I swear like a sailor, assuming the sailor in question died in 1800 and was really square.

At college, everyone's milestones occurred in shared clumps. Everyone studied, caroused, won, lost - simultaneously. Life is not like that.

Snow is like a manic pixie dream girl: fun and whimsical when you encounter it only through the barrier of a movie screen - but absolute misery to have to put up with in real life.

Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I'd get up and go, 'Hi, I'm 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!' At the time I was like, 'Why is no one laughing?'

No generation has escaped it - one morning, your skill with the eight-track or the record player or the cotton gin suddenly ceases to impress. It's just one of those inevitable disappointments that come with growing up, like the realization that Santa doesn't exist or the way that music always takes a turn for the worse after you turn 30.

I love Gene Weingarten's feature writing with the passion of a thousand suns.