Zeros

Freedom 2026: The Real COVID Babies Graduate! The high school graduating class of 2026 has finally arrived at the finish line. Four years of classes, dances, exams, social media drama , and approximately seventeen thousand warnings that, "these are the most important years of your life." But let's be honest. This class is different. These are the real COVID babies. Not the toddlers who learned to identify hand sanitizer before they learned colors. Not the college students who spent one semester attending economics lectures in pajama pants. No, the Class of 2026 entered adolescence just as the world collectively decided to become a science experiment . One minute they were in middle school. The next minute, they were staring at teachers frozen on Zoom screens while somebody's dog barked into a microphone and somebody else's little brother wandered into the background, dressed like a pirate. They were told they were living through history. Then they wer...

Life & Occasions:  Ugly Shoes for Nothing It's a graduation year. The weather didn't get the memo. Neither did my feet. There's a rhythm to adult social life that anybody who lived through the AM radio era understands instinctively. You have your wedding years and your graduation years , and they alternate with the kind of cruel predictability that used to get worked into the bridge of a Dionne Warwick song. This is a graduation year. Which means outdoor events, potluck tables under a canopy that is slightly too small, and a sky that has been threatening since Thursday. You know how it goes. You stand in the closet for twelve minutes trying to thread the needle between festive and waterproof . You land, as you always do, on the shoes that look sensible. Not glamorous — you abandoned that when you saw the forecast — but at least not embarrassing. Except they are embarrassing, because the ones you own that look comfortable are not. The ones that actually are...