Tag: Life’s Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

A New Lens on Life

The case of the masked bandit and his five-finger discount

By Maria Johnson

Years ago, when our sons were little, they gave me a Mother’s Day gift.

Their eyes gleamed as I peeled away the wrapping paper.

“Oh,” I said, aware of the tender hearts in front of me. “A LEGO set. How . . . cool!”

“Look, Mom!” they bubbled as they grabbed the box from me, flipped it over and pointed to pictures of all of the things that could be made with the multicolored bricks. “Isn’t it great?”

“It is great,” I said.

And I meant it. Because I knew how they meant it. Inside that box were hours — OK, maybe minutes, considering my impatience and their facility with LEGOs — of a shared experience, of making something together.

They knew I would be down, as in down on the floor, with anything they wanted to do. That was a compliment that I treasured. And, honestly, whenever I went with their flow, I experienced the joy of knowing them more deeply, of learning something new and, often, of cracking up at the result of our collaboration.

Fast forward to the moment when I unwrapped a gift from my husband, Jeff, on our recent anniversary.

“Oh,” I said. “A solar-powered . . . Bluetooth-enabled . . . motion-activated . . . bird-cam-feeder . . . equipped with AI identification . . . and a voice alarm. How . . . cool.”

His eyes were gleaming. Once installed, the bird-cam-feeder would be easily the most technologically advanced device in our home. OK, just outside our home.

I realized that the gift represented something we could do together, even though he’s way more into birds than I am. Plus, I had to admit his choice made sense, given the events of the past year. To wit:

I did ask for, he did give me, and I did love reading Amy Tan’s nonfiction work, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a beautifully illustrated book about how Tan survived COVID by becoming an intense observer, and sketcher, of birds.

I do luvvvvvv watching, and re-watching, the adventures of avid birder and ace Detective Cordelia Cupp in the brilliantly absurd Netflix series, The Residence. (Seriously, Netflix execs, what are you thinking by not renewing that show?)

I did express enthusiasm, in a polite way, when a friend described his bird-cam-feeder equipped with AI identification.

Also tangentially true: I have been known to commit aspirational gifting. Consider the pickleball paddles I gave Jeff a couple of birthdays ago. (“Look, honey! Aren’t they great?!” I said, rising from the table to demonstrate my dinking technique.)

But back to our fine feathered friends: Basically, I like watching birders more than birds, which is why I enjoyed watching Jeff carefully determine the best location for the bird-cam-feeder, in front of our garden Buddha, who understandably wears a slight smile.

He — Jeff, not Buddha — spent many hours figuring out how to mount the bird-cam-feeder (atop a black metal pole); how to make the couplings aesthetically pleasing to me (no radiator clamps allowed); and how to use the app that would notify us whenever the camera spotted a creature.

The first sightings, I must say, were of some truly scary specimens: The Sweaty-Headed Sucker Pluckers.

That’s right. Us. The camera picked us up every time we walked by, headed to the garden to pinch the suckers from our tomato plants.

Jeff tweaked the phone-based app settings to detect only creatures that alighted on the feeder. At first, I was amazed at the different birds that stopped in for a beak full.

There was our friend, the cardinal.

And a purple finch.

And a house sparrow.

And a Carolina wren.

And a thrush.

And a titmouse.

And another titmouse.

And, OK, another titmouse.

And then came the crows.

Oh. Em. Gee.

The crows.

Here, I would like to make a prediction: When the world as we know it comes to an end, it will not become the the planet of the apes. No. It will become the planet of the crows, an obviously superior species that knows how to work together for mutual benefit.

I say “obviously” because once they discovered the bird-cam-feeder, it was a nonstop milo-millet-cracked-corn-and-sunflower-seed hoedown in our side yard.

You know how revelers toss beads from floats in Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans?

Like that. Only instead of throwing beads, the captain of the Crow Krewe would hop up on the perch, bob side to side, and sling seed to all of his crow buds on the ground until, voila, no more beads.

I mean seeds.

This happened over and over again, until Jeff went into the app and figured out how to sound the alarm to scare off unwanted diners.

BZZZZZZ! Gone.

We were satisfied. For a minute. Then we noticed that the feeder would be full of seed at sunset and empty in the morning.

Hmm. Most birds around here, owls notwithstanding, do not feed at night.

Further, the camera recorded no birds overnight.

But something was triggering the camera to record blurs.

We went into Cordelia Cupp mode, zooming in on the fuzzy photos frame by frame until we spotted a hand. But not just any hand. A hand worthy of a 1950s horror flick. A small, gnarly, five-fingered black hand surrounded by a cloud of fur.

“Barnacle goose,” AI declared.

Huh?

A few frames later, we observed a closeup of sharp little teeth.

“Bonin petrel,” said AI, suggesting a seabird that nests on Pacific islands.

A few frames later, we made out a bushy tail.

“Mute swan,” AI ventured.

A few pics hence, we saw a pointy snout with a sliver of a dark mask.

We didn’t care what the AI bird brain said.

It was a raccoon.

We looked at each other. But how?

We dived into the literature and found out that raccoons have thumbs, which means they can grasp things, like aesthetically pleasing black iron poles, and climb said poles, hand-over-hand, past dome-shaped baffles, to arrive at sunflower seed jackpots.

Nom-nom-nom.

Suddenly, we were aware of a pattern, not that it mattered.

About this time last summer, we were engaged in the War of the Chipmunks, a dramedy that pitted us, the innocent homeowners, against the rally-striped varmints who maintain a thriving chip-o-polis around our home.

This year’s instant classic was the Battle of the Birdseed, starring that insidious urban bandit, the raccoon, which, in truth, I would have been tempted to think of as cute, if not for the fact that it was cleaning out my bird-cam-feeder, which I was suddenly very possessive of.

Ask any politician about the unifying emotions of people who feel they are threatened by “others,” even if the others are, you know, raccoons.

The fortification began.

Problem solver that he is, Jeff hopped on the internet to search “raccoon baffles.” He found one model, a wide-mouth, metal pipe that no raccoon could get a grip on, for $60.

His Scottish heritage — best paraphrased as, “By God, I’ll not pay $60 for a two-foot length of stove pipe”— prompted him to drive to a rural hardware store to buy . . . wait for it . . . a two-foot length of stove pipe for $20.

Which meant that very night I hit “Place Your Order” on the $40 skin cream I’d been dithering about for weeks.

It’s yet another way that we balance each other.

But I digress.

The point is, after many more hours at his workbench, Jeff installed the homemade raccoon baffle, and now we are now the proud owners of a maximum-security bird-cam-feeder, which is highly effective.

How do we know?

The morning after installation, there was plenty of seed for the morning feeders.

And, upon closer inspection, we saw that the stove pipe was covered with muddy, five-fingered handprints that appeared to be sliding downward.

(Insert sound of raccoon fingernails scraping black stove pipe, followed by sharp-toothed expletives.)

We looked at each other and cracked up.

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Wiped Out

A plunge into the dark side of gendered toiletries

By Maria Johnson

Some things you cannot unsee.

Consider the day I go shopping for personal care items, and I’m stopped cold by a stack of imposing black packages on a shelf crammed with otherwise brightly colored products.

I move closer to the interloper.

“Dude Wipes,” the soft-sided package proclaims. “48 flushable wipes. Mint Chill, with mint and eucalyptus oils.”

Wet wipes? Specifically for men?

I scan the package for more clues. My eyes fall on a big one: “XL.”

No other size is available.

Yep. This is definitely a product by men, for men. Since when would a man cop to needing anything other than an extra large?

I flip over the package, hoping for some kind of explanation. Sure enough, there is the origin story:

“Back in the day, we founded DUDE out of our apartment in Chicago. We were so tired of dealing with dry toilet paper during the aftermath of a lunchtime burrito. Something needed to be done. So we created DUDE Wipes to put you back on your game whenever nature calls.”

It is signed “DUDE.”

Simply “DUDE.”

Next to the backstory are directions: “Grab one and wipe, Dude.”

Well, I think to myself, this is a good thing. At least some men will understand the concept of mansplaining now.

Right next to the directions lie an American flag and an assurance — for those worried about foreign-born wipes — that the disposable cloths are “Assembled in the U.S.”

At times like this, I have so many questions. Truly, it’s the downside of curiosity, especially when I’m in a hurry.

But it doesn’t stop me from wondering: Are baby wipes not enough for the XYs among us? Are the tyke towelettes too small? Too flimsy? Too childish?

And burritos? Really? Is that a legit story or just marketers blowing mesquite smoke?

And what’s up with mint chill? Is that a flavor? Or a sensation?

“Huh,” I say aloud.

I look up to see a man and a woman pushing a cart toward me. The narrow aisle requires me to move my cart over. They’re eyeing the package I am holding.

“Have you seen these?” I say, holding up the wipes and offering a faint laugh. “They’re for men.”

They hurry by me. I feel vaguely embarrassed. Will they wheel their cart straight to the manager and report a woman fondling the Dude Wipes?

I tuck the package back onto the shelf and round the corner.

I almost run into Duke Cannon.

Do you know Duke?

Duke Cannon Supply Co.?

You might recognize the blocky “D” on their displays.

They make a relatively new line of grooming products including a hand balm called “Bloody Knuckles,” featuring a label with two old-timey boxers wearing handlebar mustaches and long pants; a lip balm that claims to be “Offensively Large” (what else?); and face and body wipes that fly under the banner of “Cold Shower,” a product clearly meant to chill the overheated front-sides of fellows.

By now, I am indelibly aware that Dude Wipes has their backsides covered.

There’s more.

Duke Cannon also make soaps, apparently for Dude users when they decide it’s time for a deep cleaning.

One product, the “Big Ass Brick of Soap,” is available in the dangerously romantic scent of Midnight Swim; the militarily dominant fragrance of Midway (as in the World War II Battle of Midway?); and the aromatic Buffalo Trace edition, which swears it’s made with real Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey.

Because alcohol cuts grease?

Because everyone wants their employer to catch a whiff of booze on them first thing in the morning?

Should a Duke user not want to risk dropping his soap in the shower, the company also sells a “tactical scrubber,” aka a mesh pouch with a carrying strap.

More effeminate consumers might call this soap on a rope, a fact acknowledged in Duke’s fine print because, seriously, who knows what a tactical scrubber is anyway? Something that goes on a smoke stack in a war zone? Someone who scrubs military intel from classified files?

I think of a potential baby shower gift I saw recently: a “tactical baby carrier” for dad. The product listing showed the midsection of a burly, tattoo-sleeved man. Infant limbs protruded from a heavy-duty sling, which was available in black, camel, olive and camouflage.

The grammarian in me was puzzled. Which word, I wondered, was “tactical” intended to modify?

Was the baby tactical? A little Army Ranger?

Or was the carrier tactical? And if so, in which way? Tactical in the sense that mom finally figured out a way for dad to help carry the load, literally?

As I said, curiosity can stand in the way of efficient shopping. So can nostalgia.

Standing there in front of the Duke display, I’m wistful for the nonbinary days of Jergens and Ivory soap. I turn down the antiperspirant aisle hoping for a whiff of neutrality.

Silly me. Maybe I’ve never noticed we live in a nation so divided by toiletries. Maybe my eyes have been wiped clean by an XL Dude Wipe. Or maybe someone is pranking me.

In any case, I find myself in a heavily-gendered never-never-land, where no one need sweat.

Here, in this fictional world, a teenage boy does not smell like a teenage boy, thanks to a line of deodorants adorned with menacing manga-style cartoon characters with names such as RaptorStrike, Wolfthorn, NightPanther and BearGlove.

Here, women only glow in pastel products that make them smell of rose, nectarine, lavender, vanilla and water lily. Never mind that no one this side of White Lotus season three knows what a water lily smells like; it sounds lovely. And hydrating.

Here, adult men are secure in their black, gray and occasionally fire-engine-red containers filled with products scented to evoke Timber, Deep Sea, Orchard and, because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, Apple Cider Bourbon, Whiskey Smash and Mint Mojito.

Presumably, one application causes drunkenness, wood-chopping or perhaps winning a marlin fishing tournament.

I briefly consider buying several sticks of the the timber-scented deodorant, smearing my entire body with it, and seeing if that inspires me to hack down the invasive Russian olive shrubs in our backyard.

But I have more pressing plans, underarms and underbrush be damned, so I stoop down to the bottom shelf and grab a stick of boring (and less expensive) Arm & Hammer deodorant.

It feels like an act of rosemary-and-lavender-scented defiance.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Here’s the Scoop

Dogs and humans find their joy, one lick at a time.

By Maria Johnson

It’s a homecoming for Cash.

Last year, the spotted pup — he’s probably a mixture of Catahoula leopard dog and pit bull — was adopted from the SPCA of the Triad and taken home to Sanford to live with his new owner, Alicia Ferreira, and her parents.

In a nod to his origin, 16-month-old Cash and his family have returned to Greensboro, appropriately enough on Mother’s Day, to support an SPCA adoption event at State Street’s Bull City Ciderworks.

The scene includes a truck that serves frozen confections made specifically for dogs. Alicia steps up to the window and orders a scoop for Cash, who waits patiently, even though he appears to be hungry. He sniffs then picks up a piece of gravel in the parking lot. Someone fishes it out of his mouth.

“He loves a rock,” Alicia says with a sigh.

A minute later, she offers him something more enticing: a taste of maple-bacon-flavored ice cream. With eyes riveted on the cardboard cup, Cash waits for Alicia to spoon feed him. He licks with gusto. And manners.

“He’s very respectful when it comes to treats,” Alicia says.

She offers him the garnish, a twig of a chicken crisp, and it disappears in one chomp.

“He’s very into it,” says Alicia, who’s wearing laser-cut dog earrings.

She’s smiling.

Her dad is smiling.

Her mom is smiling.

And the truck’s owner, Shelli Craig, is smiling. This is the response that she and her family have been getting ever since last summer, when they rolled out North Carolina’s only franchise of Salty Paws, a Delaware-based business founded on the notion that there are plenty of dog owners who want their charges to know the joys of lapping ice cream until they get brain freeze.

Yip-yip-yip. A little waggish humor, there. No one has reported seeing a pup pause mid-lick, shudder, howl and bury its head in its paws until the throb passes. Although, just for the record, Google AI says it’s possible for dogs to get ice cream headaches.

The point is, when Shelli, a professional photographer and longtime dog lover (“Puppy breath is my drug of choice”) heard about Salty Paws from her friend, Kathie Lukens, the owner of Doggos Dog Park & Pub in Greensboro, she thought a franchise would be the perfect business for her family.

With eight children in her family — some biological, some adopted, several with disabilities — perhaps it seems like a wild notion. But then, when her youngest, who lives with cerebral palsy and migraine headaches, graduated from high school, she had a question: “What am I going to do for a job?”

Shelli’s answer: We’ll create jobs by starting a business that everyone in the family enjoys. Her husband, Daniel, part-owner of another family enterprise, R.H. Barringer Distributing Co., a wholesale beer business, enthusiastically endorsed the plan.

Shelli was unleashed. She bought a slightly used cargo van in Florida and had it transported to Virginia, where it was wrapped in franchise decals featuring a puppy with an ice cream-dappled nose, licking a frosty scoop of Salty Paws’ finest.

She ordered the powders used to make the canine ice cream — basically dried lactose-free milk with a little sugar and some flavorings.

She and the kids mixed the powders with water, poured them into cartons and froze them at home. Because the product is not intended for human consumption, no health department inspections were required. The process was pretty easy.

On fair-weather weekends, the family rolled out in the van, which is technically considered a feed truck, not a food truck.

Usually, Daniel drove.

To dog parks.

And pet adoption fairs.

And fundraisers for animal rescues.

And to dog-friendly events, like some outdoor car shows. Rovers mingling with Land Rovers? Who knew?

Dog-friendly bars such as Doggos were a staple.

The brightly painted truck drew a lot of attention with its drool-inducing flavors, including pumpkin, vanilla, peanut butter, maple bacon, straight-up bacon, birthday cake, carob and prime rib, which appealed to all sorts of meat lovers.

Once, a man came to the window and explained that he wanted to try a scoop of prime rib in the same way one might want to try a Harry Potter earthworm-flavored jelly bean.

Shelli explained that Salty Paws products were not intended for humans, but also, if he bought a scoop and a spoon, she could not control what happened next.

The human verdict after licking? OK.

Another time, a woman and her two children came to the window and bought a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of peanut butter.

As they walked away, Shelli wondered if the woman had mistakenly bought the ice cream for her girls.

A few minutes later, a man came to the window asking if they sold smoothies, too. Shelli explained that they sold ice cream for dogs.

“Dogs?! Oh, crap,” the man said before muttering about whether his kids would start barking soon.

Shelli and Daniel, who was known for his dad jokes, shared more than a few laughs over the stories that spun out of Salty Paws. Underlying their bond, Shelli says, was a shared commitment to beings in need.

“He had a very, very tender heart,” Shelli says of Daniel.

Tears well in her clear, blue eyes.

In April, Daniel died unexpectedly, of a heart attack, at age 59.

Shelli parked the Salty Paws truck for about a month as she grappled with Daniel’s absence.

“We built a big life with a lot of moving parts,” she says. One of the moving parts was Salty Paws.

It took a lot of resolve for Shelli to set aside her grief, load the truck on Mother’s Day, of all days, today, drive it to the cidery with two of her sons and start scooping ice cream.

“I’ve had to compartmentalize somewhat. Children and animals can bring me out of it,” she says. No surprise coming from a woman who wears a T-shirt emblazoned with “Tell Your Dog I Said Hi.”

She looks around. An SPCA volunteer walks by, cradling a weeks-old puppy. Nearby, an older, adoptable dog gnaws happily on a bully stick, a freebie from Shelli and family.

Cash savors his maple-bacon treat, totally absorbed.

His owner, Alicia, captions the moment aloud: “Best. Day. Ever.”

Quick as a lick, Shelli laughs, suspended for a moment in another place.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Great Googly Moogly

Inquiring minds want to know some weird stuff

By Maria Johnson

If there’s one thing that internet search engines can confirm about human existence, it’s this: You’re not alone in your musings, no matter how offbeat.

Which is comforting. Sorta.

I became aware of this phenomenon a few years ago, when I broke my collarbone. The treatment included wearing a cross-body sling on my right arm, and I was struck by how much of a load that put on my left shoulder.

“I wonder how much my right arm weighs?” I thought to myself.

Pre-Google I would have had to settle for a guess. Either that, or I could have pulled out a scale and tried to weigh my arm, which would have been too painful and would have brought me back to guessing.

Well, no more.

I started typing my question into the Google machine.

“How much does a woman’s . . . ”

Autofill offered several disturbing ways to complete that search phrase, along with the relatively innocuous words “arm weigh?”

Clearly, others had wanted to know the heft of a lady-wing.

Who are these weirdos? I wondered . . . before proceeding to the answer, which is:

About 5% of her body weight.

I glanced down at my 6-pound appendage.

No wonder it felt like I was lugging around a small dumbbell. I was.

Since then, I’ve noticed that no question is so esoteric, so arcane, so flippin’ odd that other people haven’t wondered the exact same thing.

Here’s a small sampling of the questions I’ve searched in the last several months, along with a little context about why I wanted to know, and the readily available answers.

Question: Why does Amal Clooney hate George Clooney’s dye job?

Why I wanted to know: Because I’m a big fan of Guilford County native and legendary World War II-era newsman Edward R. Murrow (hello, Murrow Boulevard), and because George Clooney darkened his hair for his role in the Broadway show Good Night and Good Luck, which is about how Murrow exposed McCarthyism.

Answer: Amal hates her husband’s dye job because she believes that nothing makes a man look older than using hair coloring, which, in my humble opinion, is a double standard — and also very true.

Question: Are crows attracted to bones?

Why I wanted to know: My younger son was at a friend’s apartment recently when they discovered what appeared to be a fragment of a deer jaw lying on a cushion. Huh? The best explanation: The friend’s dog had dragged in the fragment from the balcony, where . . . a bird had dropped it. (Let’s hope.)

Answer: Yes, crows are attracted to bones and other bright objects. They have been known to leave bones as “gifts” for people they like. Or want to terrorize. That part is unclear, although another Google search confirmed that crows can hold grudges against particular humans. This led me to wonder about something else that, apparently, other people have pondered, too.

Question: Do crows laugh at people?

Answer: “There’s no evidence to suggest they find human actions humorous.”

Tough audience. Caw-caw-caw.

Question: Why do male tegus have two reproductive organs?

Why I wanted to know: OK, stay with me for a minute. I was talking to a veterinarian-friend about the most unusual pets she has ever seen, and she mentioned tegus, which are a kind of lizard. Then she mentioned in a by-the-by way — you know, how friends do when they’re discussing lizard genitalia — that male tegus have two, um, cold-blooded thingies, which led me to make a crude joke about how I know a few guys who might want to become reptiles.

Answer: Nature loves a Plan B. Sorry, human dudes.

Question: What does Cali-sober mean?

Why I wanted to know: I heard it on a podcast, natch.

Answer: Cali-sober (short for California-sober) means swearing off all intoxicants except weed, which, if you think about it, makes sense only if you’re high.

Question: Where does the phrase “great googly moogly” come from?

Why I wanted to know: Because it’s a phrase I know, but I’m not sure how I know it.

Answer: No less an intellect than author Stephen King has wondered the same thing. He traced the phrase back to 1950s bluesman Willie Dixon. Others point out that rocker Frank Zappa used the phrase in his 1974 song “Nanook Rubs It.” And apparently Grady uttered the words on the 1970s TV show Sanford and Son in clear anticipation of the internet age way before Lamont and the rest of us “big dummies” saw what was coming.

Question: How do dryer balls work?

Why I wanted to know: In case you haven’t noticed, dryer balls — which are balls that you put in a dryer; let’s hear it for the occasional obvious answer that is also correct — are on store shelves everywhere. I’d dismissed them as a gimmick until a veteran appliance repairman recommended them as a way to increase the efficiency of a clothes dryer.

Answer: Dryer balls work by “aerating” the clothes, creating more space between laundry items as they tumble, thereby cutting down drying time. I wouldn’t have believed it, but it seems to be true. The balls also soften clothes by beating the snot out them (my words, not the words of the dryer ball industry). And as an added bonus, your dryer will sound like a collegiate drum line, which should keep the crows from leaving deer bone fragments around your house. It works out.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Type Cast

How Greensboro’s Nich Graham rocks his Royal Safari

By Maria Johnson

Tangerine, soul, gossip, smoke.

It’s an odd foursome of words, but Nich Graham has invited me to bring prompts to our coffee-shop interview to spark the free verse that he pounds out on his old-school mechanical keyboard.

It’s his schtick and his bliss. Back for the second year in a row, Nich will bring his Typewriter Poetry, a form of performance art, to the Greensboro Bound book festival this month.

Clack-clack, clack-clack.

He’s a forefinger typist, even though his 1960s manual typewriter — Royal brand, beige Safari model, complete with Williamsburg-blue, hard-shell case — harks to an era when legions of students, mostly women, learned touch-typing to prepare them for futures as secretaries.

At 31, Nich knows nothing about quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs. Sporting a smattering of tattoos and a cotton tee repping Osees, a psych-rock band formed in San Francisco, he’s a lank and bright-eyed creature of his time. He recalls a brush with keyboarding instruction in fifth grade.

“We didn’t do it, so the teacher gave up,” he says.

He jabs the chunky keys with his index fingers.

Clack-clack, clack-clack.

He hammers out the four words, which appear at the top of a notecard curled around the typewriter’s heavy roller. He closes his eyes to find the flow. His verse shows up in jagged lines.

Her soul glowed

a citrus petrichor that

billowed out

in smoke

A perfume scented in

the same color

* tangerine

Just for the record, I’m not wearing perfume; neither one of us is smoking; the asterisks are a part of the poem; and petrichor means the earthy smell that arises when rain hits the ground.

I mean, he never said he was writing about me, but still.

I discreetly sniff my pits while taking notes.

Wait. Is citrus petrichor a candle scent? Do I smell like a candle?

Clack-clack, clack-clack

He uses the word “trouble” to describe himself as a young man growing up in Newark, California, on the lower lip of San Francisco Bay.

His mom, a single parent whom Nich describes as loving and tough, laid down the law when he dropped out of high school.

“You gotta figure something else out, kid, because this isn’t working,” she said.

With her blessing, Nich, who pronounces his name “Nick,” moved to the High Sierra mountains where he lived with his maternal grandmother, a “mestiza” of mixed Native American and Spanish heritage.

Together, they tended her flowers, vegetables, trees and cacti. Pulling a red wagon loaded with his grandmother’s gardening supplies, Nich absorbed lessons about time, patience and setting the right conditions for growth. He also discovered that he learned best when he was outdoors and when he worked with his hands.

A seed rooted in his teenage brain. He still hung with trouble, but, after a near-death experience, the seed sprouted.

He enrolled in a community college, where he excelled at horticulture and art. An associate’s degree later, he headed to Humboldt State College. Outside of class, he worked odd jobs and busked spoken-word poetry for donations.

A descendant of storytellers on his mother’s Southwestern side and his father’s Iranian side, Nich was a veteran of open mic competitions and poetry slams.

Spitting words came easily. The sidewalk crowds did not.

“I couldn’t compete by yelling poetry,” he says.

A friend suggested that Nich get an old typewriter as a prop and start channeling his verse via keys.

He did and added a sign: “Free-Range, Organic, Non-GMO Poetry.”

Onlookers, many of whom were too young to remember the days before computer keyboards, stepped closer, curious about the chattering machine.

If they wanted to try it, Nich let them take the beast for a spin so they could feel the bouncing action of keys under their fingertips, see the thin metal arms embossed with backwards letters striking the ribbon before dropping back into line, and hear magical rat-a-tat-tat of letters turning into words turning into thoughts.

The general reaction?

“Stoked,” Nich says. “Just stoked.”

Clack-clack, clack-clack.

Nich’s poem takes shape. Citrus petrichor wafts into another idea.

Where chisma was brought around

professional gossip

too

obtuse a term

I have to look it up. “Chisma” means rumor in Spanish.

Is “professional gossip” an obtuse term? I think not. But let me tell you who in this business is obtuse. Later.

Did Nich and I dish on work? Not really, unless you count a conversation about how writers absorb, digest and express their experiences differently.

Hmm. Maybe I don’t smell like a candle.

Clack-clack, clack-clack

Nich came to Greensboro in early 2019, intending to do a residency at Elsewhere, Greensboro’s museum of offbeat collections.

Then came a virus. And cancellations.

With no money and no way to get home, Nich repaired to the mountains of Southwest Virginia to help a woman start a goat farm. Word of mouth brought more agri-gigs, eventually leading to Greensboro’s private Canterbury School, where he still works as a garden educator, tilling, planting, weeding, watering, mulching, harvesting and composting with K-8 students.

Recently, he guided two eighth-grade girls in fixing a broken tiller.

“We sat down without YouTube and figured out how to get that thing running again,” says Nich. “It was literally the proudest moment of my teaching career. Anytime I see them I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ ”

The younger students call him Mr. Diggy.

“I’m like, ‘Whatever you want to call me is OK, little humans,’” he says. “I like seeing them grow and develop, too.”

Now working toward a master’s degree in experiential and outdoor education at Western Carolina University, Nich also does permaculture projects for private clients. In June and July, he will be working for the Creative Aging Network of Greensboro, leading gardening sessions for grandparents and their grandchildren, as well as caregivers and their charges.

He’s stuck on growth.

Swiss chard.

Lettuce.

Watermelon.

Understanding.

Connections.

He hopes to move his mother and grandmother here from California.

“I said, ‘Just come out here. I’ll take care of you,’” he says.

He sees a home, a few acres, a family-run orchard, maybe a cider press.

Clack-clack, clack-clack.

A dozen times a year, he gets paid for doing Typewriter Poetry at literary events, parties and fundraisers. On May 17, the day of the book festival, he will pop up his word shop from 1–5 p.m in the Greensboro Cultural Center.

People will feed him a few words at a time. He will type them at the top of a note card printed with his artwork, close his eyes, sway like a musician until he catches a melody of meaning, then start typing.

He can tell a lot about people, he says, by the words they toss him.

About a half give him greeting-card words: love, hope, promise — what they think they should say.

Another quarter supply words borne of turmoil. One woman started crying when she read Nich’s interpretation. “I get the privilege of helping them process whatever they’re going through,” he says.

Another quarter hand him playthings.

Nich slaps the carriage return, a chrome lever, with confidence. His poem is coming in for a soft landing.

aspiring to

share stories that

captured more than

essence

seeping down

in a river formation

a journey around

ink

noise

heart

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Well, Shhhhhhhucks

A potty-mouth clean-up is short-bleep-lived

By Maria Johnson

Algorithms are scary things, the way they learn our habits, which is pretty bleep well.

Why else would my newsfeed recommend that I read a piece in The New York Times titled “Curses! A Swearing Expert Mulls the State of Profanity.”

The story promises tips on how to cut back “if you want to.”

What the bleep does that mean?

I’m talking to you, algorithm, you little son of a software bleep.

Are you saying I have a cursing problem?

Well, you’d be partly right.

And partly wrong.

See, most of me is O-bleep-K with cursing. In fact, I love laying down a good oath. There’s a certain catharsis and clarity and energy that comes with damning a bleepity-bleeper to everliving bleep.

Bleep. I feel better just typing that.

But another part of me knows I curse out loud too bleep much, though there’s a camaraderie in hanging with other potty mouths. More on that later.

I also curse a lot to myself when I’m fired up about something, which is pretty bleep often. My awareness of this salty leaning has me thinking that maybe I’ll give up cursing for Lent.

How long is Lent?

What?!

Forty days?

Oh, bleep no.

I could maybe do 40 hours.

Like, one work week, from 9 to 5, with nights and weekends off. Sort of a Lent Soft challenge? Is that a sacrilegious question?

Yes?

All right, all right. Forty bleep days. Without spoken-word profanity.

Or swearing in writing.

But I get to write using bleeps, and I get to keep the sewer in my head.

It’s a start. I gotta do something because this habit is getting worse.

Maybe it’s because I’m an empty-nester. I watch my language around children.

As my grandmother used to say: Little pitchers have big bleep ears.

She didn’t use those exact words, but that’s what she bleep meant.

Because kiddos imitate what they see and hear, my husband and I minded our p’s and q’s — and f’s and s’s — because we didn’t want our sons to blurt out something disrespectful or insulting at the wrong time.

It takes time and maturity to learn how to curse responsibly.

Also, we didn’t want our boys to sound like they were raised in a bleep barn.

Now that our guys don’t live in our bleep barn, I mean house, anymore, I’m not as careful as I used to be. I’ve reverted to my pre-mom setting.

Actually, scratch that.

I’m worse than bleep ever.

Maybe it’s the times we live in.

Have you watched a movie or streamed a TV series lately?

The language is bleep atrocious.

Have you listened to a podcast?

Holy bleep.

Honestly, I don’t like it. But what the bleep am I gonna do? Cancel Max so I can’t watch Hacks any more?

Fat bleep chance. When Season 4 drops, I’m all over that bleep.

Yes, its profane and edgy. It’s also funny as bleep.

So let’s forget about me cutting back on consumption.

I do think there’s room, though, to cut back on my triggers. Namely the news.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a newshound from the word “go.”

We need to pay attention to what’s going on.

But for the last several years, I’ve hardly been able to watch, read or listen to the news without hollering, “I CANNOT BLEEP BELIEVE THIS!”

I realize my venting doesn’t change diddly-bleep.

But I gotta tell ya: It feels pretty bleep good.

I’d like to clear up one misconception right here: that people who curse a lot don’t have a very good vocabulary.

That’s a load of bleep. I’m not saying that stupid bleeps don’t cuss. But not everyone who cusses is a stupid bleep.

To wit, I do the Spelling Bee every day.

And Wordle.

And a crossword puzzle.

That’s a lot of bleep five-dollar words.

Plus, I’ve been around writers most of my life, and writers are some of the finest cussers I know. We have the verbal palette; many of us just favor the blue hues.

What the bleep?

Maybe this Times story can explain.

Where are my bleep glasses?

Oh, here they are.

Let’s see. Looks like they interviewed a guy named Timothy

Jay, who’s a retired professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Get this bleep: His specialty was studying profanity.

What a bleep fun job that would be.

Ol‘ Timothy says that cursing is indeed more prevalent because society has gotten way more casual.

He blames social media because you can just about write anything on TikTok or X, the platform formerly bleep known as Twitter.

(Aside: When someone comes up with a better verb than “tweet” for the act of reacting with one’s thumbs, please let meknow. I refuse to say: “Gimme a minute to X this.”).

Anyway, Tim says culture is always evolving and just as soon as a taboo becomes acceptable, people will come up with something even taboo-ier.

Translation: Don’t hold your bleep breath for cursing to go away.

He goes on to say that cursing is mostly about conveying intensity of emotion, and not always negative emotion. In some cases, swearing around others indicates belonging and intimacy.

It’s like saying to someone, “You talk like a bleep sailor, but I love you anyway. Also, I trust you not to record this and play it back for my mom.”

The good professor notes that humans get a measurable physical jolt out of swearing.

Roger that bleep

Finally, he says that the only way to curse less is to practice mindfulness about when you curse and why.

Sigh. That’s what AI said, too, when I asked it.

It said to try practicing meditation and yoga instead of cursing.

That’s a lot of bleep Oms.

And box breathing doesn’t charge my battery like swearing does.

I’m thinking my best course of action is to use more curse word substitutes.

Like dang. Or dog. Or freakin. Or fiddlesticks. That’s an oldie and a goodie.

Yeah.

Fiddle-bleep-sticks.

I like the sound of that.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Contact Sport

Con-text-ualizing a comedy of errors

By Maria Johnson

Fourteen neighbors? A couple of dozen cupcakes? A Friday afternoon?

Sure, I tell my mom, I’ll help her throw a small celebration of her 92nd birthday, a custom in her neighborhood, where the residents let each other off the hook by proactively reminding each other of the occasion and hosting their own to-dos.

It’s yet another example of something that’s gauche at a young age morphing into something that’s graceful, for all concerned, at a later age.

We draw up a guest list.

In her day, my mom would’ve inked the invitations in her distinctive hand using a fountain pen. She also would have served the cupcakes on her best gold-banded china.

Well, here she is, in her 10th decade, stuck with a daughter whose favorite pattern is “Compostable” by Chinet and who conveys her deepest emotions by text, usually with GIFs from TV comedies.

Finally, my mom agrees to text invitations — sadly without a video snippet of Tina Fey gorging on tres leches cake on “Weekend Update.”

My mom loves it when thumbs up and hearts blossom on the electronic string.

A week later, only a couple of people haven’t responded.

That’s when I learn from one of my mom’s neighbor’s, Amy, that two other neighbors, Ginny and Kathy, whom she was pretty sure would have been invited, have not received my text.

Amy guesses I might have sent the invite to Ginny’s home number instead of her cell number, which she rarely gives out. So Amy supplies the elusive number, and I zap a fresh invite to Ginny’s cell.

I should say “a Ginny’s cell.” And yes, in literature class, this would be called foreshadowing.

Next, I retrace my steps with Kathy.

Voila. I’ve sent the invite to another Kathy, so I tap out a new message to Neighbor Kathy, who responds with a heart.

I think about texting Another Kathy to say, “Never mind,” but she hasn’t responded so I let it go. (Insert suspenseful music.)

Meanwhile, Ginny replies with a conditional “yes” because she is recovering from chemo.

Wow. I am not aware that Ginny has cancer. I text her back, suggesting that she walk over to the party if she feels like it that day. No advanced notice required.

She pins a heart to my message.

To close the loop, I let Amy and Kathy know that Ginny plans to come if she recovers from chemo in time.

Amy and Kathy’s eyebrows shoot up. Ginny does not have cancer.

We all sleep on the unfortunate news of . . . someone’s cancer.

The next morning, feeling that something is off, I review my text to Ginny.

Oooooo.

Turns out I’ve texted a tennis friend named Ginny, who indeed is waging a successful battle against cancer.

She lives in Thomasville.

She doesn’t know my mom.

Yet she has pinned a heart to the invitation to walk down to my mom’s house.

What the . . . ? I admit my blunder to Tennis Ginny, who cops her own confession.

“I admit I didn’t know where I was going to walk to find a cupcake soiree,” she says.

Incidentally, this is why I love Tennis Ginny. She’s always game for fun, even if she’s not sure where to find it.

Resolving to wear glasses while texting, I call Neighbor Ginny, hoping for a voice on the other end.

These days, I know, calling someone in real time indicates either a dire emergency or an extremely juicy nonemergency with more details than two thumbs can handle.

This isn’t either, but Neighbor Ginny picks up without a hint of wariness. God Bless the Greatest Phone-Answering Generation.

She laughs her hearty New Englander laugh when I explain the situation.

I’m relieved at her forgiveness, which I find that older people grant easily, maybe because they need it themselves — as if the rest of us don’t.

Cupcake Day arrives.

The weather is perfect.

My mom’s neighbors stream through her door. I greet them and thank them for coming. A car pulls up.

“Who’s that?” someone asks.

I crane my neck.

“I don’t know,” I say, watching an elegantly dressed lady emerge with a potted flower.

She smiles as she steps through the door.

For the life of me, I cannot retrieve a name.

“I’m so glad . . . you could come!” I say, taking the amaryllis from her.

My mom lights up at the sight of her, hugs her and introduces her to her neighbors.

“This is my friend, Kathy, from church.”

Of course. Another Kathy is Church Kathy, who sometimes shuttles my mom to a prayer retreat. We communicate by text from time to time.

As it turns out, Church Kathy also used to live in my mom’s neighborhood and knows a couple of party guests. She wades in and charms the throng.

I find Neighbor Kathy in the kitchen.

“This just keeps getting better,” I whisper.

She snickers and shrugs: “It seems to be working out.”

Indeed. If Church Kathy thinks it’s odd that she was invited to “walk over” for a cupcake — from wherever she lives now — she never lets on.

If anyone else thinks it’s odd that a non-neighbor — albeit a former neighbor — is stirred into the mix, they never let on.

If my mom thinks she’d better lobby for handwritten invitations next time, she never lets on.

If I think that my husband, who makes fun of me for having more than 1,000 contacts in my phone, might be onto something, I never let on.

Surrounded by friends who are happy to be together, no matter how they got there, my mom is in heaven.

Surrounded by grace — some of it self-administered — I am, too.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Saints Alive

Valentine, Patrick, Nicholas and Fanourios. Who are these guys anyway?

By Maria Johnson

I was so delighted by the earrings — a pair of verdigris dogs with copper ears as bright as new pennies — that I had to try them on right then and there, in the backseat of my husband’s car. My older son’s partner, Tina, had just surprised me with them, following a family ramble through a row of seaside gift shops.

She and I have a custom of giving each other earrings, and she’d clearly hit a home run with the canines she’d just sniffed out.

I plucked out the faux-diamond studs I was wearing and carefully extracted the pups from their plasticized card. I hooked one hound to my left ear and was fiddling with my right lobe when the second pup slipped from hand.

I heard it hit something hard — the seatbelt buckle? — on the way down. Oops.

I expected to see the stray lying on the seat beside me.

No dice. No dog.

I unsnapped the seat belt and felt around for a metallic bump underneath me.

I bent double and pawed at the floor mat.

Tina, too, searched for the hound that had somehow slipped away in the space between us.

Minutes later, when we stopped at a landmark lighthouse, I stepped out of the car slowly, monitoring for anything that might fall from the folds of my T-shirt or shorts.

Knowing that wayward earrings can hang up in hair, snag on necklines or fall down shirts, I ruffled my own fur, patted myself down and snapped my sports bra, hoping to dislodge half of the gift.

I looked down my own shirt, disappointed to see that nothing (else) had fallen.

Meanwhile, the four scientists in the car — that would be everyone but me — converged at the seat where the lost dog was last seen. They postulated that the hound had taken a one-in-a-million dive into a crevice, or bounced at a weird angle and landed somewhere unexpected. They slid their hands between cushions, into map pockets, under mats, around seat tracks and anchors.

They could not prove their hypotheses that day. Or the day after. Or the day after that, when we meticulously vacuumed the car’s interior while listening for the rattle of success.

Alas, there was no need to pick through the dust cup.

I was deeply bothered by this loss, not just because it rendered the gift unwearable. The second earring was somewhere. It didn’t vanish.

And yet it had disappeared, to our senses at least.

Desperate, I called on heavenly help from Saint Fanourios, the Greek Orthodox saint who helps people find what is lost.

When I was growing up, my Hellenic dad often appealed to “Agios Fanourios,” which he pronounced in his native tongue as “eye-oos fan-NOO-rios” with an “r” that rolled like the Aegean Sea.

In the days before AirTags and GPS, Fanourios dropped a pin on missing objects and guided us to them by process of elimination.

He specialized in keys, pointing the way to fobs that were tucked into pockets, wedged between cushions or lodged between furniture and walls.

Usually, we found what we were looking for. Occasionally, we did not.

At these times, my dad offered a dose of common sense.

Ask Fanourios to find a necklace lost while body-surfing?

“C’mon now, honey,” Daddy would say. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a saint. Even he has his limits.”

Also Fanourios did not, according to my dad, work cases involving stolen property. If someone swiped your basketball, it wasn’t lost; it was stolen. Fanourios was an intercessor, not a cop.

He was just a saint, a person who’d done some amazing things but was a person all the same.

Recently, I was thinking about my dad — who died several years ago — on his name day, December 6, the day that Greeks celebrate the feast of St. Nicholas. I searched online for a Saint Nick bio, curious about who he was before he became a saint and the forerunner of our very own Westernized Santa Claus.

Turns out, the original Nick was a bishop who, among other things, gave dowries to the father of three poor girls to save them from lives as prostitutes. So, you know, putting patriarchy aside for a minute, good on him.

Also, he is said to have revived three dismembered young people whose remains were hidden in a pickling barrel, which is disturbing on many levels, but I suppose still lands in the “plus” column.

Also, Nick might have slugged a heretic at a church meeting once. So there’s that.

For the sake of comparison, I snooped on a few other saints.

The soon-to-be celebrated St. Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, was a lawbreaker, said to have defied Roman Emperor Claudius by marrying couples so that the men would not be drafted into the military.

St. Patrick, in whose name we drink green beer and pinch people who aren’t wearing green — as if both of those behaviors are normal — was an English evangelist who converted lots of of Irish people to Christianity, but, heck, he wasn’t even a real saint. He was never canonized. And he never drove snakes from Ireland. The Ice Age, which snapped the chilly green isle off the continent, made it a no-slither zone for a long time.

And St. Fanourios? Very little is known about him, other than the usual saintly stuff: He spread the gospel, performed miracles and suffered on account of his beliefs. He was tortured and very likely died a gruesome death. His reputation for revealing lost items probably came because a pristine icon of him was unearthed from church ruins on the Greek island of Rhodes during Muslim occupation around the year 1400.

No wonder my earring was still lost.

My dad was right. These guys were “just” saints, not wizards (pickling barrel story notwithstanding).

Still, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some magic involved in appealing to them, letting go of a problem, letting your mind relax and coming back to it later.

I’m happy to report my missing dog was found. Sort of.

With my husband’s help, I Google-searched an image of the surviving earring, and up popped a boutique that sells identical litter mates.

As I write this, a new pair of hounds is bounding my way.

I can hear my pops now, giving Fanourios credit for his guidance and for keeping up with the times.

“Look, honey, he never said where you’d find it.”

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Lovin’ Spoonfuls

How a well-known Greensboro chef changed his menu and his life

By Maria Johnson

January is a good time to talk about John Drees for a couple of reasons.

A freshly unwrapped year is all about new beginnings, which Drees, 60, knows something about.

Also, January is National Soup Month (sorry, Souptober), and that points to Drees in his latest incarnation as Chef Soup, boss of a small-batch business that sells frozen quarts of savory spoonfuls from The Corner Farmers Market, the open-air bazaar where, most Saturday mornings, Drees pitches his canopy in the parking lot of St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Greensboro.

If you had a really good arm, you could throw a rock from here and hit the vacant single-story building where Drees first made a name for himself in the Gate City 40 years ago. Many people fondly recall the scrumptious meals he dished out at Southern Lights Bistro on Smyres Place in Sunset Hills.

“I have a whole different perspective now,” says Drees, who looks to be permanently flushed from decades of stovetop steam baths. Surrounded by the coffee-sipping, fleece-and-jeans crowd at the market, it’s notable that he does not look pretentious in a white apron and black skull cap. He looks relaxed and well practiced. He ought to.

“I was the fool that worked seven days a week for 35 years,” he says. “You weren’t gonna outwork me. I didn’t know better at the time.”

A native of Greensboro, Drees popped up at Southern Lights as a cook in 1985. Soon, he bought into the business, which flourished with stylish farm-fresh food, a chummy chalk-board atmosphere and reasonable prices.

Chef J.B.D. had a hot hand.

He was a regular on WFMY-TV’s morning-show cooking segment with the late Lee Kinard.

He played a part in launching Prizzi’s, an Italian cafe in Quaker Village; The Edge, a Tate Street bar; Nico’s, a fine Italian place downtown; and 1618 West Seafood Grille, which still reels in diners on Friendly Avenue. He also spun off a satellite of Southern Lights in Winston-Salem.

In time, Drees clung only to Southern Lights in Greensboro, which he moved to a Lawndale Drive shopping center in 2010. Business was skinny but sustainable until COVID body-slammed restaurants in the spring of 2020. Drees closed his doors to diners and snapped off the lights for good that summer, ending a remarkable 35-year run.

The hard stop did him good. He was surprised at how much he enjoyed taking long walks and having time to chat about topics unrelated to business.

“I didn’t realize until the pandemic that there was so much more to life than working,” he says. “I was having flashbacks to when the kids were little, and I had Sundays off.”

He took a year to stir the question of what to do next. With three adult children, he didn’t need as much income as before, but he needed to beef up his retirement account.

He’d lived long enough to watch friends and family die sooner than expected, so he knew that time was his most precious commodity. But he wanted to spend some of it working. Nobody needed to tell him that he was really good at what he did.

He thought about opening a soup-salad-and-sandwich shop downtown in 2021, but foot traffic still lagged, and reliable employees were hard to come by.

He pared down his idea.

“I wanted soup to be the star of the show,” he says.

He explored the idea of selling soup to retirement homes, and that’s when he learned that most of the seniors’ soups were bought frozen and warmed to life again.

“A light went off,” he says.

He whipped up 80 quarts of soup — six flavors led by his signature tomato basil — poured them into cardboard take-out cups, stuck them in a freezer and carted the frosty blocks to the Corner Market in February of 2022.

He sold 60 of them.

“I said, ‘OK, this is a thing,’” he recalls.

Six months later, he added online ordering and home delivery. Today, internet sales have almost caught up with face-to-face sales, thanks to a social media presence driven by his fianccée, Nancy Cunningham, who handles marketing for Grandover Resort.

Orders spike when she teases “Souper Tuesday” — buy three quarts, get a fourth free — on Facebook and Instagram.

Drees will keep his market table for the revenue and in-person feedback, but he’s keen to grow the delivery side.

“I think [Amazon founder] Jeff Bezos was on to something, starting with, I get paid before I even pull out of the driveway,” he says. “I’m modernizing myself, but keeping it as basic and simple as I can.”

Relishing his elastic schedule, Drees cooks and delivers three to four days a week, more or less if needed. He hovers over every batch with help from two part-timers at Short Street Gastro Lab, a shared kitchen space in Kernersville.

With a repertoire of 80 recipes, he offers eight to 12 flavors at the market every week. He posts four online. Standing over a tilt skillet, basically a flat-top grill with straight sides and a crank to tip the bed, Drees makes cooking for the masses look easy. Ten gallons of cheesy potato-and-ham soup coming up.

He fires up the skillet and slicks it with glugs of olive oil. In goes a bag of bacon bits; anyone who eats ham isn’t going to fuss about bacon. Next up: chopped cooked ham, onions, celery and carrots, which Drees flips and scrapes with a giant spatula until both the meat and veggies wear a shiny brown crust. He douses the sizzle with water to deglaze the pan.

A fragrant, hissing fog rises. Dried dill comes to life. Pails of quartered red potatoes simmer to softness. A blend of cheeses — cheddar, Monterrey Jack, American and cream — relaxes into a velvety matrix.

With both hands, Drees grasps a 2-foot-long immersion blender — it looks more like a gardening tool than kitchen utensil — and starts rowing. The cheese and potato lighten the mixture as he churns. Finally, he dips a spoon and closes his eyes so that he can read the taste and texture with his mouth, not his eyes.

“Needs more water,” he says.

Thinned to his satisfaction, Drees hands off the vat to a helper while he leaves to make a delivery nearby.

Four days later, at market, the rib-sticking soup goes for $13 a quart.

Drees’ youngest child, Jonas, rings up customers on an iPad.

Standing behind Jonas, Drees is fenced by a ring of ice chests holding his wares. He faces in the direction of the original Southern Lights. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed since he started there, he says. It was like another lifetime.

What would he tell his younger self, knowing what he knows now?

“Don’t take yourself so seriously,” he says, pressing his lips into a Mona Lisa smile. “Life is too short to worry about work and making money all the time. Work will take care of itself.”

2025 Department Life's Funny

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Oh, Baby

Times and diapers, they’re a-changin’

By Maria Johnson

A while back, a friend suggested that we walk together as she pushed her granddaughter’s stroller around the neighborhood where the toddler’s family lives.

The offer lay on the changing table, so to speak, for several months, until one day, over coffee, I resurrected the idea.

My friend set down her blueberry muffin.

“I’d rather wait,” she said.

“For what?” I asked.

“For her to be potty-trained,” she said.

My head tilted in the manner of a dog — or grandchild-less human — who does not understand what she just heard.

My friend explained: Her granddaughter was being toilet-trained in the modern way, with a small portable potty that was to accompany her everywhere she went. Said receptacle was to be planted on any reasonably level surface whenever the baby gave an indication that she needed to go. This was common practice, my friend assured me, adding that some baby johns are so realistic that they appear to have water tanks behind the seat.

“Do they flush?” I asked in jest.

My friend laughed.

“No,” she said, adding under her breath, “not yet.”

My friend further reported that in New York City’s Central Park, it’s not unusual to see families lugging mini-potties around on their daily jaunts, then — when the time comes — scrambling to find privacy for their children’s plastic-lined privies behind rocks or bushes or anywhere one might go for relief in an emergency.

Fine for them, my friend implied, but she was not itching to be known as the pop-up potty lady.

Later, when the subject came up again, this time amongst some newly hatched granny-friends, one astutely observed: “Kinda changes the concept of the stranger lurking in the bushes, doesn’t it? ‘Hey, kid, I got a potty for you over here. Follow me.’” We cackled in the way that every generation hoots at the child-rearing practices of succeeding generations. Our mothers and aunts did the same thing, rolling their eyes at baby monitors and battery-powered bouncy seats.

Now, there’s a whole new crop of baby gadgets and practices to learn. Of course, today’s parents-to-be can turn to a slew of social media channels for tips. Not sure what to do with a newborn? YouTube it. There’s bound to be a Midwesterner who knows how to swaddle with power tools. Then there’s the recently released ninth edition of an old standby, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the pregnancy bible I used when my at-home test turned pink for the first time in the early ’90s.

I got my mitts on an updated volume. It was oddly reassuring to see that the fundamentals of gestation haven’t changed much in 30 years, though the book reflected societal shifts in life outside the womb: the existence of gender-reveal parties and ultrasound videos; the acknowledgement of unmarried and same-sex partners; and warnings about the use of e-cigs, cannabis and CBD during pregnancy. Heck, there’s even a yellow flag about drinking kombucha.

That got me thinking about another possible niche in pregnancy publishing: a primer for folks my age as we watch our Millennial and Gen Z kids get into the repro game.

So you won’t be clueless at your children’s baby showers and other infant-centric affairs, I give you a pocket version of What to Expect When They’re Expecting.

1. No, that’s not a potholder. That square of fabric with a loop at the corner is a “Twinkle Tent,” which is intended to keep a baby boy from peeing on the person changing his diaper. Same goes for the conical “Pee-pee Teepee.” Eventually, your children — the grown ones — will figure out that by the time the geyser erupts, all you can do is treat it like a Super Soaker, partially block it with your hands, laugh and consider yourself baptized into parenthood. Put on a party hat — the Pee-pee Teepee doubles as one — and celebrate.

2. In related news, a concept called diaper-free, aka naked, potty-training, is making the rounds. According to proponents, when your kids are ready to graduate from nappies, you strip them of their diapers to make them more, um, aware of their bodies. Then you watch their faces for signs that they need to go and hasten them to the proper place, much as you would with a puppy who starts sniffing, scratching and circling the carpet. If you know anyone who plans to try this method, we have two words. OK, technically three words: Kids ’n’ Pets, a stain and odor remover. $5.58 for 27 ounces. But available, with good reason, by the gallon.

3. Blackout is beautiful. Not that our children are trying to raise a generation of vampires, but nursery black-out curtains and black-out tents that stand alone or zip around a crib are officially a thing, supposedly a calming thing because, hey, there’s no light by which to see anything scary. Also German U-boats will never be able to see our coastline, by golly.

4. Pelvic floor trainer. Yes, this is what you think it is. A coach who guides pregnant women through Kegel exercises, mainly, we surmise, so that when they reach our age they will not wet their pants while laughing at the gifts their daughters receive at baby showers.

5. Babymoon. A version of the honeymoon, except this lovey-dovey trip is taken by couples before the baby arrives, usually during the second trimester, before the mama-to-be swells into the stage of Don’t. You. Ever. Touch. Me. Again.

6. Ever.

7. I mean it.

8. Push present. Dang, where was this trend when I was a young mom? The concept is that the new mom deserves some sort of material reward for the physical work she does while having the baby. And no, partners, C-sections do not absolve you. We’re talking baubles. Carats. 14K. Birthstones, at the very least.

Truth: No amount of bling can substitute for what most moms would actually prefer — kindness, admiration and offers of “Here, lemme take the baby while you go out for a while.”

At the same time, this mother of two (bracelets? earrings?) is totally down with the concept of reparation jewelry.

2024 Department Life's Funny