I stole a cup of coffee the other day and I think it was a particularly ethical act on my part. Not worthy of a parade, unless you really want to go to all the effort, but there are certainly attaboys due for my heroism.

I was early for an appointment, so I ducked into a coffee shop with every intention of buying and paying the full price for a cuppa Joe. When I got into the store, though, the only way to order anything was via a kiosk where you spend about 4 days answering all the prompts. I hate these things, both because they make the process waayyyyyy too long and because they’re just one more way for businesses to win their war on people.

As an oldster, I have the luxury of going up to the counter in any of these app-driven stores and asking a human for help. Everyone assumes I’m too technically deprived to operate their devices and they just sell me a cup of coffee, or whatever, like real people used to do in the old days. I get my coffee faster, I don’t have to contaminate my hands on the kiosk buttons everyone else was fondling, and I help a real person keep their job. Truly, I am a hero.

So, I do my usual thing, walking past the electronics and telling the guy behind the counter that I want a cup of coffee. He grabs a cup, hands it to me, and walks away, leaving me alone with an empty cup and a row of machines, just waiting for me to take my pick.

Okay, so I’m not exactly Whitey Bulger or John Dillinger, but I’ve just gotten away with the biggest score of my life. If I did this every day, I’d be a billionaire in only 685-thousand years. Woohooooo!

Then my conscience pops up and tells me I should be paying for the coffee and I go back to locate my co-conspirator, but he’s nowhere to be found. I could ask for a manager and settle up like an honest bloke, but then I’d be revealing that my benefactor screwed up and maybe he’d get in trouble. Maybe he has made this mistake before and now he’ll get fired for being nice to me. Maybe he’ll end up walking the streets, homeless and unloved, increasingly desperate, turning to a life of crime, killing millions of people, even going so far as to tear the labels off a mattress…and all because I turned him in.

As is often the case with ethics, the answers have nuance. I can ease my conscience by paying the four bucks, but that would be incredibly self-indulgent on my part, especially if I destroyed a young man’s career opportunities and encouraged his homicidal tendencies along the way. I could toss the empty cup in the trash and just walk out, but that would be like giving karma the finger, and I hear she’s a bitch. Or, I could just pour myself a cup of ambition and saunter out like the winner I am.

Well, citizens of our fair land, you can rest easy today. I bravely tapped the dispenser and walked out of the store without paying for the coffee, preventing a cascading catastrophe that would have ultimately impacted every law-abiding citizen in America, and even parts of the Trump administration.

No need for thanks, really, but if you’re feeling particularly grateful, you could always buy me a cup of coffee.

Subscribe? Why, yes, I'd love to, and all I need to do is click here?
 
 

Big thank-you to Edith this week, even though she’ll never see this message. Maybe the rest of you can find her and pass the note along.

So, I took my eldest grandchild to a baking class and we got paired up with Edith and two of her granddaughters for the session. It’s always uncertain when you go to some program where you end up sharing resources with strangers, and it’s even worse for classes like this one. Some kid decides they like cooking and, suddenly, their helicopter parents are enrolling them in only the best schools and beaming, “Yes, chef,” whenever they toast a bagel. I’ve run into a few competitive parents at different events and I’m always just a bit en garde as some of them reveal their tendencies.

To be fair, I’m just a trifle, ever-so-slightly, you’d-hardly-notice, little bit competitive, as well. Mostly, though, I’m defensive, ready to insist that my child gets to lick as much batter as everyone else, maybe more.

So, I’m ready, Defcon 3, not at war, yet, but watching for the signs of trouble. The mixer is on their side of the table, there’s two bigger girls starting to do the mixing, and I’m figuring out how to make sure my kid gets her share of the fun.

And then, Edith tells her granddaughters to back away from the mixer and let my little chef have a turn. For the next two hours, Edith is the traffic cop and social director, making sure everyone gets to participate and encouraging my granddaughter along with her own. And there’s no push-back from her granddaughters, either, because it looks like Edith has paid it forward across a couple of generations.

Suddenly, I’m down to Defcon 1 and Edith and I are having a good time talking about life, local schools, staying relevant with the grand-kids, and a $5,000 coffee maker I insist she buy for herself. Every few minutes, she tells one of the kids to give someone else a turn and then we’re back to sharing notes on grand-parenting.

As we’re packing up our pastries and fudge, I thank Edith and, of course, she doesn’t know what she did to earn my appreciation. That’s the way it is with nice people; they don’t think being nice is a major deal. I tell her it’s unusual to get paired with strangers who are as cooperative and sharing as she is and it’s a pleasure to have that experience with her and her granddaughters.

She thinks it’s normal. I assure her it is not. She’s made my day just a bit better and she did a favor for my granddaughter. My charge didn’t recognize the dynamics at the time, but I explain it on the way back to the car. Every so often, I tell her, you run into people who are kind and considerate, who make your life just a bit easier and ask for nothing in return. We tend not to notice them as much as we pay attention to the numskulls who litter our calendars, but we should. Otherwise, our world seems even sorrier than it really is.

Thank you, Edith. I’ll pass it on.

Subscribe? Why, yes, I'd love to, and all I need to do is click here?
 
  
 

I have been banned for life from Facebook and, unfortunately, there is nobody to contact over there to express my enormous gratitude.

It all happened within a couple of hours and I'm still not 100% sure what the fripfrap was all about, but I have my suspicions. When Donnie threatened yuge tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, I posted a question about how much more I’d be paying for my fentanyl. You know, the fentanyl that’s illegal and wouldn’t have any tax collected in the first place. Hah!! I am so funny.

Facebook doesn’t have a sense of humor, though, and I got a notice within hours that my account was suspended for six months due to violation of community standards on drugs, guns and…something else that I cannot look up because I’m not allowed back there. The note said I could appeal and I figured that would be a no-brainer, since someone would look at my post, see that it was a joke, and bring me back from purgatory.

Instead, I got a note within an hour saying my appeal was considered, it was denied, and now I can never, ever, ever spend three hours a day looking at questionable memes and pinup photos of actresses who died 50 years ago.

I felt helpless. So much of our lives are given over to portals where we pay nothing and have no ownership or recourse. What we see isn’t governed by what we want to see, but what some algorithm wants to sell to the advertisers who pay the freight. They’ll talk about the public and the town square, but it’s not owned by the public and definitely not on the square.

I was reminded that it’s the same with all the social media sites I visit. I’m not paying, I’m the product, and I am extremely expendable. There's plenty more where I came from and, if they don’t find some other human, they’ll create a facsimile.  My entry on the major sites is at the whim of some guy named Zuckerberg, or Musk, and my job is to provide the content that surrounds the ads.

I started to think about how I could get back online and reconnect with all my friends who are in their own panic right now, wondering why I haven’t posted a new funny in the past few days and hoping I am okay. Then I remembered that I have another account on that site, an account I have never used, but which I could simply start using to connect to a million minions. I tried to log in on that one and--I am absolutely not creative enough to make this up--my log-in was rejected for typing too quickly.

That was when I came to my senses.  I was an early user of Facebook, so I have been on the site for more than 15 years, and in all that time I have improved my life exactly zero from my participation.  I cannot think of a single photo I posted that I could not have sent directly to the five or twenty people who would really be interested. I cannot think of any pictures I could not have received the same way.

Looking back, I spent about 100 hours of scrolling through general stuff and junk for every hour I spent gaining new information or insights that was relevant to my IRL existence. And, for most of those insights, I learned the same information somewhere else at about the same time. Ditto for Twitter, where I mostly go to see what the crazy people are talking about, and the deadly-dull posts on LinkedIn.

And, hey, speaking of coincidences, my entire LinkedIn account disappeared on the same day I got thrown off Facebook. If it was a coincidence, of course, if you believe there are any coincidences. As with Facebook, I could not reach a human being to address the issue. I created a brand-new account using my old credentials, but now I'm wondering if I want to bother at all with this.

To be honest about the whole thing, I'm conflicted. Facebook gave me a significant piece of my life back and an opportunity to stop wasting it online. I know a ton of people who have no online accounts and they continue to function in the real world. Still, I feel like I'm the only one not invited to some really cool party and I want to prove to everyone that I am worthy.

Clearly, they have me exactly where they want me.

Subscribe? Why, yes, I'd love to, and all I need to do is click here?
 
 
 
 
 

The guy with the camera says he doesn’t want to have any good stories to tell people and I wonder if he’s missing out on life. Or, maybe, he’s a helluva lot smarter than I am. You decide.

We’re on a photo walk, taking pictures of people with the mercury at 14 degrees on the streets of Chicago because, well, photographers are inherently lacking in good judgment. Anyway, as happens when you’re walking around with strangers, we start telling stories about other photo shoots, other cities, other mornings that were way too cold, a handful of experiences that made us who we are today.

I mention that some of our worst experiences yield the best stories and that’s when the guy on my right says he never wants to have a good story to tell.

He wants everything to go so smoothly there’s never anything to talk about, and that sounds both incredibly boring and pretty damned great at the same time.  Some of our best stories come from really crummy experiences that we would have chosen to avoid, if we had the chance. Still, those experiences make us more interesting people, even if we’re banged up in the process.

As we compare notes, I think about the time I fell asleep at the wheel and didn’t kill anyone, the time I underwent surgery for a cancer I didn’t have, the time I was picked up on suspicion of being a Peeping Tom, the day I ran out of gas on the way to my finals in college…actually, I have way too many interesting stories. Every one has a coda, a lesson learned or a warning, a step to be avoided at all costs or embraced continuously. Oddly, I never have a brush with the Nobel Peace Prize or a $1 billion lottery jackpot, but I guess that’s on the way very soon.

On the way home from the photo shoot, two hosts on the radio are covering the same topic. The show is about real estate investing and one of the hosts says listeners keep asking for more feel-good stories. The other host counters that the audience disappears whenever he talks about things that work out the way they are intended. Crisis, danger, disaster, drama, these are the things that sell.

That’s the tradeoff, the cost of admission. The challenges and the near misses, and, sometimes, the collisions, make our lives just a little bit more interesting, and make us just a little more interesting in return.

The secret is to get really great stories that you can tell other people by yourself. The really great stories that need to be related by your next of kin…not so much.
 
Subscribe? Why, yes, I'd love to, and all I need to do is click here?

The woman at the next table is gushing loudly and continuously to her friend about how brilliant her new niece is.

It turns out—and this is a big shock—babies are smart and they seem to be learning new things all the time. And, who would’ve guessed, her niece turns out to be really curious about the world around her. Who could have predicted that? Well, everyone.

You see it all the time, that sudden sense of discovery, when some random person enters a phase of life that has only been experienced by 7 billion people before. Whether it’s sex for teenagers or taxes for new jobholders, all of us are big-time explorers throughout our lives.

Perversely, even the greatest adventurers among us never actually discover anything. We just find something WE haven’t encountered before and, when we tell someone older about it, they work hard to stifle a yawn.

Been there. Done that. Welcome to the party.

Maybe it would spoil the fun, but part of me thinks we should have a giant set of spoiler alerts for people who need to know what’s around the next corner. They’d be flags more than spoilers, offering an early indicator of changes ahead. 

I think about this a lot as my grandkids get ready to experience new flume rides on their journeys from babyhood to child to teen and, if I live that long, adulthood. Should I tell them about the irritating kids they’ll meet as their social circles grow? Should I tell them about the increasingly powerful level of competition they’ll face as they get older and get thrown into bigger pools of talent? Should I try to explain puberty and hormones and their upcoming rebellion against their parents? Or, is it best to just leave it alone and let them know that it’s normal…after it happens?

Life is full of surprises, although I’m not sure we can call them surprises when most are 100% predictable. How much better might it be if we had a guidebook to let us know what’s coming up? Would it make life more manageable, make it easier to adapt, or would it take the joy out of discovery?

Without a doubt, we’d flag the negative things: the cliques they’ll encounter in high school, the friends who will walk away, the people who will be picked ahead of them. Mostly, we’d be alerting them to a million disappointments that will make them more capable as adults, but only after they’ve paid a very high price. Would they become more confident, or more fearful, as they learn which shoe will drop next?

Looking back, I wonder if I would have been able to handle some disappointments more productively if I had had some idea they were coming. Perhaps I would have thought of better responses and dealt more effectively with them, or maybe I would’ve been so overwhelmed by a looming disappointment that I would have overreacted before anything happened.

So, which is it? Do we tell our younger family members what to expect and how to deal with it or do we let them discover it on their own and, while dabbing their tears, say it was to be expected?

Looking for responses on this post, so please share your perspective. Is it better to warn them, or just let it unfold? And, while you're at it, click here to subscribe.

Our waiter retired three years ago when he couldn’t work due to Covid, but he’s back in the workforce now because inflation has been so high and the government safety net he was promised isn’t covering his lavish lifestyle.

He’d probably be blaming Joe Biden, but he lives in Istanbul and his challenge is the declining value of the Lira. The latest inflation rate in Turkey has improved to just under 50%...yes, 50%...and the Lira has declined 79%...yes, 79%...against the dollar since Joe Biden took office. It turns out that inflation isn’t just an American thing, even though we sometimes act as if we’re all alone in our suffering.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many parts of the world and to meet a large number of people along the way. Whenever I get the chance, I chat one up and find out that yes, we’re all the same on many levels. Geography and culture add to the complexity of our experiences, so it’s not surprising that the Ukraine war looks much different in Poland than it does in Pennsylvania and inflation is different in Istanbul than in Iowa. Where we stand on issues depends on where we sit, sometimes literally, and we sit on a catbird seat pretty much everywhere in America.

That’s why we’re at a huge disadvantage when it comes to understanding the rest of the world. We are the 500-pound gorilla, which is a slight improvement from 800 pounds before Ozempic, but we are the one beast that cannot be ignored. Specific nations need to pay special attention to China or Russia or India or Brazil, but pretty much everyone needs to consider what the United States is doing to affect their economy and trade and military security.

We, on the other hand, don’t really need to think that much about anyone. We should, of course, because we have many serious adversaries and competitors and risks. Having a sense of what’s happening around the world would give us much-needed perspective about our local issues. But who has time to even think about any other countries when we hardly have a spare moment for our daily cat videos? And Wordle?

I'd say we're Number One and every other country is Number Two, but that would require recognizing that other countries exist. And maybe they do, at least in theory, but not in the world we Americans inhabit.

So, when the inflation goes up in the United States or products are in short supply, we tend to think it’s all about us, it is only happening here, and only our local politicians are to blame. And it’s not just inflation. Remember that Covid thing? Hundreds of countries trying to figure out how to contain it, how to protect people, how to maintain an economy in the midst of a pandemic, but we broke it down into just two perspectives: blue states versus red. It was the same thing with avian flu, just as it was with AIDS and just as it will be with whatever comes next.

Seriously, folks, we need to get out more.

We also need to get more subscribers to this incredible blog. You cannot change the world all by yourself, but you can solve at least one problem by clicking here to join our subscriber list.