I know they have free trial periods for a lot of things, but those are usually a farce. If it’s impossible to return, no one’s going to do it, and that’s the game. You can return your sample if you play hopscotch in the rain, on a Wednesday in October, while wearing a down vest and holding an old TV antenna in a lightning storm. They know what they are doing.

Weighted vests are like podcasts. Everyone has one. Your brother’s antisocial high school friend, Aaron, is now crushing it with an anthropological podcast about how humans evolved from chimpanzees. He has two vests in his hall closet. One is a blue finance bro vest; the other is weighted and black.

We once had 34 empty plastic cups, formerly full of Tom Collinses, on our table at the East End Comedy Club in East Hampton while we were in the front row to see Andrew “Dice” Clay. I was woefully underage, with a fake Swedish bus pass for ID, and hoping that, whatever form of God there was, he would not go on a rant about my pimples. Bada-bing!

Open political discourse has reached an abominable level. Actually, it’s been here for years. It looks like a thermometer that goes up to 100 degrees when it’s 112 in the shade in Scottsdale. Bursting at the seams. I stopped talking about politics and religion with people long ago, but not because I don’t like an intelligent back-and-forth conversation. It’s because people don’t like to play educational ping pong anymore. They like the buy that half-table that exists so they can hit the ball back and forth to themselves for hours while their like-minded friends watch on Twitch.

My whole life is a never-ending to-do list of things I don’t actually have to do. Maybe everything is aspirational at this age. Some might call it delusional. I want to be more like my cats. They seem to be free of appointments and genuinely happy relaxing until the end of time. Maybe I should also take breaks to chase bugs and pat tiny balls around on the ground with my off hand.

We had a dog named Bo at my dad’s house growing up. I think it was my older stepbrother’s dog. He was a golden retriever. One summer, when we owned and managed the Cozy Cabins in the Hamptons, I remember him lying on the ground with a giant ice pack on his swollen testicles. I still don’t know what this was about. I always imagined him being a fancier dog if he was named Beau instead.

I like leaving text messages on read. I guess it’s a power move. I just don’t want to be forced to respond, and once I read the message, I am caught in that obligatory arena with no gloves and Jon Jones standing across from me, knowing that I mistakenly insulted his mother. I don’t want to spend my life in the octagon.

If you found a stray koala bear and brought her home, would you make sure she has everything she needs first, or would you share a photo of you and her on Instagram? This tells us everything we need to know about ourselves. Be honest.

Bark falls from a tree, and the ants celebrate because now they can board this boat headed nowhere. At least they will have snacks along the way. The branches look down in disdain.

I pissed my pants in eighth-grade science class in what could only be described as a tidal wave. No one said a word. I went through school the rest of the day with piss-soaked corduroys. Life can be a dagger inside of a knife display, shot out of a cannon at you. Bullseye.

I know what type of person you are solely by whether or not you hold the door for others. This is the only thing that is truly black and white in the world. I used to think Missed Connections would work. Everyone who rode the subway in New York City did.

I’ve never had coffee, other than a sip here and there. When people hear this, you would think I just called them a child molester. I can say that because I spent more than a year as a prosecutor in a Sexual Battery and Child Abuse unit. It was called SBU on the inside. It would have made a good television show. I could rarely sleep at night with what I read every day.

Nothing is quite like the sound of a woodpecker. Peck, peck, peck. Horns honk in unmoving traffic. Jimmy chews his gum in rhythm with the off-center clock in the corner of Math class. The last water on Earth is a kiddie pool.

Late at night, dreams intersect. A caterpillar inches up a leaf. A dew drop forms on your front lawn. We are all one second from failure.

If I were carrying a heavy sack across the desert, I would probably lay it down somewhere and try to rest. I am 55 now, and I don’t have the physical fortitude that I used to. I’m someone’s aging dad who can pass for 42, with a body that feels like 61. Some mornings, I wake up feeling like a million bucks. Other mornings, I consult my Health chat to make sure I’m not dying. We are all dying.

Sometimes it feels like a dump truck pulled into your yard while you were sunbathing and decided to unload a bed of sand onto you. You became the sandcastle. Your day became the shells washing back out to sea. The seagulls picked nits out of your hair. You submerged yourself endlessly so the dream would stop. You woke up.