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At first the conspiracy theories were almost charming. The idea that the reason we were all being asked to stay inside was so that government agents could freely change the batteries in the birds (which were actually super-advanced spying devices) only made the world a more interesting place, at least to me, and at least temporarily. What must the life of a mechanical bird minder be like, I wondered? Is there a whole secret world of bird minders, and do they have special cafes and bars where they gather? Is it (gasp!) like Harry Potter, where there is an entire other world existing within our own, in plain sight and yet totally hidden? And what if there were a steam punk version of this world, where instead of periodically changing the batteries in the birds they had to instead wind them up, and instead of being bird minders they were called winders? Quick, somebody write this book so we can all watch the movie.

But then the conspiracies turned a little more tinfoil hat and they began to lose their charm. Suddenly this wasn’t a virus at all, but rather cancer, and we were all getting it not from exposure to other infected individuals but actually from 5G towers and watching too much Netflix, and the only solution was to burn down these towers worldwide. Or maybe nobody was really getting sick at all and it was just a scheme to make Trump look bad in a futile, Deep State attempt to take down Q, and soon the flags and the guns came out and it was all just business as usual, except this time with mothers and their confused children protesting at shuttered playgrounds.

And then the complaints about mask-wearing began, and suddenly I felt like a child being served the same dinner for the third night in a row, and I couldn’t contain my whine of unhappy disbelief. “Are you serious? Toxic masculinity for dinner again?”

Because of course men make up the majority of the people who are refusing to mask. (According to a Gallup poll taken in mid May, 29% of men regularly wear masks, as opposed to 44% of women. More tellingly, 38% of men refuse to ever wear a mask, as opposed to 25% of women.) And of course, the main reason for this is the fear of looking “weak,” most commonly articulated as “I refuse to live in fear.” (I’m not even going to attempt to go down the rabbit hole that is the fear of showing fear , mostly because I’m pretty sure that if I stare at it cross-eyed long enough, like you do with one of those Magic Eye pictures, eventually it will just resolve itself into a big billboard saying “Toxic Masculinity,” and I already mentioned how tired I am of being served that dish yet again.)

In case you still had your doubts about this, look no further than the example of Trump at the Michigan Ford plant this past week, where he actually wore a mask in deference to the plant rules, but then took it off before (he believed) he could be photographed in it, because he didn’t want people to see him wearing it. (“I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”) This sentiment was still echoing days later when large groups gathered to celebrate the Memorial Day holiday. When a young beachgoer was asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, he referenced Trump. “If he’s not wearing it, I’m not wearing it.”

Somewhere, as that young man was saying those words, America’s one hundred thousandth victim breathed their last, and their bed was made ready for the next victim.

Is it any wonder I find myself longing for the good old days of bird winding?

A few days ago I woke to the news that Jane Dee Hull, former governor of Arizona, had died, and I was shocked.

Not shocked that she had died—she was in her eighties, and had reportedly been in poor health for some time—but rather shocked to find that I felt a sense of regret and even loss over her death, and that beyond that I actually felt compassion for and kindness towards her surviving children. You see, Jane Hull was a Republican.

What’s wrong with me? I thought. Have I watched so many “We’re all in this together” Toyota truck and Campbell soup commercials that my sense of outrage has been worn down to nothing?

But then I started to remember—really remember—former Governor Hull. And that’s when I also remembered that, prior to the last decade, Republicans weren’t always the living, breathing reincarnation of Voldemort. I mean, sure, they were still pretty awful. I wouldn’t have voted for one. Or dated one. Or even failed to think, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” when I met one. But, for the most part, they were just people: people who had different ideas about how our world should be run socially and fiscally, but people, nonetheless.

True, there were some nutjobs and crooks mixed in there, but the other, saner and fairer Republicans kept those guys on a shorter leash. The list of Arizona governors in my lifetime is an excellent illustration of that: the first gubernatorial election I was old enough to vote in was won by actual used car salesman and Republican Evan Meachem, who was impeached and removed the next year by a Republican majority legislature after having been found guilty of, among other things, loaning his business $80,000 of public funds. The next two elections were won by Richie Rich impersonator (and Republican) J. Fife Symington III, who was forced to resign because the Arizona constitution specifically forbids elected officials form serving while in jail (yet another example of how our pioneer ancestors had a firmer grasp on reality than we do).

And then came Jane Hull. Another Republican. And yet, she was different. A former rightwing firebrand who had once infamously suggested that the state could save money by allowing the prisoners at Perryville to die in the heat, she softened once she succeeded Symington into office. She fought her own party not only to increase education spending, but also to spend any money at all on children’s healthcare. Hell, she even changed her position on that bastion of Republicanism—the so-called “Right to Life”—when the experiences of a close family member revealed all the gray that existed between the two sides.

As a former teacher from Kansas—a state that used to lead the nation in education—it is hard to imagine Governor Hull running a state which would have allowed education funding to lapse so badly that teachers walked off of the job in protest, much less one in which 50,000 of them showed up at the state capitol to protest. And as someone who stood up to her own party—and their threats to support a primary opponent over her for her successful effort to provide healthcare for 60,000 children of the working poor—it is hard to imagine her fighting to keep golf courses and massage parlors open during a worldwide pandemic.

In other words, it is hard to imagine her as a sociopath. Which is not something I have found myself saying about many Republicans lately.

When I heard that Jane Hull had passed away I felt sad. Sad for her family, but more so sad for the passing of the Arizona I was born in, a state that produced strong and moral politicians of both parties. Politicians who, even when I didn’t agree with them politically, I at least believed were operating based on their own idea of public service, rather than their own private interests. When it comes to the current Arizona Republican party I haven’t been able to say that for some time now.

I think that when Jane Hull died she took the last of that part of the party with her. If only she could reach back from beyond the veil and take the rest of this part with her, too.

Anyone who was a latchkey child growing up in the 80s (which was pretty much all of us) can tell you some stories about the the heavy anti-drug messaging that saturated the airwaves every weekday afternoon. No sooner would you let yourself into an empty house, pour yourself a mixing bowl full of Cookie Crisp cereal and turn on the television then you would be bombarded with Scott Baio, Drew Barrymore, Corey Feldman and Tatum O’Neal all exhorting you to “Just Say No.” (Ironically, it turned out that many of those actors were merely trying to make sure there would be enough drugs left for themselves.)

This was some serious low-quality edutainement, and after school specials like “The Boy Who Drank Too Much” and PSAs like “This is your brain on drugs” became as much a part of our 80s collective memory as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises ever did. But perhaps no message is better or more fondly remembered then the 1987 PSA where a teenage boy, confronted by his father holding his weed stash out to him and demanding to know, “Where did you learn this stuff? Who taught you to do this?” sullenly snaps back, “I learned it from watching you, okay? I learned it from you!”

I’ve been thinking of this PSA a lot this week as the internet, ever ready to point its bony finger of shame at someone, has unleashed its full fury and scorn at the college students merrily partying away on the beaches of Florida (at least until they were closed down).

“How could you?” the internet demanded, holding out photographic evidence of girls in bikinis riding on boys’ shoulders while their friends all took turns drinking out of the same beer bong. “Think about your grandparents!” the internet pleaded. And then the internet wondered how all those Gen Zers got to be so collectively callous. Right before the internet sat on its couch and started flipping through its extensive collection of “participation trophy” memes.

Here’s the thing: I’m not Gen Z or a Millennial, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the frustration being experienced by these generations. Frustrations that sometimes manifest as a seeming complete lack of empathy for the generations that came before them. You think their “Ok, Bye Boomer,” jokes about the pandemic are callous? How do you think they felt about all of your “avocado toast” jokes when they told you they were drowning in student debt, medical debt, housing insecurity, and all the anxiety that accompanies those things? You told them they didn’t deserve a living wage, and now you can’t understand why they might feel as if you don’t deserve to live. And before you say, hang on, I never said anything like that: every vote you made, or didn’t make, told them all that and more.

The shocker isn’t that there are members of the younger generations who don’t seem to care about what happens to their elders—it’s that there are any who do. Remember, this is the generation who watched their classmates die by gun violence and were met with a collective shrug, who marched in the streets over climate change and were told they needed to “work on their anger management issues.” Why can’t you stay home and take this seriously? I don’t know, Dad, why can’t you ever remember to bring your canvas shopping bags to the grocery store?

So maybe the next time you, and the internet, are beside yourselves staring aghast at a picture of college kids partying on the beach during a pandemic, or feel sickened by a “Boomer Remover” thread you heard about on reddit, don’t bother with asking them “Where did you learn this stuff? Who taught you to do this?” Because the answer, as you very well remember, is “I learned it from watching you, okay? I learned it from you.”

When my daughter was little, she used to watch “The Land Before Time” over and over again. And as much as I understood the reasons why—as much as I understood the safety in the familiar, the comfort of lines you know being repeated over and and over like some kind of toddler Zen koan—it still drove me crazy. “Try something new,” I’d push. “Your next favorite thing is just around the corner!”

How ironic is it, then, that nearly a quarter of a century later I find myself doing the exact same thing, and instead of clicking on one of the literally dozens of new shows that friends and family insist will be my “new favorite thing,” I cue up yet another episode of early season “ER.” Unfortunately, however, I’ve come to realize that Mark, Doug and Carter don’t have quite the same soothing effect on me that Ducky, Cera and Longneck had on her.

Sure the pagers, Diet Cokes and pay phones are soothing (Doctors! Waiting in line! For a pay phone!) And yes, George Clooney is dreamy in any era. But the once comforting repetition of hearing the doctors ask the nurses for a “CBC” (After a certain point wouldn’t they just take that particular test as a given? No? Carry on, then.) has dimmed somewhat by the niggling thought in the back of my head saying “I wonder how much that is going to cost?”

True, the writers of “ER” did make an effort to address the cost of healthcare even back in their day. When Carter has to work on a famously prickly cardiologist’s patient and orders every test he can think of just to be on the safe side, the nurse is aghast. “That’s two thousand dollars worth of tests!” she gasps. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the couch sighing like I’ve just seen a young Mickey Rooney offer to shine someone’s shoes for a nickel. “Two thousand dollars,” I think. “For a trip to the ER. How quaint.”

The hard truth is that in 1994, when “ER” premiered, health care costs in the United States were already ridiculous—and they have nearly quadrupled since then. This even as life expectancy rates have fallen—we are now 35^th in the world for longevity.

Most of this decline is because of the skyrocketing increase in mortality among the young and the middle-aged—people in the prime “Go Fund Me” years of their lives. Sure, a significant percentage of this increase is due to “deaths of despair” like suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases, but we can’t overlook the fact that many of these deaths are due to exclusively financial reasons—for too many people, the cost of treatment is an insurmountable barrier. And by insurmountable, I mean insurmountable like Everest, with the accompanying body count to prove it.

Take insulin, for example. There is absolutely no question that without it, diabetics will die. Which is why Dr. Frederick Banning gave away the patent for free after he and his team developed it in 1922, and why, in almost every single first world country, its price is kept affordably low. (Sometimes I like to imagine Banning’s ghost one day coming back to punch America’s greedy drug manufacturers in their collective dicks. It’s a comforting thought whenever you are on hold with your insurance company.)

Now, of course, the ridiculous and insurmountable cost for many is going to be the test for Covid 19. Or will it? I’d like to think that, finally, those in charge will step in and fix our broken system—and not just because, unlike with diabetics, and insulin, they have figured out that they, too, are at risk when everyone doesn’t have access to basic healthcare, but rather because they all have some kind of Scrooge-like awakening and finally realize that it is the right thing to do.

But then again, I might be a little naïve. After all, I can still be made happy just by watching George Clooney speak on a cell phone bigger than his head.

If there is any aphorism that perfectly sums up the era in which we live, it would have to be: “Never read the comments.” And yet, in the same way that your tongue keeps going back to poke at a sore tooth, this is exactly what I did recently when I was reading a story about the suspended (and almost immediately reinstated) journalist Felicia Sonmez.

Sonmez was suspended for tweeting a link to a story about the 2003 rape allegations against Kobe Bryant. As a sexual assault survivor herself, this take on the very recent death of Kobe Bryant was entirely relevant to Sanchez. It was also something she had every right to do, both as a survivor, and as a journalist.

Although you would never know that by reading the comments.

According to the comments (and many main stories as well), bringing up what was arguably the darkest moment of Bryant’s life at the time of his death was inappropriate. Which, frankly, is just bizarre.

No matter what your feelings on Kobe Bryant are, or were, no one can argue that the 2003 incident was a pivotal moment for him. In the “story” of his life it was a major plot point, one that I would like to believe left him a changed man: after all, he did apologize to his victim (sort of), and he was never accused again. Additionally, I would like to believe that as he got older, and, more importantly, as his own daughters neared the age of his victim (his oldest daughter is now 17, his victim was 19 at the time), his partial apology would have one day evolved into a full one, and that as he continued his work advocating for young women in sports, his growing awareness of the unique challenges they faced would have led him to a place of greater self-reflection.

In other words, I’d like to believe that his redemption arc would have one day been complete.

We talk about life-changing mistakes all the time when we talk about the deceased. We mention the DUI that turned the inspirational speaker away from drinking. We talk about the brilliant student who only really learned to focus after they were kicked out of their first choice school. We talk about the absentee parent who rearranged their priorities only after a family tragedy. When we give eulogies, talking about a person’s “second act” isn’t only acceptable, it’s a staple.

Unless, it seems, that first act involved sexual assault. In which case, the rule seems to be “not only do we not speak of this, it actually never happened at all.”

Even though studies have shown that the number of false rape reports occur at the same rate as the number of other false felony reports (such as arson and murder), the overwhelming response from Kobe Bryant’s grieving public has been to once again deny that an assault ever occurred. This despite the fact that there was physical evidence of both intercourse and trauma, as well as the previously mentioned partial apology and a civil settlement. (Yes, she accepted money. Among other things, surviving trauma is incredibly expensive.)

This denial of the facts is not only incredibly hurtful to this particular victim, and to victims in general, but perhaps most importantly, to the memory of Kobe Bryant himself.

People are complicated. They are messy, and they are, up until the moment they die, works in progress. Celebrities, on the other hand, are apparently not—they are two dimensional caricatures who are either always good, or always evil.

If you really loved Kobe, and really want to honor his legacy, then you will allow him the dignity of dying as the former, and not the latter.

And you will allow all sexual assault victims the space to react to his death in a way that helps them complete their own hero’s journey —even in the comments sections.

“Do you people have any idea what you have done to the Arizona economy? When wages were at $8.50 an hour a pizza, wings and salad was $38.00 now its over $50.00. Guess what, no more pizza and no more restaurant.”–angry Facebook comment, Feb.7, 2019

Well, it’s another new year in Flagstaff, which means three things. One, it is now socially acceptable to say out loud what you have been thinking since October (“I don’t care about skiing: I’m sick of winter”). Two, Phoenicians are still apparently okay with letting their children play alongside a major roadway (you have to wonder if the same people who hop out of the car on the side of I-17 also stop halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge to let the kids “enjoy the view.”) And three, (for the last few years at least), you now have another new chance to get into a fight about the increased minimum wage on social media (and probably in person, as well).

Unlike those first two things, however, the fight about the minimum wage is by no means a local issue. In fact, with only 21 states still sticking to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, your chances of getting into an argument over minimum wage are better than one in two. Yeah, you read that right: $7.25. The federal minimum wage has not budged an inch in over a decade. Unless of course you are a federal worker being paid in connection to a federal contract, and then the minimum wage is $10.80. This, I can only assume, is because, unlike certain congressional representatives, who are only good with things like tweeting poorly photo-shopped pictures of former President Obama, and, presumably, getting reelected, federal contract hiring managers are good when it comes to things like math, and therefore have figured out that you can’t actually get anyone to show up for a job interview if that job doesn’t pay enough to allow for the luxury of sleeping indoors.

Or, apparently, the luxury of sleeping at all. Because it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep when you’re consumed with worry about your finances. As 99% of us know all too well. But for that 1% that didn’t know, a recent study came out that confirmed just how devastating it is to live in poverty—and make no mistake about it, in a country where there is not one single community where $7.25 an hour will rent a one-bedroom apartment, $7.25 an hour is poverty.

A study by economists at UC-Berkeley showed that for every 10% increase in the minimum wage, the suicide rate of those holding a high school diploma or less decreased by 3.9%. Berkeley too liberal for you? The American Journal of Preventative Medicine published a report stating that a one dollar increase in minimum wage led to an overall decrease in suicides of 1.9%. Using those numbers, we can extrapolate that nearly 500 more people in the state of Arizona will still be alive ten years after voters approved raising Arizona’s minimum. The study also shows that increasing wages leads to lower rates of recidivism, and higher levels of debt repayment, so even if you aren’t one of the people directly affected by a lower suicide rate—even if you aren’t one of the people who gets to keep your father, or your sister, or your best friend, you still benefit from a community that has less crime and more money in circulation. You also benefit from living in a community that believes that all work has dignity, as do all workers. A community that still believes in the words of Franklin Roosevelt when he said, “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

In short, a community that actually is a community.

But hey: that’s a real shame about your pizza and wings.

On January 7, 2015, at approximately 11:30 AM, two brothers armed with assault rifles entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in Paris. Shouting that they were there to avenge the prophet Muhammed, they ended up killing twelve people that day, including a Muslim police officer who confronted them outside the offices, and who, it can be presumed, did not feel particularly avenged as he lay on the ground, wounded, and was shot in the head.

Over the next few days there would be several more attacks led by an associate of the brothers, leaving five more people dead, including another police officer.

These events terrified the world. Of course, that’s what they were meant to do, since they were, by every definition, terrorism. I would like to say that they shocked and saddened the world as well—as evidenced by the 3.7 million people who marched throughout France in solidarity and support in the days that followed (the largest public gathering in France since they were liberated from the Nazis in 1944)—except for the fact that what was truly shocking and saddening was the response from those who chose not to march. The response from the, “Yeah, but…” crowd.

“Yeah, it was terrible that those people were shot, but it was also wrong of Charlie Hebdo to be so provocative.”

Leaving aside the fact that the Charlie Hebdo janitor—the very first person murdered—clearly had no input into the magazine’s editorial decisions, (the same can be said for the police officers, joggers, and grocery shoppers who were killed and wounded in the days that followed), and therefore didn’t provoke anyone, this is a terrible argument, the worst sort of “she hit me first” kind of defense. It’s hard to believe that it had to be said then, or still has to be said now, but it’s not okay to kill people. Ever. Even if they hurt your feelings. Even if they hurt your prophet’s feelings.

Ever since the very first journalist filed his very first report (the exact wording has been lost to history, but the recap goes something like “But the Emperor is naked!”), the role of the journalist has been clear: to speak truth to power, and to shine a light in the places that those in power would rather be kept dark. In the words of the journalist Finley Peter Dunne, it is their job to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” To do that they need our full support, even when—especially when—the things they show us are things we would rather not see.

This is even more true when it comes to editorial cartoons, where there isn’t the luxury of a thousand words to get the point across—a cartoon has to make its point in the split second when it “made you look,” and, to do that, it must first make you look. There is no time for subtlety. Like all art, the cartoons are there to provoke a response, a response that should then lead to discussion. That $120,000 banana duct-taped to a wall? It did its job: we’re all talking about it, aren’t we? And yet, somehow, Dole Bananas hasn’t put out a hit on the artist.

The shots that rang out that morning didn’t put an end to the discussion that Charlie Hebdo started. If anything, they amplified it, something that I’d like to think a roomful of editorial cartoonists would be the first to find ironically humorous. In fact, I’m sure that them missing out on that discussion was yet another reason for everyone who knew and loved them to be sad they weren’t around anymore. But the dull sound of the even duller people who said it wasn’t right to even attempt to open a dialogue, who said that it was offensive, or insensitive, or, somehow, when fifteen people were dead, a bizarre form of reverse bullying—that is something that I’m sure those same loved ones were glad that the cartoonists were not around to see.

Because that? That wasn’t funny at all.

Lately, with all of the impeachment talk that has been going around, it seems as if there has been a renewed interest in both the impeachment process and in former President Nixon. (Clinton and Johnson, too, but mostly the crook who immortalized himself by uttering the words “I am not a crook,” during a press conference addressing his crookedness.) And while it understandably gives us comfort during these trying times to look to a story of how our most recent crooked President was (successfully) dealt with (even if it was nearly fifty years ago), I can’t but help but find more of a parallel (and comfort) in the story of the crooked President who served fifty years before Nixon. I am referring, of course, to Warren G. Harding.

First, a very brief and inadequate history lesson: Harding was the dark horse candidate from Ohio who was elected to great surprise and consternation in 1920. Well, surprise and consternation to many, but not to the oilmen who funded his campaign. In return for their support Harding appointed an extremely oil industry-friendly cabinet, including Albert Bacon Fall as Secretary of the Interior. One of Fall’s first acts was to set aside the decision to keep the oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming as just that—a reserve—and instead lease the rights to Mammoth Oil, owned by Harry Sinclair.

The lease was awarded in secret, meaning there were no other bidders, which was probably for the best, seeing as how the transaction also involved literal suitcases full of cash from Sinclair to Fall, as well as the gift of a sprawling New Mexico ranch for Fall to relax on after a busy day of accepting bribes and crippling the nation’s strategic defenses.

Of course, as so often happens with government secrets and a free press, this secret didn’t stay secret for very long, and the Wall Street Journal broke the story in 1922. Congress, to their credit, soon launched an investigation, which caused Fall to step down from his position. Luckily his friend Sinclair was still looking out for him, and, apparently impressed with Fall’s ability to successfully carry large bags of cash bribes, put him to work obtaining oil leases in the Soviet Union.

Harding, meanwhile, sensing that his work in Washington was done, began to make plans for his post-Presidential life. These plans included a year-long ’round the world cruise with fifty of his closest friends—all paid for by Harry Sinclair, on one of Harry Sinclair’s (presumably nicer) yachts.

All of this while the congressional investigation was slowly, but steadily, chugging along. (Sound familiar?) In the course of their investigation Congress eventually subpoenaed Sinclair himself, who, for obvious reasons, refused to appear. (Also very familiar.) Chug chug chug went the wheels of justice, though, and in 1929 the Supreme Court finally ruled that yes, you do have to answer a congressional subpoena, and that failing to do so was considered contempt of congress. Which is exactly what Sinclair went to prison for. (Unlike Fall, who went to prison that same year for accepting a bribe.)

In retrospect, of course, all of this seems so inevitable. Of course Sinclair and Fall went to prison for their crimes—that’s what criminals do. But at the time, and for those seven long years between the story breaking in the Wall Street Journal and the sound of the prison doors clanging shut, I’m sure it didn’t seem very inevitable at all. I’m sure it seemed like the process just wasn’t working, and that we had fallen into an abyss of corruption from which we could never return. And then, slowly but surely, we did. And everything was back to normal (for fifty years, at least).

At this point you’re probably wondering if Harding himself was ever brought to justice. The answer is: in a way. Technically speaking, Harding was relieved of his position, and in one of the most satisfying ways possible—one in which I can only hope will soon be all too familiar to us as well.

Harding died his third year in office.

There is a lot going on in the world right now. Oceans are rising. Empires are tottering. New rights are being won in some places just as those same rights are being lost in others. Everything feels like it’s on the brink of something momentous, something great, although, as Ollivander explains to Harry when he’s helping him pick out his wand, great can mean both terrible and good. And so it is against this background—this background of great things, both terrible and good, that I want to talk about something that it is, I believe, of vital and immediate importance.

I want to talk about the impending death of the Amtrak dining car.

Recently it was announced that beginning in 2020, the traditional dining car meal service would be discontinued on some trains and replaced with what Amtrak is calling “a la carte” style dining. This means no more Amtrak kitchen (the meals would be pre-packaged), no more dining car reservations, and, most importantly, no more being forced to sit with strangers as you await your medium rare steak and baked potato on a plastic plate.

This, to anyone who has not experienced the Amtrak dining car, probably sounds like a good thing. Because, really, who want to sit with strangers while they eat? Eating is a surprisingly intimate and vulnerable act, so much so that even the busiest of restaurants wouldn’t dream of asking diners to share a table, no matter how long the wait. Wouldn’t dream of it, that is, until that busy restaurant is also hurtling across the landscape at the same time, trying to keep to a schedule that is entirely independent of people’s dining choices.

This is the point at which I would normally be expected to wax poetic about how the Amtrak dining car is the Great Equalizer, or something like that. About how by being forced to eat with strangers we soon come to realize that we have more in common than we know, that our differences are really not that vast, and that, underneath it all, we are all the same. Which is a lovely sentiment, and maybe true on some other level, but is not at all what I’m trying to convey here.

For starters, the Amtrak dining car is NOT the Great Equalizer: it is almost entirely made up of people from the sleeping cars, and those people have paid at the very least double what the people in coach have paid to be on that same train. No, if you want that kind of equality you would have much better luck in the cafe car. And secondly, the dining car subset of slightly-well-off people is also made up of the even smaller subset of people who can’t or won’t fly, either because of fear, or discomfort, or simply not being allowed (although it is not usually the conversation starter, I have met people on the “no fly” list in the dining car). So, no, the people in the dining car are neither “a slice of life” or “just like you and me.” Or rather, they are exactly like you and me, in that they are all just a little bit weird. Just as I am weird. And, hopefully, as you are weird, too.

On my most recent Amtrak trip I sat next to an elderly Japanese woman who was making her annual trek to see Johnny Mathis in Branson, Missouri, and a real estate developer who built luxury homes but, for unrevealed reasons was no longer “allowed” to fly. And who eagerly passed on her advice of “always add an elevator—wealthy people don’t like to walk up stairs.”

They were both really weird. Delightfully weird. And without the Amtrak dining car, I would not have gotten to experience quite that particular kind of weirdness—or rather, I might have experienced it, but would have then been free to take note of it and then move on, leaving both of those people to linger as “quirky” stereotypes in my rear view. But because all of this was revealed before the salad, when we still had two more courses to go, I was able to catch a glimpse of the person beneath the quirk.

Don’t get me wrong: at the end of the meal they were still weird. As I’m sure I was still weird to them. But, hopefully, we were all just a little bit more real to each other as well. And that is what makes the Amtrak dining car still so very necessary—and still, for as long as it lasts, so very great.

In every possible sense of the word.

There are a lot of reasons why I have never acquired a parrot. The mess. The cost. The noise. But probably the number one reason is the responsibility: everyone knows that parrots can easliy live seventy years or more, which means that you will be responsible for that parrot not only throughout your entire lifetime, but in all likelihood beyond your lifetime as well. And who in their right mind would sign up for that kind of commitment? It’s a ridiculous thought.

Of course, then I went and had children.

I know that the fact that children tend to stick around as long as parrots do should have been obvious to me from the start, but somehow I missed that memo. Personally, I blame Kanye. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” he sang so catchily that somehow that refrain got stuck in my head as a sort of mantra. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” I would mutter to myself as I pried up multiple pieces of gum from a wooden floor. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” as I caught a catnap in the car between my (unpaid) chauffeur duties. “Eighteen years, eighteen years,” as I listened to a bedroom door slam for the third time in one night.

The truth of it is that “Eighteen years” is really just the downpayment—no, worse than that, “Eighteen years” is the time you have spent sitting in the back office of the car dealership, haggling over “undercoating” and “extended warranties,” before the real payments have even begun. “Eighteen years” is a joke.

Oh, sure, eighteen years is the end of your legal responsibility—you are no longer legally and financially responsible for the bad decisions someone else makes—but the line between “legally responsible” and just “responsible” becomes somewhat blurred when the person on the other end of the phone still needs to buy groceries and pay for car insurance. Or maybe just needs step-by-step instructions on how to cook a hamburger in a frying pan.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. (Well, maybe I am complaining a little.) And, realistically, I know that at some point the financial hits will stop coming. But the emotional ones? Never.

When they warn you that you will be responsible for that parrot for seventy years or more, they don’t just mean financially. In fact, I’m sure that the finances involved in taking care of even the fussiest parrot are miniscule when compared to the cost of taking care of a child (and this will be true up until the day someone comes up with the idea of sports travel teams for parrots). No, they are talking about being emotionally responsible. Which, again, pales when compared to what you go through with a child—even when that child is now an adult.

I’m not saying you don’t love your parrot—but do you worry about it taking up vaping? Do you worry that it will one day visit the wrong Wal-Mart, concert, or classroom and get shot by another, angry parrot (which, statistically, would probably be a cockatoo)? Do you worry that your parrot will have a bad day and not want to bother you by calling to talk about it, and from there will spiral into a parrot depression? I’m not a parrot owner, but I’m going to guess that the answer to all of those questions is “no.”

For years my husband and I have have explained away our lack of a dog (a rarity in this dog-loving town) by saying that we’re waiting to see how the children work out first. I used to worry that this excuse would lose its validity after “Eighteen years,” but now I realize that that excuse will still be going strong fifty years from now.

And, just to be clear: we’re also not getting a parrot.