I used to wonder if I was just making excuses for being lonely. Then I went to a mall again. Nothing I had ever said in my life had been an excuse. The tightrope walk of being human, for me, made other people en masse seem like an impish kid banging a gong while wearing headphones and also kicking at his parents as they tried to grab his seventh Go-GURT out of his slippery hands.

I once took a full-semester class in college called Women and Crack Cocaine. There was a book by the same name that we read. It was incredible because it was so nuanced. The semester before I took a class called Deviance. I loved my second college and my advisor, Al, who taught both of these classes. I went from failing business college to straight A grades because of the freedom of choice. You’d be surprised what students can accomplish when you open up the bandwidth on their educational opportunities.

In elementary school, we used to have to walk from school to Cadman Plaza Park to have gym outside. Sometimes, we had lunch or recess out there. There were always two hot dog vendors with their carts. They were in direct competition for all business, but especially for our tweenage duckets we had tucked into our corduroys. One day, they got in a fight. An actual fist fight. One was a man and the other a lady. The man stabbed the lady with his hot dog tongs. We were all shook. We left hungry.

I grew up watching wrestling and reading wrestling magazines. I thought it was real. I learned Santa Claus was a myth before wrestling. Even when I knew it was staged, it was still real to me until I sat in the front row at the L.A. Sports Arena. I could hear them talking to each other. We were that close. It punched me from the inside. We ended up getting kicked out because my friend, Keebs, spat on Billy Jack Haynes back when he was out of the ring. I didn’t care. The curtain was raised, and I was standing there looking at a blank screen.

I played games of human Frogger in New York City growing up, dodging yellow cabs and bike messengers with the deftness of an experienced breakdancer about to pop-n-lock their way out of a traffic ticket. I felt so independent as a child, able to walk freely into the world and come home with a candy bar to assuage my loneliness.

The kids all looked so excited this morning. Maybe it’s because they know that no teacher will assign homework on the first day. Maybe it’s because they want to show off their new kicks. Maybe they are just happy to be out of their parents’ reach for a change. School is a form of freedom, but also a very tight restriction. Having to ask to use the bathroom makes you feel powerless.

Sometimes, it’s the subtle things that make us see the writing on the wall. Sometimes, we wear blinders so thick that the first line of the eye chart seems blurry to us. Sorry, Doc, I can’t make that out because it’s not something I want to see right now. I never liked wearing glasses.

I could overhear her whisper-yelling at my dad and then ramping up the volume for my benefit while I huddled in the basement room playing Bubble Bobble on Nintendo. Pop, pop - it was a fun game. “You do everything for the little Jew boy.” I couldn’t argue with her. I was technically a Jew boy, and my dad did do everything for me. She never called him a Jew man.

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.

My teenage years were a constant hustle. Hiding pimples, eating junk food, writing letters to girls, sports, warm beer, and spoonfuls of angst. I don’t know how I ended up with a flat top, but I did. My barber in Hightstown had shaky hands and smoked heaters the whole haircut. I don’t know how I survived. I think it was the freedom. I walked there from boarding school when I was off class. Then, maybe I walked and got pizza. I was drifting with the wind.

When I moved back to Brooklyn as an adult, I walked my kids to their school under the same awning where I grew up every morning. It gave me a personal jolt of happiness every time. If only my mom were still up there and could come down and walk with us.

I broke up with a girl once because she was a bad speller. I would imagine her leaving me a note in the morning, if we lived together, saying, “See you tonigte, hony.” I couldn’t do it. I feel bad because our first date was out of a rom-com. I still look her up from time to time. I’ve never found her online.

For Halloween in 5th grade, I went as myself. When we rang the doorbells in our apartment building, the adults shunned me for not “dressing up.” I tried to explain how meta what I was doing was, but they didn’t get it. My friends probably got full-size Mounds while I got an old Jolly Rancher. I was tired of wearing the store-bought costumes. Even the adults didn’t want me to be different.

In middle school, I once wrote something distasteful about the principal in bubble letters on a piece of paper. I wrote it in bubble letters so they wouldn’t know my handwriting. I was a smart kid, but not as smart as I thought. They called me into the office, and I almost let out a small turd in my tighty whiteys. He asked me to write in bubble letters on a piece of paper right then. They didn’t know the level I was at. I made the letters insane on purpose. I never got in trouble.

It’s hard not to judge people when we spend most of our time judging ourselves. Dumb-looking shirt. Stupid haircut. Why did I say that the way that I did? His name is Robert, not Richard. I stepped in gum because I deserved it.

A summer day can feel like a blizzard even when it’s not cold. A sack of hammers landing on your big toe. A jellyfish sting that won’t stop stinging. Poison oak. Running fast around the corner of Old Man Jones’ abandoned garage and catching your inner forearm on a rusty nail. Grief is a sharp arrow.

I was a stepchild. My stepbrothers were stepchildren. Half-time here, half-time there. Two rooms. Actually, I never really had a room at my dad’s. I just had a bed in my stepbrother’s room. I guess that was okay. My room at my mom’s was my haven. No child needs two havens. I had nightmares at my mom’s. I thought Creepshow was under my bed at my dad’s.

The universe loves to lay bets on a seesaw. Watch for it the next time a bird takes a flying dump on a pedestrian’s head, and you laugh. Yours is coming when you least expect it. Splatter. The clock turns, and we start all over again.

Tea snackered with white sugar. Danish sugar cookie tins. Bench seating in the kitchen. Why did I sell this house? Low carpet. Shag carpet. Linoleum floors. Pink cabinets. Pink house.

I once rubbed poison ivy all over my body at summer day camp because the girl I liked said the plant in question was not poison ivy. She was smart, and I showed up the next day with Calamine lotion all over my body. Side note: I love the smell of Calamine lotion. I once slept over at her house, in a bunk bed, when I was less than ten. I can see the room. I have a photo of her and me on the beach. It’s sweet. I believe this story to be accurate, but I worry about what happens when it fades.