Josh Santangelo

I’ve eaten a couple of meals left-handed recently, but it’s still totally awkward. I’m trying.

I decided long ago that holidays, in general, are dumb wastes of time. I’m not religious, don’t enjoy spending time with my family, and don’t get to take days off for things like Veteran’s Day, so honestly I’d like to just skip all of the standard holidays if possible. I’m a scrooge like that.

One thing I can get behind is birthdays, though—I think it’s cool that everyone gets a day that’s all about them, and their friends come out and show their love and all that. It’s definitely justifiable merriment.

And while I say that now, I look back over the past year at how many birthday celebrations I flaked out on and how many birthday gifts I didn’t buy. So I’m thinking for the coming year being a good birthday friend will be my thing—I will show up, I will bring awesome gifts, and I will show my friends I love them.

I’m still not getting them anything for Christmas though.

A friend of mine ran off to live in Italy for a while and upon returning said “You could always tell the Americans by how they ate.” What she was getting at was that Europeans always seem to use both hands all the time, left (?) on the knife and right on the fork, cutting up bits of food with both, moving the bits to the fork with the knife, and leaving the plate clean at the end.

I want to learn to do that, but I’m so totally not ambidextrous. This will take practice.