McCoy: Where am I? Brain is not playing fair

Where am I? Brain isn't playing fair

Last week, while out of town and staying in a hotel, I had a most exasperating experience.

McCoy: Men, watch your step at weddings

If you're a man who's been invited to a wedding, you need to heed my advice so you know what to do at these alien affairs.

Clip-on tie is the devil’s work

As a kid, I hated Sunday mornings with a passion I now reserve only for unimaginable evils such as genocide and raw onions. Sunday - "the day of rest" - was far from restful for me, and I blame it on a weekly ritual, "dressing up for Sunday school."

McCoy: Sweet memories of kindergarten

Let your mind wander back to kindergarten, and think about those simpler times and all the fun you had. It doesn't matter where you come from; you have to admit that kindergarten was fun. You played with toys, sang songs, colored pictures of fire trucks, and learned radically new concepts like sharing and the letter Q.

A fat boy and his pies

There's an interesting picture hanging in the bathroom of a particular shop here in town.

Spring fever mind games

I wish the weather would stop playing games with us here in the South. It wasn't more than a few weeks ago that I slipped into a pair of short pants for puttering around the house.

McCoy: The joys of a garden

Spring is here, and after we sailed past Good Friday and the risk of frost, it is now planting time! I've bought seeds and pots and I'm ready to plant something.

Waiting for the perfect robot

On a warm day, back in the dark ages when Richard Milhous Nixon was the Emperor of DC and double-knit polyester was the darling of the fashion industry, I was scouring my school's library for something good to read. I had already polished off Thomas Edison's biography, every "Three Investigators" detective story I could find, and a piece about the father of the telegraph: Samuel F.B. Morse. And then I found it - a big, hardcover book on robots. Robots!

McCoy: Strangers who have saved my life

I'd like to think I'm in complete control of my life, but I'm wise enough to know that it would just be a fancy-pants illusion - a convenient myth to help me survive another night without screaming into my pillow in a major case of self-pity. I know I'm not in charge of my life. If those people are right, and it really "takes a village," then I'm just another hapless village idiot, relying on ...

Miss Opal and my Kentucky flame

As a college student, I was always grubbing for a few extra dollars. I held part-time restaurant and retail jobs, and I even built hydraulic hoses for 18-wheelers. "Anything for a buck" was my motto. It was also my excuse for becoming a telephone solicitor - that unloved wage-slave who calls your home just as you sit down to dinner. So, instead of studying or attending school events, I was often renewing magazine subscriptions or ...

School stinks

"School stinks!" How many times have you heard that from a kid with too much homework and not enough weekend? I'm sure every student has said it at some point, and I'm beginning to think the kids may be right, but not in the way you might be thinking and certainly not in the way they intend it.

Limiting Foul Language

Listen, you and I both know that using profanity is an ugly and immature thing to do. However, a cuss word or two, when the situation calls for it, can be an unavoidable sin. Let's say you just dropped a 50 foot oak tree with your new chainsaw, and you watched in horror as the tree crushed your house, which was just 40 feet away. That would justify a pretty good blast of profanity and ...

McCoy: The $250 Bath

Have you ever spent $250 to take a bath? I know that's a strange question, considering most of you get free baths, except when you have to buy a new bottle of body wash or one of those scrubby sponges that you like to use on your shoulder. Why would anyone ever spend 250 clams to soap up, shampoo and wash in a traditional bath or shower? It's just not logical, is it? Well, what ...

McCoy: End of times nonsense

We have enough to worry about right now, so why do some people add to our woes by predicting that the end of the world is just around the corner? "Oh, the world's gonna end this year! I'm sure of it. Those old Mayans and their stone calendars must be right!" Really? We've got a political quagmire, our economy is in the toilet, and you want to add Doomsday to the mix? Well, I'm not ...

McCoy: How I spent Super Bowl Sunday

Is it going to shock you that I didn't watch the Super Bowl this year? Maybe? Just a little? No, probably not. While the civilized world was watching the most sacred game of the football season, I was doing other things, like writing this column. You might be thinking, "Wow! That's dedication!" but it's not. I skipped the game, because that's how I approach all professional sports. I don't have the desire to watch the ...

McCoy: Late night gone by

Even now - far removed from the original passions - I can still remember that my friends and I were once young and vibrant. When we were just approaching our 20s, we were night owls, prowling the Atlanta New Wave music scene when we should have been doing calculus homework. On a typical weekend in our suburban town, we'd finish our work at the mall or any of a dozen other places desperate enough to ...

Like Honey and Biscuits

Have you noticed how some things just naturally go together? Take honey and biscuits, for example. Whenever I visit one of those "breakfast anytime" restaurants, I make a pig of myself with their biscuits, and I make sure to have plenty of honey to spread on them. Life offers up so many wonderful pairings: salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly, grits and butter, and too many others to list. Life seems better when it's done in pairs.

The New Grandfather Syndrome

Your parakeet may be the only one who noticed, but I didn't write my column last week. I'd planned to offer some snappy New Year's resolutions, but I procrastinated and the next thing I knew, my first grandson - Daniel Christopher McCoy - was on his way, and I was off to the hospital to meet him. Yep, I'm a grandfather now, and my whole life is changing. I was expecting to be able to ...

The Southern Man’s Genome

Scientists everywhere are decoding the human genome to see what we're made of and how we can make ourselves better. I'm no geneticist, but I know a little bit about southerners, and I'll certify that there is a special part of our DNA that makes us what we really are. We may be talking about just a few genes, but we southerners are programmed in a way that makes our lives much better here in our little part of the world.

Too hot for comfort

We all make mistakes. Some of our mistakes are hanging in our closets, daring us to wear them, if only to a Halloween party. Some of our mistakes are in Washington, sitting on their thumbs on Monday and passing laws that erode our freedom on Friday. And some of our mistakes are really close to us, like the six spicy chicken wings I had for lunch. Those wings were a definite mistake, and they're sitting ...

Coupon mania

The other day, I met a nice older couple who had about 200 coupons in their possession, and they were using a good portion of them at the checkout counter. I paid for my few purchases, and when I finished, they were still presenting coupons. I was really impressed with their organizational skills and moxie! They had "couponing" down to a fine art, and this made me wonder: What would happen if coupons were used in all walks of life?

I’m the wrong guy for the right lane

I wish I had a cup of coffee for every time someone has advised me to drive in the right-hand lane on the interstate. Actually, that would be too many coffee cups to wash, so I'll settle for a few pounds of coffee beans, and I'll brew it myself. The fact is, I've heard this comment over and over: "Stay right! It's safer!" I'm sure there are safety advantages to consider, and - as my ...