Do You Know Alice?

Do you know who Alice Bradley is?

Some friends of mine are devotees of Finslippy, her blog, a blog of which I was ignorant. And several months ago these friends told me that they thought Alice and I would get along well, in part because we are both Brooklyn bloggers with babies named Henry, though her baby is seven, if he isn’t yet eight.

So I looked up Finslippy, and learned that it is largely a parenting blog but what I like is that it’s well-written — and it’s hilarious.

When I first found Finslippy I emailed Alice and said hey, isn’t this funny, I love your blog and we both have kids named Henry, and we both live in this huge city that we both live in. Does this coincidence AMAZE you the way it amazes me?

And unlike Alan Alda, who once snubbed me while eating a plateful of turkey — I was seven, and I had asked him for an autograph — Alice offered me a large bite of turkey. She invited me to a reading she was giving that weekend.

I went and realized that we had a friend in common and we had a grand old time chatting.

Because I want your life to be happy and full, I urge you to read Alice’s words, unless it will put you over your daily word count and you will stop reading my words, in which case, forget I ever mentioned Alice, who is, quite frankly, overrated by the people who give her prizes for being the funniest and the most thoughtful blogger.

And who cares if she is an ectomorph with a great haircut? Our culture is shallow.

I bring this all up because I checked the other day, and when her Henry was about the same age as my Henry, he was as obsessed with many of the same things that my Henry is as Henry is now. Namely, vacuums and blenders and singing.