Author: Ben Meredith

Last night (February 6, 2025), leaving the Middle School basketball game, I lost for the first time in a footrace with one of my children, in a typical boy-parent “I’ll race you to the car” moment.

It was bound to happen: at nearly 17 years old, he’s working out every day and currently outweighs me by at least 20 lbs. He might even be taller than me, but I’m not willing to concede that race just yet, because we’re very close on that metric.

What’s especially strange about the whole thing is that while I may have technically lost the race, I won in so many ways.

In the summer of 2022 (or maybe it was 2023) I was giving my kids a hard time about how they needed to work harder in the offseason, and doing general dad “back in my day” posturing.

One thing led to another, and I found myself lining up in the yard to run wind sprints. I had probably had a beer, and clocked in at 235 lbs.

I took off, completely un-warmed up (just like last night, for the record!) and made it approximately 40 yards before my legs couldn’t keep up with my torso and I toppled over.

Worse, my lungs couldn’t expand and contract fast enough to get oxygen into my system, and I had a moment sitting on my porch where I genuinely thought I was going to pass out or worse. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I needed at least 5 minutes to regain any semblance of a normal existence.

I wish I could say that was the moment I decided to get serious about my health, but that moment needed some more rocks to form on the bottom.

Fast forward to the grass beside the middle school last night.

As backstory this time around:

• I still have not sprinted even one time since that fateful somersault I tried to play off in the yard.
• For a time last year I was really into walking, and even had gotten into doing what I’d consider “cardio” by walking the large hill in the woods behind my house. I haven’t done that consistently at all over the past 6 months or so.
• I’ve been doing some body-weight exercises maybe 15 minutes per day but really nothing that’s gotten my heart rate up for anything over a few seconds.
• The only thing that has functionally changed is my diet, having gone no-carb carnivore in April of 2024, relaxed to a few no-carb veggies in September of 2024.

So, in a less-formal-than-I-would-like start, my boy said “ready, set, go” and we launched out across the yard.

My Achilles tendon has been acting up for a few days (happens when I stand too much at work) and feeling it getting tender I wisely made the decision after about 10 really hard steps to ease off and take the L, but I still ran at what I’d estimate to be 90% capacity all the way across the lawn (maybe 75 yards at most). I don’t think I could’ve beaten him at 100%, either.

“That’s right, you’re slow old man!” the boy bellowed across the dark parking lot.

Then, in what I can only describe as a nearly out-of-body experience, I walked around the minivan, and got in the driver’s seat.

I was mildly winded, at best.

Reader, I don’t say this to brag. I say this because it has been a tectonic shift in my understanding of my own body. I’m still processing the ramifications of what “cardiovascular health” even is at this point. I thought that the way you get to a point of being able to sprint without being winded is to run long distances, or to get your heart rate up for 30 minutes every day. That’s the way I’d always “gotten in shape.”

I would have confidently told you yesterday at this time that, while I have lost a bunch of weight, I need to be doing more cardio because I’m not really in great shape.

That’s probably true to a certain extent. What is categorically untrue is (whatever I would have said about my ability to sprint). Welcome to 2025, where Ben gets to wrestle with his grasp of how his own body works.

So yeah, the boy’s right about one thing: I lost fair and square. But if you ask me, he’s dead wrong about that “old man” bit.

I belong to a couple of online “communities” by virtue of the things I post about: some weird diet groups (not on the bingo card this time last year, but here we are), some tech support/techie groups, and UNC athletics fandoms.

For those not in the latter group, UNC played Duke (I have a hard time spelling that the mature way, for the record) in men’s basketball this past weekend, a game where Duke was heavily favored. They won the game, but not as convincingly as their victory a few weeks earlier in Durham. Carolina fans could still hold their heads high, having led by as many as 7 points midway through the second half.

In Durham we (yes, I consider the tuition and fees I paid to the institution significant enough to claim first-person rights to the team) got embarrassed. In Chapel Hill we just got outplayed by a team that is more physically gifted than us.

As Duke made their (what would be ultimately decisive) run in the middle of the second half, the camera panned to the parents of star player Cooper Flagg. Cooper had just slammed home a nasty (and relatively uncontested) dunk, having driven past his defender on a fast break broken play. It was a dunk worth celebrating, if you were wearing Royal blue.

As the camera hit Kelly Flagg, it captured her and her husband aggressively celebrating by doing the “head-tap” motion, and turning to taunt the surrounding fanbase of mostly Tar Heels. I’m not good at lip-reading, but her face said enough to know she wasn’t commending the hustle of her son, she was taunting the crowd with some language she’d probably not use at church.

As tends to happen when you get televised internationally, folks immediately began to blast Kelly for a couple of reasons:

1. The head tap celebration is for when you dunk on somebody’s head. To do it when there’s nobody there is like doing a Grand Slam celebration for a 2-run homer, or like celebrating your half-birthday with cake.
2. She’s an adult turning to scream profanity at the people sitting around her.

Sure, there’s lots of pearl-clutching and self-righteousness involved, and I’m honestly not here to contribute to that, nor am I here to try and defend Flagg.

I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that watching Ms. Flagg display such a distinct lack of (a) taunting knowledge and (b) class was anything other than gratifying, but I’m here to sell books.

That’s right: I’m here to use this trending topic (Ms. Flagg went on to dig herself into a hole by calling all UNC fans “classless A-holes” in a much-screenshotted social media post) to tell you to order my book.

Is my book going to keep you from making the same blunder that Kelly Flagg committed? Maybe.

One of the principles I harp on in the book: in technical support you can either escalate or deescalate things. Being defensive will always and only escalate things.

One of the things my team hears me say repeatedly: let’s control what we can control in the situation, and remain focused on solving the user’s problem. To take even a second to justify your own actions opens up a dialog that leads directly away from resolution.

Good when you’re trying to generate ad revenue for a social media site, but bad when you’re trying to resolve technical issues for a frustrated customer.

Folks who preorder before March 20th get bonuses. Read more about those here.

This past weekend, my two oldest kids went with their church youth group to a retirement home to play BINGO with the residents, as well as to lead a Vespers service there. I was tasked with helping lead the music.

Before we went, one of my children was lamenting how awkward it was going to be, and begging both my wife and I to let him opt out.

“We can do hard things” I told him. And besides: I was going so he had to, too.

I am always amazed at how visiting folks multiple decades older than you can affect your whole outlook on life.

Every resident I interacted with on Sunday was exactly one question away from a treasure trove of life lessons. Like a loose and rusty latch on a barn door, you didn’t even need a key: just ask them one question. Here’s three that I tried out:

1. So, where’d you grow up?
2. What’s your favorite type of candy?
3. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you visit?

I asked one absolute firecracker of a lady (who insisted that I sit next to her, insisted on holding my hand during BINGO, AND insisted on offering me a cookie no less than 4 times in utter refusal to even hear about “my diet”) question number 1 above, and 15 minutes later I had learned that her husband had been a nuclear engineer, her kids and grandkids and great grandkids (she has 3 but only gets to see one of them regularly) visit her often, and that she sneaks cookies to her room under her shirt. Also, her husband was “Richard” when he was behaving but “DICK” when he wasn’t.

She treated me to that joke on three separate occasions.

She gushed talking about her hometown, her favorite TV show as a child, and her utter disbelief that the BINGO caller was not calling B9, no matter how much she begged for it.

Later, at the Vespers service, I sat down briefly next to a woman I’ll call “Doris” who was clearly sad. She said that earlier that afternoon they had had a memorial service for a friend of hers. She went on to say “…and because I’ve had some health problems of my own, I hadn’t been able to visit her as often as I’d like.”

Then she trailed off: “I can’t quite keep a grip on names, faces, or where I was in the story. I’m so sorry.”

Oh Ms. Doris, there’s no need to apologize.

Isn’t that all of us? So busy with what’s going on in our lives that we fail to notice folks sitting *right there* who would give the entire world for what we take for granted.

There was such joy in that place, even in spite of the disorienting sterility that comes with retirement homes.

I picked two songs that in retrospect I now see I needed those beautiful souls to sing to me.

See, Ms Doris might have had trouble remembering names and faces, but there, gathered round the throne of Grace, I watched as she mouthed these words from memory, alongside a room of believers:

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’ns Sun!
Heart of my heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

I was exhausted on Sunday, and had even considered opting out myself. I’m so glad I didn’t. Sometimes the hard things that we plan on doing end up being such a sweetness.

“There are so many other places I’d rather be”

“I’m so tired of the things we’re going through”

“What is that smell?”

These were just a few of the barrage of whiny and entitled thoughts I had as I slinked into the chair in the waiting room.

As I glanced out and to my right, there was a man in what looked to be his early 50s listening to (and watching) the Joe Rogan podcast on his phone. It wasn’t max volume, but I could recognize it from across the room. Three chairs directly to my left, a man who looked to be about my age was enjoying a headphones-free viewing of an onslaught of mostly-standup-comedian TikTok-style videos, 4 seconds at a time.

Shortly after I sat down, a lady was wheeled into the room in one of those wheelchairs they give you at the front entrance. She took the strap of her purse over her head to reveal a Stevie Nicks concert t-shirt, opened the flap of her purse, and turned her phone on it’s side, picking up in the middle of what sounded like a TED talk on how to offend conservatives.

Aside from being mildly concerned about violence if she heard Rogan or he heard whatever-that-was, I was mostly just smug with a side of overprotective-of-my-lawn, where back in my day people had the decency to wear earbuds when in public.

I tapped out an attempt-to-be-funny Facebook status along those lines, and then just kinda sat there staring at the wall opposite me, reveling in how mature I was for not even needing my phone.

Four seats to my right, tucked into the corner beneath a hanging plant, a man who looked to be in his mid-seventies sat, rubbing his eyes. I decided that I’d pass the time waiting by striking up a conversation. I remarked how much better these waiting rooms would be if they just had a nice place to nap.

We progressed from there to the weather, eventually getting around to the bulk of his life story: worked in supermarket management, moved to Alabama, then back to the Greenville area just 3 months later because the supermarket “didn’t hold up their end of the monetary agreement.” He promptly resigned, started a construction business with his nephew, and worked for 13 more years.

“They still call me to ask how to do stuff, but they won’t let me get in the truck anymore.”

Soon after, his wife emerged from her procedure and we shared well-wishes as he ambled around the corner into the hall, holding his wife’s hand.

While I had been talking to my new friend, both Rogan-man and TikTok-man were called back one at a time for their procedures, leaving me alone with Stevie Nicks-fan.

She looked to be about 35, and had some special needs. I gave in and picked back up my quite-silent phone, and scrolled mindlessly.

Under her breath at first, then increasing in both volume and emotion, our wheelchaired friend began to complain.

“I’ve been here for an hour.”

“I have to drive all the way back to Spartanburg after this”

“They should have seen by my records that I have autism and I can’t stand waiting.”

…and then the tears began to flow.

“This is f*cking stupid”

“I just want to go home!”

As the only other human occupant in the room, my attempts to appear to not hear her were ignored. She directly asked me if I could go find someone to let her “back there.” There’s something beautiful about the childlike boldness of some folks on the spectrum: no need to let social convention get in the way of what she wanted.

I agreed, and set out around the nearly-empty facility (we were there after normal business hours) in search of someone to help.

When I returned minutes later, she had noticeably worsened, slumped over in her chair sobbing into her hands.

“Do you like Stevie Nicks?”

I didn’t know where to start, but this lady needed distracting from the spiral of waiting. So I literally read the room, and started with a softball question, lobbed directly over the plate.

She sat bolt-upright, and beamed. “YES”

“What’s your favorite song?”

She thought for maybe 3 seconds, and grinned: “Stand Back!”

For the next 10 minutes, I got a nearly song-by-song retelling of the time she saw Stevie in concert in Charleston.

“Because it was raining, a police officer carried me through a puddle and plopped me in the front seat of his patrol car to get me back to my hotel! For Free!”

She didn’t even stop talking about Stevie Nicks when the nurse started to wheel her away to her procedure. She looked back over her shoulder to tell me I needed to go listen to “Stand Back”

Indeed, there were so many places I wanted to be this evening. But it seems that God needed me in a waiting room, repenting of my grumpy attitude.