Back in the day, my husband used to bitch about how people were glued to their phones at all times—even while walking somewhere. “How can they see where they’re going?” he’d ask. “What if they don’t see a car and it hits them?”

I’ll bet you can see where this is going. Now Dan is as much of a cellphone addict as the people he used to look down on.

He has a history of finding changes in technology unwelcome. He didn’t even want to get a regular cellphone in the first place. It was only after a protracted argument caused by one of us not notifying the other where they were and when they’d be home. I pointed out that this would not be a problem if we had phones we could carry around with us and not rely on a landline.

Finally, he began to see it my way and caved. I purchased inexpensive cellphones and gave him one. It was the kind with almost no features or difficult-to-access ones. (To be honest, it was the kind that parents are now encouraged to get for their kids. Like that would go over big and occasion bliss. No internet connection? No social media? They’d sooner just leave it in the box. But I digress.)

The low-ball cellphones we got worked okay, except for one tiny problem—Dan kept losing them. Not once or twice, mind you, but regularly. Once he even lost it in another state. (My dad would have said, “I’m going to tie it on a string around your neck so you won’t lose it.” His dad would have said, “If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was.” But I digress some more.) But even when he lost each flip-phone he insisted on replacing it with another just like it.

The problem only got worse when I bought a smartphone for myself. Dan refused to give up his rickety flip-phone. He did marvel at the many things I could do with the smartphone, like play Puss-in-Boots Fruit Ninja or get directions to the sushi place nearest to our hotel.

What changed his mind was advances in technology. When he heard that 5G was on the horizon and the flip-phone would flip its lid in fear, he consented to me selecting him a smartphone. A simple one. It should do as little as possible except make and accept phone calls. No Fruit Ninja for him.

Soon, however, he discovered that with it, he could get online. He had a computer and was used to the wonders he could find on the Web. (Web-wonders, as it were.) Mostly, he read the news, checked the weather, and watched YouTube videos of cute kitties, which, after all, was why Al Gore (or that guy with the series of tubes) invented the Internet.

Soon he was scrolling regularly. (It strikes me as ironic that scrolls were a very early form of communication, but now the word as well as the world has gone high-tech. But I digress yet again.)

Singer-songwriter Tom Paxton once wrote, “The news is all bad, but it’s good for a laugh.” Now that even the news isn’t good for a laugh, Dan has increased his intake of cat videos and stories about archaeology. And sworn off doomscrolling.

I’m sick of the bros! It’s not just that boys and men call each other bro. It’s how the term has invaded our culture. We have dude-bros, tech-bros, bro-grammers, bromance (which has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary), bro code, brobituary (something said of a guy who just got married), brohemian, and even Bernie bro (a supporter of Bernie Sanders).

(It’s also now common usage in TV commercials. For example, one of the most ridiculous is an ad showing two or three guys eating the same combination of pizza and sides and calling each other bundle-bros. But I digress.)

A little research shows that “bro” may have started with surfer culture. Nowadays, however, it is associated with misogyny, entitlement, and hyper-masculinity of the toxic variety. A bro doesn’t associate with women, except as a sexual conquest. The expression “bros before hoes” is a repellent example of this. The term is also used to assert that an activity is heterosexual, not gay—bro-hug, for example.

(I don’t think anyone calls my husband “bro” at work, though if they do, I don’t want to know. (Sometimes they call him Santa or Jerry.) And he isn’t into the “manosphere” of bro-culture. Dan’s philosophical. He says, “Call me anything but late for dinner.” But I digress again.)

The word itself has gone through changes over the years. Starting with “bro,” the word later was often pronounced as “brah” (a variation I knew wouldn’t last long because it sounds like “bra”), and more recently as “bruh.” (Which sounds like someone started to say “brother,” had a brain fart, and stopped.)

(Why has this happened? My personal theory has to do with the Great Vowel Shift, which is a real thing that linguists talk about. The pronunciation of certain vowels in English changed over the years (primarily between the 1400s and the 1600s). For example, the pronunciation “beet” in the Middle Ages became “bite,” which is how the word is pronounced now. “Here” became “her” and “hoos” became “house.” It has to do with the position of the teeth and the tongue in the mouth when saying those words and applies mostly to long vowels. It didn’t happen just in English, but in other languages like Swedish and Norwegian. It’s really only useful when you’re reading Chaucer aloud, but who does that except English majors and linguists? But I digress, at length and boringly.)

While we’re on the subject of forms of address (which I was a moment ago), I’d like to note that women have no way of informing each other of a flat tire. Let’s take the case of a man with a tire that’s deflating. Another man can say, “Hey, buddy (or mister, dude, guy, or, presumably, bro), your tire is low.” (Women can say, “Hey, mister,” too.) When the person with the flat tire is a woman, men can yell, “Hey, lady, your tire is low.” But there are no good ways for women to impart this information to other women. A woman could say, “Hey, lady (or sister or sis or miss), your tire is low,” but none of those sounds right. The best they can do is yell, “Excuse me, your tire is low,” but that doesn’t indicate who has the deflating tire. It could be anyone in the traffic pattern. (Women are therefore restricted to “excuse me” rather than “hey.” I suppose women could always point at the other woman’s tire without yelling anything, but that’s a little ambiguous. But I digress some more.)

What would the female equivalent of bro be? Sis? Sounds like the tire is leaking. Lady? Too formal. Chick? Too sixties. Woman? Too technical. Bitch? Just no. Female? Too dismissive. Anything else I can think of is just too vulgar. I guess we just have to wait for language to catch up to “bro.”

“Where’s the clicker?” resounds through the room. (That’s what we call the remote control. Clicker is two syllables shorter than remote control and exactly as long as remote. But I digress.)

“I don’t know.”

“You had it last.”

“I thought I put it on the table.”

“Well, you didn’t, unless you put it under the peanut butter jar, and it’s not there.”

“Maybe it’s in your desk drawer.”

“I never put it there. Maybe it’s on the floor between your feet.”

“I don’t see it there.”

“Maybe it dove into the cushion of your chair. Fish for it!”

“Maybe Toby took it.” (Toby’s the cat.)

“No, he’s watching Bird TV.” (Looking out the window.)

This is an accurate account of a conversation that occurs nearly daily (nightly, too, sometimes on the same day). The seeking, scrambling, fishing, and fumbling. The recriminations. The prospect of an un-entertained evening stretching out before us.

(I look back fondly on the days when the remote was attached to the TV or VCR (yes, I’m old) by a long plastic leash. All you had to do was follow it like a trail of breadcrumbs and there the clicker was! You could also follow it the other way to find out where the TV was, not that we used it that way all that much. But I digress again.)

When Dan gets tired of the cooking, crime, and comedies I like, he says, “Can I see the clicker?” If I’m feeling puckish, I simply hold it up within his line of sight. He sighs and says, “Gimme that.” (I don’t really do that. Much, that is.)

I must say I don’t understand the way Dan uses the remote. Rather than selecting a program to watch, he goes to a movie channel and clicks through every film listed, muttering, “That’s a good one” or “Haven’t seen that in a while.” He never quite commits to a movie, even if I say I like one of them. He waits until I go to bed to select a movie and watch it or episodes of Quantum Leap. Or wakes up at 3:00 a.m. and goes downstairs to do the same.

(We do have different taste in movies. I like musicals, swashbuckler movies, and anything starring Kris Kristofferson. Dan likes war movies, Thin Man movies, and anything featuring Peter Sellars, none of which features Kris K. But I digress some more.)

But we were talking about remote controls. At least I was. I think.

Custody of the clicker passes back and forth during the day. When Dan’s at work, it’s mine, all mine. I spend most of the day with the TV on, even when I’m doing my writing. I usually have the live channels on and flip around when I get bored with one. On any given day, I may listen to a few episodes of Ink Master, a couple of Buffy, some Dr. Pimple Popper, and maybe Forensic Files, if they have an episode I haven’t already seen. I don’t generally pay attention to what’s on. It’s just my “emotional support noise.” I don’t like sitting in a completely quiet house, and the cat doesn’t make that much noise. Or if he does, there’s something very wrong.

(It was Dan who got me started on Dr. Pimple Popper. I was reluctant to watch it because it had such a dopey, repellent name. But after a few episodes, I found it tolerable. It was another medical show, kind of like Mystery Diagnosis or Monsters Inside Me, both of which I like, except with cysts and lipomas instead of parasites. But I digress even more.)

Then, when Dan comes home, we have to negotiate what to watch. Big Bang Theory or The Dirty Dozen? Dr. Strangelove or Forged in Fire? Beat Bobby Flay or Bell, Book, and Candle? The Three/Four Musketeers or Arsenic and Old Lace?

Finally we settle on something. It doesn’t really matter what. Inevitably, Dan falls asleep in the comfy chair. I grab the clicker and change the channel.

If you want advice about writing, go to the pros for the prose (or verse, as it may be). They have helpful advice to offer.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,”  said noted poet William Wordsworth.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start,”
the best-selling Stephen King advised.

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on,” offered Western writer Louise L’Amour.

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way,”
said sci-fi great Ray Bradbury.

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way,” advised Ernest Hemingway. Words to live (or write) by.

Hemingway clearly followed his own advice. He was noted for writing short, punchy sentences. (He himself wasn’t short, though he sure was punchy. He was six feet tall and had a boxing ring in his backyard. But I digress.)

James Thurber, a legendary cartoonist and comic writer (writer of humorous stories, not superhero genre fiction), imitated Hemingway’s style in a version of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (better known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” But I add more digression.)

This is how Thurber imagined Hemingway’s version would go:

“It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring….The children were in their beds. Their beds were in the room next to ours. Mamma and I were in our beds. Mamma wore a kerchief. I had my cap on. I could hear the children moving. We didn’t move. We wanted the children to think we were asleep.”

But Hemingway (the real one) gave what I consider the greatest piece of advice: “Write drunk. Edit sober.”

People have debated what he meant by that (a thing that English mavens do). However, as an English maven myself, I think that, like his writing, his advice was straightforward and clear. (I got a t-shirt with his famous saying on it. But I digress yet again.)

What are the advantages of writing drunk? you may ask. Think about what Stephen King said. (“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”) I can vouch for this, having committed to writing posts for two blogs every week. (Not that I actually get drunk every time I start a post. I have some other work I have to do that would not improve with a blast of bourbon. But I digress even more.) But words do tend to flow more easily when something intoxicating is flowing, too.

Then there’s editing sober. I advise that, too. You’ve most likely missed a few commas (at the least) when you were WUI (writing under the influence). Not to mention question marks, quotation marks, and apostrophes. When you’re sober, you are capable of noticing these flaws, as well as sentences that need to be shorter and punchier.

So, which is more difficult, writing or editing? Of course, editing is. You have to do it with a clear head. You can’t just go splashing words around. You have to be precise. You have to pay attention to style, narrative flow, repetition, characterization, and fixing everything you did while you were drunk. But for me, writing is the fun part, and not just because of the booze. You’re creating something, and that’s exhilarating!

For the last word on the subject, however, I’ll turn to playwright Lillian Hellman: “If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.”

Except Hemingway, of course.

Once I was talking with Brenda, a coworker, about pets. She said she had a cat. Instantly, I started asking questions. What’s its name? Is it male or female? How old is it? Where did you get it? What does it look like? Has it bonded with anyone in the family? What’s its personality like?

“It’s a cat,” she replied. “It doesn’t have a personality.”

“What do you mean, it has no personality? Every cat has a personality,” I said.

“All it does is lay in my shoes.”

“That’s a personality if I ever heard of one,” I replied. “It likes you and wants to be close to you. Your scent makes it feel secure. It’s chosen you as its human. If you don’t pay attention to it, it will get lonely and turn to your shoes for comfort. You should pet it and cuddle it and love it.”

She scoffed at me.

But all cats have personalities, even if they’re peculiar.

We once had a kitten who caused a commotion. We heard a bump-bump-bump coming from the hallway but had no idea what it could be. Maggie solved the mystery when she came into the living room, dragging one of Dan’s hiking boots (larger than she was) by its long, red lace. Now there was a cat with a shoe fetish! (She also used to hide bits of kibble in the toes of his shoes. She was a rescue and hadn’t known where her next meal was coming from, so she’d stash some food just in case. I’m just glad we didn’t feed her wet food. But I digress.)

Maggie bonded with Dan. When she was around him, she behaved like a Gallic strumpet, writhing and meowing and presenting her backside. To her, I was chopped liver (or something less edible). I always said if Maggie and Dan were the same species, I wouldn’t have had a chance with him.

Another cat we had, Matches, also bonded with Dan. Matches would play catch with him. Dan would throw a crumpled-up piece of paper, and Matches would catch it between his paws and bring it back to Dan. When he tired of the game, he would drop the “ball” instead of returning it. (He also bit Dan’s ankle whenever he stepped out of the shower. As a sign of affection, it wasn’t as endearing as playing catch. But I digress again.)

Our other cats had personalities, too. Jasper came running up onto the bed most evenings, meowing urgently. “What is it?” we’d ask. “Has Timmy fallen down the well? And did Grandpa fall in after him? And did a school bus full of nuns fall after them both? And catch on fire?” He never told us, but he didn’t stop meowing either until we tugged his tail, which he loved.

We’ve had many cats over the years, and all of them had personalities. Louise liked to be held in my arms like a baby. Chelsea would get upset if Dan and I quarreled. Bijou slept across my throat the first night I brought her home.

However strange they (or we) sometimes acted, they socialized with us, bonded with us, and set up housekeeping in our hearts. Personalities? They had personality-plus.

(You may now applaud because I got all the way through this without giving in to the temptation to say “purr-sonality.” Until now.)

I went to a classy university—one so classy that they could (and did) boast about the vegetation that climbed their walls. There you could learn all kinds of useful stuff, such as how to be an engineer, a business maven, or a lawyer. So naturally, I went there to study poetry.

My education wasn’t wasted, however. I learned things that the university didn’t advertise as being part of the curriculum. Here are just a few of them.

Naughty Poetry

One of the more interesting poems I encountered was one by e. e. cummings (the poet who lost his Shift key). He wrote a poem that was considered so filthy that his publisher would only include it in his collected works on an onionskin paper insert in nine copies, handwritten by the author (and cummings had terrible handwriting). But that was in 1935. (The title is “the boys i mean are not refined,” and now you can find it on the internet (if you’re not easily offended, that is). (You just looked it up, didn’t you?) But I digress.)

Bad Wine

I took a class in my junior year called Wine Tasting for Non-Majors. The class met on Wednesday afternoons in an auditorium, and we sampled various wines. We passed bottles of wine and small plastic cups down the row like we were in church, only without the collection baskets. There was a spit bucket at the end of each row for those who didn’t drink (very few) or those who hated a particular wine.

There was lots to hate. We sampled the candy wines. (I was actually fond of Pear Ripple, which I don’t think you can get nowadays. But I digress some more.) We sampled wines that had gone bad in various ways so that we knew what to say to snooty wine stewards: “This wine is foxy,” for example, or “musty” or “oxidized.” That was where the spit bucket came into play.

(The university had, in addition to the usual schools of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, and the like, a Hotel School. Hotel majors had a very different wine class, the sort in which you took a sip and had to identify the country, the variety, and the name of the woman who stomped the grapes. It was not a jolly passing of bottles. It did not enliven Wednesday afternoons. But I digress even more.)

Smelly Animals

Carl Sagan taught us to avoid cow farts. (Yes, that Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, also noted for appearing on the Johnny Carson show and the catchy phrase “billyuns and billyuns.” But I digress still more.)

So, how did cow farts get into Astronomy 102? Sagan, like me, was fond of digressions. He occasionally got onto topics such as greenhouse gases, which is where the cow farts (and burps) come in (or go out, really). He told us that greenhouse gases were produced in large quantities by “the rumen of ungulates,” which is delicate science-speak for cow farts.

How does that work, exactly? It all goes back to methane, a notoriously stinky gas. Human farts are largely nitrogen with just a soupçon of methane. Cow farts, on the other hand, produce enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of carbon dioxide. We first-year students thought this was hilarious. That’s one hell of a lot of cow farts.

There were other things to learn at the university, only some of which I got around to sampling: sheep wrestling, bee dissection, and archery. (I took that twice, wearing a forest green cape and hat, because I was fixated on Robin Hood, setting me up for a later fixation on Katniss Everdeen. But I digress yet again.)

I could have spent far more than four years there, sampling the good and the bad. Sometimes, I wish I had. Not that I’m in shape to wrestle sheep these days.