There are still a few places in this country where you can buy one gasket, three nails, or two washers. Those places are becoming fewer and farther between. Consequently, I have bags of washers and packages of screws from which I’ve taken one.

If you’re anything like we are, once in a while you look down at the floor and find a screw or a little odd-shaped something-or-else and have no idea where it came from, what it is or what to do with it.

If I were well-adjusted, I would throw out those bags of screws and misplaced gaskets and what-nots. After all, the odds of finding where that thing came from are not good. And the odds of ever needing another one the same size as the two I had to have so badly I bought twenty, are even worse. As are the chances of finding where I put them should I need them. But I am anything but well-adjusted.

I save that stuff in a little box in the garage, and once in a while, when we go to someone’s house, I put a few in my pocket and drop a metal screw behind the refrigerator when no one is looking. Or maybe a washer under the bathroom sink. A piece left over from an Ikea cabinet might find its way behind someone’s sofa.

I won’t be there when they find it, weeks or months later while sweeping or vacuuming. But I know it will drive them nuts trying to figure out where it belongs. And that gives me a certain satisfaction.

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Baseball season started recently; I’m told. (I’m not a fan). I do remember when it was called America’s Pastime. Now that claim goes to “Wheel of Fortune.” Baseball lost the title without a chance to as much as turn a letter, simply by putting a team in Montreal.

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Speaking of seasons, we are hurling into another political season where people of all stages of sex, age, experience, philosophy and photogenicism will be the front runner for something or other at some time or another. Apropos of nothing, I learned when protesting the Vietnam War at the University of Minnesota that “radical student politics” is the only phrase in our language that contradicts itself three times.

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I have a closet full of almost perfect clothes I have almost never worn. I think some of it should only be worn when it’s appropriate, so I save it for those eventualities. I don’t wear a pinstripe suit to work in the yard, for instance. (However, given the occasions I have to wear a pinstripe suit any more, I may as well).  

But I also have a too-large collection of sweaters, polo shirts, windbreakers and sweatshirts from various events and rarely, if ever, worn. I have sweatshirts from the 67^th through 76^th Oscars®, none I’ve worn more than six times. This year was the 91^st Oscars® which tends to only point out how outdated my wardrobe is. Why am I hanging on to a 24-year-old sweatshirt in mint condition that may be worth upwards of $1.75 on eBay? It’s embarrassing to wear a sweatshirt in public that has an old, and large, logo. But, like the pinstripe suit, I can’t bring myself to wear it when pulling weeds, nor can I throw it away. If you know anyone who wants them, or sweaters from the 1982, 1991, 1992, 2002 and 2008 U.S. Open golf championships, send them my way. Marie Kondo will thank you.

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(With apologies to Johnny Cash) I punched a kid in fifth grade just to watch him cry. He was new to our little school and there was just something about him that struck me the wrong way. So, I struck him the wrong way. It’s bothered me ever since and while I doubt I will ever see him again, I think he owes me an apology.

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I have only recently realized that there are some people who don’t drink every day. I don’t know why they don’t. I’ve decided I might try that, though I don’t know what I will do instead

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A few years ago, I was sitting, bored, at a staff meeting and mentioned that Hemingway is widely thought to have suggested that one should write drunk and edit sober. The officious director of the department, admonished that no one had better be writing drunk in her department. By jingo.

Once I realized she was serious, I allowed as how I felt it was really about pouring your thoughts and emotions out on to the page and writing without reservation, then letting it simmer and refining it later. And if that’s the case, it’s good advice.

Besides, it wasn’t Hemingway.