The Raging Elitist

Category: Dear Elite

The Call

Some jobs beg to be properly completed. For instance, there’s a certain pleasure to the trancelike state you experience washing windows, but the real prize is stepping back and admiring the finished product, your mind as clear and renewed as the freshly cleaned glass. The last thing you want to hear when you’re basking in…
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Plain Sweet Banana

Scotty is a boy of contradictions. He can go silent for long stretches before giving a lengthy description of all his recurring dreams. He can cry for an hour over nothing (he used to do this every time he woke up from an afternoon nap), but he’s the only person I know who spontaneously slaps…
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Now We Are Six

When I was in my mid-twenties coaching the year-round swim team at the rec department, I used to joke that I wanted to have kids but didn’t want to deal with them until they were six. I was coaching swimmers ages five to eighteen, and it was pretty clear to me where the cutoff in…
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Feel Free

COLONOSCOPY. The word itself stirs up butterflies in my stomach and makes my palms sweat. A younger me disbelieved the day would ever come when I would willingly give myself diarrhea and let a stranger snake a camera up my ass, but as of this moment, it seems that’s where my life has been headed…
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Crossword Puzzles

We’re about a half mile from the house before I finally accept that I’d rather be on this Sunday afternoon walk with my family than at the neighborhood party at the boat landing. A little gust of breeze sends live oak leaves tumbling from high above, and the kids are contentedly eyeing the ground between…
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Shame and Embarrassment

Do dogs get embarrassed? Every now and again, on the rare occasion that Sammy has an accident in the house, or perhaps after being caught trying to eat off the kitchen counter, I see something like shame written on her face. Maybe her concern is purely hedonic, but maybe it’s moral. She does seem to…
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Two Walks

Even though calories are Sammy’s great passion in life, the leash is the key to her heart. I believe this, because I used to be the key master, and now I’m not. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s been three years since I took Sammy on a walk by myself. Three years of protecting…
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Being Daddy

Recently, we let our kids watch their first PG-13 movie. We were on a rare family trip that necessitated staying in a hotel, and Mrs. Doubtfire was on TV. “What the heck?” I thought, “I saw it when I was a kid.” I was entertained by Robin Williams’ performance back then, and I still am.…
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Running for Trains

Behind schedule and running to catch a train in a crowded station, that intellectual giant Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, suddenly stopped at his friend’s behest and took stock of his behavior. “I don’t run for trains,” his friend told him. I used to share that inclination. I remember heading out from my…
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Weekend Away

The butterflies started in my stomach about 15 miles before we reached the hotel. Danyelle and I were driving south through the lowland forest of Retirement-Land, South Carolina bound for a resort outside Beaufort. A weekend away from the kids awaited, and for some reason, I dreaded getting there. “I’m nervous,” I confessed. I recognized…
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