It was one of those phrases that stuck. It wasn’t even aimed my direction, but hit anyway.

I was in grade school at the time. Third grade. Parent-teacher conferences. Privacy wasn’t the requirement then that it is now, so my parents and I were only a few desks away as the teacher told this intelligent yet rambunctious boy that he wasn’t living up to his potential.

All these years later, I still remember his name. Can still remember how his head dropped in shame, how he looked over at me to see if I’d heard. Looked pained when he saw that I had.

I thought so highly of him. He was quick. Smart. Funny. He raised his hand first and read ahead and knew tricks for memorizing multiplication tables. But our teacher thought that wasn’t enough. Saw that he could do more. She could see his potential, and apparently he wasn’t anywhere close.

Even though it wasn’t her assessment of me, it attached itself anyway. I was determined to make certain no one ever said that about me.

It was said anyway. A lot.

Not by others. By me.

I could seldom live up to what I saw as my potential. When I slacked off, I knew it. When I didn’t give it my all — even if what I produced was impressive — it still disappointed me because I could almost always see how I could’ve done it better. Making matters worse were those times I actually did hit my limit, when I pushed myself to the point of knowing there was no further to go.

An early for-instance: I ran track in high school, the second runner on a four-person mile relay team. The moment that baton would hit the palm of my hand, I lived up to my potential, pushing myself so hard that once I handed the stick off to the next runner, I’d wobble off into the grass and pass out (or darn near).

I loved it. Loved that I could push myself to that limit. It was intoxicating. Made me feel proud. It proved there was no physical way I could’ve done more.

When I was in my 20s, I worked a full-time job, a part-time job, refinished antiques, made a variety of crafts, and taught myself how to write stories. At that same time, I was learning all I could about construction so I could design and build a house. Which I did. I never stopped. I was exhausted and stressed, but knew I was riding at the edge of my potential, so I was generally OK with myself.

Then my daughter’s arrival brought a whole new potential to reach, that of SuperMom. I was going to hand-sew Halloween costumes and hold wildly creative birthday parties and decorate the most adorable playroom. I would be the best homeroom mother, Girl Scout troop leader and bake sale organizer who ever lived.

But life wouldn’t cooperate. So much piled on that I couldn’t manage a fraction of what I intended. Not only that, but I could no longer meet my self-imposed markers in nearly any other area. I fell short more times than an intact Chihuahua in a field of Great Danes.

And I beat myself up something fierce.

One of my closest friends, Susan Crumley, heard my complaints enough times that when she ran across a blog post on the subject, she sent me a link.

According to the post by Rachel Marie Martin (http://rachelmariemartin.blogspot.com), “I read this article in the New York Times about the pressure on moms to look a certain way after they give birth. And then? Then, we’re to be ultra creative, crafty, humorous, happy, chipper, up before dawn, to sleep after dark, with our sinks shined, and the laundry folded, and tomorrow’s breakfast in the crockpot, with tomorrow’s dinner (pulled from our once-a-month cooking) thawing in the fridge, while we work out for 20 minutes on odd days and 40 minutes on even days, and our hair is always done, we’re makeup ready, our fridges are stocked, and the craft closet bursting with ideas for that quick perfect afternoon art project.”

All these self-imposed and society-imposed pressures can leave a person feeling like a failure, but what the blog post recommended hardly seemed to make sense.

She said to slow down.

It seems insane to think that when there’s already too much to do the answer can be to slow down. Yet along with doing less, she suggests making an effort to notice more, pay attention to each little thing that’s achieved, especially all those little time-eaters that can munch up a day.

I decided to give it a try. Instead of continuing to beat myself up for not getting anywhere near my potential, I’m going to unplug for a week. I’m disconnecting from the Internet and turning off the cell and ignoring the news. I’m going to do nothing for a week but enjoy myself.

After so many years, pushing has become second nature, but I’m going to make a serious effort to cut myself some slack. I’m going to force myself to sit still on that porch I worked so hard to fix up. I’m going to read books bought for enjoyment rather than research. Going to go for actual walks, rather than laps.

And to reframe my potential into one that’s kinder to me.

Sometimes it’s hard not to listen in to a stranger’s cellphone conversation. Especially when the person drops some little ear-tweaking teaser phrases that rank the conversation too potentially interesting to miss.

I just never expected that I, a rabid cellphone opponent, would become one of those people.

It happened last week when returning from an out-of-state teaching gig that left me stuck in the Chicago airport for several hours. I’m not used to air travel, nor familiar with how to endure crowded places for more than a few minutes, and I naively believed there’d be some quiet corner to work.

I figured once a flight boarded, the seating area would empty for a while, making it possible to find a less frenetic place. Yet each time I’d settle and start writing, someone would inevitably come along, plop down a few chairs away and begin a long and loud conversation on their cellphone.

One woman had a speech pattern that I found particularly distracting. It wasn’t an accent. More like an impediment. You might even dub it an Irish Impediment since it was her habit of randomly prefacing words with the letter O.

An example.

“O’Peter has been struggling with college. O’Yes, struggling. Peter. Really. He’s taking O’Eight hours this semester, I believe, but he has this job at O’The sweetest little boutique …”

I tried to wait her out. Tried to move a few seats away. Even tried stopping what I was doing to sit, notepad in hand, openly listening to her conversation and jotting notes. It was hopeless. She was so loud and longwinded that I eventually gave up and moved to the seating area where my flight would be called.

Which is when my own cellphone rang.

It was my 15-year-old daughter, Celeste. She’d been staying with a friend while I was away, while my friend Susan stayed at my house to take care of our pets.

Before I tell more about the call, I should explain that Susan is the ultimate house-sitter. She not only tended our herd of animals, but hung curtains (including the rods), cleaned my garage and painted my kitchen. I was nearly as excited about her staying at my house as I was about the trip itself. Susan is also something of a dog whisperer, and she made a project of trying to fix our closet dog, Roo.

For those unfamiliar with the Closet Dog breed, it’s what you get when you mix an elkhound with a coyote and then allow it to simmer a few years with a dog hoarder (53 dogs in a single-wide trailer) before depositing the resultant basket case with a softheaded dog foster parent. Who’s not up to the task of rehabilitating such an extreme case.

Although I’ve not spent the money to get DNA confirmation, Roo meets all the markers, both physically and otherwise. She’s compact, somewhat waterproof, skulks around the edges of rooms, and spends every night roaming the house, stealing whatever she can lay her jaws on and carry back to her closet, where her larder grows so large it can fill a garbage bag in a week.

I love that weird dog, but years of trying to alter her behavior have resulted in nothing more than waving the white flag of surrender. I deemed her untrainable. A lost cause.

Susan disagreed. Insisted that during her time at my house, she would turn Roo around.

Celeste and I thought Susan’s confidence was adorable. We knew Roo. Knew how frustrating and infuriating that dog could be.

So now we’re back to me at the Chicago airport. I’d abandoned my quest for quiet and moved into the crowded United Airlines waiting area. My cellphone rings. It’s Celeste, calling immediately upon arriving home after being gone for most of a week.

“It smells amazing in here,” Celeste says.

She’s walking around the house as she talks. Susan had already left, so the place is empty. My girl — unaccustomed to a house that smells good — is searching for the source. Finds it in the kitchen.

“Whoa!” She says. “You should see the size of this crock pot.”

The lid clunks down on the counter. With much lip smacking, Celeste is describing the giant slab of meat that Susan had left cooking for us. She stops chattering briefly to greet the dogs. Says hi to Murry. Hi to Chewie.

But no Roo.

I’m confused.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “You mean to say you got home and there’s a giant crock pot on the counter with a huge slab of meat in it and one of the dogs is missing?”

Which is how I learned people were eavesdropping on my conversation.

Karin Fuller can be reached via email at myemailaddress. O’And Roo can be found at Susan’s house, where she continues her rehabilitation.

I walked into the kitchen last Sunday morning to find one of my daughter’s friends staring out the kitchen window, head tilted. She was squinting up into a big oak tree that towers over my porch.

“Did it really snow last night?” she asked.

“It’s in the 80s,” I said.

She pointed.

“Then what’s that?”

It appeared to be snow. A big puff of it, stretched long across a branch. She pointed to another nearby branch that was similarly fluffy and white.

But I knew better. It wasn’t snow. It was evidence.

Proof of how very wrong I could be.

I’ll explain.

I have this chair. Once upon a time, it was a pretty chair, covered in a classy sort of tapestry fabric. It was overstuffed, with a matching ottoman, but it attracted the attentions of a claw-sharpening cat who so thoroughly ribboned the sides that it came to look as if it were wearing a Hawaiian grass skirt. But since the chair was still so comfortable, I relocated it to the basement, where its next misfortune was to be located directly beneath a pipe. Which broke. Thoroughly soaking the chair.

So this is how the chair came to be in my back yard, where it had been dragged into a sunny spot to dry. Except while there in the sun, the chair’s wonderful overstuffedness was discovered by three rather enthusiastic pet rabbits that have the run of our yard.

Unfortunately, only two rabbits at a time were capable of comfortably fitting on the seat of the chair. Rabbits are great appreciators of such indulgences but are not fond of sharing. Granted, they may appear to be docile creatures who can be easily manipulated with S’mores-flavored Pop-Tarts, but in reality, they are hostile beasts who will repeatedly fling each other from hula chairs with increasing brutality.

It was during such flinging that a small hole came to be torn in the back of the chair, and because of this hole, the rabbits discovered a new game.

Emptying the chair of its stuffing.

When I first discovered their game, there were only a few small puffs of white drifting about. I was busy with other chores and didn’t dream they could, or would, do much damage to the chair beyond a few mouthfuls of stuffing.

I was so very wrong.

When I returned several hours later, I found the rabbits having the time of their lives, working in concert with each other to drain and distribute. The chair looked deflated. And my yard looked bizarre. It appeared as if an ocean of pillows had been slaughtered and the remains dragged about in some morbid sort of display. That so much stuffing had come from the back of a single chair seemed impossible.

By the time I made this discovery, it was starting to get dark. I’d been racing around the entire day and was thoroughly exhausted. The last thing I felt like doing was walking about in the dark, collecting massive amounts of white fluff (and mosquito bites). I decided I could put it off until morning. I mean, what could possibly happen with the stuffing beyond what had already been done?

This question was answered by the many squirrels that discovered — with much glee, I imagine — vast quantities of nestworthy fluff strewn across the grass. Sometime during the evening and early-morning hours, they had carried it up into most every tree in my yard.

In the meantime, it appeared the rabbits spent the night filling a good many of their holes (I suspect the moon’s surface has fewer craters than my yard) with bits of stuffing, something that I expect will be beneficial to dog ankles.

As I stood on my porch, looking out at the wreckage, a chipmunk raced past, a tuft of white chaw sprouting from its mouth. I watched as it raced to carry off the few puffs that remained, which it tucked into a variety of low crevices. Between cinderblocks. Between the screened sections of my porch. Among the many stones in my garden wall.

My yard appears to have been prepped by woodland creatures as a setting for a low-budget winter movie.

And considering there’s no easy way to retrieve all that fluff, it’s a setting I suspect I’ll be seeing for a very long time.

Used to be that having your birthday remembered would make a person feel special, but thanks to Facebook and other computer-automated reminders, birthday greetings often begin arriving en masse starting at midnight, when reminders are posted.

I’ve heard complaints that the intimacy has been taken away, that the thrill of being remembered is gone.

Piffle, I say.

Milk it for all its worth, I say.

That’s what I plan to do anyway. Starting today. My 48th.

It’s part of this new outlook I’m trying to adopt, one of making the most of time and opportunities. Of not going into the second half with a pack of regrets.

The past few months have been the kind of rough that’s had me turned inside-out. I feel like I’ve landed back at Start once again. At first, I was frustrated and depressed and embarrassed, but I’m beginning to get excited by the idea of beginning again.

Clean slate.

Part of this slate cleaning has involved going through the house, closet by closet, drawer by drawer, removing the excess. One of my goals is to become a minimalist. Albeit one with lots of books.

And shoes.

My thinking is that the less I have to take care of, the more time I’ll have for what’s important to me.

It’s been interesting how the further into my cleaning I get, the easier it becomes to let go of what I once cherished. I’ve started taking pictures of some things so I’ll still have something to look at and remember, but the item itself is going away.

It’s one of the rare perks of aging — knowing what’s important and what’s valuable, what’s worth saving and what isn’t.

Among my findings were stacks of quotes about random subjects, including a few about getting older. I figure by using them now, I can throw them away.

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” — John Barrymore

“Everything slows down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips.” — attributed to John Wagner

“Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.” — unknown

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” — Samuel Ullman

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Middle age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.” — Ogden Nash

“There’s no such thing as too late. That’s why they invented death.” — from the movie “Out to Sea”

“Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it starts avoiding you.” — unknown

“It’s sad to grow old, but nice to ripen.” — Brigitte Bardot

“I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth’s gravitational pull has become since 1990.” — Dave Barry

But my favorite came from Mom:

“Birthdays are God’s way of telling us to eat more cake.”

Sometimes I get the feeling my Creator was inspired by Disney since I have far more than the average person’s share of Bambi and Thumper moments.

Case in point. Last week, I went outside to collect my Gazette, and there in my front yard was Stew, our oversized yellow rabbit.

(A Disney-esque aside:  Stew was supposed to be a dwarf rabbit, but the only thing small about her is her 14^th chin. And she’s working on that.)

So Stew was stretched out in the yard, lazily nibbling clover, when I disrupted her early morning repose. The expression on her face was an easy-to-read, “Oh, crap. Busted.” I saw her tensing to run.

Now, Stew has escaped a few times before, and the last thing I felt like doing was chasing an obese rabbit around the neighborhood at six in the morning. Granted, she’s fat, but she’s still far faster than me, so rather than race, I returned to the house and got a package of PopTarts. The S’mores-flavored kind. Her favorite.

I returned to the yard, tore open the package and broke the PopTart in half. I held up the half in one hand, then pointed to the back yard. Said, “Get back there and you can have this.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Stew raced around the side of the house, squirted her girth under her freshly dug fence hole, and then turned immediately around on the other side. I tossed her the PopTart.

Wishing like heck someone was around to witness what just happened.

I had ordered a rabbit and it followed my instructions. But no such luck. I was alone.

Sort of.

When I turned around, there in front of me was our new little black rabbit, sitting right about where Stew had been just moments before.

(Rabbit-related aside: If you lost a friendly black bunny with one cloudy eye around the time of the big July storm, it now lives at my house.)

Apparently, the term “hare-brained” means “fast-learner,” as this rabbit had observed the transaction that just took place and recognized that half a Tart remained. And she wanted it.

I slid the other half from the package and placed the remaining whole one, still in the foil sleeve, on the sidewalk. I held the bunny bait aloft, pointed toward the gate, and ordered New Rabbit the same way I had Stew. She followed my instructions just as obediently and claimed her reward.

I paused long enough to shove some nearby rocks into their hole and then started back around front to collect my Gazette. Now, this entire rabbit commanding/fence blocking business took maybe, at most, a minute or two. Even though much of my life is thoroughly out of control, I exude efficiency when it comes to commanding and imprisoning wildlife using nothing but breakfast foods with questionable nutritional value.

Anyway, my side gate is only about a dozen steps from my front porch, and as I rounded the corner, I’m surprised to find a deer—a small, button buck—standing on my sidewalk, finishing the remaining PopTart. Apparently, he’d been lurking behind a nearby tree, waiting for me to step away from the Tart.

I suppose I should mention here that I don’t live out in the country. I’m in South Charleston. Not the outskirts of town either, but just a short distance from Montrose. And here was a little buck so close I had to turn sideways to squeeze between him and my porch.

He followed me right up onto the porch and then stood there, peeking through the storm door, not in the least bit afraid.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

Got him a second PopTart. And a banana.

We’re getting together later for coffee.

I’m guessing he’ll want Starbucks.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard that anger is a terrible thing, how it’s negative and damaging and something to be avoided. And generally, with the exception of when I’m behind the wheel and in a hurry, I anger slowly and cool down quickly. I’ve never been one to rage or hold onto my mad. I thought it was my nature, the way I’d always be.

And then something inside me broke.

Without going into particulars, I was put in a position a few months back where I was told to accept something that wasn’t, for me, a grey-area wrong. It was fully, both feet into the black-and-white unacceptable camp. Those who would’ve benefitted from the transgression I was expected to quietly accept were either completely oblivious to, or deliberately turning a blind-eye toward, the wrongness. It unleashed a fury in me that I’d almost never experienced before.

And I couldn’t let it go.

My mother is a master at letting bygones be bygones. She’s simply isn’t willing to remember negative details about those she cares about. It’s a trait I admire. One that I have, at times, made my own. But sometimes, it’s possible to wipe a slate clean too fast for your own good. Some slates might be better left dirty since there are times when a little anger can be healthy. I’ll give a for-instance.

To those already familiar with the basics of my past, please excuse the rehash. I’ll keep it brief. Basically, not long after the death of our youngest daughter, my husband left. What she died from—there was no way to have prevented it or cured it, there was no one to blame or aim my fury toward. It just was what it was. A hell of a huge pill to swallow.

And then my ex left and provided someone for me to be mad at, and that anger allowed me to focus and move forward in a way I absolutely know I wouldn’t have been able to do had he stayed. Instead of curling into a ball and whining, “Look how much losing you crushed me,” my mantra became, “I’ll show him.” I pushed myself to do things that improved me and made life better and more fun for my daughter. Looking back now, I think it’s possible that what he did and the way he did it inadvertently saved me. Hand-holding and back-patting weren’t going to get me through to the other side. Anger did.

It’s interesting how these old parts of my life keep influencing the new, especially now that I’ve rolled this full circle around to where anger comes into play once again. This fresh fury caused me to revisit that time, review what resulted from it, and recognize that anger can have value. Good can come from bad, but not easily or without effort. It took time for my ex and I to rebuild a friendship, but now he’s one of my closest and most valued friends.

From that first big anger, the one at my ex, came almost nothing but positives. This latest seems different. I’ve been surprised by how many times my anger returns—not toward those from the initial situation, which was there and gone fairly fast—but toward other situations and behaviors that I simply shouldn’t have tolerated as long as I have. I began standing up for myself, something I don’t do easily. Or often. It’s forced me to step beyond many of the lines I’d drawn in my sand, to make hard decisions and act on them. The part I’m having trouble with now is knowing when and how to let go of the anger.

A friend of mine, who deserves sainthood for the many times she talked me off the ledge over the course of a single week, told me that holding onto my anger was giving away my power, that my fury hurt no one but me. That by carrying it around, I was giving those I thought were in the wrong something they didn’t deserve to have. I was wasting my energy rehashing what happened, thinking of things I wished I’d said or done differently.

My friend is such a composed person, and knotted up as I was, I knew I needed to get myself back to that kind of calm. We were sitting outside talking late one evening, and there was an ashtray on the table in between us. She suggested I write the names of anyone I was upset with or hurt by on little slips of paper and burn them. I did. It didn’t help. I wrote and burned again. Drew little cartoon pictures and burned those, too. The pyromaniac side of me was having a blast.

Sometime during the second sheet of paper, I realized the worst of my knots had untied.

It felt a little like magic, but I know it wasn’t. It was a willingness to let it go. And a readiness.

While reading about the powers and dangers of anger, I ran across many pithy quotes that say it so well.

“Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness, and concealed often hardens into revenge.” (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. (Malachy McCourt)

“Get mad. Then get over it.” (Colin Powell)

But the one that hits the closest to home is from Gloria Steinem.

“The truth will set you free. But first, it’ll piss you off.”

As I write this, I’m coming down from one of the best weekends of my life.

My head’s still down by the Greenbrier River. My heart is in Lewisburg, which I’m thinking might now be my favorite place.

In 2011, Budget Travel Magazine designated Lewisburg as the “Coolest Small Town in America.” Now I know why.

I traveled to the area (to nearby Ronceverte) for a girls’ weekend in a small trailer that was advertised as being “down near the water.” Near the water, it was. But it was also near the railroad tracks.

Very near.

Still, it had been ages since I’d had a grown-up weekend away, and I can’t remember a time when I needed a trip more than this. There was a bonus in that nearby Lewisburg was holding its first-ever Literary Festival that same weekend. Because of the festival, many of my writer friends who I normally see only once a year were in town. Among therm was one of the festival’s featured authors, Lee Maynard, who invited me to join him for dinner at his place.

Earlier that same day, I’d heard that the festival’s other two guest authors, Jerry West and Homer Hickam, were staying at The Greenbrier, so I made the assumption that Maynard was staying there too. I thought “dinner at his place” meant a fine steak from the Greenbrier.

I should’ve taken into consideration some of what I knew about Maynard–that he’s an avid outdoorsman who worked many years as a mountaineer and professional river runner, that he was national director of operations for Outward Bound and a member of the “Outlaw Writers.”

That he was so amused when I said something about him being at The Greenbrier. Because technically, he was.

Except his place was at The Greenbrier River.

In a little rented camper.

With a neat little fire pit.

Where he cooked our steaks.

On sticks.

When the meat was ready, he removed a big knife from his pocked and flicked it open. I checked the blade for traces of blood and fur. There were none.

Gentleman that he is, he provided a second, smaller knife for me. They were the only utensils we  had.

And it was, hands down, the best steak I’ve ever tasted.

I spent the next day at book signings and readings and strolling around Lewisburg’s wide variety of shops. The more I talked to shopkeepers and residents, the more enchanted I became with the place. The streets were filled with people. A clarinet player sat on a stoop, playing his horn. There were colorfully knitted trunk coverings on trees and artwork everywhere I looked and people willing to stand in long lines to meet their favorite authors.

The town is flat-out charming.

Saturday night was supposed to end at the Del Sol Cantina with a concert by Pops Walker and Kipyn Martin, except when the two were done playing, we weren’t done listening, so we moved their concert to the front porch of Don Steck and Tracy Rush’s home.

For an evening I never wanted to end.

With my feet propped on the back of a big, grinning dog, I was treated to some of the finest music I’ve ever experienced. These other folks are wildly talented, but Kipyn is something else. The most pure voice I’ve ever heard.

Maynard, although still a bit bristly from having his Crum Trilogy called the “50 Shades of Appalachian Grey,” was waxing a bit poetic on how enjoyable he was finding it to be surrounded by musicians, so I asked if he might be considering writing lyrics for a change.

“Nah,” he said, “I ain’t gonna be one a’ them pome-writin’ girly-boys like Chuck Kinder.”

I think he was kidding, but he said if I ended up writing about the evening, he wanted that Kinder bit in word for word.

I slept away much of the final day in a hammock, being intermittently awakened, and then lulled, by the sound of passing trains. The insects were plentiful, but courteous enough to leave me alone while I slept.

I can’t imagine how the weekend could’ve been any better. Good words, good music, good beverages with good friends. And the idiotic fun of spending a little time with an outlaw writer who was staying in a van down by the river.

Celeste in the front seat. I’ll let the others tag themselves.

It was the last thing I wanted to do. Or so I thought.

This past Monday was my daughter’s 15th birthday. The only thing Celeste wanted was a ticket to the Vans Warped Tour, an all-day series of concerts that was scheduled for the day after her birthday.

In Cincinnati.

One of Celeste’s best friends was going and asked if she’d like to go too. The tickets weren’t too awfully expensive, so I went online and in a few minutes, had her present picked out, paid for and printed.

So how many years am I going to have to spend in this life of mine to know that nothing can ever be so simple?

Sometime in the afternoon on Celeste’s birthday, the mother who had agreed to take the girls to Cincinnati found out she couldn’t go.

The girls were crushed. Especially my girl.

On her birthday.

Had it been any other day, I’d have told her to suck it up and deal, but this had me turned inside-out. She asks for so little. Wanted this so much. I needed to find a way to make it work.

But taking her myself wasn’t easy. My car is a relic. It transcended being “older” and slipped into “vintage” awhile back, meaning it wasn’t reliable enough for two 3 1/2-hour drives in one day. Making matters worse — at least for the status-conscious teens — my car is a station wagon. If there was a symbol for uncool, it would be shaped like a wagon.

Fortunately, my ex-husband, Mitch, offered to let us use his convertible, though the girls made me promise not to put the top down until the trip home. There were hairstyles to consider.

By the time we hit the road Tuesday morning, we’d added a few additional passengers. Along with me and Celeste were two more girls and a boy. The boy was an interesting one. He correctly used the word “verisimilitude” in a sentence, thereby endearing himself to me in a way I doubt few teen boys could manage.

But he was interesting in more ways than that. When I stopped to get gas, he and the three girls ran across the parking lot to a nearby McDonald’s, but stopped at a fruit stand on the way. Where he bought a watermelon.

This wasn’t a small melon he purchased, but a big, heavy sucker. Upon which they’d soon drawn a face. And bestowed upon it a name.

Juaquîn Da Melon went to the concert with them. While there were many restrictions on what was allowed on concert grounds, it turns out that there were no restrictions on fruit.

There probably will be next year.

Juaquîn had a day unlike that of any other melon in history, I expect. He was photographed in a variety of situations, starred in multiple videos, and crowd-surfed.

But then, just two bands before the end of the night, Juaquîn met a violent end on the pavement, his broken and badly mangled carcass then cannibalized by those who had, only moments before, been celebrating his presence. Fistfuls of his innards were callously flung about the crowd, prompting a frenzied food fight. A sticky end to the evening.

Just that morning, before leaving home, each girl had doused herself in a different scent of body lotion, and their hair was stiffened to a crisp by hairspray and mousse. So the drive down was fragrant.

The fragrance coming home was something else entirely. They’d spent nine hours in shoulder-to-shoulder conditions in 90-degree heat. Sunscreen and bug spray had been added, and over the course of the day, they’d been doused with thrown foods and snow cones and an assortment of drinks. Those teenagers were ripe.

Even with the convertible top down, there were times I welcomed the relief provided by the many flattened skunks we passed over.

It was after midnight before we made it home. I’d spent much of the day driving in Ohio, land of illogical street sign placement and a well-earned reputation for slow drivers being overly fond of the left lane. I’d talked my way out of a speeding ticket, been lost several times, spent more money than I’d planned. Had taken a day off work during our busiest time.

I collapsed into bed, still wearing my clothes, thinking how it had started out being the last thing I’d wanted to do. And how three simple words had made it worthwhile.

“Best birthday ever.”

I was manning the registration desk at my 30-year reunion, amused by history having looped back around to me working a table while my classmates socialized, when a man—the guest of a fellow Nitro Class of ’82 attendee—approached seeking a new nametag.

There was nothing wrong with the tag Michael Fleener was wearing. He just said he felt like being someone else for the night.

I never realized reinventing yourself could be so easy. And there were so many possibilities.

Among the names he considered were Buck Fifty, Arlo Prices, Kurt Reply. And Hugh Jorgan.

In the end, cartoon nostalgia won out and he went with W. E. Coyote.

Originally, though, Mr. Coyote had other ideas about what name he’d like to have been for the night. His first choice, he said, would’ve been to use the name of a classmate who’d died many years back.

“That way I could walk up to people all evening and go, ‘Hey. Why weren’t you at my funeral?’”

Fleener struck me as someone who could put the fun in funeral.

“I always wanted to go to a big funeral dressed as the Sad Clown,” he said. “Or maybe stand quietly at the back of the room dressed as the Grim Reaper. “

I later mentioned this to my daughter. Her demented mind makes me proud. She took it one better.

“I’d like to dress up as the Grim Reaper,” Celeste said, “and walk the halls of a nursing home.”

The subject reminded me of a story a friend recently shared about a man he knew who worked as a private pilot, along with two other pilots, in Alaska. The three had a habit of playing rather elaborate practical jokes on each other.

After many years together, one of the three men died. His final request was for his two friends to spread his ashes over a certain area at a specific time of year. He’d written out detailed instructions for how he wanted it done, even included the precise flight path for them to adhere to when releasing his ashes.

Respectful of their friend’s request, they followed his instructions carefully. Not realizing he had calculated his request to make certain his ashes would blow back inside the plane, thoroughly coating his friends.

Earning him the ultimate last laugh.

And while we’re still on the subject, I’d just like to say that any preacher who reads scripture at a funeral service should not be annoyed by those cursed with short-fuse giggles if said preacher knows he has a lisp, yet attributes every verse he’s reading. Even though several are from Thessalonians.

Although I never got to meet Val Patterson, I like the guy. He seemed like someone who got all the fun he could out of life.

And even some out of death.

Paterson recently lost his battle with throat cancer, and his self-written obituary went viral thanks in part to his hilarious confessions. Among the 59-year-old’s admissions was that his Ph.D. from the University of Utah came by way of a clerical error that resulted in him mistakenly receiving a diploma in the mail when, in reality, he had not even completed enough school for an undergraduate degree.

Wrote Patterson in his obit, “To all the Electronic Engineers I have worked with, I’m sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked well.”

His only regret seemed to be not having more time with his wife. Patterson said he’d managed to travel everywhere he ever wanted to go, have every job he wanted to have, learn all he wanted to know, fixed everything he wanted to fix, eat everything he wanted to eat.

Reading his obituary reminded me of one of my all-time favorite quotes.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, champagne in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘Woo Hoo! What a ride!’”

That’s how I want to go out some day. No whimper. All bang.

The thing is, I’ve always been such a conservative person. I’ve spent my entire life dotting i’s, crossing t’s. My list of “I’ve nevers” is likely longer than that of your average 18-year-old.

Back in June, I wrote about my determination to begin taking more risks. I made a pledge (albeit quietly, to myself) to do one thing every day that scares me. Most of the time, I’ve found that one thing has been to speak my mind. It was difficult at first. I’m a quiet person. I have a tendency to defer to others, supposing they know better than me. Breaking away from that old habit of mind isn’t easy, but what I’m learning is that the more I force myself to do the things that scare me, the more difficult it becomes to find scary things. In a very short time, my world has become a less frightening place.

During an online conversation on the subject with my friend Lee Maynard, he mentioned the distinction he draws between feeling fear and being afraid.

“Fear is a natural emotion,” wrote Lee. “It can be useful if it is carefully contained and focused. It heightens senses, quickens reflexes, speeds up the mental processing of images and information. Fear is an emotional tool. Properly used, we can make decisions that will sustain us.

“Being afraid is fear taken to the point where we lose the ability to reason with ourselves. We lose control. We are not rational. Our decisions are panic-based. We are undergoing a survival reflex that is only thinly hidden beneath our skins. Being afraid causes decisions that bring us ruin.”

I’ve come to realize that so often, we remain stagnant because we’re simply afraid of change. We don’t like where we are, but we’re so fearful of the unknown that we run in place until we aren’t able to run any more. Life inside a safe circle isn’t much of a life. It’s an existence.

I’m also starting to realize that taking risks doesn’t have to be such a frightening thing. Risk requires contemplation, preparation, the honing of skill, reasoning. Not only can you prepare for taking a risk, but you can also recover from risks taken and lost, and learn from what went wrong. Changes can be made. Corrections to the course.

I’ve been thinking about such things in part because of my 30-year class reunion, which has been going on this weekend. These 30 years have gone by so fast, seem to be picking up speed.

And there’s so much I still haven’t done.

So many I’ve nevers.

Too many.

I intend to excise as many of those nevers as I can over the next few years.

I don’t want to merely exist. I want to start the skid sideways into this part of my life.

With chocolate in one hand. And champagne in the other.