A few days ago, my wife and I joined some friends for a gathering during a few rare hours when we weren’t busy hauling a teenager to some kind of expensive activity or hosting an entire herd of them at our home to ransack our pantry and abuse the plumbing.

As I sit here in my uneasy chair, I can hear the screams and guffaws of what sound like about 500 teenagers in my backyard swimming pool for my middle daughter’s high school graduation party, and I wonder if a sufficient supply of chlorine shock treatments exists for that water ever to recover.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been engaged in a WWE cage match against allergies.

It all started with the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, and it’s one of the few lingering effects of the experience that hasn’t tempted me to seek intense electroshock therapy.

Depending on when you’re reading this, my 52nd birthday is/was on April 20th, which, as my dad still loves to remind me, is the same day as Adolf Hitler’s.

According to Livestrong.com, there are nearly 5 million young people participating in gymnastics in the United States, and although only a handful ever make it to Olympic competition, their parents fork over enough cash on lessons, leotards, custom-embroidered gym bags, hair bows, grips – and other equipment my wife didn’t tell me about – to fund the entire Russian sports doping program.

With the onset of Daylight Saving Time throughout the U.S. – except for a couple of states that still trust the science – we’ve now reached the time of year that is especially challenging for folks like me who don’t identify as “morning people.”

Warning! The following column is clogged with gratuitous potty humor.