Category: Parenting

Imagine a Protestant locked in a dim, dank room with a Catholic. The chairs are hard and uncomfortable, the lighting poor. Outside where the sun is shining, children are frolicking in the surf as their contented parents sip drinks with little umbrellas in them. The protestant and the catholic can

Teachers across the country are being bombarded with the following narrative from well-meaning but horribly misguided parents: “Don’t tell my daughter that she got a ‘B’ on the test. We don’t want to damage her self-esteem. We will help her more with her homework, we promise. It’s just that she’s

Not so many years on vacation in Aspen, my parents changed hotel rooms. I forget why although I do remember that this was in the days before cell phones. Connected inadvertently to the room where my folks no longer were, I spoke at length to a Mrs. Stone about her

Not one to name drop but I have to tell you that a buddy of mine is one of the preeminent screen writers in the country. He has sold scripts to Stephen Spielberg; he has written movies that you have seen. “B” is top of the food chain in Hollywood,

In “A Nice Place to Visit” from the inaugural season of “The Twilight Zone,” Sebastien Cabot welcomes Mr. Valentine, a recently deceased criminal, to a posh hotel suite. “My job is to see you get what you want, whatever it may be,” says the impeccable Cabot who goes on to

I appreciate your patience in allowing these seemingly disparate vignettes to be woven into a workable, if not perfectly seamless, tapestry. Part 1) The Young Realtor Realtors who view their clients and their work as an unrelenting series of losses punctuated by rare big hits are unlikely to be satisfied

In the generations before social media-texting and whatnot-students passed “notes.” Notes were, as the name implies, pieces of paper on which messages were transcribed. In those halcyon days, “I’m going to kick your ass after school at Burger King” was about as literate a message as you were likely to

Adrienne is playing cards with his cousin, Melanie. Melanie’s mom watches as the children play, occasionally, pointing to a card in her daughter’s hand, giving advice, or suggesting a play. As the game progresses, Melanie’s mom becomes more involved, more insistent. Ignoring the other adults at the family gathering, she

So there’s this married guy on this secluded beach. And there’s this attractive, young woman–not his wife–sitting behind him on a blanket rubbing coconut scented suntan oil into his back. He’s talking to her about how much he loves his wife and how great their two young children are. She’s

Just as Sauron’s ring makes the wearer power mad, running marathons tends to make narcissists of us all. At the risk of using too many first person pronouns, I am going to allude in my column this week to the 15 times I have failed to qualify to run the