Life Lessons Sweet Ice Tea, Siberian Size Jars, and Broken Glass How I learned to appreciate the joys of hot tea“You’re doing this wrong.” Don’t you get tired of these stupid headlines? I do! You’re Eating Apples
Living With Russians The Race to a Better Matchstick Or, how I taught my Russian mother-in-law to appreciate paper book matchesA long time ago, I went to Russia. I met, fell in love with, and married my translator. Not
Growing Up How to Overcome Shyness by Being Anonymous Unexpected Lessons in CommunicationMy dad is on the top of a 40-foot pine tree next to our house, but it’s okay. No, really. He has emphysema, a bad heart,
Flash Fiction Battle Front: A Short Fictional Tale Sometimes things go bad even after you return home from warThe winds picked up outside of the barracks at Camp Shelby. Captain Roger Greenwood, a Tennessee Army Guardsman, reclined on
Life Lessons What Breaking My Leg Taught Me About Priorities How using crutches had unintended but beneficial consequencesThe impact threw me from the motorcycle into the air in the opposite direction of the way we had been traveling. Physics is
Life Lessons A Quick Lesson About Managing Expectations Do this, and you’ll be way ahead in the game of lifeI tell my wife and daughters all the time to manage their expectations. Whether it’s a new
Life Lessons The High Price of Bad Assumptions The real reason why you shouldn’t store water in gasoline containersMy translator’s mother, who had a broken leg at the time, hops into the small Russian made car,
Life Lessons That Time We Almost Got Killed at the Gas Station Although MythBusters said it couldn’t happen, I still don’t recommend this activityI’m probably 15 or 16 years old riding around the metropolis of Saraland, Alabama with two
Living With Russians When the Mean U.S. Embassy Worker Wouldn’t Give Us A Visa How patience paid off when we decided to get marriedFor a long time after the American Embassy in Moscow denied her request for a visa, I thought about getting my
Life Lessons Avoiding Tunnel Vision You should read those highway signs about tunnel height restrictionsThere were no signs warning me not to drive into the tunnel with an empty gas tank. I was driving my
Life Lessons What I learned about my inability to sing When people don’t like your singingAt the end of the year in elementary school, the band teacher at the middle school arrived to test us, fifth graders, to see
Life Lessons Congratulations, you’re pregnant And other fun stuff you should probably save for after law schoolThere are a few things that professors will tell you not to do when you are in law school:
Life Lessons How I almost got away with blaming the kid next to me Why kindergarten isn’t the best time in life to learn the blame gameI am probably five or six years old. I’m sitting at a table with other preschool
Public Speaking It’s OK to Use That Amazing Technology in Front of You If you’re making public speeches, don’t fear the microphoneI‘m sitting in an audience straining to hear the speaker. “Why?” you ask? I’ll tell you. The microphone
Animals The day a frog almost put me in the emergency room Why it's a bad idea to rescue frogsI am sitting on the couch in the lobby of our local gym because I rescued a frog. Now, normally, I’d be
