Robert Fulghum has long been one of my favorite authors . . . ever
since he came out with ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED
IN KINDERGARTEN, I've made it a point to get everything he has
written.

They each contain essays that look at everyday situations in a
way that will delight you and, also, make you think . . . his latest, WHAT
ON EARTH HAVE I DONE? is no
exception.

Fulghum begins by telling of an experience he had when he
heard a mother asking a variation of the book's title question
of her son: "Billy, what on Earth have you done?" . . . he then
realized that his mother had asked the same question, and he
then asked his own children, who no doubt have asked
their kids.

Yet as he finds out, the answer is never easy and almost
always surprising . . . in one of the best passages of the
book, he describes an encounter he had with a particular
store's employee . . . when something was not ready when
promised, he didn't get upset; rather, he played a game
to see if the person could come up with a really creative
excuse as to why this happened.

This playfulness is described via several other encounters
that Fulghum has as he moves among Seattle, Utah and
Crete . . . for example:

* There's a tailor shop on Queen Anne Avenue. Sign in the window
says ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS FOR MEN AND WOMEN. The
tailor is standing in the doorway. I stop. "I'd like to get altered and
repaired," I say.

She looks at me cautiously. Goes inside. Closes the door.

Not a player.

I also liked this other approach he describes:
* A friend of mine simply waves and smiles at people he doesn't
know.

More often than not, they wave and smile back.

Or ask, "Do I know you?" and he responds, "No, but you could."

As to what it (life) all means, Fulghum perhaps sums it up best
with this tidbit:

* The old man looked mildly outraged and fell into high-gear Greek
again with his son. The son was apologetic. "Pardon me, but my
father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You
have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not
even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No
wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.' He
is dismayed."

If you'd like to become less dismayed, buy WHAT ON EARTH
HAVE I DONE? for the upcoming holiday season . . . it will
make an ideal gift for just about anybody on your list . . . yet
make sure you treat yourself, too, with your very own copy.

I have been a huge fan of Fulghum's for many years. However...

I lived in Japan too, I traveled to many different countries in Europe too, and I too lived for 15 months just a few kilometers from the place he stays on Crete and from where he writes, but will entertain NO fan mail or emails or visits - as if the hoards are there on that rural rock to mob him. And so even in the past couple of books, as he made a huge deal about eating a breakfast of Japanese tea, Cretan honey, and some kind of European bread, I thought: "big friggin deal". That stuff is in my cabinet daily. He truly has departed from his earlier brilliant, heart-inside-out, magical musings and observations on life, those poignant stories of every little person out there strung together by a common bond of being exceptional even as we are average, to a gloating narration of his travels all over the world (yep, he's got the money now) without any of those wonderful tales. So what, you're walking down some cobble stoned street in ancient Sardinia...AND??

It's truly a sad day when the most gifted writers lose that hunger to understand life and people, and to write about it in the way Fulghum used to, and instead, they replace it with words hammered out while they take themselves on a never-ending vacation, living on their laurels.