Man Overboard

Exploring family stories; plus Marlins manager Clayton McCullough, the quarterlife career crisis, and a few things I'm loving.

Hello readers,

Every family has its lore. That lore is usually shared again and again to say “This is who we are and what we’re made of”, and/or “This is a lesson I learned the hard way so you don’t have to”, and/or “Let me tell you about that time I was a total hero” and so on and so forth. Stories like these create meaning and they help us understand what it takes to survive and thrive, or even just endure.

One of the reasons I became so interested in writing about other people, is because I wanted to understand what their relationship was to their own family stories. Did they accept them, question them, or discount them altogether?

There is an old family yarn from early in my parents’ marriage about sailing with friends on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. Lake Pontchartrain is not a lake in the true sense, where it is an enclosed body of freshwater. It is, rather, an estuary, with straits that connect it to the Gulf of Mexico, which means you get all kinds of things swimming around in there. Anyway, it was a beautiful day, I'm told, so my father decided to grab a rope, hop into the brackish water, and let the boat pull him.

Here's what people can agree on: my father was being tugged along behind the boat when a shark appeared behind him. Everyone began screaming at him to get out of the water (cue theme from Jaws), and he did, just in the nick of time.

My father’s version of this story is a bit different, perhaps because of the terror he felt, the beer he was drinking, or his lifelong slippery relationship with the truth. In it, he was, yes, being dragged behind the boat, but the shark in question was a Zeppelin-sized hammerhead that was out for blood. Just as my father pulled himself from the water, the gargantuan beast with its six-foot-wide hammer (!!!) leapt from the water to take a bite out of him, but, alas, was too late.

This is the point in the story where my mother usually says: “I don’t know about all that.”

For my mother, the less dramatic version of this story could have been her way of saying “I was this close to being a widow that day.”, or “And that is why I’m not much of a swimmer.” Perhaps there might even be a touch of “Your father and his decisions…” thrown in.

For my father, who once claimed to play baseball barehanded for LSU, well, obviously he was a very brave man who was this close to being a goner. Because of his unmatched virility, he was able to save his own life, and I should be grateful for that because otherwise I wouldn’t have been born. Mind you, this is the same man who told me that if he hadn’t been hired by a private detective (“a real Dick Tracy cat…”) to weed out Communist infiltrators at LSU (???), he never would have met my mother…and I never would have been born…so I can thank my lucky stars for Joe McCarthy (who, incidentally, had been dead for quite a while before my father’s “secret mission” took place). 

For me, the moral of this story is twofold: beware of predators and fact check early and often. Both will save you lots of time and trouble.

Tell me: What is your relationship to family stories and how have those stories helped you throughout your life? Hit reply and let me know.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Paige

Writing prompt: Write about your favorite family story. What is it and why do you think that it holds such a dear place in your family?

You have to know how to use your accidents.

-- Helen Frankenthaler

Endnotes

Play Ball

Baseball season is almost upon us! Hooray! Shout out to baseball coaches, who face a lot of difficult decisions. Should they send the runner, or tell him to stay put? Should they ride out a pitcher's tough inning or dial the bullpen for a fresh-armed reliever to get them out of trouble? If you're former Los Angeles Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough, there's also the thorny little question of whether to leave a perennial World Series contender to manage a 100-loss team like the Miami Marlins? For McCullough, that answer was yes. I spoke with him recently for a Jupiter Magazine cover story about how his team exceeded expectations in 2025 – they only dropped 83 games – and how he'll continue preaching a "one game at a time" mindset this coming season. For more on McCullough, his "superhero" wife Jill, and the beauty of working with a blank canvas, click here.

Navigating the Quarterlife Career Crisis

Some of us here at the newsletter have kids aged 18-25 who are concerned about what's next and whether AI will be taking away a potential job or even making their yet-to-be-earned college degree obsolete. Author and career coach Scott Doyne's forthcoming book, Navigating the Quarterlife Career Crisis: Real Stress, Real Solutions, will both reassure the young adults in your life and provide them with actionable ways to hunt for a job with confidence. The book comes out on Tuesday, March 24 (next week!), and to launch it into the world, Doyne will be having a roundtable event on Zoom at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time. For more information, or to sign up, be sure to visit this link! And, of course, go buy Scott's book!

Things I'm Enjoying and/or Excited About

Tickets for the opening day of Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the High Museum of Art. Hojicha Frappe. The happy orange snails in my kid's RedBubble shop. Yebba's new album Jean. Everything Jessie Buckley has said as she has won the best actress award for Hamnet. Goodness gracious, she is such an absolute treasure.

This week...

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