so damned cold that some people are secretly hoping they can get deported, too, if only for the next few months. (Too soon? Probably.)

Good news is harder and harder to find, but have no fear, dear readers. As always, the incredible jolliness team at Dad Writes is coming to the rescue. We’ve searched everywhere and we have discovered the absolute best feel-good message for you. (And only you. Millions of readers think I’m talking about them, too, but you and I know this is for you and you alone.)

What message could possibly bring such joy? Only this:

No, you absolutely did not do everything you could, and, no, you didn’t do it right.

Don’t you feel better already? Of course, you do. How can you not?

I went to a dinner a couple of weeks ago and the topic was how to comfort/console/help friends and relatives who are about to die. Yes, I could have opted for the comedy club, but this is an important topic and the situation is much more common as I stride confidently toward the Reaper. If we’re lucky to live long enough, it’s a situation we’ll all face.

Unsurprisingly in a group of people over 60, everyone at the event had faced this reality or was facing it now. For those who shared their experiences with me, the stories were all similar and the after-thoughts were almost universally the same:

Did I do everything I could? Did I do the right thing? Did I make a mistake about holding on or letting go or focusing on reality or building hope or…? The situations were all different, but the questions were the same. Could I have done just one more thing? Could I have said something more wise or not said something that could hurt? Could I have paid one more visit, baked one more pie, made one less comment, given one more hug?

Hidden in the questions, I think, is a belief in the impossible. Even if we know with 100% certainty that there was nothing we could have done to alter the course of nature, we still wonder if there was some button we could have pushed to change the destination. Every one of the people I spoke with could have done something more or different, something smarter or warmer or more comforting. For every single one of them, though, it would not have made a difference.

When it really, really counts, we all make a mistake or two or three. We all miss a beat or make the wrong joke or get sidetracked on the way to a visit. Most people, usually the ones who really do make the effort, will have some regrets. Sometimes, the regret is an indicator of how much they did right. Sometimes, the people who wonder if they did all they could are the same people with a very, very long list of the things they did.

None of us can offer any real insight if we weren’t in the room where it happened, because every situation is a sample size of one. The best we can do is to listen and to reassure the mourner that they did their best. Usually, that reassurance is enough, if only for the moment at hand.

This is a story about romance, but probably not the kind you’d suppose.

I was wandering around Old Town Scottsdale a couple of months ago and the See’s Candies store is still operating as it has for as long as I can remember. Most likely, it’s been open much longer, since the company is almost 105 years old.

I’ve never been a big fan of See’s candy, since I prefer savory over sweet and I don’t consume much in the way of candy, anyway.  It’s fine, for candy, but that’s not my thing and it’s definitely not the point I was intending to make here.

(Don’t you just hate it when some guy starts telling a story and runs off on a tangent and has a hard time finding his way back to the point he was trying to make? Me, too. I’d really hate to meet a guy like that.)

Okay, back to my story. Seeing See’s still selling Scottsdale sweets sparked sentimental sensations.

There was a time, kids, when you had to go to an actual See’s Candies store to buy their wares. If someone brought you a box of See’s Candies, it meant they not only traveled hundreds of miles from home, but thought about you while they were on their journey and made the effort to both buy a box and schlep it back for you.

And that’s where the romance comes in. There was something magical about receiving a gift from a faraway locale, an item so rare that your benefactor needed to journey for days in order to find and claim it. See’s Candies sold literally tons of caramel suckers to Midwest travelers who gained panache points from friends when they returned home. (Yes, they probably could have bought candy through mail order, but that’s not how we rolled in The Time Before.)

We all loved everything that was unavailable at home. We longed for a precious six-pack of Coors, which you couldn’t get east of the Mississippi, and we were ready to give a kidney to any friend who brought some back from exotic St. Louis. Coors tastes like water that somebody drank already, but we didn’t care. If we had some, we were more special than all the normies who were still getting their suds from the land of sky-blue waters.

Last year, I visited a half dozen spice shops in Greece, searching for a spice blend one of my daughters and sons-in-law wanted. Eventually I found it…along with the website info for ordering it online any time of any day. I spent more time searching in the spice stores than I would have needed to find it on my phone, but it was the search that created the romance. To me, that easy access made the item less special. It wasn’t a unique product I needed to find in a bazaar. It was one of 200 billion SKUs I could buy instantly from Jeff and Lauren.

Every so often, you’ll find a place in your travels that’s selling something unique, something available only at that store in that town. Whatever it is, buy one. Our world is becoming more bland, even coarse, and we can all benefit from just a bit of romance in our journeys.
 
 
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Every so often, I think I should get out more, but the world outside my apartment just gets stranger and stranger…

• Checkout challenge. It’s a war of willpower between the grocery store and me. I’m fighting to keep people employed, so I refuse self-checkout and wait for a cashier. America’s grocers refuse to add more cashiers and they’re counting on me to give up and bag my own damned groceries. I know they’ll win this war, eventually, but I’m not giving up without a fight. Meanwhile, based on their attitudes, I don’t think the cashiers care as much about their jobs as I do.
  
• Musical maladies. We need more songs about Halloween and Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, and we need them now, because the store I was in was playing non-stop Christmas music during the first week of November and it’s already getting old. 
• Rhyme times. In case anyone thinks it’s difficult to write songs about holidays other than Christmas, allow me to disabuse that notion. Consider, for example, “Candy pickers want full-size Snickers,” “Nuttin’s better’n American Veterans,” or “Three extra helpings of turkey and sides are no big deal with Semaglutides.” This stuff writes itself.
• Cheer worm. Meanwhile, there's one Christmas song that I really, really hate and it's now my biggest ear worm. Every damned morning, I catch myself singing this thing and grimacing at rhymes that are worse than "asking Santa for extra Mylanta." So, what's your 100% least favorite Christmas song? 
  
• False fronts. Wandering through CVS, all kinds of stuff is behind locked, plastic windows, probably to protect against roving gangs of thieves that would grab things…after breaking the windows. Apparently, toothpaste is a hot item, but toothbrushes are not. Go figure.
• Come again? The manager at the local Starbucks is slouched in the back of the dining area, eating a sandwich, as he yells a greeting to everyone who walks in and invites them to come again as they leave. I haven’t figured out yet if he is being incredibly diligent or exceedingly lazy. I’d make a Schrodinger analogy here, but I’ve used up my allotment for 2025.
  
• Cow down. The guy next to me at breakfast ordered a glass of milk with his meal and it really surprised me. I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone order a glass of milk without a sippy cup and a straw. Is this some online challenge I haven’t heard about yet?
• It’s a match. Of course, a grown man ordering a glass of milk isn’t nearly as mysterious to me as guys who wear shorts with a sport jacket and t-shirt. Unless you’re a British officer subjugating India, shorts and jackets are never a match. (Too soon?)

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The people at the next table are talking about space. They all seem to be in relationships and they all need more of it. Not relationships. Space.

It’s a table of four, three men and a woman, and they seem to be a golf foursome at the 19th hole. The woman is doing most of the talking, mostly about her partner, who wants to be with her all the time. She says she needs to get away from him, so she finds ways to get him to visit with one of his parents or reconnect with a project he’s been putting off. She does a lot of planning, apparently, because she has a long list of suggestions with one common link: banishing her beloved.

One of the guys says he understands because his wife is at home all day and he isn’t. He wants a break from people when he gets home, but she’s desperate to connect. Another guy mentions a couple he knows who got divorced, then remarried, but they decided it would be better if they still maintained separate homes. It seems to be working out pretty well, he says.

At first, I think it’s rude to eavesdrop on their conversation, but then I find a way to forgive myself. First, they’re talking loudly enough that anyone within 20 feet can hear them. Nobody drops their voice to a whisper and nobody asks anyone else to keep anything secret. The law is on my side, too, since there’s no expectation of privacy in a public place. I’m not really eavesdropping, then. I’m merely being aware of my surroundings.

The conversation gets very detailed and, to my mind, very intimate, and I’m surprised by how open they are about their relationships. Very surprised, really, since it becomes clear after a while that they really don’t seem to know each other that well. The woman talks at length about her partner, but it appears that the men at the table don’t know his name. As the guys add their own comments, it’s pretty clear nobody else knows the people they’re discussing other than “wife” or “friend” or some other anodyne reference.

At the end of the lunch, they get separate checks instead of simply splitting one check four ways. It’s a bar at a golf course and a cheeseburger with three beers is going to set them back about fifty bucks with tax and tip, so nobody is saving much by getting a separate check. It’s a leap, but I think good friends would just split the check equally, even if they used separate credit cards.

Lunch is over, but they keep talking, and the only thing they seem to have in common is a focus on space. They don’t talk about neighbors or kids or their jobs or travel or anything else that might suggest a connection other than, possibly, a round of golf. Each of them is in a relationship, none seems to be in a relationship that anyone else at the table knows, and all of them struggle with their need to get away from the person they consider most close.

Maybe this is the human condition, a push and pull to be close and distant, intimate and detached. Maybe the people at the next table are finding the right balance to sustain their relationships. If nothing else, they found a topic they can discuss without rancor or gunplay.

I like it when the people at the next table write my posts.

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She got off the treadmill, started walking toward me, looked me in the eye, and said, “Hi, how are you doing?”

I didn’t think I knew her, although I’m the guy who had to be introduced to his own relatives at his wedding, so you can never count on me to remember anyone. The important thing was that she remembered me, so I responded that I was doing quite well. Then, I began asking her about her day as she walked past me and out the door.

Damned ear buds.

If there’s ever going to be justice in this world, everyone using earbuds should be required to have a flashing “On Air” sign on their foreheads, letting the rest of us know they’re broadcasting and don’t want us talking to them.

I’ve actually gotten better at it over the years, avoiding the trap of responding to people as if anyone was willing to be seen speaking with me in public. I should know better, of course, but I’m so excited to be acknowledged that I jump into the conversation immediately. Almost invariably, I have not been invited.

I fell for it on this particular day, though, because the woman did something almost nobody ever does. She made eye contact. Yes! Hard to believe, but she actually looked me in the eyes as if she was acknowledging that we were both, what’s that word…people.

Eye contact is absolutely a lost art form. Nobody ever looks at you while crossing the street in front of your car or riding with you on the elevator or, well, pretty much ever. It’s as if everyone got the message that looking into someone’s eyes is worse than staring at a solar eclipse.

Believe it or not, kids, there was actually a time when I’d get called out for looking at my computer screen when someone came into the office for a conversation. That sounds quaint now, as if we aren’t all looking at our phones while saying, “Yes, I’m listening,” to the person who left the room ten minutes ago. 

Actually looking at someone while talking to them adds a degree of intimacy to a conversation, almost as if we were two real human beings communicating with each other in a three-dimensional world.  Crazy, I know, but all the great ideas seem crazy at first.

The pendulum swings, though, and eye contact is bound to come back, just like Hula Hoops and Oregon Trail and Nehru jackets. One of these days, some influencer or rock star will start promoting the healing powers of eye contact and we’ll all be staring at each other like it’s 1999.

Until then, could all of you buy some “On Air” tiaras to wear while you’re using your ear buds? It will save me a ton of embarrassment and that’s a small price for the rest of the world to pay on my behalf.

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There’s a theme running through this week’s incredibly wry and witty observations about the world outside my apartment. Big prize for the first person to figure it out…

• Winging It. The sound is getting unbearable in Chicago’s suburbs as cricket mating season moves into full passion. You cannot pass a tree without hearing a few hundred males, scraping their wings to make that godawful chirping noise while every female in the area resigns herself to doing the deed with one of them. It’s a lot like every campus bar in America, but more of the guys are going to get lucky.
  
  
• Magic Fingers. Is there anyone who thinks you need to push the elevator button once for each person who is waiting for a lift? Is there anyone who thinks they can make the elevator come more quickly if only they push the button five or six times instead of only once? Is there anyone who thinks the elevator is off on its coffee break and needs to be reminded that people are waiting, so an extra button press will get its attention? Of course not. Nobody is dumb enough to think any of those things. And yet….
  
  
• Been There. I wandered past Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace the other day, where the sign proclaims it’s been his personal nativity scene since 1899. (Before then, it might have been someone else’s birthplace, but they were nobodies and we don’t care.) It got me thinking about birthplaces, though, because it’s a silly thing to commemorate. Hemingway was born in Oak Park, which means that’s the town he left to achieve fame and fortune. Walt Disney was born in Chicago, but he and Roy set up their cartoon studio in Los Angeles. Ted Kaczynski was born in Chicago, too, but he achieved his fame in Montana. As with the rest of life, the place we start is less important than where we finish.
  
  
• Third Wind. There’s an old woman wobbling down the bike path, walking with her arms splayed out so far that you’d think she’s on a tightrope over Niagara Falls.  She has muscular legs, so maybe she was a runner a long, long time ago. Right now, though, she’s a very old woman, struggling to keep whatever’s left of her strength and balance intact. Also right now, I’m very impressed.
  
  
• Men Who Know Too Much. I’ve always believed we should trust the experts, mostly because those are the people who learned the details that they need to gain, you know, expertise. Still, I understand how people can really be suspicious because, in our daily experience, it turns out they’re a bunch of idiots. Take a ride on a bike and you’ll see the number one criterion for designing bike lanes is never to have ridden a bike in your life. (Interviewer: “Have you ever ridden a bicycle?” Applicant: “Yes, almost every day.” Interviewer: “Next!”)
  
  
• Open Secrets. In the good old days, my mailbox overflowed with credit card offers that totaled several million dollars over the course of a year. Now, when I get mail at all, it’s often a five-page letter about a data breach at a company I never heard of that manages data from another company I never heard of that got my information from some app I was forced to download in order to get my tacos delivered. Progress!!
  
  
• The World Is Not Enough. One of the goofiest ideas that’s making the rounds in some political circles is that billionaires aren’t motivated by money, simply because they have all they could ever need. Poppycock. Also, balderdash. It’s part of the human condition to want more and believe we deserve more, no matter how much we have. I knew a woman who said she was compensated fairly and didn’t need more money, so her family had her committed. (JK. I never knew anyone who said that, so no action was required.)
  
  
• Shocking Statistics. On a similar note, I just read a survey of Americans that indicated they think things cost too much, they aren’t making enough money, interest rates are too high, raising kids is too expensive, the government isn’t doing enough for them, the government is doing way too much for everyone else—especially THOSE people—and there’s nothing good on TV. As you might expect, I was very surprised at all of this information.

Yes, I’m easily surprised. Also confused and flummoxed and shocked and aghast and titillated and, hang on, I need to check my thesaurus…   

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