The Florida melt is not a sandwich. It doesn’t involve hamburger patties on Wonderbread with some unusual sauce that blends ketchup, beach sand and a mystery substance found in the fridge that turned a color no one has ever seen before. Rather, Florida melt is that time of year when spring finally fades, taking with it that sweet, candy smell of jasmine and the cool breezes that whisk across you like a silk kerchief. Spring fades, and quicker than you can say “scorched buttocks,” Florida’s molten lava summer kicks in. Socks melt to your feet and the jasmine catches fire. Florida melt is when climbing inside a pizza oven will give you more relief than standing on the street. It’s when the mosquitoes head up north in search of cooler skies, and you start making grilled cheese sandwiches al fresco on the asphalt in front of your house. During Florida melt, the heat pours down out of the sky, enveloping every part of your body. Your sweat glands get tested to the point that you need transplants.

For years my wife has talked about having a yard sale. For years, she has stuffed things into the attic, the shed or the loft — not to mention my sock drawer, my closet, my desk, the car, the utility room, the pantry and a closet packed so tight that we have since boarded it up and plastered it over to keep it from exploding. All this saving has been in anticipation of an imaginary garage sale she figured would one day whisk down out of the heavens and solve our clutter and junk problems. But it has never come. So things piled up. Let me be honest here, I’m just as guilty. I can’t just place blame. Whenever I had something I thought I might need in the future, say a guitar with a broken neck or some old used reporter’s notebooks, I threw them in a box in the attic. What I would use them for in the future, I have no idea.

Goodbye days of the hobo runner, I have new running clothes. And if I don’t mind saying so, I look like an Olympic track star. Truth is, I’ve never looked like any kind of athlete while out running. Maybe an athlete mauled by a bear. But that’s not to say I’m a bad runner. I’m pretty good — I finish OK in races and I’m starting to do some early training for October’s Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. (I’m registered, so only an injury — self-inflicted if-must-be — will get me out of it now.) I’m a fairly good runner with a lot to be proud of. But while the rest of the world exercises in special track suits, designer duds, and aerodynamic, flashy threads, I always looked more like a fraternity brother after a long night … of being mauled by a bear. I have runner’s shorts with bleach stains on them and elastic that so long ago disintegrated that you have to wear them with suspenders or duct tape them to your waste. Sometimes when I wear them, the only way to keep them up is to hold on to them in the front, which makes for awkward strides and an odd running style. Passersby must look at me and think, “There goes a guy who really has to use the bathroom.” It was time for new running shorts. My socks started getting far too many holes in them. My toes would work their way through those […]

Great. Just Great. Leave it to the news media to go out and cover a story that never, ever, in any form should have been covered. Sometimes it just takes a little self-control and public decency. It takes knowing that you shouldn’t do it because you will scare the ear wax out of people the minute you apply the ink to the newsprint. And this story did it: “Doctor finds spiders in ear of boy with earache.” Son of a biscuit! It ran everywhere, from here in The Record to CNN and USA Today. If you missed it, a boy who had been complaining of a popping sound in his ear went to the doctor where his ear was flushed out, turning up two spiders — one still among the living. They were living quite peacefully in there — had a condo association, were ordering furniture from an online retailer and in general had it about as good as you can when you’re living in the ear of a 9-year-old that hasn’t been cleaned since birth. The popping noise, the boy said, was the sound of them walking around on his eardrum, probably doing the rumba or throwing keg parties.

“Chase dog, eat your food,” I say standing over the bowl of dry kibble, looming over the dog who often reminds me she doesn’t speak English. Remembering this, I phrase it a different way, expecting this time it will have greater effect or impact: “Eat your food, Chase dog.” For some reason, it doesn’t work. She merely sits on the floor in the morning staring at me. “Eat! There are starving children in China.” Why don’t these lines work on her? Why isn’t she eating? The dog’s face seems to tell me she would rather have a deranged poodle yank all her hair out than eat these pathetic looking rabbit pellets. “No thank you, I’ll go without.” It’s been cause for concern in my house. The dog is healthy and spry. She looks like a puppy, except for the weathered gray she’s getting on her face. She’s full of energy, has a youthful disposition and can jump like the ground’s on fire. Her weight is good and hasn’t changed. Our vet even thinks she’s in remarkably good health for a girl her age –about 10 — and she exercises regularly. Physically she’s fine. Medically, just as good. “So what is it?” we’ve wondered, sitting at the dinner table. It’s a mystery.

So, a couple months back I took my mother a computer. I figured all those miles she was from her 15-month-old granddaughter could be bridged by the Internet. I could post photos and videos online, and she could view them at home in Tampa. That would at least cut down on the times she tells me to put the phone in the bath with Amelie so she can splash around with her. (Explaining to her how this could electrocute the kid, or at least ruin the phone, doesn’t seem to work.) It took her a month to even acknowledge the computer, and another month of poking it with a stick like a baboon trying to figure out something that had fallen from the sky. Eventually she convinced herself that radiation wouldn’t surge from the machine if she plugged it in, and still later, she took another big step when she called to ask how to turn it on. “Hit the ‘on’ button,” I told her. “That works best for me. You could also pray for divine intervention each time, but it takes longer.” I considered that enough success for a single year, and put on my calendar to try and talk her into typing on the keyboard come next January. And then the unthinkable happened: The woman with almost zero computer skills jumped dozens of steps on the way to computer enlightenment — or at least learning how to change the clock — and signed herself up for Internet service.

Word-for-word, this was the phone message left on my answering machine. It was a gruff sounding voice, like a cross between a grizzly bear and someone who had lived in the South so long that their accent had fermented and taken on complex subtle hints of apple, walnuts, motor oil and dirt. This is what I heard: “Hello, my name is Calvin Johnson and I’ve been trying to reach Scott Thompson [my brother] for so damn long. He never answers the phone and I’m trying to reach him because I’ve got this vintage motorcycle. It’s still in its box. I think it’s a 1955 British some-kind-of-a-G*****n motorcycle. And I understand he’s interested and I want to get rid of it. I’m willing to give it away, but he never checks his phone, he never gets his messages. So I understand you’re his brother, so will you please tell him if he wants this motorcycle, it’s still in the box, it’s all shiny looking and it’s all new and it looks goooo-ddd. He can have it if he wants it, he just needs to come and get it! Tell him to give me a call. My number is [repeats my phone number] … No, that’s not it. That’s the number I just called. I’m a silly boy! The number is [gives a new number]. Get on that boy! Tell him to call me up. See ya, bye.” So I hear this — remember, think grizzly bear with a Southern accent, but […]