If I were a commuting motorist, I’d have my handheld device at the ready so that I could check my messages as soon as I came to a red light. My car would be my office: I’d set it up so that I could take calls, send email, browse the company website, and so forth, while in traffic. I’d be able to Slack you en-route to work. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Then, I’d start Yammering with my blogger friends, unbeknownst to you, during the same commute, such that I’m having several conversations at once.

Not that I have blogger friends.

Is that you calling me out for veering into the bike lane? Excuse me, Mr. Bike Guy. But how am I supposed to know it’s a bike lane when I’m trying to find out what the best restaurant was in each state in the year you were born? Plus, how am I supposed to Yammer and Slack and browse for mother’s day gifts while conveying a 4,000-pound personal vehicle across the city AND keep track of you? Because there is never enough time for mom, so let’s use some of our carefree drive time to shop for gifts for her.

Do I use my blinker when I want to turn right? Let me put it this way: no. Blinkers are so 20^th century. I look old and stodgy enough; using a blinker will just make me look like a dinosaur. Blinkers are for a-holes, as Frank Zappa might say. Can we really be in the 21^st century and not be able to convey our driving intentions telepathically?

And what about those jetpacks?

I remember emailing my friend Richard back in the early 1990s using Compuserve, so clearly it’s a primitive communication method. So, for crying out loud, how is it that a guy like me has to explicitly convey that he’s going to cut off a cyclist when by now technology should have solved this problem?

Going to work on my driving habits this week by watching a You Tube video about good driving practices while sitting in car traffic.

I know that when you think of Cornhole you think of me, and trust me, I’m enormously proud of that. But please don’t forget that there are many other people playing Cornhole out there, some of whom are stars in their own right. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but the fact is I’m not actually ranked number one in the world in Cornhole.

Not even number two.

Would it surprise you to learn that I’m number 17? I’m sure it would surprise the actual number 17-ranked Cornhole star (currently not me).

Can I be honest? Truth is, this year I wasn’t invited to the Johnsonville Cornhole Championships. I’m not even a member of the American Cornhole League. And here you assumed I was named All-Cornhole in 2016 and 2017.

Turns out I’m just a regular joe with no endorsements who nevertheless can win his street’s Cornhole championship with almost no training.

Do you have a similarly heartwarming story?

In the mind of the average stable genius, mollusks consist of clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops, but you’re not an average genius, and word is you’re not even stable, so you don’t know that you didn’t know for the longest time that most people don’t know that they weren’t aware that in the greatest country in the free world there are several billion species of bivavles.

And more in the greatest country in the enslaved world.

I’m exaggerating. There are only 20,000 bivavle species in the whole universe, give or take, according to the fake encyclopedia media (so who really knows?). And most of them are concentrated here in southwest Florida, from what I can tell from walking the beach on Marco Island.

So now you now: I’m vacationing in warm and sunny gun country. While here, I’ve been feeling out my family’s interest in visiting an alligator farm, where the kids can watch their dad wrestle an animal determined to pull him into the water and drown him. But what a rush it is for dad, I’m told: the primal battle; the prehistoric nature of the animal that has sunk its teeth into your abdomen; the feeling of desperation as you realize that the ‘gator has squeezed the air out of you and has probably already won the battle.

Once rescued from certain death by the 7^th-generation swamp dweller running the farm, I challenge the kids to memorize the shells we’ll be encountering. They totally ignore me at first, assuming I’m performing my usual leg-pulling nonsense, until I jump up, all excited. “Make a chart,” I say. They look up from their devices just long enough to scowl. I explain: “You can note the shells you collect, the dates and times and where you found them. You can connect with other children your age doing the very same thing! Imagine how jealous your friends back home will be to know that you’re making charts and filling in data, while they’re spending endless hours staring at their boring devices. Heh, heh.”

They’ve stopped listening. They care as much about finding a Scotch Bonnet on their morning walk as they do about discovering Van Hyning’s Cockle in the bottom of a bucket.

Slinking off to eat some conch fritters and gator-tail while cleaning out my AR-15.

If I were Pope, the first thing I’d do is fight for normalized relations with the people who practice the Cult of the Easter Bunny. Although my own Catholic upbringing strongly emphasized Jesus over the Easter Bunny, I was an open-minded young lad and was able to appreciate how some people could drink in the stories of the mystical rabbit and his mysterious workings. Who was I to say that the baskets filled with chocolate lops and cottontails and little chocolate eggs that resembled hare scat weren’t actually filled by a rabbit? Honestly, could I be 100% certain that the absurd myths that were intoxicating believers in Bunnyism were completely impossible?

Oh, great, now I’ve gone and tipped my hand. For half a second I had you thinking that I was actually willing to lend legitimacy to the Easter Bunny, such that if I ever became Pope (which, when I was a really young child, was still a possibility) I’d be willing to spend large chunks of my free time lobbying political leaders to seek common ground between us in the mainstream and the deranged psychopaths who perpetrate this annual farce of Bunny worship.

Imagine what you have to get your head around to believe in the Easter Bunny: a large (one assumes, given all the booty delivered) rabbit hops around and somehow penetrates through the several layers of security around your home, (via, what, magic?), and then farts out little brown eggs into a basket.

And here’s what I find most troubling: you allow your children to consume the little brown pellets they find.

Don’t you see the ridiculousness of this?

Sometimes, I worry for you and your decision making skills.