We gotta do something about this frigging swing set,' he said. 'I'm telling you, it's ninety percent of the problem.

She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.

In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute— how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

So dawn goes down today... Nothing gold can stay. -- Robert Frost

Nerd life is just so much better than regular life.

Beware of that monster called 'self-loathing'.