As we dive face-first into convention season, a humble suggestion to my fellow panel moderators: skip live audience Q&A at the mike. Pass around index cards and pencils at the start, collect em midway, pull out 5 good ones. Read them to the panelists, give the asker a door prize. Get a volunteer to take dictation for anybody with writing/fine motor issues. You'll get better questions from a more diverse set of folks, save the more seasoned audience members and your panelists a ton of cringing through rambling non-questions.

In kindergarten, a scrappy older boy I was playground friends with went off to get in a “fight.” His death was inevitable, so I enacted funeral rites for him, which involved ritually placing my palms on the surface of a perfectly still puddle of rainwater and chanting his name.

https://twitter.com/KEBrightbill/status/1098106429628694528

There was also the time I cut my fingernails into claws so I could protect girls on the playground from boys trying to kiss them; the months that I went to bed wearing a fleece neckwarmer to fend off vampire attacks (thinly veiled hopefulness there)...