Skip to content

grin and bare it

A blog by Matthew Dicks

Temper your parental and marital advice based upon the bell curve

By Matthew Dicks | February 26, 2011

My friend, Tom, watched this TED Talk and thought of me. The talk centers on what the Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman call “the four taboos of parenting.” One deals with the propensity of women…

Read More

Imperfect beauty

By Matthew Dicks | February 26, 2011

The photo is unfocused, grainy, poorly framed, and poorly lit, but I think that might make it better than if it had been done well. I love this photograph of my daughter.  I see utter…

Read More

Talk to your kids

By Matthew Dicks | February 25, 2011

There is a lot of fascinating information in this ten-minute TED Talk related to speech development and the way in which babies acquire language, but the piece that I thought was most compelling (and glossed…

Read More

I was naked onstage

By Matthew Dicks | February 25, 2011

I am quite susceptible to hypnosis. This trait may run in the family. My mother, a smoker for more than twenty-five years, quit cold turkey after one hypnosis session. I discovered my susceptibility to hypnosis…

Read More

Nothing like an ominous hammer cock

By Matthew Dicks | February 24, 2011

I watch a lot of partial movies on AMC while I am working out. Depending on the elliptical machine, I often have closed captioning automatically turned on for the film. It turns out that the…

Read More

Dating in Stop & Shop

By Matthew Dicks | February 24, 2011

When I was in high school, I would take girls to the local Stop & Shop on a first date. When I told this to my wife, she asked what I would do on these…

Read More

US Weekly a mystery to me

By Matthew Dicks | February 23, 2011

This was the magazine cover that I was staring at yesterday while waiting in line at the supermarket. Here’s the good news: I did not recognize the woman on the front cover who was “obsessed…

Read More

I can’t die at my desk unnoticed. Oh well.

By Matthew Dicks | February 23, 2011

Teaching isn’t the easiest or the best paying job, but I have always wanted to teach and am happy that I chose this profession. In addition to the daily joys that it brings, I have…

Read More

When your country is one thousand years old, things can get quite complicated

By Matthew Dicks | February 22, 2011

With the sale of my new book to a British publisher, I felt it was time to finally understand one of the great mysteries of life: United Kingdom versus Great Britain versus England: What’s the…

Read More

Techno-toddler

By Matthew Dicks | February 22, 2011

My two-year old daughter, who cannot pronounce the letter L in the word please and is not potty trained, picked up my wife’s iPhone and brought it over to the shower door. She held it…

Read More

Subscribe ToThe Grin & Bare It Newsletter

Sign up to conveniently receive my daily blog post from "Grin & bare It" into your inbox daily.

You have Successfully Subscribed!