According to a survey we conducted during the last US economic recession, 80 percent of respondents felt that their stress levels increased because of the recession, and more than half say that, as a result of that added stress, the intensity level of daily business and family conversations has increased dramatically.
When I entered the eighth grade in 1959, I was given the option to study either Latin or French. I chose French because from what I understood, the French weren’t dead yet. Miss Limply, the school’s French teacher, launched the first day of class by showing a cartoon of the Three Little Pigs. From the …
“Take a look at this!” my mother shouted. “You won’t believe it.” Not knowing what Mom was talking about, I put down the psychology text my neighbor Gary and I were studying (we had a midterm the next day) and the two of us got up from the kitchen table and headed straight to the …
“Is that for the Christmas pageant?” Mr. Mulroney asked as I stuffed a six-foot artificial Christmas tree into the passenger seat of our VW bug. “No,” I answered. “It’s just a little something to dress up my cubicle at school.” “Well,” our neighbor continued, “you can’t get started too early when it comes to the …
Norman Chadwick didn’t mind walking to high school even though it was nine blocks away. He did mind the fact that most of the students who shared his route made fun of his shoes. “Hey, Clodhopper,” the boys would shout as they passed by Norman. “Do you think your shoes are big enough?” Or, if …
One crisp October day as I walked home from school with Rick Eherenfield (my grade-school best friend), he asked me a rather naïve question: “Would you like to go trick-or-treating with me next week?” What a rube! Didn’t he know anything about the finer art of extracting candy from strangers? First of all, it’s a …
In September of 1951, when I headed to grade school for the very first time, my mother made an important decision. Since I was now old enough to travel the bogs, trails, and back alleys of Bellingham, Washington (all in an effort to learn the three Rs of elementary school), I was certainly old enough …
During the month of July, we publish “best of” content. The following article was first published on September 29, 2015. Throughout my teenage years, I worked for my mom and dad painting an eighty-year-old boarding house they had purchased. It was a sprawling, artless, clapboard building that hadn’t been given much attention for decades, so …
Visit the Crucial Skills blog to read Kerry Patterson’s article, Kerrying On: Uncle Vic.
This week my wife and I attended a graduation exercise. I’d rate it just below running naked through an apiary. Don’t get me wrong, the music was lovely. The student speakers were refreshing and on point. But the adult speakers . . . whew. It’s hard enough to listen to hundreds of names of total …
