September 2, 2025

other laws of physics

1. The first day of school will be beach weather. You’ll gaze longingly from the classroom windows to a parking lot where a lineup of cars—any of which could plot your escape—will stay impotently keyless.

2. After the man driving the postal truck departs from your mailbox, a volume of anticipatory pleasure fills your lungs. You don’t know what it is you are waiting for him to leave there, but each day the well inside of you miraculously fills again.

3. The feeling of wanting to un-know certain scientific facts. For example: a praying mantis is carnivorous, and a tooth cavity is one of the few things a body can’t heal.

4. In nearly every one of your to-do lists, there is a phone call you dread making.

5. When a set of instructions reads “Easily assembles in minutes,” it is a best-case-scenario type of thing. This same principle applies to “wrinkle-free” and and “economy size” and “same great taste.”

6. On a bicycle, you are perennially between the ages of 5 and 12.

7. Wishful thinking is the opposite of what people think it is, “ful” being the operative suffix. Sometimes, when people use this phrase, you want to ask them what the world would look like with wishlessthinking, then watch them blink back, suddenly emptied of things to say.

8. The effects of successfully launching a tiny paper boat into the protected cove of a salty body of water will linger for days or weeks or more. Taking a video will add to these salubrious effects.

9. It doesn’t matter whether the anti-aging emollient really works. What matters is the fine attention you are finally giving to your own lovable face.

10. The tiniest crack in the sidewalk is an ecosystem. When the heart breaks, a new planet comes alive.