We’ve all seen it. The moment when you approach someone who’s absorbed in their phone or laptop, and when they notice you’re watching, they instantly shut down their device.

“What are you doing? I asked my sweetie pie.

“Nothing.” While Ryan looked a bit sheepish, I didn’t press. Though I was curious.

Later I would discover what had him so fascinated, and for those of you thinking that something nefarious was afoot, hoping perhaps for a whiff of titillating scandal, you might be disappointed.

I think we all can become mesmerized by what we encounter daily on the Internet. Consider YouTube, for example, where music videos are king. The ultimate earworm ditty “Baby Shark Dance” had over 10 billion views in 2022. When I put on my math cap, which is old and tattered and has never worked very well—note that Ryan helped with the math, so blame him if it’s wrong—I came up with the following: The song is two minutes and 17 seconds long. When I did my best cyphering, I determined that humans worldwide spent roughly 44,000 years listening to that annoying little tune, which had me wondering what worrisome societal issues we might have solved over that time, had we not been dancing around singing, “Baby shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.”

You’re probably now wondering what had my sweetie pie so entranced? I couldn’t have been more surprised when I caught my big tough guy giggling at cat videos. And it turns out Ryan is not alone. Searches for images and videos about domestic cats top roughly 26 billion annually on YouTube, making the kitty the unofficial mascot of the Internet.

Why do cat videos fascinated us? According to the HuffPost article “The Surprising Reason People Love Cat Videos,” by Alex Sobel Fitts, a study of almost 7,000 people determined that the respondents overwhelmingly “felt significantly happier after watching the videos and experienced fewer negative emotions of anxiety, sadness and guilt.”

Which sounds like cats might be medicine…or magic, and I’m certainly not one to argue. I’ve tended to approximately 40 felines over the course of my life and currently share my home with four. However, I know Ryan was not always on the “Cats Rule!” side of the street.

“I thought you didn’t like cats,” I pointed out one evening when our cat Morgan was splayed across Ryan’s chest, purring loudly.

“I only like your cats,” he said stroking Morgan’s head.

Now I know that’s not true. Ryan loves cats as much as I do. Note here that we both also share an abiding affection for canines. (My cattle dog Bella just stared me down and forced me to write that.)

In any case, I can’t really criticize Ryan for his daily foray into the cat-video world, because I have a dirty little secret too.

“What are you looking at?” Ry asked as he peered over my shoulder.

I felt the urge to hide my shame, still I let him see.

He creased his brow. “Rocks?”

I nodded. As a life-long mineral collector, I felt the sudden urge to defend myself for the time I spend cruising rock sites online, but Ry just smiled. And now there is harmony in our home, as neither Ryan nor I have to hide our internet addictions.

Anne Montgomery’s novels can be found wherever books are sold.

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I’ve been on a quest of late to work with all different types of podcasters, and recently I had the opportunity to meet Tiberius. His journey began when he was seven. You can read the following explanation on The Tiberius Show home page.

“After watching a movie called The Greatest Showman,  he wanted to be an announcer,” Tiberius’ father Joseph explains.  “(I) was building a recording studio for a client and while testing the equipment Tiberius would not stop playing with the mics.  He kept announcing everyone that entered the house and acting like he was interviewing people.  Kinda like a mini radio show.  So after a while he decided he wanted to do just that.”

I was invited to be a guest on the program and was impressed with how professional the operation was. Joseph serves as producer, director, and engineer. Tiberius is the host. As you can imagine, the whole endevour takes a lot of preparation. Today, Tiberius is 12 and the thrill of interviewing people hasn’t worn off. When we met, he wore a short-brimmed fedora with matching bowtie and suspenders, an ohmage to his favorite interviewer, Larry King.

Tiberius is mostly interested in discussing jobs. He’s interviewed many guests, including a film composer, chemistry teacher, tax expert, video game designer, antique seller, DJ, and digital marketing professional. In my case, we talked about sports reporting and sports officiating.

There are also special segments of the podcast, including Math Corners and Heart of a Lion. When I found out there would be math involved—a subject in which I am hopelessly lost—I was a bit concerned, which I explained to Joseph.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Just tell Tiberius you need some help with it.”

And boy was I glad he told me that, because as Tiberius described the math word problem that involved various numbers of colored pens, my mind shot back to elementary school where I always shuttered at the thought that the teacher might call on me. Luckily, Tiberius had my back, and he explained the answer so that even I could understand.

The whole show was fun and bubbly with Tiberius performing like an excited ringmaster. But then, at the end of the show, Tiberius turned serious. It was time for Heart of a Lion, the segment of the program where he discusses the importance Leadership, Integrity, Obedience, and Nobility.

The solemn turn is understandable, when you consider the reason Joseph puts so much time and effort into the program. “I got Covid,” he explained. “I was in the hospital for a few months, and I kept wondering what my epitaph would be. What would they say about me when I was gone?”

Joseph thought about that a lot. Finally, as he lay there critically ill, he knew what he hoped those words to be. “I wanted them to say I was a good dad.”

After being on the show and watching father and son work together, all I can say is, Joseph, that’s exactly what you are. A good dad.

If you’d like to listen to my conversation with Tiberius, you can find it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8qYhyncYZ4

Anne Montgomery’s novels can be found wherever books are sold.

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For months I’ve been looking forward to my 50^th high school reunion. Note that typing those words is, um…difficult. When one is young, old people muttering how fast time flies is something we tend to ignore. But decades later, when my 96-year-old mother looked at me and said, “I never thought it would go so fast,” I finally understood. That comment sent a chill down my spine and cemented the idea that the older we get the quicker that life clock ticks.

There were a lot of people I wanted to see, but mostly it was my three best friends: Jill Paskow, Shelly Sherman, and Denise Carra, all of whom I met in elementary school. We marched through junior high and high school in lockstep, but after graduation we went to colleges in different states and ended up spread across the country.

I left Livingston, New Jersey in 1973. My friends scattered. Marriages happened. Babies were born. Close friends and family members died. But despite the years that divided us from our youth, the memories of our time together as kids remain vivid: South Mountain Arena where we ice skated, camping on Eagle Island in the Adirondacks, those meetings of the Bridge Club where we talked endlessly about boys and secretly read Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask), and holiday celebrations with Denise’s huge Italian family, where her Sicilian grandmother, Noni, who spoke no English, would pat us on our cheeks, apparently assuming we were all her grandchildren.

When I boarded the plane in Phoenix, Arizona, one that took me back to Northern New Jersey, I hadn’t been in that part of the country for over a decade, nor had I had much interaction with my high school pals, aside from the occasional email or Facebook posts.

My visit made me wish we’d spent more time with one another over the years, but I can’t fix that now. All I can do is rejoice in the fact that I got to visit my friends: Shelly, Jill, Denise, and many others.

And it was glorious.

Anne Montgomery’s novels can be found wherever books are sold.

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