You know the movie The Notebook? There’s a scene where Allie’s mother is worried about the romance developing between Allie and Noah. Everyone is arguing, and then Allie’s father quietly offers this wonderful piece of wisdom: “It’s just summer love.”

I say that line to my wife, Cori, all the time. There’s something about the way he says it, like “summer love” is its own category of human experience. It’s not quite love. Maybe it’s summer infatuation. But it feels enormous when you’re inside of it, and almost everyone has a story about it.

This is mine. Except mine has a strange ending.

It was the late 1990s, and I was fifteen or sixteen years old. My family took a short trip from Medina, Ohio, to Jellystone Park, a campground about forty-five minutes from our house. Yes, it was named after the home of Yogi Bear from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And boy, what a treat.

I was there with my mom, brother and my cousins, and we were having a great time.

A day or two after we arrived, I noticed another campsite just down the road from ours. And that’s where I saw her.

Blond hair, blue eyes, great smile. Her name was Jessica.

The moment I saw her, it felt like a lightning bolt. And I swear, she looked at me the same way. Suddenly, everything else around me became like the teacher from Charlie Brown. Just noises in the background. Wah, wah, wah. From that moment on, nothing else mattered except finding another excuse to spend time with Jessica.

And that’s what we did the whole trip. We went swimming. We hung out in this little building near the campground that had a few arcade games. We took walks and tried to steal every possible moment together.

One evening, we took a long walk through the campground and had our first kiss. I didn’t understand it in the way I do now, but even then, I knew the moment was special.

I also knew it was going to end...

Jessica lived in Michigan. I lived in Ohio. And (again) this was the late 1990s. People were barely using text messages, social media wasn’t a thing and AOL Instant Messenger was just starting. That summer, you could write a letter, or you could call long distance and hope your parents didn’t lose their minds when the phone bill arrived.

So, before we left the campground, Jessica and I made a promise that we would write to each other. We weren’t promising that our relationship would last forever. We just wanted to stay connected.

A few weeks later, back at my home in Medina, a letter arrived.

Jessica had kept her promise.

She told me about her school and what was happening in her life. She wrote about how much she enjoyed meeting me. It was thoughtful, sincere, and surprisingly mature.

I read it and thought, “This is so cool. I’ll write back tomorrow.”

Then tomorrow came, and I forgot.

A few more days passed. Then a few weeks. Eventually, so much time had passed that I convinced myself writing back would only make things worse. She would know I had forgotten. She would know her letter had been sitting there. She might think I didn’t care.

So, I never wrote her back.

And that’s the strangely unsatisfying ending to this story.

I think many of us live out endings like that, moments when we should have been a little bit better, but weren’t.

It wasn’t meant to be hurtful, but it was pretty crummy of me.

But I think that summer I think I learned something. I learned the difference between what it takes to be in “summer love” and what vulnerability and courage look like when you’re mature enough to pursue a real relationship that is made for all seasons.

And I have Jessica to thank for that. For leading by example when I fell short.

Some people spend their whole lives trying to figure out what story they want to tell.

Glynn Washington has spent a good part of his trying to figure out what stories have done to him.

Glynn is the creator and host of the public radio phenomenon Snap Judgment. Years ago, before I knew where any of my own storytelling would lead, one of my stories aired on his show.

So when we finally sat down together, I wanted to start at the beginning.

Not the beginning of Snap Judgment. The beginning of Glynn and story…

Glynn: “As a child, I was a speed reader. Maybe ten seconds a page. I read The Hobbit and I was so furious that it was over, that I was done, that I immediately started trying to slow myself down as I reread that book again. And I don’t speed read anymore because of The Hobbit and the love that I had for being in that world and not wanting to leave it.”

But there was another kind of storytelling happening around him too.

Glynn: “I grew up in a fundamentalist Jesus cult that preached that the world was coming to an end imminently. It was end of days, apocalyptic, white supremacist, all sorts of stuff. And what I understood later was the power of those images was the power of fear and the power of leveraging someone’s imagination against them. I saw the power of story deployed against me. I saw the power of story fill the pews every week. Even as the rhetoric became increasingly unhinged, people were still there, and they were there because of the story.”

That stayed with me. Because Glynn doesn’t talk about story as something automatically noble.

He talks about it as power.

Glynn: “The thing that sticks out is the malleability of story. Does story in and of itself have a quality, or is it just a tool? There’s lots of storytellers out there, and from my perspective, the mal-intent ones are winning. What we’re having right now is a crisis of empathy. And a crisis of empathy is a failure to see the world through someone else’s eyes, an inability to do so. And the only tool that I know to let you do that is story.”

From there, I wanted to know how someone with that relationship to story actually found his way into radio.

The answer was not a straight line.

Glynn: “I ended up in Japan for a few years. I did go to law school. I briefly worked for the State Department in Malaysia. I worked for a big accounting firm, but they had to fire me pretty quick. Then I moved to California and I was running nonprofits for some time. And then I heard about a radio contest. That kind of started me on my road to Snap Judgment.”

Then came the break. Sort of.

Glynn: “I had a bunch of darts at the board for various things. Screenwriting and novel writing and all this stuff. What happened was I entered something called the Public Radio Talent Quest. I found out about it on an actual iPod. Turned out the deadline was the next day, so I made a little tape. I ended up being one of ten finalists.”

Week after week, people were eliminated.

And eventually Glynn found himself battling another storyteller named Al Letson.

Glynn: “Every week he was coming up with this hot stuff and I’d try to battle him back. The next week he hit me again. And I thank my lucky stars, at the end of it they decided to pick two winners instead of one. It was me and this guy Al Letson, who went on to become the host of Reveal. At the time, my biggest rival. Now one of my closest friends.”

At this point. I was curious if there was a story about his own life he still hadn’t figured out.

Glynn: “A lot of the questions in my own life came from extensions of my parents’ questions that they had. I thought, what in the world was that whole insane childhood of mine about? But it was about people who were doing the best they could, trying to answer the big questions themselves and maybe coming up short. But we all come up short.”

He wasn’t finished with that story yet.

Glynn: “I know some of the negative aspects of it, but there were gifts. You build a lot of resilience growing up in a cult. There’s a lot of skills that can come up from that situation. And I’m really just trying to appreciate them more instead of running away from that story in some way. I want to embrace it, and I want to embrace them while I still can. Look, life is short. You better close these circles while you still can. Do it now. Talk to them in a different way. Even if you gotta put aside a lot of hostility, a lot of anger, a lot of things. Put that nonsense aside.”

So, my takeaway from our chat? So many things.

But story is a beautifully strange thing, isn’t it?

Glynn made it clear how story can be used for the wrong things, how it can shape people, mislead them, even harm them in terrible ways.

But he also made it just as clear that when we choose to use it for the right things, it becomes something else entirely.

Not just a tool for understanding the world and each other more deeply, but maybe even a way to move beyond the moments where we’ve been misled or taken advantage of and, if we’re lucky, finally a tool to help us understand ourselves.

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In the late 1980s, I was obsessed with a short French film called The Red Balloon.

My mom had gotten me the VHS because she wanted me to be more worldly. I knew nothing about its artistic significance. I didn’t know it had been made in 1956 or won an Oscar. I just knew the film memorized me when I watched it.

It was about a little boy who finds a red balloon that seems to have a mind of its own. It follows him through the streets of Paris like a friend.

And at 4 years old, I had one major takeaway...

Red balloons might have magic powers.

A couple years later, I would have to put that theory to the test.

Original Art by Lux Art XD

My buddy Justin was one of my best friends. He had red hair that fell into his eyes and this strangely sophisticated energy for a kid in kindergarten. He was kind, smart, complimentary. While the rest of us boys were slowly becoming little jerks, Justin somehow seemed above it.

We also played soccer together. I was the striker. Justin played defense. And, not to brag, I was incredible. But besides the love of the beautiful game, I had another incentive. Every game my grandfather promised me one crunchy Taco Bell taco for every goal I scored, so naturally I was out there playing like my financial future depended on it.

Nine goals. Ten goals. Twelve goals.

And every time I scored, the first kid running over to celebrate with me by my side was Justin.

Then one afternoon, my mom was driving me to a game when she looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“Pumpkin,” she said, “I need to tell you something about Justin. His dad passed away.”

I remember trying to understand what that even meant. A dad dying seemed impossible to me then. I kept thinking about Justin. Was he scared? Did he miss talking to his dad? Was his dad somewhere missing him too?

I wanted to fix it.

After the game, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Red Balloon.

Then it clicked.

“Mom, can you get me a red balloon?”

She asked why.

“Well, if I need to get a message to Justin’s dad in heaven, I probably need something that can get it up there.”

To her credit, my mom didn’t blink. She drove me to the party store, and moments later, we arrived back home with a balloon full of helium and a very small piece of paper so the note wouldn’t weigh it down.

I wrote as small as I could.

I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but I remember the message:

Sorry you died. Hope heaven is great. Justin is a great kid. You don’t have to worry.

I folded the paper into the tiniest square I could, tied it to the string, and my mom opened the window.

I let go.

The balloon rose above the house, then over the roof, then higher and higher until eventually I couldn’t see it anymore.

And suddenly I felt this enormous sense of relief.

The message had been sent.

So, I did the only logical thing left to do.

I went downstairs, popped The Red Balloon into the VCR, and started thinking about the next time I would see Justin.

I couldn’t wait to tell him the good news.

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Growing up, I made an unfair promise to myself. I promised I would never get divorced.

Now, the odds were already against me, but when my first marriage ended, it was painful. I had never experienced anything like that, and my number one priority was making sure my daughter, who was one at the time, was okay.

And I think we did a pretty good job.

But after everything I went through, I made another promise to myself.

This time…to never get married again.

And then Cori came along, and she swept me off my feet. She never spoke a lot. But when she did say something, it was like a one-liner. Like movie star charm.

And then there were all these little moments when I knew it was her.

We took a road trip across state lines for a frozen yogurt spot that used to be in Ohio but wasn’t here anymore. So, naturally, we drove all the way to Michigan for it.

One night in the first couple months of dating, we ended up in the emergency room. She sat right by my side. That same night, the cardiologist came in and said, “Hey, listen, you’re just having a panic attack.”

She held my hand and smiled without judgement.

I knew it was her then, too.

But what about that promise? To never get married again. What was I supposed to do?

I needed some kind of a test.

Something that could tell me with absolute certainty whether or not I should pursue this relationship.

And then it hit me.

The door test…

See, it started as a one-person show, written and performed by Chazz Palminteri, then it became a movie, A Bronx Tale.

In this movie, a young man named C (short for Calogero) tells Sonny (a mob boss and mentor) that he thinks he may have met one of the great women in his life. And Sonny tells C there’s only one way to find out for sure.

He says, “The door test.”

C says, “What?”

Sonny says, “Here’s how it works...

You walk your date to the passenger side of the car. You unlock the car door, you open it for her, and you let her get inside. Then you close the door, and you walk around the back of the car. And as you’re walking toward the driver’s side, you watch through that rear window, and if she reaches across the car and unlocks your door for you, she’s one of the great ones. But if she just sits there and waits, you dump her right there on the spot.”

C is shocked, and so was I when I watched this movie.

But now, here I am in present day, grappling with the fact that it might be ridiculous to base this major life decision on a scene from a movie.

But if I’m being honest with you, it felt like exactly the kind of reassurance I needed.

So, one night, we’re on a date. Cori and I finish dinner, and we’re walking through the parking lot toward the car. I knew it was time.

I walked her to the passenger side. I unlocked the door. I opened it for her. She sat down. I closed the door. I started walking around the back of the car.

And suddenly, everything seemed to move in slow motion.

I look through that rear window, and Cori’s leaning across the center console. I can see the streetlight shining through the window. She’s just glowing. And then she reaches over and unlocks my door.

I swear to you, I jump five feet into the air.

“Yeah!”

I get into the driver’s seat, and I’m just looking at her.

She says, “What’s that look for?”

I said, “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

That night, on the drive home, I made one final promise to myself:

That I was done with promises and tests. I was done trying to control everything.

Because without all of that stuff that happened before, I wouldn’t have been sitting in the car beside one of the great ones.

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Both are strange, painful, but beautiful rituals.

Trying to do anything outdoors in August is not for the faint of heart. A rib burnoff consists of lots of amazing food, but usually on a 90-degree, humid day, with giant men sweating over barbecue pits and slathering ribs with tangy sauces.

You’re probably looking at $20 for three bones of ribs, a warm soda, and an unintended sunburn, all while standing on an asphalt slab with the echoes of a Styx tribute band playing in the background.

Respect to those who participate and endure, but it’s not my cup of tea.

Then there’s the county fair.

It’s still hot, only this time there are animals, food, rides, and everything else. Is it potentially a giant petri dish of germs and contagions? Yes. But the only thing I ever "caught" from time at a fair is nostalgia. Truly, there’s still something magical about it.

Growing up, my childhood fair was the Medina County Fair. When I think of it, close my eyes, and breathe in, the first thing that comes to mind is not manure.

It’s Cool Water cologne.

This may sound strange at first. But let me explain...

For me, the fair is almost like a collective memory machine. Thousands of lives and memories converge in one place for a few days at the end of summer.

But my experience being there, if I am being honest, was about trying to be noticed.

I remember being a teenager who had already been on summer break long enough to begin missing the social ecosystem of school. My friends and I would scheme, coordinate and convince our parents to drop us off for an hour or two.

The point was to meet for a few moments and establish a kind of unspoken social pact before we began walking the fairgrounds in what looked like aimless circles. But it was true performance art.

Teenage roaming designed to appear casual, like we had just happened to be there, drifting through with no agenda at all. But underneath it, there was a very clear strategy of being seen.

Now, each one of us had their own goals.

Me?

I was hoping to be seen by someone who might become my future girlfriend during the upcoming school year, as if the entire fair were a kind of audition and I was trying out for the role.

Maybe I would catch her eye while we passed each other near the lemonade stand. Maybe she would smile. Maybe that tiny moment would increase my chances of getting a note from her in the hallway once school started.

Maybe her note would start with:

“Hey, what’s up? Nothing much here.”

Except not with the word “up,” but a little arrow pointing upward and a heart that followed.

And if one received a heart, that meant something.

See, it was a simple system.

At that age, romance was built almost entirely out of small signals.

A glance. A smile. A carefully timed walk past someone.

And if you were lucky, maybe an awkward phone call later.

But the fair was the perfect place to spark the domino effect of that system.

Tipping that first domino, however, meant deep preparation before attending.

There was DEP hair gel. There were carefully selected clothes. And there were samples of a popular cologne called '“Cool Water” that I had collected from the woman that sprayed perfume at the mall.

Cool Water had this majestic smell. It somehow smelled like the ocean, adulthood, and a sports car I didn’t own.

To me, it represented sophistication.

I would arrive at the fair smelling like I had just stepped off a yacht, even though my mother had dropped me off near the entrance in the family minivan.

Then my friends and I would meet, coordinate, and the ritual would begin.

It’s funny, these memories are hilarious to me now because an entire social ecosystem was unfolding around us.

There were families and farmers and generations of tradition. There were livestock competitions, music, food stands, and there was a form of beauty everywhere. There were thousands of imperfect stories moving past one another in the summer heat.

As a teenager, I barely noticed any of it.

I could only smell my own Cool Water cologne and imagine finding the kind of love John Cusack found in the movie Say Anything.

But maybe that is what the fair gives each of us.

It gives us the same place, but it allows us to experience it through whatever season of life we happen to be in.

And something must have worked during my “Cool Water phase,” because I ended up marrying the most amazing gal in town later in life.

Now when I return as an adult with kids of my own, I try to notice more than I did back then.

I try to focus on the people, traditions, and stories around me rather than remaining trapped inside my own small world.

But even now, every once in a while, somewhere between the food stands and the games, I swear I can still smell Cool Water.

Maybe this year, if you go to your County Fair, you will too...

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I wrote this short story as if the whole debate were unfolding inside a courtroom drama.

I can see it now...

The prosecution would present its case against Hallmark movies.

Then, I would stand up and deliver the closing argument for the defense...

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

You’ve heard the prosecution. They argue that Hallmark movies create a false world. That they’re unrealistic, repetitive, and part of the brain rot of modern media. They say we should stop watching them and spend our time on stories that are more grounded in reality.

I understand that argument.

But here’s my final plea…

We know exactly what Hallmark movies are don’t we?

We laugh at them. We’ve built entire meme cultures around them.

The city slicker returns home.
The old flame reappears.
The Christmas festival needs saving.

It’s like a hot chocolate on a cold night.

But we’ve seen the formula again and again.

So why do millions of people keep watching?

The prosecution assumes we can’t curate our own media diet. That we can’t watch the news, appreciate great art, and still enjoy a Hallmark movie.

That may be true of some. I reject the notion that this applies to the majority.

We’re more complicated than that. Aren’t we?

I live in Medina, Ohio, a small town that feels a little like Stars Hollow, the fictional town from Gilmore Girls. (Thanks to my wife, Cori, for introducing me to this series.)

There’s a magical feeling that comes with walking around Medina’s Public Square. The markets. The shops. Old friends connecting. The people taking a break on a lazy afternoon, sitting on a park bench and watching the wind move through the trees that hover above.

The prosecution claims that places like that aren’t real. That they only exist in the mind and paintings of Normal Rockwell.

I’m here to tell you Hallmark towns exist. Because I live in one.

Now, I’m not completely blind. It’s not perfect. No town is.

But, when you live in a place like I do, there are moments when it feels like you’ve actually stepped into one of those movies.

Even with predictable plots and cheesy dialogue, these movies remind us what matters.

Community.
Connection.
Love.

The things we spend our lives chasing often pale in comparison to those simple things.

The prosecution says these stories repeat themselves.

Of course they do.

But don’t our greatest traditions do the same?

We pray the same prayers.
We celebrate the same holidays.
We return to the same rituals.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury let’s be clear. Repetition isn’t always a flaw.

Sometimes it’s how we remember what’s important.

In 2026, we continue to be surrounded by clickbait headlines, outrage, directionless opinions, and endless notifications every hour of every day.

I submit to you that we don’t need more reminders that the world is broken.

In fact, we need balance.

Stories that help us breathe.

Stories that remind us kindness still exists.

Stories that leave us with hope.

And maybe that’s exactly why Hallmark movies matter.

Because every once in a while, it’s good to spend two hours in a world that reminds us the one we’re trying to build is still possible.

I rest my case.

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Maybe that sounds heavy, but I think once you reach a certain age, you start noticing it more. The names in the headlines hit differently. An actor you grew up watching. A musician who scored some chapter of your life. Someone who felt eternal because they lived inside your memories, even though you never actually knew them.

But that kind of grief is different. It’s the kind you can feel from a distance.

Then there is the other kind.

The kind that doesn’t trend.

The kind that shows up at your own front door.

Many of you know, in the Christian tradition, Ash Wednesday begins Lent. Ashes are pressed onto your forehead in the shape of a cross, and you hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is one of those rare days that does not let you look away from the truth.

We are physically here.

And one day, we won’t be.

Not too long before this past Ash Wednesday, I stood at my uncle’s funeral. His name was Kris Tetrick. He was an entrepreneur, a Cleveland firefighter for decades, and the kind of man who spent his life running toward things most of us would run away from.

A few years before he passed, his son, and my cousin, Johnny Tetrick, also a Cleveland firefighter, died tragically in the line of duty. To me and my other cousins, Johnny was a superhero.

He still is.

Two men from the same family.

Two men who ran toward danger.

Two men who loved people well.

Their stories are not fully mine to tell. Not really. Not properly. 7 minutes on a podcast, a short column in the paper, or a short story feature on NPR would not even begin to hold their stories.

But I loved them and admired them.

At my Uncle’s funeral, I was asked to be a pallbearer.

I said yes.

And there I was, standing with one of my cousins and a group of Cleveland firefighters, helping carry my uncle’s casket. First to the hearse. Then later to the gravesite. Then lowering him into the ground.

And all I could think was, wait a second.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, I was working construction for my Uncle Kris. I was a young kid, a grunt on his crew, cleaning up job sites, mopping floors, doing work I did not always want to do.

But he was teaching me.

He was showing me what it meant to work hard, to build something, to carry yourself like a honorable man in this world.

Back then, he seemed full of power and vision and charisma and strength.

And now, all these years later, I was helping carry his body back to the earth.

What an unbelievable honor it is to help shepherd the bodies that helped raise us.

Through all that emotional fog, an old memory came back to me. When I was twelve years old, I wrote a question down for my teacher. She handed it back and said, “I’ll never be able to answer this for you, but one day you’ll know.”

The question was this:

If my brain is what makes me think and feel and remember, then when my brain stops working, do I just stop too? Like a candle when the wax is gone and the flame cannot keep burning?

Or is my brain more like a radio?

And the real me, the thinking, loving, laughing, remembering part of me, is something the brain picks up and plays?

If the radio breaks down, maybe the music stops here.

But does the music still exist somewhere else?

I think my teacher was right.

Maybe that is one of those questions we only get to know eventually.

As the bagpipes played “Amazing Grace” and I walked away from the burial site, I still did not know the answer.

But for the first time in my life, I felt closer to it.

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If you take yourself back to being five, six, seven, maybe eight years old, you probably remember that feeling. The dramatic certainty that you were done with this house. I was at the ripe old age of five when I felt it. Very Macaulay Culkin. Very Home Alone. Except I never wished my family would disappear, I just had one of those childhood moments that went too far.

The whole thing started with GI Joe.

My mom and I were in a serious debate about whether I should be allowed to watch it. I wanted to watch it badly. All my friends had the lunchboxes, the action figures, the whole thing. But my mom drew the line. She said I wasn’t watching a show that used guns and modern warfare.

I pushed back with the strongest argument I had.

“It’s almost 1990,” I said. “Everyone watches it.”

Her answer was simple.

“You’re not everybody else.”

I didn’t understand the logic. She let me watch He-Man. Prince Adam turns into a guy with a giant sword and fights Skeletor. That felt like violence to me. But she broke it down. He-Man might use a sword, but it wasn’t modern warfare. It wasn’t guns. It wasn’t the same thing.

Looking back, she was making a pretty good argument.

But I was still mad.

At some point, internally at least, I made my decision. If that was how things were going to be, then she would not be seeing me around anymore. I was out of there. She would miss me. She would rue the day she didn’t let me watch GI Joe.

I was fully committed emotionally.

The problem was, I had no plan…

I had a bike. That was it.

So when my mom wasn’t looking, I snuck into the fridge and grabbed an apple. Then I found those orange peanut butter cheese crackers that do not taste like cheese but are somehow incredible. I put them into a bandana like I had seen on TV, found a stick in the backyard, tied it all together, grabbed a juice box, and slung the whole thing over my shoulder.

Then I hopped on my bike, one hand steering, the other holding my little makeshift bindle, and rolled down the driveway. I looked back once at the house and prepared to enter the unknown.

Now, if you were there, you may have seen a safe suburban neighborhood in Medina, Ohio.

I saw a jungle.

I mean where would I eat? Who would make grilled cheese the way my mom did? Where would I sleep? What about my books? What about the stuffed animals I still secretly played with?

Did I even have money?

Was I supposed to get a job at five?

I stood at the end of the driveway staring into the big world, and my courage evaporated. Then I looked back at the house and saw my mom standing in the window.

I felt embarrassed. Sad. Defeated.

But I couldn’t show her that.

So I marched the bike back into the garage, threw the bandana sack on the ground, walked inside, and headed straight up the stairs.

My mom said, “Hey, Aaron.”

I didn’t answer. I was performing heartbreak.

She said again, “Aaron.”

“Yes, Mom?”

“I’m glad you’re home.”

I didn’t smile on my face, but I smiled in my heart.

“Me too.”

And the thing I’m most grateful for now is this: when I couldn’t run away, my mom kept the door open.

When I ran away, she let me come home.

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1. A story about a boy I met in elementary school

2. A story about a man on the verge of fulfilling a spiritual path

3. A short segment about how they are together.

Part 1

There are some people we only know for a small season, but for reasons we may never fully understand, they stay with us. They become lodged somewhere in memory, not because we knew them forever, but because they left an impression that outlasted the actual relationship.

For me, one of those people was a boy named Chris. I met him in elementary school, and even then, through my young eyes, he seemed ahead of the curve. He had a kind of natural cool that could not be manufactured. It was not the kind of cool that comes from trying to be noticed.

It was the kind that comes from not caring whether anyone notices at all…

Chris had Airwalks before anyone had Airwalks. He had Vans before anyone had Vans. He wore a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt before I even knew Smashing Pumpkins was a band.

In fact, I thought the shirt was about someone who really hated Halloween.

When I asked him about the shirt, he told me, and in his own quiet way, opened a door for me into alternative rock music.

He introduced me to Billy Corgan, to Siamese Dream, to a whole sound and style I had not yet encountered. I remember going to his house and seeing what I think was a Jackson guitar. I think he had a killer Jackson guitar!

I remember thinking he had this wild intellect, like he carried 100-year-old wisdom inside a third-grade brain.

And then, life moved on. Different grades. Different circles. Different paths. Chris and I drifted into separate lives, and I had not spoken to him in person since childhood.

Still, every time I walked into a record store and saw Siamese Dream on vinyl, or heard “Tonight, Tonight” playing somewhere, I thought of him.

Part 2

In September of 2011, a young man walked into a Byzantine Catholic church in downtown Cleveland. He was looking for a quiet place to meditate. He had been searching for some time, trying to understand his purpose and his destiny. Although he had been baptized Catholic, he was not practicing the faith at the time. He had been following an East Indian form of mindfulness, trying to find peace through meditation. On that particular day, the church happened to be open, and a young priest happened to be inside cleaning before its reopening.

The young man sat there in silence for about 30 minutes. As he meditated, his eyes became fixed on an image of Mary. When he got up to leave, the priest’s mother stopped him and told him it was September 8, the Nativity of Mary. She explained that Mary gathers lost souls and brings them back to her son. Then she looked at him and said, “I think you’re supposed to be here.”

Two weeks later, his mother brought him to a Thomas Merton seminar. Merton, a Trappist monk and writer, would become another signpost on the young man’s journey. The seminar eventually led him to visit the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

When he arrived there, something in him stirred. He felt immediately drawn to monastic life. The only problem was that he was not yet practicing the Catholic faith, and he knew the Trappists would not let him enter under those conditions. So, on the six-hour drive back to Cleveland, he began imagining another possibility. Maybe they would let him live near the monastery as a janitor. Maybe he could have some kind of quasi-monastic life from the edges.

In 2012, still searching, the young man found himself staying at an ashram in India. One day, a stranger pointed at him and said, “I don’t think this guy should be here.” The words shook him. That night, alone and anxious, he prayed what he later described as the first real prayer of his life: “Please get me through this trip. Please get me through this night.”

He did make it home. But his searching continued, and his meditation practice still felt frustrating. One day, he went on a hike. As he walked, he remembered the monks at Gethsemani chanting the Our Father.

In that memory, a peace came over him. That night, he woke up and prayed the Our Father for three hours. The next day, he returned to the Byzantine church where the whole journey had begun. That return led him into Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and a Good Friday vigil. By Easter, he understood the call…

He was not meant to live near a monastery as a janitor. He was meant to become a Catholic monk.

By 2016, he had entered Gethsemani as a postulant (someone who formally asks to become part of a religious community). In 2021, ten years after walking into that Byzantine church in Cleveland, he made solemn vows.

That young man became Brother Joseph.

Part 3

So how are these two stories connected?

Brother Joseph used to go by another name. When I knew him in elementary school, his name was Chris.

The boy I remembered as effortlessly cool, the kid who introduced me to Smashing Pumpkins, the friend whose memory came back to me every time I heard certain songs, had become a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani. And the funny thing is, when you come from a town like Medina, Ohio, even when you are no longer connected, you somehow remain connected.

My wife, Cori, is friends with Brother Joseph’s sister, Alliey. A few months ago, Alliey reconnected Brother Joseph and me. Since then, we have been emailing.

A true gift.

The thing I can’t get out of my head is the different ways a life can be seen.

There’s the person others remember us to be, filtered through their own prism and a small slice of shared experience.

Then, there’s the person we actually are.

And finally, there’s the person we are destined to be.

It’s almost like we live three truths in one life.

*This episodes includes an adaptation and retelling of Brother Joseph's true story. You can read his original written story⁠ HERE⁠.

*Learn more about the Abbey of Gethsemani at ⁠monks.org⁠

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Sometimes it feels like there are periods of life that are so busy, so overwhelming, that everything is happening all at once. That feeling reminds me of when I used to commute from New Jersey into New York City on New Jersey Transit. I can picture myself sitting on that train and suddenly thinking, “How many people are on trains right now? How many people from across the entire New York metro area are all converging on Manhattan in these trains and buses?”

All of that busyness. All of that humanity. All of those people. And somehow, all of that energy ends up going through just a couple of small tunnels.

It is this feeling of pressure. Everything being pushed through one narrow place. It felt like that when I was on the train, and sometimes, life feels like that too…

Similar to a train, life seems to operate in two modalities. There are moments when you are in motion. Things are going fast. You are heading through a tunnel. There is energy and noise and pressure. And then the train stops.

And there is calm at the train stop.

There are periods where you can breathe, have conversations, and reflect. And then you are back on the train again. At least that is how I have experienced it. Sometimes those busy periods can feel very short, or they can feel like a lifetime. Sometimes those calm periods can feel very short, or they can feel like a lifetime.

And I know some of you right now are reading this and you are in it.

For me, starting at the beginning of this year, I found myself in one of those busy train seasons. All of those train cars trying to go through one tunnel kind of thing. And I have been trying to manage it.

I am not complaining at all. It is just that I know myself. I know my strengths. And logistics are not one of them. There is a reason I have the best wife in the world, who handles a lot of things for me, because I am a disaster logistically. I have people who help with parts of my business from a coordination standpoint because there is so much going on that I had to sort of scale out.

And right around that time, when the new year started and the busyness really started to increase, and my mental capacity and capability started to become challenged, I committed to something.

It was an event I really wanted to do because it had to do with storytelling, education, and creative kids. And it was a great honor.

A woman named Jennifer reached out to me. She was coordinating a program called Children’s Ink, part of Roxboro Elementary School in Cleveland Heights. It is this amazing event built around hundreds of students submitting poetry. Then a handful of kids are selected, and their poems and creative vision are honored.

The kids get to sit in this chair, almost like a throne, uplifting their accomplishment. Then they are paired with creatives, community leaders, influencers, artists, and people making a difference in their field in Northeast Ohio. Those guests go on stage and read the poem out loud in front of the entire auditorium while the writer of the poem, the student, sits there and listens to their work being read in front of their peers, teachers, parents, and community.

It is phenomenal.

I had never done anything like this before, but when I heard about it, I immediately thought, “Yes.”

But you know when your heart says yes, and then your brain kind of follows behind it and says, “Oh gosh, I want to, but…”

That is where I was.

I found myself on that train car of busyness in life, and honestly, it was looking like it was going to be really hard to make this event. I was close to canceling.

Jennifer, who may be reading this now, did not know that.

And not to be overdramatic about it, but I was stuck. Should I cancel? Should I not cancel? Should I cancel? Should I not cancel?

It is weird because I knew it would not be the end of the world. But there was something else at stake for me. I do not even know what it was.

But I know all of us face little moments like that, except they are not really little moments. And sometimes, maybe even often, when facing those decisions, I choose wrong.

But this time, luckily, I talked to my wife. And I prayed.

And at least on this day, I decided to get off the busyness locomotive train that was heading for the pressurized tunnel. I decided to walk through the train station, take a breath, and make my way to Roxboro Elementary School in Cleveland Heights to read a poem.

It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Then I met Kody.

The smile on his face said everything. When it was our turn to go up on stage, Jennifer called us up. Kody sat in that throne where he deserved to sit. Before we walked up, he told me, “I’m a little nervous.”

I said, “You have nothing to be nervous about. This day is about you. And wait until you see the smiles on the people’s faces in the auditorium when they hear your words. You won’t believe it. This is your day.”

We went up on stage. He sat down.

This is Kody’s poem:

Orange Poem

I’m poured orange in a juice glass.
Mmm.
Refreshing orange taste.

I hear a bouncing basketball in the yard.
Children calling me,
“Come and play. Come and play.”

Halloween is the orange-colored time of year.
Leaves turn orange in fall.
Pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns are everywhere.

And Grandma fills jars with homemade marmalade,
bakes a carrot cake with four orange layers.

We go trick-or-treating.
I’m dressed as a tiger with a long tail.
Nixie, the cat, is in a fox costume.

We’ve got candies wrapped in orange foil,
some apricots,
some jelly beans,
and a lot of lollipops are also orange.

Thanks Kody.

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A perfect little bowl of twigs and grass holding bright blue robin eggs that looked almost too vivid to be real.

It’s funny, when I was growing up in Medina, the last thing you’d ever hear me say was, “I want to live in the suburbs.” Now, having boomeranged back, and now living in the Medina suburbs, the last thing you’ll hear me say is that I want to go anywhere else.

Even with our modest backyard, there is something beautiful about the way Medina holds both rural and suburban life together. You can be standing near a sliding glass door with a cup of coffee, looking at a patio set and a patch of grass, and somehow still feel like nature is right there with you.

And there I was, admiring the blue robin eggs two steps outside my back patio. First slowly, then I became involved...

Art by Pete Whitehead

Every morning, I checked on the eggs. I looked out the window before work. I asked the kids if they had seen the robin. Before long, I wasn’t looking at the backyard as a yard anymore. I was looking at it as a little kingdom with threats. Were there crows nearby? Was the weather getting bad? Was some animal lurking around? Where was the mother robin?

Watching her work was something else. She was constant. Flying in and out. Guarding. Gathering. Returning. Watching. There was a kind of fierce motherhood in her that you could feel even through the glass. Then one morning, the eggs hatched, and instead of blue shells, there were three tiny heads, all mouth and motion, lifting themselves out of the nest like one little pulsing bundle of life.

Then came the crows. I was working inside when I heard them. A whole crowd of them, or as I learned, a murder of crows, which suddenly felt like the most accurate name in the English language.

They were loud, chaotic, circling the tree and dive-bombing the nest. And there was the mother robin, completely outnumbered, fighting them off.

I stood there for a second, watching nature do what nature does. Then I opened the sliding glass door. Apparently, I had decided to join nature. I grabbed small sticks and little stones from the yard and started throwing them near the crows to scare them off. I wasn’t trying to hurt them. I was just trying to distract them long enough to give the robin a chance.

For one glorious suburban moment, the robin and I became a crime-fighting duo...

Batman and Robin.

She dove from the sky. I threw pebbles from the lawn. If my neighbors looked out their windows, they would have seen a grown man defending a bird’s nest like the fate of the world depended on it. Eventually, the crows gave up. The robin and I had won.

That night, I went to bed worried. What if they came back? What if something happened while I was asleep? The next morning, I walked out early to check on the nest. Everything was still. The mother robin was gone, so I leaned in a little closer. Too close.

At that exact moment, all three baby robins decided it was time for their first flight. They exploded out of the nest and hit me directly in the face. I stumbled backward with baby birds on my hands, shoulder, and head, trying not to let them fall. I had somehow stuck my face into the exact moment they were leaving home. So, I lifted my hands toward the sky and said, “Fly, children, fly.”

And they did! All three made it. They fluttered into the trees, awkward and alive and free. For a second, I almost cried.

Then the mother robin returned.

She saw me standing there, near her babies, and immediately assumed the worst. Our partnership was over. She started dive-bombing me, aiming for my head like I had betrayed the entire bird kingdom. I retreated back through the sliding glass door and shut it behind me.

And there I was, inside the house, looking out at the robin who had once been my superhero partner. She looked back at me from the yard, and I could almost hear what she was thinking.

“I knew I should never have trusted a human.”

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The green light on the Gmail account tied to my grandfather’s email keeps coming on. It’s been doing this for years.

And as usual, I sent a message.

And as usual, nothing came back.

That’s because my grandfather passed away over a decade ago.

Let me catch you up…

More than ten years ago now, my grandfather died suddenly. He fell, hit his head, and by the time he got to the hospital, there wasn’t much they could do. One moment he was here, then he wasn’t.

I’ve told and written several stories about my grandfather through the 7 Minute Stories podcast and its written companion series, Stories in a Snap.

He was the one who used to pick me up from my childhood home in Medina, Ohio and tell me stories during the drive back to his house in Chagrin Falls. He’s the same grandfather who would stop at Taco Bell after my youth city league soccer games and buy me a taco for every goal I scored.

A few months before he died, he became obsessed with technology.

Not because he needed to. Because he wanted to stay connected to the world.

So, he bought a tablet, created a Gmail account, tried learning Facebook, and attempted to understand URLs, websites, and spam folders. And every other day my phone would ring.

“Aaron… what the heck is this thing?”

I’d laugh.

Then I’d drive over to help him because he’d insist I explain it in person.

At the time, I thought I was teaching him technology. Looking back, I think he was teaching me something else.

Because those afternoons weren’t really about passwords or setting up accounts. They became this strange little bridge between two people living in completely different seasons of life. And somehow, this frustrating technology gave us a reason to keep showing up for each other.

Because despite all the frustration, he leaned into it. He wanted to adapt. He wanted to stay connected.

Then…he passed away.

And I thought that was the end of it.

Until a few months later, when I was sitting at my computer sending work emails, I looked down at the corner of the screen.

His name.

His Gmail account.

And a green light.

Active.

The same account we created together.

At first, I didn’t know what to think. But immediately I started remembering everything. The phone calls. The afternoons. The frustration. The laughter.

And I did something that felt strangely natural.

I emailed him.

Maybe that sounds weird.

But for some reason it felt easier than praying. Or maybe it was prayer.

Typing an email to my grandfather felt tangible. There was a subject line. A timestamp. A sent folder. Proof that the effort to communicate had actually happened.

And ever since then, every now and then, when I see his account is “active,” I send another one.

I tell him I miss him.

I tell him I think about him all the time.

Now look, maybe it’s a glitch. Maybe it’s a data leak or an abandoned account floating somewhere around the internet.

But there’s still a big part of me that hopes maybe somewhere out there… he finally remembered the password.

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Not a big wish. Not even a real prayer. More like the kind of sentence you mutter under your breath when you are tired, frustrated, hungry, thirsty, and starting to lose the better version of yourself.

My grandmother, now in her early 90s, told me over the phone that she’d taken a fall, but insisted she was feeling better. Still, something in her voice lingered. Not wanting to take the chance, my wife Cori and I made the 45 minute drive from Medina up into Geauga County to check on her ourselves. And the moment we arrived; we understood the assignment. Gram needed to go to the ER to be sure.

Fast forward two hours…

The three of us are still in the waiting room. It felt like forever. I paced. I tried to breathe. I went to a vending machine, put in ten bucks for chips and water, and watched the machine spin without giving me anything.

That was about the moment it happened. Not out loud. But I thought it...

I wished the whole ER system were run by AI.

I dreamed of the possibilities.

No waiting. No confusion. No clipboards. No guessing. Just a machine rolling out like the robot in Rocky IV, asking for your name, scanning your information, sorting you into a queue, and moving you along like a DoorDash order.

Efficient. Fast. Clean.

Then the triage nurse called us back.

At first, I was still carrying all my frustration into the room. I was ready to be annoyed. My grandmother was tired and trying to explain what happened, but she was getting lost in the details. So, I stepped in and told the story as clearly as I could.

The nurse listened. Really listened.

Then she looked at me and said, “Thank you. That was clear. I needed that.”

Then she looked at my grandmother and said, “We’re going to get you taken care of, okay? I got you a nice room, and it’s right across from the bathroom.”

And that was the moment I realized my grandmother wasn’t the only one who needed a human being in that room.

I needed one too.

Maybe a screen could have moved us faster. Maybe an AI system could have sorted the information more cleanly. Maybe the whole process could have been more efficient.

But it wouldn’t have looked at my grandmother with warmth.

It wouldn’t have understood that a woman in her 90s might need a room close to the bathroom without us asking.

That was when I was grateful my wish didn’t come true.

Because maybe one day healthcare will be faster. Maybe it will be smarter. Maybe it will be powered by systems that move us in and out with perfect precision.

But I hope we don’t become healthier while feeling less human in the process.

Oh, and Grandma?

She’s doing better.

Still kicking butt as always.

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Because sometimes, you have to tell a fictional story about a real person just to spark your own humanity.

That’s what happened to me while standing in a Discount Drug Mart line. If you’re not from Northeast, Ohio already here’s a simple truth: In NEOhio, Discount Drug Mart isn’t just a store – it’s an institution…

Not only will you find “everything you need,” it’s the kind of place that has stayed the same for decades – a nostalgic sanctuary where you can pick up a prescription, birdseed, bug spray, a gallon of ice cream and a sweatshirt in one trip.

My mom used to take me there as a kid, and now my daughter and I have our own version of the tradition we call “Drug Mart runs” – walking the aisles, grabbing chips and brushing past memories that feel like they’ve been sitting there waiting for us.

But something has changed over time, and it’s not the store. It’s me.

I find myself slipping into what I call a transactional mindset – in and out, task complete, moving like a machine, forgetting the human beings around me.

The day I really noticed him didn’t feel any different. I was in line, focused on the moment ending, not the one I was in. Then my daughter, who was with me, saw him.
I was floored. I asked her how she knew.

“Well, he stands tall and proud, and he seems to care and look at every person he meets,” she said. “But that’s all I know. For the rest, I made up a story about him in my head.”

Just like that, she saw something I didn’t.

When we walked back to the car, we started imagining his life together – a wife at home, maybe tending a garden during the day. A successful career he had retired from. But maybe something was missing – not money, not title. Maybe it was the meaning that work gave him day to day.

So now, in our story, he wakes up in the morning, stands tall in the mirror and buttons his shirt slowly, one button at a time – not out of habit, but with intention. Because going to work still matters. Because he cares.

Standing there, I realized I had missed it. I had been so wrapped up in my own world that I didn’t even see him.

The next time I went back, I looked for his line. I stepped up, made eye contact and said his name.

“Walter.”

We talked briefly as he carefully and efficiently bagged my items. I told him every time I see the name Walter, I think of Walter Matthau. He paused and said he had just been watching one of his movies before coming into work – one of his favorite actors.

How ironic.

That was it. He kept it moving and asked if I wanted a receipt.

Of course I did, even though I usually crumple them up without thought and throw them away.

But my connection with Walter was enough – enough to understand three things:

1. You don’t button your shirt like that unless there’s dignity behind it.

2. Drug Mart’s Walter loves Walter Matthau.

3. Sometimes, you have to tell a fictional story about a real person just to spark your own humanity.

   ---

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And then something shifted…

A few months ago, some folks here in Medina, Ohio (shout out Medina!) where I record and broadcast, suggested I try something new. They encouraged me to take those spoken stories and shape them into written ones. Not transcripts. Not copy-and-paste. Something adapted. Something intentional.

So I did.

After recording each story, I began taking the transcript and reworking it into a written version. Tightening it. Listening for rhythm on the page instead of the ear. Letting the story breathe in a different way.

These written version of these 7 Minute Stories are now a series called Stories in a Snap.

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To that end, I was asked to write a column in my local paper (The Medina Weekly). About 20,000 readers. And to my surprise, it became one of the most rewarding creative shifts I’ve experienced. I think readers would say the same too.

So am I a writer? Or just a extemporaneous storyteller trying to mascaraed as one? I’ll let you decide. But I do think we’re all storytelling animals. Or at least that’s what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre believed.

And I think he’s right.

Whether we listen, watch, or read… story is the thing that connects us. It’s the thread that runs through everything. The matra I live by is: a story is the shortest distance between two souls”

Which brings me here.

This Substack exists for a pretty simple reason. Like many of you, I wanted one place. One singular digital space where I could share my weekly stories directly. Not multiple landing spots and algorithmic landscapes in between.

Just a clean line between “storyteller” and “storycatcher”.

That’s the hope.

Here’s what you can expect:

Every Friday, I’ll publish a new Stories in a Snap. These are true, short-form written stories drawn from my extremely normal yet deeply relatable life here in Ohio. They’re adapted from my audio stories (which have reached over 30 million listeners in the last two years)…

but are now shaped for the page… quick, immersive, and often carrying a quiet sense of nostalgia.

If the audio version feels like someone telling you a story across the table, these written versions feel like the same story waiting for you on the page. Hopefully, leaving you just a little better than it found you.

You’ll also find opportunities to click through and listen to the original audio versions on the podcast feed if you want to hear where the story began.

To the team at Substack, thanks for building something that actually feels aligned with creators and the people who follow them.

And to those of you who’ve been here long before me… I’m glad I finally made it.

If you decide to subscribe, I hope these stories find their way into your week in a meaningful way. And maybe, just maybe, they leave you a little better than they found you.