It happened last night.

Leslie and I were walking around a new neighborhood when we strolled past a giant restaurant window with a tall guy in a paper hat standing inside. He was swiping a tiny windshield wiper across a hot black circle and cooking up thin little crepes. Maybe I’m a bit simple but for me this was like watching something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My brain flashbacked to watching little sugar donuts float down Hot Oil Rapids at the supermarket when I was a kid. I also remember my poor kid brother Augustus falling into a chocolate river.

Anyway, we ran inside and ordered a crepe up for snacking. Paper Hat Man stuffed it with strawberries, poured chocolate sauce over it, and asked us the big question: “Would you like a scoop of ice cream on top?” Now, I don’t know where you come from, but where I’m at there’s a local bylaw stipulating that anybody ordering a giant crepe covered in chocolate sauce must say yes to the ice cream. You don’t want to get tossed in the slammer for screwing up dessert.

As you can imagine the creamy sauce-smeared crepe was deliciouser than delicious. It got me thinking that adding a scoop of ice cream — or a la moding anything — just makes most foods much better:

1. Pie. The classic. Apple pie without ice cream is just a hot and sticky mess. You need that ice cream to balance the flavors and mess your teeth up with hot and cold sensitivity. Word to your molars.

2. A glass of Coke. Turn that boring cup of fizz into an ice cream sundae with just one scoop. Let the vanilla scoop melt and swirl into bubbly creamy sips. If you’ve enjoyed a Coke Float before then you’ve lived a good life, my friend.

3. Waffles. Okay, now we’re back in the Big Pastry Family. (Other members include pancakes and funnel cakes.) When you eat waffles a la mode make sure to let the ice cream soak into all those little squares. When you manage to add ice cream to breakfast you are officially the Champion of Breakfast.

4. Something weird that none of us have tried before but is probably delicious. Do you add ice cream to brownies, spaghetti, or maybe pineapple pizza? Hey, we’re not judging. No, we just want to learn from you. Because all we know is the  world of a la moding has no limits and sometimes off-the-wall ideas go a long way.

5. Birthday cake. There’s something indescribably delicious about the texture of warm-n-spongy-icing-smeared cake smushed together with freezing cold melty vanilla ice cream in your mouth. This is truly the Dream Team of tastes.

Yes, adding a scoop of ice cream to food makes it that much better.  So listen up boys and listen up girls. Let’s all hold hands and just a la mode the world.

AWESOME!

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Here comes the rain.

Black clouds cover the sky before jumbo drops start pounding down all around you. Drenching clothes, splashing windows, everyone runs for cover with wet cheeks and rain hair.

And when giant cracks of lightning suddenly splinter the sky and fill everything with eyeball-searing flashes of bright white, it’s like holy cow. Did you see that?

The moment after the lightning is a little stomach flip of anticipation as you wait for the bass-roaring boom of thunder to land with a bang all around you. How big will it be? How far away was the lightning?

It’s completely humbling to see the world suddenly stop while Mother Nature has a screaming fit. When nothing matters except the storm you’re forced to soak into the zone. Hands tightly grip steering wheels, crowds huddle on porches, and we all stare out raindrop-streaked windows watching it all come down.

AWESOME!

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Picture this.

You’re biking down the leaf-slicked sidestreets of your hometown when you suddenly lose your balance and fly head first over the handlebars straight into the curb. You smack it hard and are left lying in a twisted mess of bike chains and bloody legs.

But then! Just as the shock is setting in and you start getting your bearings, the clouds above you suddenly part and a giant hand reaches down from the heavens and picks you up and sets you on your feet. Then the hand zooms away and you’re left standing in the middle of the road all dazed and confused.

That’s what I picture it must have felt like to the upside-down beetle I flipped back over the other day. Yes, he was just lying on his back like a fool, arms and legs frantically pawing the air in a terrible attempt to flip over. Well I flicked him a bit and he flipped over before scampering away to safety.

Hey, sometimes insects just need our help.

Next time you release a fly from its Between-Sliding-Glass-Doors Prison or let a bumblebee banging its skull against your bedroom window buzz away, just stop to enjoy the moment of helping a fellow living thing out. After all, we’re all sharing the same planet, we’re all sharing the same sun, and it’s great helping an insect do something, so it can get its doing something done.

AWESOME!

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I love burritos.

Wrap a chewy tortilla around a slopful of sticky beans, blackened chicken, and creamy guacamole and that’s a pretty fine lunch. Hey, squirt some sour cream in there, sprinkle grated cheese, and splat some salsa on and you just made it better.

Burritos are so delicious that I eat them as fast as possible. I don’t talk, I don’t blink, and I don’t breathe during my super-fast-super-chomp moments of gobbling down the goods. By the end I’m a heavy breathing mess with salsa streaks down my chin, rogue tin foil scraps on my shirt, and sweat dripping down my forehead.

I know it sounds like a pretty picture but the truth is I start filling with regret at this point. After all, I mean — I probably just parted with eight or nine bucks and the five-minute chowdown doesn’t seem worth the fat lump sitting my stomach. It’s a thousand calories for five minutes of tastiness. Somehow the math just doesn’t add up.

But that’s what makes it so great when a Burrito Ghost joins me about two hours later in the form of a deep burp  from 20,000 leagues deep in my stomach. Suddenly splashy scents of chopped tomatoes, cilantro-sprinkled rice, and spicy salsa join me for a brief reminder of the World’s Most Delicious Lunch.

Burgers, bruschetta, garlic bread — it doesn’t matter. Those flavor memories combine to form some serious meal nostalgia.

Oh sure, your snobby friends may say it’s disgusting.

But we all know it’s

AWESOME!

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You just sounded like a pig.

AWESOME!

It’s like throat glue.

After you finish scraping the chocolate icing off the plate and fingering up every last crumb, it suddenly hits you that your entire face and mouth is smeared with the brown and pasty. Molars have new chocolate fillings, lips are smeared with sugary icing, and your whole throat is coated in a thin layer of the moist and delicious dessert.

Lean back on your creaky kitchen chair and feel the brown sugary molecules filling every crack and corner of your mouth. Rub your tongue around, close your eyes, and maybe swish your spit around for a l’il bit of homemade chocolate pudding.

And then get ready.

Because now it’s time to chug.

Pour a glass of ice-cold milk and send that White Rushing River screaming down your throat. Feel the cold rip into your cheeks and teeth and let those creamy rapids wash all the guilt away.

AWESOME!

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Welcome to the place where nobody knows your name.

1. The Boring Party. You’re watching Saturday Night Live on the couch or hanging by the punch table at prom while everyone else dances up a sweat to The Power, Informer, or Pump Up The Jam across the room. When that other guy plops on the couch or your fellow nerd in a math-themed T-shirt pulls up for a handful of chips, you know you just met your conversation buddy for the next hour.

2. The Wrong Age. Dragged to mom’s book club because the babysitter cancelled last minute, you were expecting a warm cup of grape juice and four boring hours in someone’s rocking-chair and doily-filled living room. But then another misplaced kid arrives, too! Since they also have no intention of discussing underlying themes of lust in The Handmaid’s Tale, you bond for an afternoon full of new toys and maybe The Neverending Story on TV.

3. The Office Social. You’re the new guy in accounts payable at the quarterly meeting or the fresh-faced college grad in a roomful of old farts. Since you don’t know anyone else it’s great when someone in the same boat swims up to you near the empty chairs at the back. Neither of you know anything so you get to figure it out together.

Yes, there’s something sweet about becoming friends with the other guy who doesn’t know anyone here. Sure, maybe circumstances threw your friendship together but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Life is short, delicate, and fragile and some insta-bonding is good for the soul. Use all your old jokes, be a new you, and enjoy those short and simple moments with someone you’ve never seen before.

AWESOME!

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There’s always one.

It’s the lady who’s been there since the war with glasses perched on her nose and the framed photo of her kids from twenty years ago on her desk. Sure, she might have gray hair, she might have wrinkles, but nobody’s better at keeping this place together.

First of all, she’s mind-spinningly fast when it comes to simple tasks that trip people up like double-sided photocopying while filling the legal-sized paper tray or figuring out which key belongs to this stupid locked filing cabinet.

She keeps the top brass organized so well that it usually becomes a joke with lines like: “We’d be lost without Cindy!”, “Sam runs this place!”, or “If Barb goes on vacation, it would be chaos!”

These lines are usually funny until Barb goes on vacation. And it is chaos. That’s when the lunch meeting has no lunch, there’s no laptop for the big presentation, and the expense reports don’t get filed because a haystack of crinkly receipts are just piling up on her desk.

Now apparently the origin of secretary comes from our great-grandpals in the 1300s who referred to them as “one trusted with private or secret matters.” These days not much has changed as they’re often the only ones with access to the goods to get things done.

Today we say thanks to that secretary who actually runs things around here.

You make our school, and office, and life

AWESOME!

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AWESOME!

Check out my new book on resilience You Are Awesome

Way to cut out the middleman.

AWESOME!

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