Why can’t I look away? — My little family drove to Maine and back, and both ways, while my son was safely hooked up to an intravenous drip of Marvel, my wife and I listened to a serial killer podcast. Jack the Ripper, Edmund Kemper, H.H. Holmes, the Eyeball Killer, and Elizabeth Báthory: The Blood Countess.

Carving my birthright — My brother Joe and I were weapon boys. BB guns, slingshots, bows and arrows, jackknives. Armed and harmless and dangerously happy.

I’ll settle for your best guess — I told a girlfriend once, “I have a self-induced speech impediment.” We broke up. Not because of the impediment. We broke up because I kept saying things like, “I have a self-induced speech impediment.” What scares me is that she’s still out there somewhere telling everyone about my big impediment. …

Maybe you have my life-crushing problem too — I have a superpower: I can die at any moment. Yes, everyone has this power. Therefore, not special. But with me, I keep coming back. Some superpowers are triggered by the horrors of radiation and puberty. Mine kicks in through a unique kind of waterboarding. …

And how to blend in with grief — When I pass graveyards, I say to the dead, “I’m trying, guys.” Trying to live big and die big. I assume they lived and died this way, which turns their hillside into an amphitheater of Olympic judges, all eyes on my life performance.

A Maine pirate’s tale — A pirate is this: “A sea-thief, one who without authority and by violence interferes with the property of another upon the sea…” One time, I was kayaking in Branch Pond, a big pond in Maine, and I discovered if I parked my kayak in the water 200 yards from the…

And I OD on epiphanies. — You’ve gotten stuck in one of life’s miserable ditches and your escape attempts keep you stuck somehow, so your mother says, while pointing at your core, “You know what I think?” “Yes,” you say. “Therefore, technically, and with all due respect, this conversation is over?” …

But please don’t force me to survive — It struck me the other day that I don’t know anything about survival. I’m not a carpenter, so I can’t build shelter, and I don’t hunt, so I couldn’t bring home a forest pig even if I wanted to. And if somehow I did bring home a forest pig, he’d…

My fate would be decided quickly — My wife and I recently visited a technical high school with our son, and in the Construction and Building Trades area, we ran into masculinity trouble. The moment we stepped into the vast and noisy workshop, we were met by the workshop’s ruler: a big man sporting a big plaid…