In February of 2004, I read about a twenty-eight-year-old hedge fund manager in The Wall Street Journal that was so weird I clipped it out and saved it in my journal.

I grew up in Wahiawā, Hawai‘i, a place that, on most days, felt comfortably safe from imminent destruction.

And yet, I couldn’t help wondering about those yellow fallout shelter placards posted on buildings all over town. What did they mean, and who were they for?

Content warning: Do not read while eating lunch.

The joys of Road Warriordom are many: cramped middle seats; endless flight delays; small, impossible-to-open bags of over-salted peanuts. Some days — thanks to delays, cancellations and ever-present bureaucratic stupidity — are worse than others.

My mom was a complete failure as a Tiger Mom, by Amy Chua standards.

She never made me take piano lessons. She never knew from one day to the next whether I did my homework or not. And she waited until the day I received my high school diploma, when I was up to my ears in flower leis, to ask why I didn’t graduate with honors.

For some inexplicable reason, Valerie G. had a beef with me in sixth grade.

Who knows what I did to set her off, but the time (after school) and the place (by the cafeteria) for a fistfight to settle the matter was set. The dread and nausea in my belly grew as the day progressed. Val was not the sort of girl who pulled hair or bitch-slapped — she kicked serious ass, and the entire school, boys included, was scared of her.

I hadn’t planned on going swimming in the Atlantic fully clothed.