Families start out, most of the time, with unconditional acceptance of one another. That acceptance starts in childhood and continues into adulthood. Somewhere in there, between childhood and adulthood, the ability to distinguish right versus wrong is born.

Alarm clocks, I felt, were nothing more than a plague rained down by an evil force, possibly even Lucifer himself.

One of the most glorious, yet tragic, things about being human was that, sometimes, you just had to learn things for yourself. Call it a flaw, call it a blessing, call it life. If everyone learned from everyone else’s mistakes, the world would be perfect.