Last week, I had a dream that I found a pen.

Not a dream where I could fly. Not a dream where I was being chased through a high school I haven’t attended in thirty years by a faceless man with a chainsaw. Not even one of those dreams where the coach sends you into the game and you realize, with mounting horror, that you have no idea what personnel group, formation, or decade you are in.

No. I dreamed I found a pen.

More specifically, I dreamed I found the pen. The one I’ve been searching for. The one currently sitting somewhere in my house, quietly carrying an emotional burden no writing instrument should ever be asked to carry. In the dream, I found a whole box of them, like some sad suburban Indiana Jones, except instead of recovering the Ark of the Covenant, I had discovered a lifetime supply of medium-point suburban happiness.

I woke up genuinely disappointed.

This is where I am now. I have reached the stage of life where my subconscious is no longer producing sex dreams, flying dreams, or nightmares about failure. It is producing dreams about office supplies.

Which is how I know middle age has officially moved into my subconscious and started rearranging the junk drawer.

The hostage-taker, in this case, is a Lilly Pulitzer pen.

I know. That sentence should not exist. A grown man should not be emotionally dependent on a writing utensil best associated with bright floral patterns, resort wear, and women who look like they know exactly which fork to use at a charity luncheon.

And yet, here we are.

The pen itself is nothing flashy. It does not look expensive. It does not arrive in a velvet case. No one hands it to you while wearing white gloves. It is not the kind of pen a man signs a peace treaty with, or uses to close on a lake house, or dramatically taps against his teeth while pretending to understand what a tax write-off is.

But the second it touches paper, everything changes.

It has weight, but not too much weight. Grip, but not the kind of aggressive rubber grip that makes you feel like you are preparing to write hostage demands. The click is clean. Confident. Adult.

The ink comes out smooth and dark, and the pen moves across the page like it has a pension and a clean driving record.

This was not just a pen. This was Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl, but for middle-aged handwriting.

It writes better than anything Staples has ever produced, which is both a compliment and an indictment. I have purchased entire packs of pens that seemed personally offended by the idea of ink delivery. This one made even the dumbest note feel slightly more important. Eggs. Trash bags. Call dentist. In that pen’s ink, all of it carried weight.

The problem, of course, is that a pen like this does not simply appear in a man’s life with proper documentation. There was no box. No receipt. No origin story. One day, it was just there, somewhere in the domestic ecosystem, the way certain objects materialize in a house with women in it.

Hair ties. Decorative bags inside larger decorative bags. Water bottles. So many water bottles.

And now, apparently, a pen engineered by NASA and branded by a company that makes dresses for people who summer as a verb.

At some point, either my wife or daughter acquired this thing through a purchase I was not emotionally or financially prepared to investigate.

The clip on the pen says Lilly Pulitzer, which sent me, reasonably, to the Lilly Pulitzer website. This was my first mistake. Lilly Pulitzer, from what I could tell, does not sell pens. They sell dresses, tops, swimwear, scarves, bags, accessories, and various brightly colored items designed to make Midwestern dads realize that they’ve been dressing like Adam Sandler since 1997.

But pens? No.

I was not merely searching for a pen. I was searching for a possibly discontinued women’s resortwear-adjacent promotional pen that entered my home through mysterious channels.

That is a very specific kind of crisis. Because if Bic stops making your favorite pen, you can complain like a normal person. If Lilly Pulitzer stops giving away the perfect pen with a floral blouse purchase, you are left explaining to the internet that you are a grown man desperately seeking backup writing instruments from a women’s resortwear brand. A brand whose target customer packs a second outfit for brunch, just in case brunch becomes an event.

This is how a man who once had actual goals in life ends up typing phrases into Google that make him question every decision that brought him to this point.

“Lilly Pulitzer pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer click pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer promotional pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer blue ink pen smooth.”

“Lilly Pulitzer pen where did this come from please help me.”

I checked Google. I checked Amazon. I considered entering the dark web of promotional office supplies. There are places online that sell bulk pens from banks, hotels, dentist offices, insurance agencies, and, oddly, something called “The Greater Milwaukee Tartar Sauce Authority.”

I don’t know what the GMTSA does, but I assume it has bylaws.

The worst part is that the pen offers no clues. No model number. No manufacturer. No tiny stamp that says Zebra or Pilot or whatever factory in Ohio or Taiwan or Bangladesh is secretly responsible for this miracle. I found myself turning the pen over looking for any microscopic brand evidence like I was trying to solve the Zodiac case with better office supplies.

Then came the knockoffs. Every search produced pens that looked close but were wrong in ways only a man deep inside a stationery spiral could understand. Too skinny. Too shiny. Wrong clip. Suspicious grip.

They were the dating profiles of pens, attractive enough to click on and dangerous enough to regret. Or so I assume, since my dating years ended back when people still had to disappoint each other in person.

I even started judging other pens more harshly. Hotel pens, once a beloved category in my personal economy, suddenly felt unreliable. Bank pens were beneath consideration. The free pen at the doctor’s office had the courage to advertise vein treatment while writing like it needed a referral.

Despicable.

Meanwhile, the original remained on my desk, still writing beautifully, still refusing to explain itself.

That is the quiet panic of the whole situation. The pen is mortal. Every sentence costs something. Every grocery list brings us closer to the end. Every time I use it now, I feel like I’m putting miles on a classic car. I have seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off enough times to know how this ends.

This, I realize, is not a normal relationship to have with an object that could be accidentally used to label leftover taco meat. Especially by a family member unaware they were holding an instrument forged by the gods.

But that may be the point.

There was a time in my life when I dreamed about ambition, escape, glory, sex, football, and whatever else my brain thought might make me seem interesting. Now I dream about a pen.

That sounds sad, but I’m not totally convinced it is. Embarrassing, yes. The kind of thing that should probably stay between a man, his God, and whatever company collects his search history, definitely. But sad? I don’t know.

Maybe this is just what happens when life gets smaller in the best and worst ways. You stop dreaming in movie trailers. You stop imagining yourself sprinting through airports, quitting jobs in dramatic fashion, or standing on some metaphorical mountaintop while the music swells. At some point, the fantasy becomes quieter. Nobody needs to pan out over a skyline. Nobody needs to cut to black.

You just want the right pen.

My life has become so stable, so domesticated, so aggressively dad-shaped, that my subconscious has apparently stopped asking, “What do you desire?” and started asking, “Maybe I can get these in bulk at Costco?”

And honestly, that’s fair.

Because there are categories of joy you cannot understand when you’re younger. You cannot explain to a twenty-three-year-old the pleasure of a good chair, a quiet kitchen, a reliable snow shovel, or finding the exact container lid on the first try.

These are not dreams you chase. They are dreams that sneak up on you while you are busy folding laundry. Then one day you realize your life has not become less meaningful. It has just become weirdly specific.

And if you are lucky, every now and then, one of those specific things writes beautifully. And if that sounds too dramatic for a pen, fine. I accept the charge.

There are worse things to care about. There are worse things to notice. Most of life is not made of enormous revelations anyway. It is made of tiny preferences we slowly gather without realizing they have become part of us.

The coffee mug that feels right in your hand. The sweatpants that no longer belong in public but still deserve respect. The seat on the couch that is not assigned, exactly, but everyone in the house knows damn well belongs to you.

The pen is just one of those things.

Maybe this is pathetic. Or maybe this is adulthood: learning that happiness is sometimes not a grand achievement, but a pen that moves across paper like it has somewhere to be.

I still haven’t found the replacement. The original is still here, still writing, still carrying the full emotional weight of my middle-aged existence. Someday it will die, and when it does, I will handle it with the dignity and perspective of a grown man.

Which is to say, I will probably blame my family.

A small SilentPunt programming note: the last couple weeks have been unusually busy. The men-not-looking-at-each-other piece became my most-read and most-shared newsletter yet, which either means I have finally found my audience or America has more unresolved urinal trauma than previously understood.

Last week’s conversation with Bill George also did really well, and I’ve got some excellent guests lined up for the summer. I also published the first of two reported pieces from inside the UFL’s replay/rules operation (here), with the second coming soon. And yes, the Matuszak book is still very much alive, staring at me from the corner like a 6-foot-8 tax document.

🎙️ Former Coast Guard Academy head football coach Bill George joins the podcast to discuss his book Home Fields, a story that begins with football and service academies but evolves into something much deeper.

We talk about mortality, World War II family history, caring for dying parents, fatherhood, coaching, guilt, and the realization that the things we devote ourselves to can slowly narrow our lives without us noticing.

📚 Chapters

0:06 – Welcome / Why Bill Finally Became “Bill”
1:05 – Writing Home Fields During the Final Years of Coaching
4:00 – World War II Stories, Family History & Rewriting the Book
5:15 – What Makes the Coast Guard Academy Different
9:20 – “You Continue to Build Character and Take Years Off Your Life”
11:35 – The Emotional Cost of Coaching
13:40 – “Football Locks Your Mind”
17:45 – Caring for a Dying Father While Raising a Young Daughter
19:55 – Hospice, Mortality & Spiritual Reflection
22:00 – Lila, Gido & Parenting Through Grief
25:10 – Humor, Marriage & Nancy’s Letter About Motherhood
31:00 – Why Coaching the Offensive Line Was the Best Part of the Job
34:10 – “Who Won Today, Good or Evil?”
37:30 – “Come Upstairs With Me”
40:00 – What Bill Learned About Life, Family & Regret
46:30 – Bill’s Next Book & Why All Proceeds Go to Pediatric Cancer Research

Historians believe men first began bonding side-by-side around 12,000 years ago, shortly after discovering fire and shortly before refusing to ask for directions. Experts believe the average American male can withstand approximately 3.7 consecutive seconds of direct emotional eye contact before urgently needing to comment on the weather.

This behavior has persisted across nearly every era of human civilization. Men have discussed grief while repairing fences. They have processed heartbreak while untangling fishing line. They have revealed childhood trauma while staring through windshields, monitoring smoker temperatures, or pretending to be extremely interested in whether rain is expected later in the week.

Entire friendships have existed for decades on little more than shared activities, directional nods, and occasional observations about the stupidity of others.

For reasons scientists still do not fully understand, men appear significantly more comfortable discussing emotionally vulnerable subjects when both parties are jointly focused on a third object. Ideally, that object is moving, on fire, partially mechanical, or capable of causing bodily harm.

Throughout history, men have bonded while hunting mammoths, marching into war, grilling meat, and standing in garages holding beverages they consume at a pace best described as “supportive.” Face-to-face emotional transparency, meanwhile, continues to be treated by many American men with approximately the same caution normally reserved for unexploded ordnance.

And so, as with most strange and deeply ingrained male behaviors, we begin in the cold with two men walking side-by-side pretending not to have feelings.

The Hunter-Gatherer Era

Anthropologists believe the earliest examples of male emotional bonding emerged during prehistoric hunting expeditions, when small groups of men spent days walking side by side, tracking mammoths across frozen landscapes while carefully avoiding direct eye contact at all costs. Communication remained sparse and highly practical.

“Tracks.”

“River east.”

“Weather turning.”

Occasionally, however, one hunter would quietly introduce a deeply personal concern into the conversational ecosystem with the same tone normally reserved for discussing animal migration patterns.

“Think Greg’s marriage is okay?”

This approach proved evolutionarily advantageous. Early men discovered emotional vulnerability became significantly easier when both parties were jointly focused on a large woolly animal capable of trampling them to death. Direct face-to-face discussion, meanwhile, created obvious survival concerns, as it reduced the amount of time available for scanning nearby terrain for predators, collapsing ice shelves, or Greg accidentally provoking another mammoth.

Scientists now believe prehistoric men would rather have fought apex predators with sharpened sticks than begin a conversation with another man using the phrase,

“Can I be honest with you for a second?”

The hunting party itself functioned as an early prototype for nearly every modern male bonding environment that followed: fishing boats, golf carts, garage workshops, fantasy football leagues, and standing around grills pretending to supervise bratwurst.

Somewhere around 10,000 B.C., two hunters likely stood overlooking a frozen valley silently contemplating mortality, purpose, and the crushing uncertainty of existence. After several minutes of silence, one man squinted into the distance and announced:

“Probably gonna snow.”

Emotional equilibrium restored, the hunt continued.

Ancient Rome

The Romans, of course, perfected this dynamic long before suburban dads began discussing mortality over Traeger grills. Historians believe Roman soldiers routinely processed the psychological horrors of war while standing shoulder-to-shoulder sharpening spears, repairing sandals, or preparing crosses for crucifixions. Rarely did anyone say, “I’ve been struggling lately.”

More common was something along the lines of, “Pass me the hammer,” followed by twenty uninterrupted minutes of silence best left unexamined.

This arrangement suited everyone involved. Eye contact was minimized. Vulnerability could remain technically deniable. If a Roman centurion accidentally revealed too much emotionally, there were immediate escape hatches available, including discussing grain supply logistics, criticizing chariot traffic, or invading Gaul again for morale purposes.

Much like modern American men, Roman soldiers understood that difficult conversations became significantly easier when both men were technically focused on something else. In their case, unfortunately, that object was frequently a large wooden execution device.

Somewhere, undoubtedly, two exhausted Roman soldiers stood near a half-finished crucifix around 43 A.D., quietly trying to make sense of the accumulating emotional debris of empire. One finally muttered,

“You ever feel like none of this really matters?”

The other adjusted his nail pouch, stared firmly into the middle distance, and replied,

“So…bad news about Marcus’s goat, huh?”

The Industrial Revolution

By the time the Industrial Revolution rolled around, men had become remarkably efficient at converting emotional vulnerability into shared physical labor. Packed shoulder-to-shoulder into tenements and factories, they spent sixteen hours a day covered in soot, narrowly avoiding industrial dismemberment, and communicating almost exclusively through nods, coughing, and highly specific complaints about pulley systems.

Historians have long argued that labor unions emerged in response to dangerous working conditions. Increasingly, however, evidence suggests they were also one of the first socially acceptable ways for men to gather regularly and say things like, “You gettin’ tired too?” without triggering a full masculinity audit.

The early union hall functioned much like the modern sports bar or suburban garage.

Men stood around holding beverages, discussing management with startling emotional intensity while technically pretending the conversation was about “work conditions.” In reality, many simply craved the revolutionary concept of being seen by another human being for more than fourteen consecutive seconds.

This explains why union meetings often lasted three hours, even though all actionable conclusions were reached within the first eleven minutes.

Meanwhile, tenement life dramatically accelerated the evolution of side-by-side male bonding. Privacy barely existed. Entire families slept separated by little more than curtains and tuberculosis. As a result, men developed advanced emotional survival tactics, including staring out windows while discussing financial despair, smoking silently on stoops, and taking extraordinarily long walks to nowhere…the original male wellness retreat.

Somewhere in lower Manhattan around 1891, two exhausted factory workers undoubtedly stood next to each other, stared into an alley, and briefly achieved emotional intimacy entirely by saying,

“Lotta pressure lately.”

The other man nodded once, spat into the street, and replied,

“Yep.”

Post-WWII America

American men returning from WWI, WWII, and Vietnam had legitimate reasons for staring at the garage fridge instead of each other during emotional conversations. Today’s men mostly inherited the posture without the artillery. At this point, our inability to connect face-to-face feels less like PTSD and more like an evolutionary vestigial tail.

As the decades passed, men became extraordinarily innovative in creating environments where emotional intimacy could occur accidentally. Basements, garages, tailgates, and ice-fishing shacks all emerged as safe spaces where a man could briefly discuss mortality before immediately commenting on propane levels.

In Wisconsin, the basement bar is less a room than a cultural institution. Half tavern, half family bunker, it’s where generations gathered for Old Fashioneds, Packers games, fish fry overflow, and emotional conversations conducted almost entirely while staring at a mounted deer instead of each other.

Peeing Into The Future

By the 1970s, American men1 had achieved extraordinary technological advances. We’d landed on the moon, split the atom, invented color television, and developed the ability to microwave Salisbury steak in under four minutes. And yet, despite all this progress, public bathrooms across the Midwest still operated under the assumption that what men truly wanted while urinating was the looming threat of accidental eye contact.

When I first moved to Wisconsin, Camp Randall Stadium still featured the old trough-style urinals: long communal basins separated by a half wall, with another row of men directly opposite you. This arrangement effectively transformed peeing into a low-level psychological endurance exercise.

Thankfully, the restrooms have since been updated. Somewhere along the line, Wisconsin taxpayers eventually decided that if they were going to publicly fund an 80,000-seat football stadium, they could at least ensure Brad from Manitowoc didn’t have to drain twenty-five dollars’ worth of Leinenkugel’s while accidentally locking eyes with Frank from West Allis across a municipal piss aqueduct.

Modern bathroom design, thankfully, reflects decades of emotional and architectural progress. Today’s side-by-side urinals feature carefully engineered divider walls, forward-facing positioning, and just enough personal space to allow every man in the room to pretend he has entered into a private legal agreement with the wall.

Direct eye contact while peeing at Camp Randall now requires a deliberate ninety-degree head turn, an act generally interpreted either as a Mad Men-era corporate dominance maneuver or the opening stages of a criminal investigation. The rules are simple: Eyes forward…say nothing…see nothing. Pretend every other man in the room is merely a rumor. The entire system functions less like plumbing and more like mutually assured emotional disarmament.

And yet, even as we race toward the future of artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and robot-assisted surgery, male emotional architecture remains stubbornly prehistoric. However, someday soon, a man will step into a fully automated restroom where an AI assistant scans his hydration levels, predicts kidney stone risk, and politely reminds him he has unresolved intimacy issues stemming from seventh-grade basketball.

Even then, he will still stare straight ahead at the wall-mounted advertisement above the urinal and say, “Crazy weather we’ve been having lately.”

Civilization may evolve.

Technology may advance.

But American men, apparently, will continue solving vulnerability with infrastructure.

🎙️ Retirement is supposed to be the goal. Work hard, build something, and one day you’re free…but it rarely feels the way people expect.

This week on the SilentPunt Podcast, I’m joined by author Andrea Hoffman (What Are the Chances) to talk about what actually happens when the thing that defined you ends: identity, expectations, and why freedom can feel a little disorienting.

Because most people plan for money in retirement, but not for meaning.

📚 Chapters

00:00 – Intro + the retirement conversation
01:10 – The “college with money” fantasy
03:30 – Why the reality doesn’t match
06:10 – Financial pressure + easing into retirement
09:00 – Identity and losing the thing that defined you
11:45 – “Third spaces” and building a life outside work
16:20 – Friendship, guilt, and time away from family
21:10 – Status, perception, and how people see you
26:00 – Staying curious and mentally engaged
38:00 – Loneliness, connection, and what actually matters

I’m No Morty Seinfeld

On expectations, and catching the right wave

At a cheer competition not long ago, I was standing next to another dad as the team was warming up backstage. He’s around just enough to be familiar, but not enough to know what’s going on. He couldn’t tell a punch-front from a rewind. Neither can you probably, but that’s beside the point.

He leaned in like he was about to share something important with me:

“My only job,” he said, nodding toward the competition floor, “is to be there when my baby girl runs off the mat and jumps into my arms.”

He said it with a little smile, like he’d cracked the code. Ladies, I know you don’t like it when men ‘mansplain’ things to you. But imagine for a moment, just how much more infuriating it is when you are a man and are ‘mansplained’ to. It’d be like a perimenopausal woman listening to a 20-year-old complain about a hangnail.

Anyway, I gave the guy a nod, because that’s what you do. But I remember thinking two things at the exact same time. First, that this wasn’t even accurate. I’d been to enough of these competitions to know he wasn’t always there for that moment. And second, if I’m being honest, it made me feel a little bad.

You know, the normal amount of bad. The healthy kind.

I felt kinda bad because that’s not what my daughter does to me.

One of the reasons I stepped away from coaching was so I wouldn’t miss this stuff. The weekends, the performances, the travel…the moments that feel like they might matter later. And when she comes off the mat, she doesn’t come looking for me.

She finds my wife. There’s a hug. Sometimes tears, but always talking. A lot of it.

And me?

I’m an onlooker. If you were an outsider looking in, I probably look like the divorced dad who showed up but doesn’t really belong. Not the guy who used to sit on the top step and comb her hair, go on “adventure hikes,” or sit on the floor for hours playing school with her stuffed animals.

“It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about you,” I repeat to myself ad nauseam.

You’d think I’d just spent five days in Tibet, not five hours in an obnoxiously loud, ridiculously named venue where nine dollars buys you twelve cents worth of popcorn and a mild headache.

I think subconsciously, when I retired from coaching to ‘be dad,’ I probably did it for selfish reasons, at least partly. How great would it feel to be worshipped by your kid for being the world’s greatest dad?

But I’m no Morty Seinfeld, I’m a bit player at best. Because parenting is just like every other part of life. We don’t get to choose our role. Most of the time, our roles choose us.

I’m starting to think life is less like a plan… and more like trying to time waves to ride in the ocean.

🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️

In the fall of 2003, my wife and I moved to Wisconsin when I got a job as the offensive coordinator at a small D3 school. It was an upgrade for my career, but also a gamble. The program had won three games total over the previous two seasons, and nearly the entire staff had been fired. This was a last-chance situation.

To no one’s surprise, we started 0–3. Luckily, Week 4 pitted us against the worst team in the league (yes, even worse than us).

“Well boys, if we lose this one, I’ll be gone by this time next week.” That’s what our head coach told us after the third loss. Basically implying that if we lost this next game, to arguably the worst team in America, he would be fired.

We lost.

At 0–4 we were set to host one of the top teams in the conference (and our biggest rival) for homecoming. It was supposed to be a bloodbath.

We won.

We went on to win three of our last six to finish 3–7. We were ecstatic. The players were pumped. And the administration believed we were headed in the right direction.

Three years later, the program had improved enough that our head coach left for a D1 job. I was promoted to head coach. We kept building. Not in a straight line, but in a clear upward trend. By 2010 we were 7–3, with two of those losses coming in overtime.

At the postseason awards meeting, there was a tie for Coach of the Year. I lost the re-vote.

Three weeks later I was fired.

Different administration. Different expectations.

🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊

When I was a kid, I used to ride a boogie board in the Atlantic for one week every summer. The older I get, the more I think life is like that. You wait for a wave, ride it as far as you can, then paddle back out and wait again.

Some days there are more waves than you know what to do with. Other days the water is flat and you’re just…out there. Either way, it’s not up to you.

All we can do is pick our spots, take our shot…

and when it’s time…

…be ready to paddle like a motherfu*ker.

🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️

If you enjoyed this, you’d enjoy last week’s episode of the SilentPunt Podcast with author . We discuss his 10-year quest for publication, fatherhood, and some other fun stuff:

Next week I’ll be joined by author as we discuss retirement and all the expectations that come with it. If you’ve found the SilentPunt podcast on other platforms (YouTube, Apple, Spotify), please make sure to follow or subscribe to us there as well.

Lee Bacon has published 10 books, landed a movie development deal, and built a writing career most people would have quit on long before it worked.
Before that? Rejections. A lot of them.

We talk about what it actually takes to stick with something when there’s no payoff, how becoming a father changes how you think about work and identity, and why the “non-linear path” might actually be the only real path.

📚 Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:18 Substack vs. traditional social media
1:51 Lee's books
3:51 What exactly is a middle grade book
4:27 How did you find out you had a voice for kids books
7:52 Family life for an ex-pat in Germany
12:15 Balancing career and family
17:22 Fatherhood
20:38 Audible and Substack narration
24:06 Future projects
26:14 Lightning Round

Know someone who would like this? Share with them here 👇🏼

Refer a friend

Last week on the podcast I introduced you to NSA intelligence officer turned author Lizzy Wright. Lizzy co-wrote her first book, Aggressively Human, with husband Steve Wright. One of the challenges she talked about in writing the book was humanizing Steve. He was/is a Greek God who has for all intents and purposes lead a charmed life. However, like all of us, Steve has had his share of hard times. But early in the book those things hadn’t happened to him yet.

Below is an excerpt from early on in the book that I think shows some great humanizing. The scene takes place in the early 80s in Dallas. Steve, a rookie with the Cowboys, is staying with all the other rookies for pre-season camp in a local hotel. At one point during camp there was a very large nursing convention going on at the same hotel. Which is how he and a few teammates found themselves at the hotel bar, making what they probably believed to be excellent life choices.

At one point in the evening Steve needed to excuse himself and use the restroom. Where he promptly, and violently, shit his pants:

“Nothing at my disposal could handle this predicament unless it involved industrial cleaning equipment. My task was figuring out how on earth I could get up to my room unnoticed. It had also dawned on me that I had left my wallet on the table with the cute nurses, but that was an impossible retrieval mission given the circumstances. Forget my wallet; I wasn’t going back to that table now, you couldn’t drag me.”

Upon sneaking out of the bathroom, still in his soiled pants, he snuck his way into an elevator:

“I took a position against the side wall, closest to the exit, next to a hot nurse who I had eyed at the bar earlier. As the doors slid shut, everyone started looking around, wondering why the elevator smelled like an outhouse, followed by a hunt for the culprit. The nurse surmised that it was emanating from me and inched away…So much for that potential hookup.”

Funny story, right? But it also does the job Lizzy wanted of humanizing Steve in a way the rest of the early part of the book couldn’t.

It also reminded me of something I didn’t fully understand when I was younger, especially when I first started coaching. You don’t get to grow into authority. Eventually it just gets dumped in your lap. And from that moment on, whether you feel ready or not, you’re expected to act like the version of yourself that deserves it.

I learned that the hard way at one of my first jobs.

Throughout high school and college, I was coached by guys who essentially did what I mentioned a few lines ago. No explanations, no pats on the back…just perform. And your reward for doing so was that you didn’t get your ass ripped.

They say that a bully is a bully because they themselves were bullied at some point. And that people who are abusive were probably abused themselves. That’s about the best way I can describe my early coaching style: mimicking what I was used to.

On the first day of practice as the running backs coach at a new job, one of my freshmen, Russell, left his helmet on the ground while the group ran to midfield to grab a drink. Because this wasn’t how we hydrated:

It was more like this:

So, the guys had to run about 35 yards, grab their drink from the MacGyver’d water trough, and jog back. By the time they got back I was holding Russell’s helmet. As the group gathered around me, intently listening for the next drill set up, I handed Russell back his helmet.

“I’m handing this to you nicely this time. If you ever leave your helmet on the field again I’m going to throw it into the fu**ing woods.”

That was that, and away we went practicing. As an aside, running a drill session for the running back position is usually about as fruitless as me watching opera. Nobody’s getting anything out of either activity. Guys that can run the football can run the football, guys that can’t…can’t.

Anyway, that period came and went, and off the group headed for another water break. And wouldn’t you know it, that sucker Russell left his helmet again. I can still remember the words that ran through my head:

“Shit. Now I gotta throw his helmet in the woods.”

….then:

“Am I really gonna throw his helmet in the woods?”

This internal debate ping-ponged around my head until the group returned. Going back on my word, on the first day of practice and in front of the entire group, eventually became a non-starter. As the guys gathered around me, holding Russell’s helmet again, I casually turned my back to them and chucked the helmet as far into the surrounding woods as I could. When I turned back to them it was on to the next drill.

The only other thing I remember from this episode is that the very next day, what should have been the second day of a four year career for Russell, he didn’t show up for practice. He had quit and went home after the previous day’s practice.

🏈 🏈 🏈 💩 🏈 🏈 🏈 💩 🏈 🏈 🏈 💩

So often in life we are trying to be some version of ourselves that we think others want us to be. Or need us to be. Especially in environments like locker rooms and practice fields. But not just there.

Jobs. Relationships. Any place where you’re handed responsibility before you’re sure you’re ready for it. Places where you don’t get eased into anything. You just look up one day and realize you’re the one expected to know what you’re doing. And so you act like you do.

That’s what I was doing that day. And in a different way, it’s what Steve was doing too.

Because even in his story, the one involving the inadvertent incontinence, he still gets on the elevator like he’s supposed to be the same guy he was ten minutes earlier.

The Cowboys rookie. The guy at the bar. The version of himself everyone expects.

The hard part isn’t becoming that guy.

It’s figuring out when you don’t have to pretend to be him anymore.

🐾 👇🏼 🐾 👇🏼 🐾 👇🏼 🐾 👇🏼 🐾 👇🏼 🐾 👇🏼

If you missed last week’s pod with Lizzy you can check it out here (or, on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube):

SilentPunt

From Hunting bin Laden To Published Author

SilentPunt Podcast #211 / April 8, 2026…

Listen now

2 months ago · 13 likes · 8 comments · Henny Hiemenz

And if you’d like to read all about Steve Wright’s exploits (other than shitting), check out Aggressively Human.

“Yeah, I can probably fit that in.”

📰 Weekly newsletter.
🎙️ Every-other-week podcast.
📖 A book on John Matuszak that occasionally taps me on the shoulder like, “Hey bro…remember me?”

And soon, I’ll be helping coach high school football (long-story), which means my free time is about to take a Lawrence Taylor–sized helmet to the sternum.

So I’m making a small adjustment.

Going forward, SilentPunt is going to run on an alternating schedule:

• One week: newsletter

• One week: podcast

You’ll still hear from me every week, just in a slightly different rhythm.

The goal here is simple: keep the newsletter sharp, keep the podcast growing, and finally make a real push to finish the Matuszak book the right way.

For months now, I’ve been researching and writing, writing and researching, amazed by his story, but struggling to pull it all together.

Then last week, something finally clicked. Or at least I think it did. And now I need to give myself the space to flesh that out. I’ll share pieces of that process as I go…not everything, but enough to bring you along.

Back next week with a full post.

Until then, pace yourself. Unlike me.

If you’ve reached the Sally Field portion of this newsletter, “you like me, you really, really like me,” take that as a sign to send this to one other person.

Refer a friend

And also, dogs:

Most of you don’t know Lucy. She was our sweet and spunky Yorkie, who passed away a few years ago. RIP Boo.

Discover how Lizzy Wright transitioned from a career in intelligence to becoming an author of memoirs and fiction, weaving her personal experiences with her professional expertise. In this episode, Lizzy shares insights on morality in espionage, the challenges of writing memoirs, and her exciting upcoming novel, Saffron Spy.

(If you listen on Apple or Spotify, I’d really appreciate a follow there this week. The way their algorithms work, follows help other people find the show.)

Resources & Links:

• Lizzy Wright’s Official Website

• Aggressively Human book

• Marinovich book

  Thanks for reading SilentPunt! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

NO KINGS: The System Isn’t Scared of Your Sign

Why outrage without sacrifice doesn’t do a damn thing

I read a line from Greek philosopher Epictetus earlier this week that kept echoing in my head as I thought about this piece:

“Anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave.”

We hear that and think of force: something obvious, something we would notice. But what if coercion doesn’t feel like pressure? What if it feels like convenience? What if it looks like normal life? Because if that’s the case, we’re not being pushed. We’re being guided. And we’re willfully going along with it.

….Or are we?

We like to believe in free will. It’s foundational to how we see ourselves: Americans, many of us Christians, raised on the idea that our choices are our own. But author Chuck Klosterman complicates that comfort when he states:

“Free will is a detriment to the man who doesn’t realize he’s confused.”

Take a beat and let that quote sink in for a moment.

I know you couldn’t possibly be confused. Nor could I. But what about the other guy?

That confusion is the part we rarely interrogate. We assume we’re choosing, but we don’t spend much time examining the systems shaping those choices. The rhythms of our lives…what we buy, how we spend, what we prioritize…feel self-directed, but they’re often just deeply ingrained patterns reinforced over time. What we call freedom can quietly become habit, and habit left unexamined, can start to look a lot like obedience.

🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊

Most Americans live inside a system that nudges them to buy more than they need…not through force, but through incentives, expectations, and identity. You work to earn, earn to spend, spend to keep up, and keep up so you don’t fall behind. It doesn’t feel like coercion; it feels like participation.

“Upwardly mobile” comes to mind.

That’s how it hooks you. The system doesn’t need chains if it can convince you that this is success. And once you believe that, stepping outside of it doesn’t feel like freedom, it feels like losing.

This is what makes moments like the “No Kings” protests feel significant. People step outside the loop, at least temporarily. They gather, they speak, they signal that something isn’t right. Visibility matters, and collective action creates a shared awareness that individual frustration never quite can.

But history is consistent on this point: a single day of protest, no matter how large, is a statement, not pressure. If everyone goes home and resumes the same behaviors the next morning, the system doesn’t have to respond. It simply absorbs the moment and waits for it to pass. And most of the time, it does.

Part of the reason it passes so easily is because we’ve become exceptionally good at arguing sideways. We don’t stay on problems long enough to solve them. Instead, we pivot, we counter, we redirect.

You don’t like what Donald Trump is doing? What about the Democrats who did XYZ? You point out a flaw? It’s always been flawed. You suggest a fix? What about this other issue you haven’t addressed?

This is whataboutism, and it’s undefeated. Every argument gets rerouted before it can land, which means nothing ever has to change. We don’t resolve problems; we get stuck comparing them.

It didn’t always work this way. There was a time when a limited, imperfect solution could still be accepted as progress. Car accidents used to kill far more people than they do now, so we introduced seatbelt laws. We didn’t eliminate risk entirely, but we reduced it meaningfully. At the same time, thousands of people still die every year from swimming, and we didn’t ban swimming. We understood the difference between manageable risk and preventable harm, and that understanding was enough.

Now, if a solution isn’t perfect, or if it doesn’t address every adjacent issue, it’s dismissed as insufficient. And “insufficient” has quietly become the enemy of “better.”

This is where protest often stalls out. After the signs and chants, there’s a second question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: what happens next? More specifically, what are you willing to stop doing?

That’s where things shift from collective energy to personal responsibility. It’s one thing to show up and express dissatisfaction; it’s another to examine your own participation in the system you’re criticizing. That shift is uncomfortable, because it requires trade-offs. It requires you to give something up.

🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊

This is also where Scott Galloway’s idea of “resist and unsubscribe1” lands with a little more weight. His argument is simple: if you want to push back on a system, stop funding it. Cancel subscriptions, change spending habits, redirect your attention. Use your wallet and your time as leverage instead of just your voice.

It’s not loud, and it doesn’t come with the same social reinforcement as protest, but it asks a sharper question: if you’re angry at a system, why are you still feeding it?

Protest says, “I object.”
Unsubscribing says, “You’ll feel this.”

And systems don’t change because they’re criticized. They change because they stop working.

If there hasn’t been a fully organized, structural response from Democrats to Trump, part of the explanation may be less about courage and more about incentives. Truly dismantling the systems that enable power accumulation would require tearing down mechanisms that benefit both parties. Campaign financing, media ecosystems, influence networks…these aren’t partisan tools; they’re structural ones.

Disrupting them would be costly to the people profiting, Democrats included. So the more realistic strategy for them is patience. Let outrage build, let elections cycle, and position yourself to regain control within the same framework. The rhetoric may change, but the incentives often remain.

And if we’re being honest, most of us aren’t exactly pushing for systemic change either, not if it comes with real sacrifice. We say we want things to be different, but not at the expense of cheap gas, reliable Wi-Fi, and two-day shipping. We want reform that doesn’t inconvenience us, change that doesn’t alter our lifestyle in any meaningful way.

That’s not hypocrisy. It’s human. But it does set a ceiling on what’s possible.

Consider how expectations have shifted. What used to feel like a splurge now feels like Tuesday. The baseline has moved, and we’ve moved with it, rarely asking whether any of it is necessary.

You can see this same dynamic play out in higher education in states across the country. For years, there’s been political pressure to keep taxes low, which has led to reduced public funding for state university systems. But these schools still need to operate, so they adapt…most notably by increasing out-of-state enrollment, since those students pay significantly higher tuition.

Then, a high-achieving in-state student (3.9 GPA & 30+ ACT) doesn’t get into UW-Madison, and the reaction is anger. What often gets missed is the connection between those realities. You can’t consistently reduce public investment in a system and then be surprised when that system looks elsewhere for revenue. The outcome feels disconnected from the cause, even though they’re directly linked.

This is the thread running through all of it. We want outcomes without fully owning the inputs. We want lower taxes and fully funded institutions. We want systemic change without personal disruption. We want to protest the machine while continuing to benefit from how it produces.

That doesn’t make us uniquely flawed.

It just makes us participants.

🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊

If Epictetus is right, the question isn’t whether we’re being forced; it’s whether we recognize the forces acting on us at all. The most effective systems don’t rely on pressure; they rely on alignment, on making their incentives feel like your own personal choices.

The research on protest movements shows that change comes from sustained participation, not isolated moments. And participation isn’t just showing up; it’s withdrawing, disrupting, and altering behavior over time. Pressure is created when systems stop functioning as expected, not when they’re briefly interrupted.

(This, by the way, is why strikes work.)

We say we don’t want kings. We say we value freedom. We say we believe in free will. But free will only matters if you recognize when you’re not actually using it. Otherwise, it becomes exactly what Klosterman warned about, a liability disguised as a gift.

We don’t need millions of people to show up once.

We need fewer people to live differently for a long time.

And that starts with a question that’s a lot less satisfying than a chant:

What are we willing to stop?

🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑 🛑

This week’s book recommendation is Chuck Klosterman’s “But What If We’re Wrong?” I picked this book not because of the quote from him earlier in this piece (that was from a different book). I did so because if what he posits in this particular book is correct, the biggest mistakes we’re making right now are the things we’re actually most certain about.

And that might include what we currently think counts as resistance.

We were gone for a handful of days this past week for a cheer comp and some family R&R. So here are the kiddos at camp:

Featuring:

(Click their links and subscribe to them all. No pressure, but also…do it):

(click this link to find Jon)

(click this link to find Liz)

(click this link to find Matt)

📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺

1) Where did you grow up?

Jon: Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Liz: In the land of 10,000 lakes, Prince, and the biggest mall in the states: Minneapolis, MN. And yes, sometimes I still say “Oof-da” when I’m done eating.

Matt: Pinson, Alabama. Same high school as Bo Nix. We absolutely did not have an NFL QB when I went there.

2) Favorite 80s movie:

Jon: That’s like choosing a favorite child! I guess, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Liz: There’s no possible way I could name just one. But off the top of my head: Back To The Future, Better Off Dead, Coming To America, The Neverending Story, and Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom.

Matt: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

3) First celebrity crush:

Jon: Donna Dixon.

Liz: “Chachi” on Happy Days, “Bobby” on The Brady Bunch, or “Ricky” on Silver Spoons. When you’re 6 years old, you crush on the characters, not the actors.

Matt: Elisabeth Shue. She’s still a 10.

4) First R-rated movie you were way too young to watch, but did anyway:

Jon: Saturday Night Fever.

Liz: Does Temple of Doom count? Because that movie should’ve been rated R. But it wasn’t my choice, my teenage aunt brought me and my older brother to see it. I was a 9 year old in the theater watching a man’s heart get ripped out of his chest before being lowered into lava while alive. But I’m not traumatized at all. It’s just the first movie that always comes to mind when GenXers discuss which films they were too young to see, was probably responsible for exacerbating my insect phobia, and made me not eat soup for years.

Matt: The Breakfast Club. How I learned about high school, before junior high. I was quoting that movie to classmates years before they saw it.

5) Favorite fast food / snack / candy from the era:

Jon: Twix.

Liz: Fruit roll-ups, pixie sticks, Smarties, Nerds, Hostess Fried Fruit Pies1, and a McDLT with the new ch-ch-ch Cherry Coke (remember the jingle?).

Matt: On Fridays, my elementary school had a popcorn-and-Coke special for $0.50 each. I treated myself to a few of those with chore money.

(Yo Matt, in 2nd grade at Sts. Simon & Jude we got soft pretzels for a dime. Just sayin’.)

6) A place you got dropped off to be left alone for hours, and told, “I’ll pick you up later”:

Jon: The Galleria Mall in White Plains, NY.

Liz: I was never dropped off somewhere to be alone, I was always dropped off at the mall or the rollerskating rink with a friend or to meet a friend. When I was little I’d go the playground alone sometimes but there were always other kids there. Unless by “to be alone” you mean without a parent or older sibling. Then that happened pretty much everywhere!

Matt: Local neighbor’s house who had a shortened full court, complete with a 9’ indestructible bball hoop. Lotta pick up hoops played there. My folks never picked us up later cause that was the only other place we’d be.

7) First concert you ever went to, and who you went with:

Jon: The Grateful Dead in the Meadowlands with the late, great Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and his dad, Steve.

Liz: Weird Al Yankovic. I went with a boyfriend when I was a teen.

Matt: Pearl Jam, Springfield, Mass. Went with my gf at the time, who was a big PJ fan too. Outstanding show.

8) Favorite appointment viewing TV show (remember, no DVRs back then):

Jon: Mork and Mindy.

Liz: Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Diff’rent Strokes

Matt: 1a) Monday Night Football, 1b) Miami Vice on Friday night.

9) Favorite rerun to watch:

Jon: Seinfeld.

Liz: Three’s Company, which I ran home from the bus stop to watch every day after school, starting around 8 years old. Other faves include Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, and Good Times.

Matt: Cheers. My father loves that show. When I’d visit him in the summer (in CT) he’d always have it on early evening before Sox games on TV38. Shout out to the Jimmy Fund.

10) Where did you have your first kiss? Details?

Jon: Nantucket Island. What happens in Nantucket, stays in Nantucket.

Liz: In true Gen X fashion, I had my first kiss at the mall. We were both 14, my crush and I stood by the bushes outside while waiting for our parents to pick us up and that’s when we kissed. I remember being thrilled, but we were “going together” for as long as you’d expect two silly young teens to be boyfriend and girlfriend: two weeks. Which, to be fair, feels like a month at that age.

Matt: Skate Haven roller rink. 6th grade. Andrea Whiteman. Her friend Angela came with us and nudged me over the finish line. I didn’t find out til months later, at a church social, Angela wanted me to kiss her too.

I’ll see y’all in Nantucket,

For the love of all move courts, did you listen to Ginger or not? How about you? Tell us your answers in the COMMENTS for cryin’ out loud.

Also, if you’re not a subscriber, join the idiocy below. (Dogs further below)

How do you become a writer with no connections, no plan, and no clear path?
📚
In this episode, bestselling author Luke Epplin (Moses and the Doctor, Our Team) shares how he went from a small town in Illinois to New York City, and eventually to Random House and a USA Today bestseller.
⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:15 Small-town Illinois → wanting more
6:40 Choosing Washington University
10:30 Moving to NYC after 9/11
16:45 First jobs (nanny, tutor)
20:10 Breaking into Random House
27:30 Becoming a writer (the long game)
35:00 First book + getting an agent
42:00 Writing Moses and the Doctor
50:00 Advice for aspiring writers
📚 About Luke Epplin
Luke Epplin is the author of Moses and the Doctor and Our Team. His work has appeared in national publications, and he is a USA Today bestselling author.
🎙️ About SilentPunt
Stories and ruminations intended to provoke thought, laughter, and the occasional WTF.
👉 Subscribe for more conversations like this:

Subscribe now

Comment of the week

(for the simple fact that I cannot read it without picturing my 81-year-old dad reading it and being like, WTF does any of that gobbledygook mean?)

Book Recommendation

• With opening day right around the corner, this one’s for baseball fans only. And one I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard of.

  

  

We Were Forgotten. Maybe It Helped.

Spring, 1987. Southeastern Pennsylvania. 7th grade. Baseball season.

I’m standing outside Stetson Middle School as my teammates get picked up one by one. Pretty soon, I’m the only one left. Ten minutes pass. Maybe fifteen. I start to think I should call home. I walk to the doors.

Locked.

It may seem hard to believe, but back then, when adults were done being contractually obligated to ensure your safety, they just left.

Sometimes even the country.

Don’t believe me?

I’m writing this in a public library two hours from home. I drove my daughter and her teammate across state lines (to Illinois, land of the FIB1) for cheer practice. They’re 16. They both have cars.

We still drive them.

We carpool them down for practice 2-4 times per week. The exact number of which is decided whimsically by their cheer overlords.

I mean their coaches.

When it is my turn to drive I am happy to do so. On the way down the girls have their headphones on, so I listen to podcasts. On the way back, I get to hear the latest cheer gossip.

Win-win.

But I’m also glad to do it because I’m happy my daughter has the opportunity. She had reached an ability level at her previous gym (which, not for nothin’, was five minutes from our house) that required her to go somewhere else to continue to grow.

However, I sometimes feel something other than happiness when I think about how she’s being raised versus how I was. And maybe it hits a little harder because I’m still very much someone’s kid, too. I talk to my parents a lot. I live half a continent away, and I miss them.

Most of us are being pulled in both directions at once: trying to be present for our kids, while also showing up for the people who raised us.

It doesn’t leave much space. Not real space. The kind where you sit with something. Or someone. Mostly, it leaves you with fifteen minutes here and there.

Enough time to scroll.

📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳

Back at Stetson Middle School, I would’ve given anything for more reps. Another practice. Another game. That unfulfilled passion for sports is probably what led to my first career as a coach.

As some of you know, I host a podcast. Occasionally on the show we’ve talked about the strange place in time people of a certain age, like me, inhabit. We grew up in a world run by, and catering to, adults. We had our little corner of the world, and needed to find a way for that to make us happy.

And mostly we did.

I spent some time earlier this week researching the 1985 movie The Goonies. The kids who made up The Goonies are a great example of enjoying their little corner of the world. Their parents expected them to be home at night, but what they did on their own time was their business.

Locked in a freezer with a dead body?

…Deal with it.

Accosted by escaped felons?

…Adapt.

Locked in a basement next to a chained-up monster?

…Make friends with it.

Fast-forward 35 years or so, and we are not the Goonies. We are the parents. But our kids aren’t Goonies, are they? Because we are trying our best to give them what we might have missed out on.

But what are they missing out on by us doing so?

☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️

The sun has by now set, all those years ago, on the main entrance of Stetson Middle School. My exasperated mother arrives to pick me up. I know better than to ask what happened. Unlike my child, who will send me a series of texts if I’m so much as thirty seconds late to pick her up.

The ride home with my mom is quiet. Quiet is good. The only other option I can see in this scenario is yelling. Yelling is bad. When we arrive home I found out why. My mother’s ire is pointed squarely in the direction of my oldest sister. Apparently she had been the family representative assigned to pick me up that evening.

“No, Mom, I went to the school, and the baseball field, there was nobody there,” she replied defensively.

After an escalating back-and-forth between the two of them, we figured out the problem: My sister went to the wrong school. Whether she, in fact, didn't know where her younger brother attended school is still strangely up for debate.

So, upon going to a different middle school and not finding me (nor any other soul…which quite possibly-maybe-definitely shoulda been a red flag), she went home.

And alerted no one.

So there I sat.

🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰

I grew up in a time when kids were expected to figure things out on their own, even if that meant sitting outside a locked school, wondering if anyone was coming. Now I spend hours driving my daughter across state lines so she doesn’t have to.

Somewhere along the way, we flipped from leaving things to chance…to eliminating it entirely. I’m grateful for what she has. But I do wonder what gets lost.

Independence?

Resilience?

Maybe even the ability to make friends with the monster in the basement.

And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure how much of this is about her…

…and how much is about me, not wanting her to ever stand alone outside a locked school.

Almost a year ago I turned 50. I’ll spare you the obligatory jokes, aside from this one:

While I was prepared for some of the things that you lose when you get older (hair, strength, hearing, and a general vitality for life that makes living in these godforsaken times palatable), I was wholly unprepared for the things I would gain.

However, most of the things I’ve gained are really net losses. Things like ear hair, back hair, and a pretty strong disdain for people under the age of thirty. None of these ‘gains’ are helping.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. While it is true that I’ve lost much of the hair on my head, and I’ve gained some in my ears, it has not been a 1-to-1 trade-off.

Like, yes, I have hair in my ears, but not as much as I’ve lost on my head. So what gives? Where has the rest of that energy gone?

I have a theory, and no, it does not include disproving one of the foundational tenets of modern science. I don’t even know if this theory holds true for the rest of humanity. But I think it’s true for me.

I think that extra energy has found its way into my brain. Last week, I introduced you to this beautiful girl who taught me a thing or two about meditation.

As I mentioned in that piece, part of the impetus behind me taking up meditation is to clear my mind of the random thoughts that seem to haunt me like the ghost of William Hung.

And they are not only thoughts, sometimes they are songs. Or more precisely, snippets of songs. On most mornings, I have some random line or two of a particular song in my head. For no apparent reason. Earlier this week, it was this little ditty:

“You are blind as a bat, and I have sight.”

If you don’t recognize those lyrics it is probably because your brain function is fully intact. Kudos to you. Because those lyrics were sung 44 years ago at 11:30 pm Eastern Standard Time. Around that time, Paul McCartney1 and Stevie Wonder collaborated on a duet called “Ebony and Ivory.” The song was a call for racial harmony, using the black and white keys on a piano as a metaphor. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that version.

What I did hear, 44 years ago, was the satirical version of the song Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo performed on Saturday Night Live. Murphy as Wonder, and Piscopo as an aging Frank Sinatra, recording what purports to be a new album. Instead of the veiled use of a piano as metaphor, Piscopo’s Sinatra decides they should just cut to the chase and sing about Stevie Wonder being black, and him being white.

Piscapo-Sinatra sings to Murphy-Wonder as they are both sitting at a piano,

“You are blind as a bat, and I have sight.”

At the beginning of the skit, Piscopo needs to be introduced as Mr. Sinatra, because he bears so little resemblance to Frank. Eddie on the other hand, as you can see above, needs no introduction when he enters.

As soon as Eddie starts singing, it is a little shocking how good his voice is. So good in fact, that the audience starts clapping shortly after he begins. Hard to believe his singing career didn’t take off…

You probably could’ve gone the rest of your life without knowing that existed. You can thank me later. Although, if I’m being fair, his follow-up to that, Party All The Time, is kind of a banger.

Aside from the ‘blind as a bat’ line, there is really only one other funny part in the entire skit, and it’s unintentional: Piscopo giving off huge white-guy vibes by clumsily snapping his fingers out of tune with the music.

I initially intended to add the YouTube link to this skit at the end of this. But after watching it again, I realize that would be unkind. Aside from the couple of laughs above, it’s not SNL’s best work.

So instead, I’ll just leave you with dogs. Because dogs are great. And drop me a ❤️ or a comment if you had fun with this!

If you missed last week’s piece on meditation and Garnet, you can read it here:

I don’t sell stuff or ask for anything in return. I know this is a foreign concept.

This week’s book recommendation is Howard Bryant’s Kings And Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. Two reasons you should read this book:

1. You take an interest in: US history, sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, or McCarthy-ism.

2. Do you know who Paul Robeson was? Neither did I previously. Once you read this book you’ll understand why, and what that says about us.

This is not a sports book. It is a human book.

My Meditation Coach Weighs Fifty Pounds and Likes Belly Rubs

How a traumatized shelter dog finally shut my brain up.

This past Monday afternoon I found myself lying in wet grass, rubbing the belly of a fifty-pound shelter dog. As the thawing Wisconsin turf saturated my ratty old jeans, I heard myself say outloud, “holy cow girl, I love you too!”

Now, how in the world does that relate to meditation? Bear with me…

Recently, I’ve been working very hard to become a better meditator. As I’ve gotten older, the constant chatter of my brain has become harder and harder to turn off. If you need any verification of this you will receive it in next week’s post. These song lyrics are a sneak peek:

“...sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.”

I spent the better part of this past Monday morning with those lyrics playing on a loop inside my oft-rattled skull. Which was especially annoying because I have no idea when I last heard that song. Rihanna clearly built an earworm with that one.

Needless to say, my efforts at meditation have been wholly lacking in efficacy.

I’ve realized that this has been a problem my entire life. As a young person I mostly quieted my mind by watching TV and playing sports. In early adulthood it was my career, along with marriage and parenting.

In recent years, I’ve picked up golf as a hobby. One of the things I love about it is that I find the entire round meditative. I am outside, with beautiful scenery, and completely focused on the task at hand.

By the end of the round, whether I break eighty or blow up and shoot a hundred, I feel refreshed. However, despite its meditative qualities, I cannot devote four-plus hours each day to it.

My wife has made that abundantly clear.

So I’ve been reading books, listening to podcasts, and even trying acupuncture in an effort to quiet my brain. Most meditation advice says the same thing: we’re rarely in the present. We’re replaying the past or planning the future.

So I started small. Five minutes every morning.

As many of you know, I’m a volunteer dog walker once a week at a local animal shelter. Dogs are awesome for so many reasons. One of which is that they’re never replaying yesterday or planning tomorrow. Mostly they’re just focused on whatever is happening right now.

Because I’ve been there a while and am one of the only non-elderly/male volunteers, I’ve worked my way up to walking the “red” dogs. “Green” and “yellow” dogs, anyone can walk. They’re the ones who are docile and excited to see people, regardless of who they interact with.

Red dogs, however, are…a lot.

Usually, they are some combination of:

🐾 Big
🐾 Bad on a leash
🐾 Jumpy
🐾 Mouthy

Kinda like a middle-aged man who’s been told meditation will fix everything.

When I first started volunteering at the shelter, and wasn’t allowed to interact with the red dogs, I assumed it must’ve been because they were mean or aggressive. As it turns out, they’re usually just traumatized.

I realize that saying “just” before traumatized might sound insensitive. But if you think about it, being “traumatized” is a heck of a lot better than being inherently “bad.”

A lot of the red dogs arrive terrified of humans. The shelter works slowly to retrain that instinct with patience, treats, and small exercises like rewarding eye contact.

Which is how I got to know Garnet.

I’ve been walking Garnet for two or three months now. She’s a red dog.

When I first met her, I thought she seemed reasonably happy to see me. She’d spin in circles and wag her tail. Over time, I realized she was happy to see me mostly because she was learning something important:

Humans = treats.

One of the exercises we do with the treats is something to encourage eye contact. I’ll hold a treat out to the side while the dog sits and waits for it. For red dogs, their eyes are usually locked on the treat.

We’d rather they look at us. So we wait. Eventually, they glance up, and that’s when they get the treat. Sometimes they need a reminder. Usually it’s just saying their name.

When Garnet first started doing this with me, I could tell the eye contact was purely transactional. Like,

“Fine dude, here are my eyes.

Now give me the goddamn treat.”

Not dissimilar to most workplace dynamics.

But over time something changed with Garnet’s eye contact. Her gaze softened and lengthened. What before had felt like a thousand-yard stare was now a look of what can only be described as affection.

“Give me the goddmaned treat” had turned into, “maybe this guy ain’t so bad.”

This past Monday, the same day as my song lyrics, I saw Garnet again. The beginning of our time together was business as usual. Then, about halfway through the walk, she started getting closer to me.

She’d sniff the ground near my feet, linger, and then look up, making unrequested eye contact. This happened a few times.

Eventually she stopped completely and leaned her entire body up against my legs. When I bent down to pet her she rolled onto her back. At that moment there were two possibilities:

#1: She was being submissive because she was scared of something.

…or

#2: She wanted a belly rub.

It was number two.

I bent over and rubbed her belly, speaking softly to her for a good two or three minutes:

“Oh, hi Garnet, this is sooo nice.”

“You like belly rubs, huh? Well, aren’t you just the sweetest little thing in the world?”

She alternated between wriggling around on her back and lying still. She didn’t seem like she wanted it to stop, and with my surgically repaired back beginning to complain, I decided to take a chance and get down in the wet, still-dead grass with her.

There was some nervousness in doing so. Not because I thought she’d be aggressive, but because she is a fifty-pound ball of muscle.

One of my favorite shelter dogs ever, a gorgeous tank of a pittie named Ava1, once split my lip clean open with her cannonball of a head when I bent down too quickly and she jumped up to greet me.

Ava was fine. My ego required stitches.

Lesson learned.

I got to the ground safely with Garnet, and we continued the belly rub. After about ten minutes or so she decided she wanted to get up and walk again. We completed our loop, and I brought her back inside to put her back in her area. Upon unleashing her, I realized something:

During my entire time rubbing Garnet’s belly, I wasn’t planning for something later in the day. I wasn’t replaying some perceived slight from years ago.

I wasn’t thinking about anything really. I was just there.

With her. Completely immersed in the short white hairs on her belly, and the silly, sloppy, and happy look on her face.

Two creatures lying in the grass, neither of us worried about yesterday or tomorrow. Occasionally catching each other’s eyes and feeling goodness.

Just existing. And it was…delightful.

🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾

The next morning, I woke up and attempted my five minutes of meditation again. Five minutes turned into twenty. For most of that time, my brain was still pulling me here and there.

But in between those moments, there were small pockets of quiet. At one point I imagined myself in one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been.

And then suddenly I wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t anywhere. My brain had finally stopped narrating everything.

That’s when I realized something. That place meditation books keep talking about? It wasn’t mystical. Or difficult. Or something to strive toward.

It was just this.

Being exactly where I was.

The same place Garnet had been the entire time.

This week, I talk with Professor Spalding about the strange world of quantum mechanics. We dive into the famous double-slit experiment, probability, photons, black holes, and why reality behaves far differently than common sense suggests.

Plus, how quantum technology is already shaping our future.

Remember, all episodes of this podcast and accompanying newsletter are FREE. Always. If you are enjoying the content and would like to support my efforts, please subscribe below.

Anyone remember the guy on the right?

Or maybe you recognize him more like this….

Well, I’m writing a book about him! It’s an unbelievable journey from small-town Wisconsin kid to Hollywood icon gone too soon.

Let me know if you’d read it in the comments!

Everything is Terrible, Except It Isn’t

Another Day in Paradise

Earlier this week I realized the second season of one of my favorite shows had dropped. It’s called Paradise (on Hulu). At the end of the first episode of the first season, a cover of Phil Collins’s “Another Day in Paradise” plays over the closing scene. The rhythm is restrained, almost processional.

It’s an amazing version of the song, arguably better than the original. Read till the end, and I’ll show you.

The irony is that the song’s title is doing most of the work. The show you are watching initially looks like paradise. But what Collins was writing about wasn’t paradise at all. It was about homelessness, and the way we train ourselves not to see it. The way suffering becomes background noise. The way you walk past someone in crisis and convince yourself you didn’t see them.

Collins wrote the song at the tail end of the 1980s, a decade still remembered for tremendous economic growth. Two years prior to the song’s release, Gordon Gekko uttered the phrase that would come to symbolize the decadence of the time:

“Greed is good.”

Fast forward to today and everything feels terrible. Politics is broken. AI is coming for our jobs. The economy is a house of cards. Student loans have strangled a generation. Phones are rewiring our brains.

We are one push notification away from societal collapse. Or at least that’s how it feels.

But here’s the inconvenient truth: by almost every measurable standard, this is the safest and most prosperous time in human history. Extreme poverty is down globally. Violent crime is down across the board. Medical advances are astonishing.

We carry more computing power in our pockets than NASA used to send humans to the moon. And we mostly use it to argue with strangers and look at cute dogs.

Or monkeys.

That doesn’t mean nothing is wrong. The purchasing power of the dollar has fallen dramatically since 1989, and our standard of living has not nearly kept up with inflation. That matters. But constant economic anxiety isn’t the same thing as total collapse.

Phil Collins was writing about turning away from suffering. We’ve taken a slightly different approach. We’ve chosen not to fix things, but to rename them. A few years ago, “homeless” people became “unhoused.”

The word changed.

The problem didn’t.

Renaming a fire doesn’t lower the temperature.

It’s tempting to decide someone must be orchestrating all of this. That shadowy villains benefit while we bicker over terminology and tweet ourselves hoarse.

Maybe there are some villains. But even so, we still have agency. We don’t need a new word to begin acting humanely. We don’t need a new villain to begin acting responsibly.

We don’t need the world to be perfect before we acknowledge what’s already good.

In the fall of 1989, when Collins’ Another Day in Paradise was making its way up Casey Kasem’s charts, I was in the seventh grade. A Catholic school dropout by the third grade, I was relegated to CCD by then. CCD was our Catholic church’s version of Bible class.

We called it Central City Dump, but what it really stood for, I have no idea.

Most years, the nuns talked at us. Then, in seventh grade, Ms. Thomas arrived. She was young, normal, and had the radical idea that we might learn something if we enjoyed it.

One night, she brought her boom box in and pressed play on Collins’ album But Seriously. We sat there quietly while “Another Day in Paradise” filled the room. The lyrics were haunting. The rhythm somber yet empowering.

It didn’t tell us what to think.

It showed us.

For maybe the first time in my life, I thought about someone else’s life more than my own. At the time my internal priorities were Randall Cunningham, girls, and surviving lunch period.

Empathy for others had not yet entered the equation.

By the following Wednesday, Ms. Thomas was gone. A nun informed us she had been teaching “outside the Bible.”

Maybe she was.

Or maybe she was teaching us to think.

Greed is bad. That part hasn’t changed.

But constant appetite is corrosive too. The endless sense that we are deprived, doomed, and one headline away from ruin. You can acknowledge what’s broken without declaring everything is broken.

You can care about suffering without pretending prosperity doesn’t exist. You can notice what’s working and build from there.

The world will gladly sell you outrage all day long.

But you don’t have to buy it.

🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙈 🙉 🙊

Don’t forget to drop a comment or a heart in the comments. ¡Muchas gracias!

• My co-host this week is my old buddy Mark Prel. Mark is a teacher, coach, husband, and father…as well as a big-time Buffalo Sabres fan. If you are into hockey, give him a follow on X at ‘sabresfunstats.’

1. Can boxing be saved?

2. Favorite 80s movies.

3. Bills coaching situation.

4. Challenges of raising boys compared to girls.

5. Listeners of the week.

   ⭐️Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, & YouTube. Please remember to Rate-Review-Subscribe if you are listening on those platforms.

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Marinovich, written by its namesake, Todd Marinovich, with help from Lizzy Wagner, is the story of the mercurial former USC and Raider QB’s rise and fall. Multiple rises and falls, actually, coinciding with addiction struggles and a love of art. You don’t need to be a football fan to enjoy this one (although it’ll help 😉).

🐾 🏈 🐾 🏈 🐾 🏈 🐾 🏈 🐾 🏈 🐾 🏈

Steven Spielberg Is Responsible for My Crippling Fear of Intimacy

Have you ever had a life-altering realization strike you out of the blue? Like, you’re sitting at Chipotle raw dogging a burrito when you suddenly realize the reason why the phrase “Venus in retrograde” annoys the piss out of you? Well, thanks to superstar writer Shea Serrano, that happened to me earlier this week.

Shea wrote a piece about the epic 1975 film Jaws. In it, he breaks down the opening scene in the film where a beautiful young blonde girl named Chrissie gets eaten by a shark while skinny-dipping, leaving her hammered boytoy passed out on the beach.

Do you remember how horrific that scene was? To say she got “eaten” is like saying Custer had a rough couple of days at Little Bighorn. She wasn’t eaten, she was eviscerated. It is one of those scenes that shakes you to your core. And I’m talking about grown adults.

🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈

By the time my parents saved up enough money to purchase a VCR, it was 1984. On very rare occasions, they would have a night out together and leave my older sisters in charge to babysit me.

I have fond memories of watching Solid Gold on TV and having mini dance parties with them on several of these occasions. But with the addition of the VCR came a creeping darkness, as Solid Gold was replaced by renting movies like Jaws.

By the time a young man is in the third grade, he has started to notice young ladies. And while my folks had made the monumental purchase of the VCR, they still hadn’t ponied up for Cable TV. So, no MTV beauties or Skinamax bombshells to ogle either.

I think Suzanne Somers’ character Chrissy in Three’s Company was my first crush. I would say something about the name Chrissy/Chrissey here…what with its different spellings and propensity to designate slutty 1970s-era women…but my sister’s name is Chrisie, so that’d just be weird.

At the time, I think I envisioned myself as the debonair bachelor who wooed Chrissy over Harvey Wallbangers at the Reagle Beagle.

When Chrissie from Jaws started flirting with that sandy-haired himbo and running to the water, stripping off her clothes, I was frozen in what can only be described as pre-pubescent lust. But to my nascent brain, newly introduced to testosterone, it was love.

True love.

My naughty bits were sending signals my prefrontal cortex had never previously received. And all I could think was, “I like this.”

And also, “I don’t think Jesus would be happy with me.”

As the shirtless nicompoop she was flirting with lay passed out on the beach, Chrissy swam elegantly through the surf. Just about the time I thought her body was about to turn to the camera and show me the meaning of life, there was that first tug on her leg.

While watching, I remember thinking maybe she had bumped her leg on something. That lasted a good two seconds before this gorgeous young woman, the object of my sexual awakening, got thrashed about and eventually devoured by what we can only assume by that point is the shark.

🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈 🦈

When you’re a young boy, you’re nervous around pretty girls. At least the normal ones are. The guys who seem completely comfortable around gorgeous women tend to grow up into gigantic a-holes.

Or President.

Regardless, reading Shea’s piece forced a realization: seeing my first true love disemboweled by a 6,000-pound prehistoric eating machine might explain why, for the next fifteen years or so, I couldn’t form a coherent sentence in front of a girl.

Imagine the neural response I had on the Monday after my Jaws viewing, when I spotted third-grade hottie Mary Elizabeth genuflecting upon entering the pew in front of me. The only thing I can liken it to is those orphan animals at the zoo that imprint on a different species at birth. Like a baby cheetah following a momma golden retriever around.

It works. But everyone involved knows this wasn’t Plan A.

To wit, most third-grade boys don’t choose their first love. They imprint. Like baby cheetahs.

Just dumber and in corduroy.

Fast forward forty-one years, and I have done all of the necessary ‘work on myself’ to become a reasonably well-adjusted husband and father. And by ‘work on myself’ I mean golf, alcohol, and making sure the mantra “yes honey” is emblazoned on my medulla oblongata.

If only my folks had rented E.T.

SilentPunt Podcast, #207 / February 18, 2026

1. How GenX got screwed.

2. Books.

3. Why is there still horse racing?

4. You gotta problem??

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