Danny Taylor: Skinny Guy Thinking it Through

In college, I belonged to a mentoring group, and once a semester, our mentor would invite us to his house for a whole weekend of home-cooked meals and a crash course in some form of character development. When we had downtime on those weekends, we would take long walks through the cemetery that lay across the street from his house. It was only creepy during the twilight hours when day became night and an eerie fog fell among the tombstones. We would meander through the park, inventing stories about those who lay beneath our feet. Faceless names etched in stone. That's all they were to us. Not unlike those who appear on a family tree. I know my parents. I knew my grandparents. At the very least, I met two of my great-grandparents. All the rest, going to the Mayflower in one direction and the Irish Potato Famine in another, are nothing more than faceless names branching out in too many directions to count. While I know the character of my parents and the stories of my grandparents, t...

For a brief moment early in my married life, I worked at a shoe store. My boss was a very even-keel kind of guy. He was jovial; “merry,” some might say. Only once did I see him really upset and it was over—of all things—a receipt.   Because random Thursdays in February don’t see a lot of foot traffic, it was a rather slow day in the store. So to test us, he casually dropped a paper receipt right in the main aisle—a small piece of trash visible from any angle in the store. Then he watched. Over the course of an 8-hour shift, as many as six different employees simply walked right over that receipt. We weren’t assisting customers or addressing some emergency. We were just tending a store that didn’t really need tending. Later that night, the boss laid into us for ignoring that small piece of trash. Broadly, it reflected a store that was unclean and unkempt. Narrowly, it reflected a retail staff that simply didn’t care.   And why? “It wasn’t my fault.” “I’m not the one who put it ...

Last Saturday, my son went to Homecoming. He didn’t have a date, but he was far from alone. Eight special-ed students got into their suits with sloppily-knotted ties, their glittery dresses and freshly painted nails. They met at Chick-fil-a, throwing back waffle fries and lemonade like it was an open bar. Their parents forced them to pose in a hundred different locations for pictures, and they voiced their objection through smiles and gritted teeth.   We arrived to the venue a good thirty minutes before the dance was to start, while the DJ crew and decorations committee were still setting up. The Northview school administration (second to none in Ohio!) was kind enough to let them in early to take even more pictures. When their patience had run dry and they were no longer willing to stand for even just one more photo op, my son went to the DJ and made the first song request of the night: “Welcome to New York.” While the rest of Northview’s student body was filtering in, Matthew had...

Years ago, my family and I were locked in a virtual escape room with several friends in different parts of the country. In an online place of guaranteed doom, we fruitlessly poured over haphazard clues in an attempt to proceed to the next tier on our way to “freedom.” It wasn’t going well. We were stuck in the first of four levels of riddles knowing we could only ask for help three times; after that, we were on our own.   In the “room” were gifted, intelligent, well-educated professionals. Careful scientists and precise mathematicians assumed the virtual escape room would be rather easy: child's play, in light of all the degrees standing behind our names. Certainly the riddles of the escape room  could not outsmart our vast array of intelligence. Yet here we were, reviewing clues with a fine-tooth comb and uncovering nothing helpful.   Almost as an obnoxious interruption slicing through the intelligent discussion of the well-educated, my daughter—who must have been 8 at t...