What I've Learned

Submitted to Esquire in September 2004 in response to their call for “What I’ve Learned” pieces from average people. None of these were chosen.

~It’s hard to be happy, but I try at least once a day.
~Potato chips are like Crack.
~There is nothing so perfect as a well-played baseball game.
~A good boxing match comes close.
~I love my son, Emerson, more than baseball.
~Although I adhere to it, I do not comprehend monogamy.
~Women are cruel, selfish, manipulative, conniving, and vindictive and I love them.
~Good bourbon and good cigars are gifts from God.
~I loathe politics on every level.
~There is never enough money.
~Conceptually, I will never comprehend death or the passage of time.
~As in the best southern literature, a sense of Place is as important as life itself.
~Spiders scare the living shit out of me.
~Driving from Florida City to Key West is one of the most satisfying things a man can do.
~The strangest thing I’ve ever seen is a man wearing bicycle shorts, a leather helmet, goggles, and roller skates pushing a shopping cart down a lonely stretch of Alligator Alley in Florida in the middle of summer.
~Steve Spurrier is loathsome.
~Because of racial divisiveness, nothing of consequence will ever be accomplished in Augusta, GA.
~People in Nashville are the nicest people in the country—until you put them behind the wheel of a car.
~The level of arrogance in Academia is unmatched in any other sector (although I’ve never worked in Hollywood).
~Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and then in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is the most beautiful woman to have ever lived.
~Natalie Portman, Kim Basinger, Ashley Judd, and Helena Bonham Carter come very close.
~There is no greater satisfaction than being a father.
~I love a thunderstorm.
~Never say anything behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t say to his face.
~I’d rather you steal from me than lie to me.
~What I hate most about myself is an inexplicable fear of authority figures—especially cops.
~You have not lived until you’ve seen John Prine perform Lake Marie live.
~I’ve never felt so vulnerable or ineffective as when airport security searched my infant son.
~Heartbreak is debilitating.
~Hemingway revolutionized American Letters.
~Blacks and Whites will never reconcile their differences.
~I really like red meat.
~A man needs some grease in his diet.
~A Japanese Maple is a lovely tree.
~God, I love movies.
~I will never mature to my chronological age.