We all have our culinary aesthetic.
Our closely held food quirks.
The guilty pleasures that might get us politely escorted out of supposedly polite company.

No, I’m not about to waste your time on something as tired as the pineapple-on-pizza debate.

What I’m talking about is more profane.
More blasphemous.
More... heretical.

My guilty, and frankly sultry, pleasure?

Taco Bell Supreme Tacos with canned cranberry sauce.

Whole berry or jellied, I don’t discriminate.
And no. It’s not gross.
It’s divine.

You’ve got the salty, savory crunch of the taco.
A hit of sour cream.
Then the tart-sweet velvet of cranberry sliding into the mix?

You’ve only cosplayed life until you’ve tasted that combo.

There’s a world of weirdly wonderful pairings out there.
Lamb with mint jelly.
Buffalo wings with Domino’s sweet icing.
(Yes, that icing.)

Apparently my palate thrives on that sweet n savory dynamic.
Probably why I melt over Indian and Thai food, too.

Listen.
This is a safe place.

What are your strange food desires?
Go on.
Get weird with it.

- KC

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P.S. Pineapple pizza is amazing with bacon, sausage, or pepperoni.

Yup!

I didn’t stutter, I said what I said! Breakfast for dinner, in the style of an unsupervised 10 year old. I’m 200 grams of sugar deep and I feel no pain—nor guilt tonight! (I’m def hitting the gym tomorrow, but tonight...)

Let’s have a little chat about one of the best parts of adulthood that we often overlook. Too many of us rushed through adolescence, chasing the future, that we forgot to stop and enjoy the ride. And now that we’re here, we rarely look back at what we left behind.

Life now as an adult is serious, with no shortage of things to worry about, from our health insurance premiums going up while covering less, to your knees creaking a little more today than yesterday, to having to grind some OT to afford groceries. It’s a lot. And it sucks.

If you can remember that episode, where the wise prophet and cultural icon, Homer J Simpson said: “All work and no play make Homer go something something.”

Yes. 100%

So this week I challenge you to step into your mental Tardis and pay your younger self a visit. Remember some of the things you used to do when left to your own devices to have FUN, to UNWIND.

Try to pull an all nighter playing video games or watching horror movies under a pile of blankets.

Pig out on a box of your favorite childhood cereal, and stream some old cartoons. If you look, you can find them. (Prime has Looney Tunes and old stuff too, they were free last time I checked. If not prolly Youtube or whatever streaming service you use.)

Break out the Risk board, or your old Pokémon or Magic Cards… Legos anyone?

(Check out the prices on those Pokémon and Magic Cards, those things are worth A LOT now!)

Go to the local park and play on the swings or the slides.. maybe hide and seek or capture the flag if you can find the people!

Take a walk in the woods, and crack rocks just to see what’s inside!

Pop in one of the albums of a band you used to like and listen to the whole thing back to back and try to remember what you were doing when listening to it.

As the years pass, our lives subtly succumb to distractions. It’s easy to get bogged down by responsibilities and obligations and forget the magic and harmless whimsy that ran through our realities. For me? It was cereal and old 80s classics like Spaceballs and Flight of the Navigator.

What about you?

What’s one thing your younger self would love to see you do again?

-KC

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It was a single, perfectly detached rear quarter of a deer that first welcomed me to Pennsylvania. It was sitting on the side of I-80, between the yellow shoulder line and the jersey barrier with nothing around it. Just hanging out on the shoulder like the highway equivalent of a morbid yet appropriate table setting. I had questions of course, how did it get there? Where... was the rest of it? As I drove on it stuck with me though. How many things we pass by on the roads, highways, and throughways over course of our travels that we see, yet go unseen?

Eyes on the road right? Hands at 10 and 2, during our commutes and our errands. Heads absently bobbing up, down, or side to side to music. Or sentence fragments muttered in half committed responses to whatever the discussion is between the talking heads on the radio. Our eyes are open. We’re alert, the partially finished coffee sitting in the cup holder makes sure of that. Yet the autopilot has been thoroughly engaged, our consciousness checking in 5 minute blocks, but ready to respond a quarter second’s notice. Not unlike the parent of a toddler who had moved to an adjacent room to fold laundry, listening for anything outside of the expected chaos. Unsupervised, yet not unsurveiled.

If you pay close attention, you can almost feel it happening. When you slip back into the drivers seat, and when you step away again. More interestingly, try to catch what things bring you back. Unexpected roadwork draws me in for a few moments, just long enough to figure out if I need to worry about being late to my destination or if I need to brave the back roads. I’ll snap back in if I start getting that strange intuition you get when you know someone is about to merge, not right now, but you can tell they are definitely thinking about it. The pilot in me refuses to leave again until some kind of resolution is reached; so I tend to either slow down to give them an abundance of room, or speed up and pass to either force the decision, or remove it entirely. I’m not sure what that inner pilot is doing in that other room, but I hope it isn’t folding laundry.

It isn’t always something grisly like that deer haunch. The other night on my way home from work it was a perfectly upright potted plant. Its generic home improvement store plastic base didn’t look too damaged. It was intact enough to consider its survival a small gesture of divine providence, even in its slightly injured state. Aside from the obvious questions of “How?” I thought about the others. Did it fall off the back of something? Was it deliberately placed there as some sort of high risk prize for the one daring enough to stop and pick it up? The concerns about its final outcome faded quickly though, as I had some more laundry to fold I guess.

The hats, caps, and odd sneaker every now and again might receive a momentary flare of awareness, but their explanations are too mundane. Too easily explained by an unexpectedly windy day with the top down, your shotgun riding navigator with a foot out the window with untied shoelaces. Then there’s the wild card sibling battle where the checkmate was always throwing something out the window at 75mph.

Mattresses and box springs I understand completely though, but don’t at the same time. They are a royal pain unless you have a pickup with a bed big enough or box truck. Securing it to the roof of the car? Bungees, rope, or winches, whatever you got, you hope you have enough of it to keep it stable. Behind the doors or through the windows, and how exactly do you tie it lengthwise? The joke though is even with your best amateur effort, you still run the risk of physics demanding sacrifice. But even if the wind snatches it off the roof of your car...why didn’t you go back and get it? If it was worth going through all that trouble, was a little road dust now the proverbial straw?

I once came across a couch. It was no longer white, but it looked like it was trying to remember. Weather and the highway’s own systems of entropy had clearly taken its toll. Terrible pun aside, I considered the couch as it faded from the rear-view. Was it a moving day casualty? How did it come to be discarded so far from home? It seemed serviceable enough, maybe it and its owners had shared memories enough that made this unceremonious goodbye easier. Who can say?

Driving is a happy pastime for me. Always has been. A moment away where I turn my inner monologue into a full conversation to the backdrop of whatever genres I happen to be into at the time. Continually alert, but with a solitary hand at noon. The pilot makes sure to pop its head in from time to time, before going back to folding socks.

-KC

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My favorite part about Christmas was never the presents under the tree. Generally, you always knew, or at least had a pretty good idea, of what you were getting, so the element of surprise was rarely there at full power. The stocking, however... that’s where you got to see the real creativity, the real effort, in my opinion. All this to say, I love surprises.

Which is also why I love rocks.
Yes... rocks.

You ever look at a boulder and wonder what’s inside it?
Underneath it?
See a mountain and start imagining what it would look like if you could just... smash through it?
Just to see what secrets it may or may not have held?

I did.

Hell, I still do even now.

Fortunately, I had some friends that felt the same way.
Like a motley crew of deviants, we’d go out into the woods with day packs and sledgehammers, adventuring out to appreciate nature in a particularly unique way.

Smashing rocks.

There was no science behind it. Just boys doing boy things, having fun, talking shit, and celebrating whenever we found something cool. Given how low our standards really were for entertainment at the time, that was pretty frequent.

But every so often, we’d find a real prize: a small quartz or amethyst geode, maybe a surprise vein of pyrite or the like.

I think back to these times often, because how often do we overcomplicate things that need not be so complicated? Throwing in all these extra steps that just serve as hurdles keeping us away from our goals, or simply doing what we want to do?

Sometimes, it’s as simple as just getting that sledgehammer.

And smashing some rocks.

–KC

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Musings about the world of modern hand drying. Some battles are small. Others are damp. This was both.

The “Kind Chicken Regular” was a series I wanted to try when I started Kind Chicken. A series of strange spoken word shorts that range from the lightly surreal to thoughtful and ridiculous.

I’d love your feedback!

-KC

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This line comes from a translated haiku by Mizuta Masahide, a 17th-century poet and samurai who, legend has it, penned it shortly after his home burned to the ground.

It definitely says something that instead of a string of profoundly colorful epithets, he wrote a haiku.

But I digress.

At 7:50am on August 17th, 2010, my mom lost her battle with breast cancer. With her passing, I inherited two absolutely ridiculous dogs: a spindly, confused-looking Boston Terrier/Poodle mix named Josh, and a black-and-white Sheltie named Izzie.

Josh had long skinny limbs and a sparse, wiry coat — think a thin-limbed Yorkie with alopecia. His mirror, Izzie, sported the trademark luxurious Sheltie quadruple coat and a blank, beady-eyed stare.

Josh was the personality of the two, all terrier stubbornness, with a presence ten sizes too big for his 12-pound body. One of his ten thousand nicknames was “Mr. Bun,” because when he curled up, he kind of looked like a little croissant… and that had way too many syllables, so Mr. Bun had to do.

Izzie had the personality of a cereal box, but he was so innocent and funny. Always found wherever Josh was getting into trouble. A truly bonded pair.

I was working my way through school at the time. Suffice it to say, for a while, things were tough. But through a little (read: a lot) of help from God, my friends, and my roommates, I was able to finish school and start my career as an RN.

The idea of giving them up for adoption was out of the question. They were the last living connection I had to my mom. I wouldn’t forsake that. They were family.

I may not be Vin Diesel, but… you get it.

It was May, not long after I got my feet under me as a nurse, Josh, ever the eternal diplomat, escaped the backyard and wandered into a neighbor’s yard, where he was attacked and badly hurt. I had to let him go that night.

A couple months later, in July, liver cancer took Izzie.

I prayed they found each other in the hereafter. And though I was heartbroken, I was, and still am, grateful I got to be there for both of them, and say goodbye. That’s a privilege not everyone gets.

2016 was a rough year.

But as I mourned and healed, I realized I no longer had ties. My family was gone. My friends were starting their own. But for me… my roots were now wherever I decided to take sun and water.

Two months after Izzie passed, I was on the move, and starting my adventure.

I headed west, bouncing from place to place, meeting new people, making new friends, and finally living life the way I intended. Free from the demands of legacy or expectation. Since then, each day I wake up is another chance to chase a new dream and step into a new chapter.

Those of you who’ve known loss know that some wounds linger longer than others. Some pains don’t disappear, we just learn how to carry them.

For me, I still remember.

But now, as I live, they ride shotgun with me in memory. Dog hair and all.

Because every time my barn burned down — I never lost sight of the moon.

— KC

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Sometimes a man finds a book that shakes everything he knew about his place in the world.

Or at least his confidence.

The “Kind Chicken Regular” was a series I wanted to try when I started Kind Chicken. A series of strange spoken word shorts that range from the lightly surreal to thoughtful and ridiculous.

I’d love your feedback!

-KC

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I remember when you said “Daddy, the branches look like they’re arguing.”

The vinyl of the lawn chair creaked against my back as I looked up towards the canopy, branches crooked in crazy, impossible angles.

“Yea Buddy, you might be on to something.”

I said, while your body savored the last bit of momentum on the tire swing. Size three Chuck Taylors bobbing absently in thought.

You were so smart, seeing the world like everything was a version of something and someone else. And each—a friend you just hadn’t met yet.

“What’cha doin?” I heard your voice from below the ladder. Peering down, our eyes had met, yours so big and curious. Of course, you had your tractor in tow—didn’t you always?

“Fixin’ the rope buddy, if it broke you could hurt yourself.” Hemp rope worn thin around the branch of the elm—needed to be replaced. A father’s job.

“Oh. Does the rope hurt the tree?” You asked, probably noticing the shallow groove the old rope had carved into the bark. My hands paused while I considered the question.

“I don’t think the tree minds much. They’re tall and strong.” My beard had itched more then, more pepper than salt. “Just like you’re gunna be one day.” So many knots I still needed to teach you.

“Do you think the tree wants to play with my tractor?” I couldn’t help but laugh, as I finished drawing the bowline tight.

“Well I don’t—” At the bottom of the tree, a little yellow tractor sat between the elm’s roots. You had already run off after a dragonfly, arms spread wide preparing for flight.

The tire swing and chair are still there.

Maybe a little older, maybe with a little more rust in places.

At night, I see the fireflies in conversation with the stars overhead, your voice, soft in the wind asking “Dad? Where do the stars go when it rains?”

“Buddy... I can’t wait to tell you one day.”

-KC

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The Newton North High School I attended was an absolute UNIT of a building. It was a campus really, taking up a full quarter mile square of space. Those brief 5-10 minute gaps between classes because you needed every single one of those minutes to navigate its 6 floors, 4 color coded quadrants, and 14 staircases. Its mass was necessary though. 2000 kids, and in one of the more affluent school districts in the state, you needed to ensure that each one of those kids had access to each and every opportunity that their respective castes afforded them.

My freshman experience inside this academic metropolis was one of overwhelm. Getting to classes was an experience. Which staircase to get to which part of which floor to get to class in time led to many inside jokes among my class. It’s like the architects, drunk on rust-colored grandiosity, were also tangent enthusiasts. Probably. With time our navigation skills improved, and the labyrinth began to make an odd kind of sense, except for the last staircase in the “Red” Quadrant of the school. That staircase, tucked a few steps past the entry mouth of the Cafeteria and across from the housemaster’s office, led to a single, massive classroom on the fourth floor.

You know what’s really odd though?

Ok, humor me a second.

Close your eyes.

Think of the hallways of your high school.

Any hallway.

What do you see? Once the fog clears and the sepia filters kick in? Maybe some peers, professors, and lockers right?

Carpets with patterns like elevator music?

The classrooms on one or both sides of the hallway?

Think of the doors.

Notice how they sometimes are open, sometimes closed?

Yea, this classroom at the top of the stairs was always open… always.

Now I never(always) cut class, but if a student happened to find themselves with an unexpected free time, it is incumbent upon them to make the highest and best use possible of that reprieve from responsibility, don’t you think?

It was on that type of day that I found myself climbing those metal and concrete stairs, set on trying to understand what exactly was going on in that room. Dust motes unevenly revealed themselves, wafting through the sunlight that poured through the 1970s era skylight. This gave an almost consecrated ambiance to the ascent. Which in my 15 year old opinion, would have been a pretty irresponsible use of heavenly sanction.

Soon I found myself walking down the hall towards the always open door. The carpets here were a mute steel grey, my footsteps muffled by their synthetic fibers. Before long, and anticlimactically (sorry) I was crossing the threshold and entering the classroom.

At first glance, it was unremarkable aside from a killer view, which given its height, and being in almost a parapet of the monolith of the school body, this would have been expected really. Natural lighting was phenomenal, standard green chalkboard center mass, but as I started to turn it’s when I saw the real payload this room had been hiding. The bookcase.

Anti-anticlimactically, this was no regular bookcase. It was floor to ceiling, holding not tens or dozens, but easily several hundred books. Hard covers, soft covers, the colors, the...dragon logo? The many… dragon logos? Scattered amidst the many book rinds? This wasn’t a simple bookcase. This was a great wyrm’s horde underneath a Dwarven kingdoms vault. This was a cache of long walks now entertained, and successful procrastinations yet to be delayed!

Like a moth to a shop vac, I was reading all the titles, opening the books and smelling the sweet must of their inseams, skimming the backs. My undiagnosed ADHD brain spiraling into a dopamine frenzy. See, I had always loved reading, but it was only the previous year that I had really sunk into the fantasy and sci-fi genres. To find this? This was like getting end game boss loot on a side quest!

Somewhere in the distance it occurred to me that I had no idea what the actual situation was here. Some teachers kept their personal collections in their classrooms. But whose were these? It was not even a moment between the arrival of this thought then I saw the computer lab printed sign taped unceremoniously to the wall.

“Feel free to borrow, don’t forget to bring back.”

Permission granted! That day at school I may or may not have missed a few classes. It was unavoidable you see. I was productively occupied, having had a change of heart about the possible uses for a heavenly sanction so clearly implied.

I never did get to meet the teacher who owned those books. Room #501 never had a teacher listed, and my periodically “I just remembered to ask” queries would just be answered with shrugs and smiles. Maybe the mystery is part of what makes this memory so special. A treasure only for those with the eyes to see it, in the room at the top of the last staircase. With a door that’s always open.

-KC

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“Struggle” hits different depending on who you ask.
But when you’re in it, there’s really no other word that feels right.

Maybe your struggle is a tough relationship. That moment you realize that no matter how you once felt, this person isn’t your person.

Maybe it’s being down to the last $10 in the checking account, fridge empty, payday still eleven days out.

And resilience?

It’s showing up for your third overtime shift this week when your stomach still isn’t right from that bug.

It’s that quiet sigh and slow closing of your eyes, bearing down until you finally get the chance to change your living situation.

People toss out clichés like “It’ll work out” or “Things will get better.”
But what is that, really?

Just a mirage of camaraderie. A bittersweet moment of gratitude that someone listened,
before you’re back to figuring it out alone.

You still need gas.
Or maybe you’ve got a headache waiting for you at home.

Our brains are wired for survival:

Pattern recognition.

Pain avoidance.

The old cravings for fat, salt, and carbs.

But tucked somewhere deeper?

Hope.

Sitting quietly in the back, next to the life lessons and the wisdom you’re still collecting.

Every day you wake up is another chance to choose differently.
Another opening for the universe to send help.

But you have to be here to meet it.
And I hope you’re here when it arrives.

-KC

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I strongly believe clothing sizes should be made uniform across all brands. Hell, we should make it an international standard, but unlike the imperial and metric system, one that everyone agrees upon. I don’t think that we necessarily need to extend that standard to the particular nuances of cut or style, but at least some kind of formally agreed upon rubric should be installed.

As someone who routinely has to stop for clothes at DXL or in the big and tall sections of stores, I already know what brands can accommodate the broadness of my shoulders without assuming I am built like a literal cereal box, or thickness of my thighs without assuming I have the midsection of a fridge. I am far less forgiving about shoes, especially given their often inflated costs. Given my base 14W size, I range somewhere between 14 and 15 depending on brand. Who wants to play the buy and return game that turns what should be a simple purchase into anything more appropriately titled an ordeal?

As frustrating as this can be, it did work out in my favor once unexpectedly.

Not sure what happened to the bathrobe that came before, if there even was one to be honest. But either way I was in the market for a new bathrobe, and soon found myself on Amazon beginning what would turn out to be a weeks long search. Several cart rotations and deep dives into its near infinite pages later, I found a strong contender. Terms like “luxury” do some suspiciously heavy lifting on Amazon most of the time, same thing goes for reviews if we’re being honest. But I had a good feeling about this one.

It was beautifully blue, and most importantly it wasn’t a “one size fits all” size, which I also find is all too often a lie. Ordering a 3XL I waited for it to arrive with distinct excitement. What arrived was a behemoth of plush fabric. This bathrobe was 3XL alright, but for a horse. It wrapped around me twice over, its hood draped over my face as if I was a stylishly post shower appropriate monk from some secretive order from deep within the Vatican. Plush, feeling 2-3 times thicker than the usual terry cloth fabric most other robes were made of. It was the type of thing that the rappers of the 90s would have killed for in their music videos. Warm, super sized, soft, in other words...

Perfect.

Soon I found its use no longer limited to being worn around the house, but I began wearing it out in inclement weather. Listen, in snow, misty rain, or just plain ass cold? Why wouldn’t an oversized hooded bathrobe be the appropriate choice? Who needs North Face, when I have bathroom chic?

Exactly.

It may be considered a derailment of the fashion forward concept, but at least I’ll be unapologetically warm and comfortable. And simultaneously several steps above what the “People of Walmart” try to get away with. If you’re ever feeling particularly brave sometime, give it a shot. Let me know what you think.

Works better if you let the belt flap in the wind behind you as you walk.

It looks extra cinematic.

-KC

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A pain quickly forgotten,

my body now an empty husk.

A brilliance like water before me,

flowing from spaces unseen.

Across the reality I once claimed,

that now sought distance,

my soul stared at me.

Its countenance reproachful,

once a pristine silhouette.

Albedo speckled with accumulated filth.

Gossamer fabric caked in tar.

The eyes of my soul were knowing.

Dark and full of sorrow.

Absent of compassion,

absent of the forgiveness

I forgot to ask for.

As it turned away,

dissolving into the unknown.

I understood,

It had departed long ago.

-KC

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Stagnant water still rots, just as kind dreams spoil in the face of starvation, fermenting into a sour vintage. Whereas sand compressed becomes stone, a literal sum of its parts—becoming one.

Greetings, oh Pontificate of Rust. Condescend to us not with your sermons of toil and restraint. For our exhaustion is rampant, and the wan benevolence of our numbness falters before the provision of lack within our purses.

What would become of us, if we continued to fall in line, column after column in your black march to the swamp’s doldrums? Beneath your banner of prosperity for the few, your standard a yoke upon backs scarred and broken by untenable premiums roiled in thirteen figures of gilt.

Slow is the pace, meager are the rations, threadbare are the uniforms. Panels of boot leather come apart readily, same as the feet within them. Meat for the bed of the murk. Wine for the cups of those who have never known thirst.

Alms for the poor, crumbs for the meek. Yet the beggar’s bowl overflows with sand, and sand again chokes the parched throats of the meek. Sand and time, compressed by necessity become stone. A literal sum of its parts—becoming one.

If the wages of sin be death, who does this tax collector serve?

-KC

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Dry humor spoken word short about falling in love with a blanket.
It wasn’t a metaphor. It wasn’t a dream. It was warm. Supportive. Possibly a little manipulative.
These are the kinds of bonds we don’t talk about. We just… cocoon.

The “Kind Chicken Regular” was a series I wanted to try when I started Kind Chicken. A series of strange spoken word shorts that range from the lightly surreal to thoughtful and ridiculous.

I’d love your feedback!

-KC

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When I woke up in the backrooms, I didn’t realize I was actually *In* the backrooms. The strange, displaced quality of everything was the tip off. The ambient tensile hum of fluorescent lighting.

The intense beigeness of the beige. The carpet padding was truly A plus. At least wherever there was carpet. I’m glad I wore comfortable shoes.

After the third grouping of disconnected monuments, overly colorful slides, and abstract art statues, I wished for a suggestion box. Better playground fill would be a vast improvement. Shredded tires sometimes left little metal threads exposed. I don’t remember when I got my last tetanus booster.

Does anyone? Really?

They didn’t make it easy, but I eventually cornered one of them, in the room with the giant teal balloons. Shadow people are poor conversationalists. Preferring to stare at me awkwardly, when I tried to talk them into wearing clothes. I guess they only liked to watch. And it did, as I walked away.

I read somewhere that mid century modern is making a comeback. If the arms that erupted from the wallpaper had mouths, I might have asked their opinion. But they didn’t seem that interested in chatting either. Or shaking hands.

Hallways opened into uninteresting throughways. Passageways often closed into dead ends. I found myself in a classroom, sage green chalkboard, full of ghostly eraser swirls, and lift-top desks. A molded plastic lunchbox sat. An image of Alf embossed on its cover. Inside I found what would be my maybe lunch, or maybe dinner. What time was it anyway?

The sandwich wasn’t bad. American cheese on wheat in a clear sandwich bag. A juice box with a picture of an apple. The fruit roll-up was a nice touch. I always liked fruit snacks.

While I ate, my mind wandered. Mom once told me to always wear clean underwear. I remembered. They, like my conscience, were clean. Idly strolling down these cloyingly ambivalent hallways, I discovered a clean conscience wasn’t always a good thing. Something to ruminate on would have been nice.

Maybe I’ll add that to the suggestion box, if I ever find one.

-KC

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Sure, we’d eventually have field trips to amusement parks, but until then?

We had the O.G. carnival ride.

The Shopping Cart.

See, this ride scaled.

You started by the handles, legs pushed through the little metal gaps.

Then you graduated into the cart itself, hopefully immersed in that week’s groceries… and whatever snacks you could accidentally knock in while your chauffeur was momentarily distracted.

And then, the final evolution:
Standing on the front.
Gripping the sides like you were on a stunt team.
Pushed around the supermarket in the BEST stop n go traffic you’d ever know.

This was prime childhood right here.

But time waits for no one, they say. And eventually, the time came when I was too big for the cart.

Sitting here now, and looking back, I can safely say it was one of the two milestones that told me I was “Growing up.”

The first was when I was too big to stand on the front of the cart.

The second when I found myself voluntarily buying a bottle of Robitussin because my cough was that bad.

Dimetap was NOT gunna cut it that time, grape or no grape.

Sometimes, when I’m at the supermarket going broke at checkout, I’ll see a kid riding around on the cart as their mom or dad pushes them around.

And I smile.

Because I know how good they have it.

I just wonder if they know it yet.

-KC

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There are many among us who struggle today, caught in cycles of addiction, poverty, or just were dealt a poor hand in life.

It’s so easy to say “If that were me, I would...”, “Why don’t they just...”, “They could always:” But statements like this miss a crucial point... it isn’t you.

We’re all different, in looks, and capabilities, aptitudes, skill sets, and problems often tend to be highly personal and to some extent subjective. We don’t always know where people come from, the roads they’ve walked, or the obstacles they’ve faced.

And opportunities are not handed out equally. Not really.

The single parent may have been widowed. The drug addict or alcoholic may be struggling with mental health issues and self medication may be the only path they’ve found. The ex-con may have 70 applications pending, desperately waiting for a call back. The runaway caught up in the wrong crowd – may have been running from a nightmare at home. We just don’t know, and their road may not have given them the answers they need.

In my work in psych, I have seen that same child from the troubled home end up in the correctional setting years later, or worse. Or how the system even after releasing someone, just can’t seem to let them truly go.

Things are never as simple as they seem.

I’d like to encourage us to try and curb that knee jerk urge to “Monday morning quarterback” someone else’s situation, and remind us to be grateful for our own situations, no matter how humble they may be.

A roof over the head.

A warm bed to lay in.

Food to eat, and clean water to drink.

A way to make a living even if modest.

The love and appreciation of another.

And the opportunity to be more than we were. If we’d like, if we choose.

These are blessings we should appreciate. They may be the norm for you, but for many others, they are just a dream.

Be kind to each other—it’s tough out there.

-KC

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The Porchlight’s Still On:

This is Kind Chicken’s main body of work. Personal Essays, reflections, prose, nostalgia, and sometimes heavier forays into mental health and self preservation.

The Kind Chicken Regular:

I loved the “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” videos in the days of SNL, These shorts were my tribute to that concept. Some funny, some ridiculous, and others surreal. I don’t make them anymore, but if you enjoy them I could always revisit in the future. Let me know!

A Cabinet of Curiosities:

This is for pieces that don’t quite fit the rest of KC. Whether that’s due to vibe or genre, those pieces will live here.

Ex: Fiction, poetry, horror/adjacent, slipstream, etc.

Thanks for stopping by, make yourself at home.

-KC

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On those early summer days when the breeze sometimes remembered spring’s chill, he’d leave the porch door open. I’d imagine him sitting outside, with a book, or just staring into the trees. How their leaves seemed to enjoy the weather as much as he did. Warm days found him with a tall glass of lemonade—fresh squeezed. His little half smile as each lemon was washed in the colander, and halved on the bamboo cutting board an old roommate had left behind, once upon a time.

And I’d play for him.

Each day he’d ask me to play something different, and of course I would, it was my purpose, and he—was my person. But Sunday mornings were dedicated to Jazz—and Coltrane, was always on his menu when brunch was being served. Over the past few months especially, he had curated for himself quite a vinyl collection. Spanning Alice in Chains to Yiruma? Never a dull moment, as they say.

He’d stopped listening to the radio months earlier, and truthfully, I was glad of it. Whatever was on the news would send him into tirades, storming through the apartment for hours. But before long, he’d be back on the porch, coming inside to turn the record over, and place my needle down again. A few albums in, and everything would be alright.

Something’s been bothering him lately though—this isn’t like him. He hasn’t asked me to play for him since last Sunday. And he knows that a Sunday without Coltrane, is barely a Sunday at all.

-KC

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1

I started failing at cooking as a teenager.

Some failures were spectacular: baking brownies on a cookie sheet (could stop bullets), using handfuls of jerk seasoning instead of tablespoons (leads to tongue PTSD), even trying to prep pork in the blender with rosemary and vanilla because I liked how it smelled together. (Please don’t ever do this.)

I was reckless.
I was unhinged.
I learned that rosemary and vanilla do not go with each other... or pork, for that matter.

But each failure was a discovery of what didn’t work.
Each failure was the price I had to pay to maybe do things a little differently, to discover what did.

Every time I went out to eat, I paid attention to what real chefs did with their ingredients.
Then, like a mad scientist, I’d experiment when I got home.
It became... fun.

Now? I specialize in Italian, Indian, and Asian cuisine. Maybe not the higher-level stuff.
But my lasagna is to die for, my curries are divine, and don’t make me take out my wok!

There’s a joy that comes from making pancakes from scratch (surprisingly easy, believe it or not. You really don’t need Bisquick) and seeing your girlfriend’s eyes light up when you get crazy with the French toast.

On the flip side of that joy is the curse.
The thing that few people think about.

When your sweet tooth hits at 3 a.m. demanding satisfaction?

Let’s just say the smallest recipe I have for cookies makes four dozen.
My cobblers are surprisingly versatile.
Bread pudding is not that difficult to make.
Compotes, caramels, and toffees, just gotta keep the heat under control.

Thank God I’m still figuring out how to work with yeast.
Fresh-baked bread would be my undoing, and cinnamon rolls...

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, though.
For science!

When you know your way around the kitchen, you’re never truly out of options to ruin your diet.

–KC

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