What most people find festive—a weekend at a beach shack with friends, a boat trip down a river, a crackling bonfire on a summer night—I see as a bleak nightmare to be grimly endured. I...

Who thinks to interview their own mother? As a self-fixated teen, I never imagined that she had an actual personal history. To my young eyes, she was Source of Cash Obsessed With De-Cluttering

I’m a sucker for a man who giggles—not a high-pitched serial-killer sort of giggle, but a lighthearted laugh.

My father is the most genial Midwestern guy imaginable, but for him, disaster lurks around every corner—financial ruin, squandered health, pyramid schemes, airbags failing to deploy—so he tends to use fear as a parenting tool...