July 8th, 2025
Last weekend, I was playing video games with a little kid (a little kid I know, not some random little kid) and between Mario Kart races he pointed at me and said, “You have a mole on your neck.”
At first I thought he was being a dick. Like little kids can be. Have you ever taken a little kid to the grocery store and was terrified that they’d start saying honest shit to the person standing behind you in line?
Anyway, I was wrong. Because he followed that observation up with another one.
“Look,” he said. “I have a mole on my neck, too.”
And that’s what I’ve been trying to get across.
There’s this cliché we say, that human beings are so similar to one another and not as different as we seem. But that’s too abstract. And it’s why we remain so divided.
What we need to do is find specific shit we have in common and start there.
Like somebody wearing a t-shirt featuring an obscure band you love. Or enjoying your favorite beverage or snack. Or talking about a book you just read or a show you can’t stop talking about.
Or the moles on our necks.
I try to get my son out of the house every day. We usually go for a walk. I’d say it’s the thing I care most about right now as a parent, to keep him connected to the outside world and ground him in nature.
Whenever I see another person out there, I think: Wow. Look. You’re just like me. Walking around in the dirt, looking at trees and birds and shit. And you chose to do this. You chose to come outside and be hot and to put down your fucking phone for five fucking minutes and we’re both here, just a couple of humans breathing actual air and seeing each other.
Seeing the moles on our necks.
There are some really shitty people in the world right now, and they are hurting so many, but I refuse to believe that they’re the majority.
I think that most people have a mole on their neck, just like mine, and it’s just the first of an infinite amount of things we have in common.
The Den 