The length of the Arizona “audit” of the 2020 election makes me admire those who stole the election. Their thieving was so effective that evidence of it is very, very, very hard to find.

How often when the clouds open do you start to sing, “You and me and rain on the roof”?

The nine-year-old boy skidded to a stop on his bike. He looked up at the rapidly darkening sky with lightning moving in his direction and shouted to his friend, “We are going to die!” After a few moments, he said more softly to no one in particular, “That was a metaphor.”

          As I passed a group of toddlers on the sidewalk after some rain, I heard the teacher calmly state, “It is your choice whether you walk in any puddles. But first think about whether that is a good choice.”

“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is ‘God is crying.’ And if the child asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, ‘Probably because of something you did.’” Jack Handey.

It was a philosopher (or maybe a comedian) who said, “If you want to prepare your child for real life, give her a Where’s Waldo book without any Waldos.”

Heard on the subway: She said with what I took to be a loving smile, “I never said I was a good mother.” The eleven-year-old boy sitting next to her replied, “And I never said you were a good mother.” “I am only being a mother until I can get you out of the house.” “Fine with me. [Pause, then, somewhat anxiously.] But you are always going to keep my room as it is. You aren’t going to make it into a study!”

While crossing the street at a busy intersection, I heard a young man say to a young woman, “Would you rather have your best friend murdered, or . . . .” And it faded away.

After the building collapsed in Surfside near Miami Beach, an official there said, “This doesn’t happen in America. This is a third world phenomenon.” And this makes Florida what?

The news story said that Florida has some of the strictest building codes in the country for the construction of high-rise buildings, but the codes have had lax enforcement. Building codes are regulations, a word that is uttered by some as an epithet. Politicians tout that they have eliminated regulations without making any distinctions among them. As Florida’s building codes indicate, however, regulations are protections. Some protections may not be useful and can be removed, but we might think more about their elimination if we started calling regulations protections. The call for the blanket removal of regulations would seem different if we saw them as the call for the blanket removal of protections.