My colleague Darren was explaining, with the measured patience of a man who has explained this same thing perhaps forty times, why we needed to add a seventh column to a spreadsheet that

So there I was in the Safeway checkout line, not doing anything particularly noteworthy, holding a bag of pre-washed arugula I almost assuredly did not need, when the man ahead of me started

There’s a kid at the next table in this coffee shop, maybe eleven or twelve years old, and he’s doing that thing where he cycles between three apps on his phone

The guy at the auto parts store was trying to help my friend Dave, truly he was, but what he kept doing was pulling out this enormous three-ring binder, the kind with the

The guy ahead of me at the hardware store was buying a single hinge. Just one. Brass, standard size, nothing remarkable about it. And he was asking the clerk, with what I can