Screenwriter Dorchak (author of Of Pigs and Meteorites) offers a playful collection of stories that plumb youthful indiscretion, drunken shenanigans, and the regret that sometimes punctuates life’s best moments. “Lucky Me” finds Dorchak reminiscing about his high school run-ins, sparked by his “natural defense-response, which happened to be a Sky-Net of snark and humor,” while “Oh Gipper, Where Art Thou?” recalls a raucous night of egging his wrestling coach’s house, culminating in a chaotic escape of youthful recklessness and swagger—characteristics that define many of Dorchak’s more adventurous memories.

When not recounting tales of past near-glory, Dorchak reflects on the current ways his body is in revolt. When his wife tells him not to move the “Large, Heavy Thing,” middle age consciousness kicks in, forcing him to wonder if “you’re only trying to move it because you’re afraid to choose the option of getting someone else to do it… that would mean admitting how old and out of shape you are.” He ties earlier youthful adventures to his somewhat wiser escapades as an adult, contemplating the pitfalls of looking back on past decisions. “Poor Life Choices can be made at any age or stage of life” he writes, “but making them when you are younger is advised, so that you learn from them by the time you are older.”

Readers who appreciate tongue-in-cheek humor and healthy doses of self-deprecation will be entertained, though Dorchak does wade into deeper waters at times. In “Taxes and Death,” he reflects on his fraught relationship with his father, distinguished by sharp arguments and years of silence, painting his father’s death in bleak tones—“he all but died alone in the rain like some sort of character out of a Hemmingway novel”—before dredging up his father’s last words to him: “Yeah yeah yeah... love you.” This is a lighthearted reminder of our collective nostalgia for the abandon of youth.

Takeaway: Playful collection of youth’s lighter moments.

Comparable Titles: Dave Barry’s Live Right and Find Happiness, Bruce Sheets’s A Boomer Memoir.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A