During my junior year abroad in Germany, I received a letter from a person I didn’t know. It was very thick and the return address was a prison in Nevada. I was intrigued, but also concerned. How in the world would someone in a Nevada prison get my mailing address in Germany?

And then I remembered my brother Tim.

When I was around 3 or 4, before I entered Kindergarten, I became convinced that I would never learn to read.

I am not a fan of the word “adulting” for several reasons. First, “adult” is a noun and to add -ing to it to make a present participle is annoying. Second, it is a whiny present participle.

When I was young, maybe 8 or 9 years old, I would spend parts of my summer staying with my grandma and my uncle who lived with her. My uncle’s first wife had left him some years earlier and he had moved back in with his mother in his 30s.

I am what is commonly referred to as an Oops Baby. My brothers are all at least a decade older than me and I was told that my mother initially thought I was food poisoning. I still have that effect on some people.