Chick Wit

• Column Classic: Thanksgiving November 30, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline / Francesca Serritella

  Here is a true classic and the first column Francesca wrote while in college, before she became a regular contributor.

  Intro from Lisa Scottoline

  Thanksgiving is about family, so I thought I’d ask my daughter Francesca for her thoughts about the day.  We spend so much time talking to and teaching our children that sometimes it’s nice just to ask them what they think, and listen to the answer.  So take a minute this Thanksgiving to ask your own baby birds what they think about the day, and listen to whatever they chirp up with. 

  Because I bet that the thing that you’re most thankful for is them. 

  Column Classic: Thanksgiving

  By Francesca Serritella

  

  My family is small.  Since it’s only my mom and me at home, our Thanksgiving has never been the Martha Stewart production it can be for some other families.  My dad’s family has Thanksgiving in New York; my grandmother and uncle have Thanksgiving in Miami.  My mother and I buy a last-minute turkey, make up some wacky ingredients for a stuffing, and eat together with Frank Sinatra playing in the background and a lot of warm, furry dogs warming our feet.  It has always been nice, and I know we’re lucky to have each other, but sometimes it has just felt small.

  Until Harry.

  Harry is our neighbor, he’s in his eighties, and we got to know him from running into him when we walked our dogs.  He used to go for a long walk every day, waving a white handkerchief so cars would see him.  He would stop to chat with us, always cheery and warm, even when the late-autumn wind made his nose red and his eyes tear.

  A few years ago, my mom invited Harry to our Thanksgiving dinner, and he arrived at four o’clock sharp, wearing a cozy and Icelandic sweater and graciously removing his Irish tweed cap as soon as he came inside.  During dinner, my mom asked him about his hobbies, and to be honest, I didn’t expect this to be the most thrilling conversation topic.  After all, my grandmother’s hobbies are crosswords and yelling at my uncle.  But Harry’s face lit up at the question.

  “I’m a Ham!” he said.

  We didn’t get it.

  And with that, Harry turned into a live-wire.  He talked about his hobby as a Ham Radio operator, a mode of amateur radio broadcast first popular in the 1920s.   Harry told us all about using radio technology while serving in WWII, and we sat, rapt, as he described sending a signal into the air, bouncing it off the stratosphere, and bending it around the earth.  He seemed like Merlin, hands waving in the air—his fingers had lost their quiver and his watery eyes were bright and shining.

  Well-meaning, but being somewhat of a teenage buzz kill, I asked, “Have you ever tried email?  Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  No, he said.  He enjoys the effort—a foreign concept in my wireless Internet, instant-messaging world.  Even though Ham radios can communicate through voice, he still uses Morse code sometimes, just for the fun of it.  Most of all, he enjoys belonging to the community of Hams.  “I get to meet people I would never meet.  I have friends around the world.”

  That night, it didn’t matter that Harry and I didn’t share a last name, or that we didn’t share the same relatives or the same nose.  That Thanksgiving, he was family.  He still is.

  What Harry and my mother taught me that Thanksgiving, whether they knew it or not, was that you don’t just get your family, you can create your family.  We do it all the time without realizing it; we form bonds with the people we work with, live with, learn with.  I’ve felt homesick up at college, but I’ve also created my own little family of friends at school.  I hope all those brave soldiers overseas have found second families in their comrades, people to support and lean on when they’re forced to be away from loved ones at home. 

  These second families don’t replace our first one, they just extend it. 

  It wasn’t until that Thanksgiving with Harry that I really got it: there are no rules for what or who makes a family, no limit on love.  The holidays especially are a time when we can reach out and say “thank you” to all the people who make up our many families.  And sometimes, if you’re lucky like me, Thanksgiving can even be a chance to set an extra plate at the table.

  Looking out the dining room window, I can barely see Harry’s house for the trees.  But inside that house is a man who is not alone.  There lives a man who is an expert at reaching out to people, whether by angling radio waves around the globe, or by flagging us down on a walk around the block.  He has us, he has our other neighbors, he has friends around the world.  Even better, we have him. 

  And for that, I am thankful.

  Copyright © 2007 Lisa Scottoline / Francesca Serritella

• Reindeer Games November 23, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  The holidays are almost upon us.

  Let the game begin.

  What game am I talking about?

  Not food-shopping.

  Not gift-buying.

  Not home-decorating.

  I’m talking, of course, about Hide-and-Seek.

  That’s the game I play with myself, before every holiday season.

  Because invariably, people will be coming over, so I want to make the place look clean, and I get busy.

  No, not cleaning.

  Have we met?

  I don’t clean, I hide.

  By this I mean, I look around the kitchen and all of a sudden my eyes go automatically to piles of clutter that I’ve been ignoring all year, like:

  A stack of bills.

  Catalogs.

  Sweaters that need to go to the dry cleaner.

  Purses shoved in a kitchen chair.

  Books to be read.

  Yes, books are stacked everywhere in my house.

  I actually like that about me.

  And what I start doing is taking the piles and hiding them.

  This is so that when people come over, they’ll think I keep a clean house.

  But I know better, and now, so do you.

  Please tell me that I’m not the only one.

  Let’s play Holiday Hide-and-Seek!

  Yesterday I stuck all the bills in a tote bag.

  Luckily I have 327 tote bags, and I think I used up 150 of them.

  I moved the stack of catalogs to a drawer, but the drawer was already full of other catalogs.

  At least they were in good company.

  Have fun, catalogs!

  I put the sweaters that have to go to the dry cleaners in the trunk of the car, so I’ll take them the next time I go.

  Or more accurately, I’ll forget they’re in the trunk and drive around with them for the next three weeks.

  My favorite place to hide things for the holidays is the steps to my basement. This is because I am actually too lazy to take stuff all the way down to the basement, or sometimes it’s too heavy.

  Yesterday I actually put two dog cages on the basement steps and they slid right down to the bottom like they were sledding.

  How much fun is that?

  Another game!

  Clutter sledding!

  Except afterwards, I realized I couldn’t get down to the basement because there’s too much stuff on the steps for me to get by.

  To get toilet paper.

  How long can I hold out?

  I’ll let you know.

  After the holidays are over is when the chaos really begins.

  Because when you play Holiday Hide-and-Seek, you can forget where you hid all your stuff.

  You can’t find it anymore.

  The clutter has vanished.

  Or it escaped, like Clutter Houdini.

  Or maybe somebody sneaked in and stole my clutter.

  I played Holiday Hide-and-Seek, but I ended up playing myself.

  And every year, the same thing happens: I start to get overdue notices for bills that went unpaid over the holidays.

  I buy another copy of the book I hid because I couldn’t find where I put the one I bought.

  Or sometimes I end up with a stack of papers and This Is Not a Bill whatevers, and since they’re completely miscellaneous, I put them away to go through them later.

  By later I mean never.

  Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

  But that’s all a problem for another day.

  As of now, my house is clean.

  Or more importantly, it looks that way.

  Happy Holidays!

  Copyright © 2025 Lisa Scottoline

• Classic Column: Adults Only November 16, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Lately, everyone’s talking about adulting.

  No, not adultery.

  Nobody even cares about that anymore.

  Nobody even knows that word anymore.

  Adulting is a made-up word that means trying to be an adult and doing the daily things that adults have to do, like paying bills, putting out the recycling, and establishing a savings account.

  Everyone online is talking and blogging about adulting, so much so that there’s even a backlash against it, with people claiming it’s sexist, boring, or overplayed.

  That’s where I come in.

  At the end.

  I always get wind of something when everyone else is sick of it.

  Just like I always hit the store and find out the sale was last week.

  But as for adulting, I’m a fan.

  I’m even a fan of the word.

  Usually I don’t like trendy, made-up words, but this one makes sense, and honestly, I’ve thought for a long time that adulthood should come with a basic book of instructions, so you know the myriad things that are expected of you, from the macro level like Be Kind To People And Animals, down to the micro level like You Can Wash Your Hair With Dishwashing Liquid if You Run Out of Shampoo, and Vice Versa.

  See, did you know that?

  Well, it’s true.

  Take it from me.

  Don’t ask how I know.

  To stay on point, maybe that’s what happens as we get older.  We accumulate all kinds of little tips for living, which not only help you do the right thing but also make your life easier.

  For example, Tell The Truth is always the right thing.

  But you know what will make your life easier?

  You Can Pick Your Teeth With an Envelope If You Don’t Have A Toothpick.

  See?

  That’s a quality life tip, right there.

  Let’s call it adulting, so we feel trendy.

  I read online that there was a library giving classes in adulting, and I applaud that.  It’s just another thing to love about libraries, though between us, I feel like I could teach an adulting class, with tips like:

  Clean The Lint Trap On The Dryer Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  Change The Oil Filter On Your Car Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  Don’t be Weird About Going To The Doctor Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  We can all agree on those adulting tips.  And then there are ones that only I know:

  Drink Half & Half When You Run Out of Milk Because It Tastes Like Milk, Only Better.

  Don’t Buy Foundation Because It Wears Off After Two Hours And If It Doesn’t, It Was Too Thick In The First Place.

  Don’t Cut Your Hair When You Think You Need To Because That’s When It’s Starting To Look Good.

  Buy Cheap Bras Because They’re Always More Comfy Than Expensive Ones.

  And, Buy Back-ups Of Everything, Especially Toilet Paper.

  Agree or disagree?

  But even though I have learned a few things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m super successful as an adult.

  In fact, I screwed up as an adult just today.

  What happened was that yesterday afternoon, I was standing outside with the dogs and I felt a gnat around my face.  I tried to wave it away, but by mistake, I batted it into my eye.

  So right there, not quality adulting.

  In fact, that’s an epic fail, as the kids would say.

  Of course, they said epic fail three years ago.

  I just got now got wind of it.

  Which would probably be the definition of an epic fail.

  But anyway, the gnat was in my eye, so I washed my eye and thought I’d gotten it out.  It bothered me the rest of the day, but I figured it was irritated and forgot about it.  I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and looked in the mirror.

  And what did I see?

  Well, nothing, out of one eye.

  It was all black.

  Because there was a dead gnat on my cornea.

  Yes, I slept all night with a bug in my eye.

  It must have drowned in my eye juice.

  But I slept great.

  Maybe it was a sleeping bug?

  Anyway, I’m not proud of this.

  No matter how you slice it, it’s not quality adulting.

  I’m pretty sure that if I taught a course in adulting, the first lesson would have to be:

  Don’t Sleep With Bugs In Your Eyes.

  So I’m not always perfect.

  But above all, It’s Okay Not To Be Perfect.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Classic Column: Tryhard November 9, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Mother Mary knew the secret to great parenting.

  Don’t try too hard.

  And I mean that in the best way.

  The thing that both of my parents gave us in abundance was love.

  That came naturally to them. 

  They didn’t have to try very hard at all.

  My brother Frank and I were adored, unconditionally.

  They thought everything we did was great.

  It was the only thing they agreed on, until they divorced.

  Their love for us was all out of proportion with any reality.  For example, I remember getting ready with my brother to go with my father to the World’s Fair in New York City.

  Yes, that would be in 1964.

  Welcome to The History Channel, or in other words, my life.

  I was born in 1955, so I was nine years old at the time.

  Believe it or not, I just had get a pencil and paper to do the math, including carrying-the-one, which shows my great affection for you.

  I remember telling my mother that I was excited about seeing New York.

  And I remember distinctly what she said to me, which was, “Honey, New York is excited to be seeing you.”

  Wow.

  That’s love.

  Or maybe delusional behavior.

  But either way, I grew up feeling pretty great about myself.  

  And not because I got good grades in school or for any other reason, except the fact that I breathed in and out.

  My father was the same way.

  I remember that after I had become an author he would come to my signings, and someone said to him, “you must be very proud of your daughter” and he said, “Lady, I was proud of her the day she came out of the egg.”

  I’ve told that story before, I tell it all the time, because I think I have the same attitude, and think it’s one of the reasons that Francesca and I are so close.

  I just adored her, the moment she came out of the egg.

  I still do.

  And I said all the dumb things to her that my mother said to me, like “don’t study so much” and “it doesn’t matter whether you get A’s, just so you’re happy” and “stop reading so much, it will ruin your eyes.”

  And paradoxically, Francesca turned out to be a wonderful student and accomplish great things, despite me telling her that she didn’t need to bother.

  And I can’t say I caused that, or even that it planned it, only that when I think back to my childhood, I realize that there was absolutely no trying going on in my household, at all.

  We just were.

  And that applied to little things as well, like Halloween costumes.

  Nowadays, Halloween costumes have been raised to an art form and there are parades in my town, where they give out a variety of prizes for the most original costume and such.  All of the costumes are homemade, and I can see how hard the parents and kids tried to make a wonderful costume.

  But we Scottolines never tried that hard.

  For Halloween’s when I was growing up, my mother went to Woolworth’s and bought a costume in a box.  It had a plastic mask that was stiff and attached to your face with a cheap piece of elastic that would undoubtedly break by the end of the evening.

  Which was fine because the mask was too hot to wear anyway.

  You could’ve welded in my Halloween mask.

  I remember being Cleopatra five years in a row, and thinking back on it now, I realize I wore the same costume.  

  I mean the same exact costume, which my mother must have re-boxed after Halloween and put away, only to present to me the next October.

  “Cleopatra!” I would say with delight, each time.  

  Because for me, Halloween was when you got to be Cleopatra.

  No one ever suggested you could actually change costumes, and I couldn’t imagine why you would want to.

  If you could be Cleopatra, why would you be anybody else?

  I had diva tendencies even then.

  Which Mother Mary evidently encouraged, being something of a diva herself, even though she was only 4 foot 11 inches.

  Size really does not matter, people.

  The costume was a sheath of turquoise polyester with pseudo-Egyptian hieroglyphics on the front, and the mask was authentically Cleopatran because it had triangle hair on either side of the face, a snake for a headband, and really bad eyeliner.

  And I remember loving Halloween, with my father taking us from house to house, me swanning around in my Cleopatra dress and my brother in his pirate headscarf with a fake-silky blouse.

  He was a pirate for five years in a row, too.

  That was before we knew he was gay.

  But he did look damn good in that blouse.

  We’d carry paper bags to collect the candy and orange cartons to collect pennies for UNICEF, though we had no idea what that meant, only that it was a good thing to do and made a lot of noise when you shook the container.

  All my memories of Halloween, like most of my childhood, are happy, filled with polyester, preservatives, and sugar.

  We were happy because we loved each other and it showed.

  My parents told us so, and hugged us, and kissed us.

  When we fell and skinned a knee, it was a tragedy.

  No injuries were ever walked off in the Scottoline household.

  They were fussed over, worried about, and cured with food.

  No failures or setbacks were ever shrugged off and anytime we were rejected by anybody or anything, fists were shaken.

  “It’s their loss,” my father would always say.

  And my mother would curse. 

  One time, in my lawyer days, she wanted to go to my law firm to yell at one of the partners for working me too hard.

  I stopped her, saving the day.

  For them.

  Because an entire law firm was no match for my mother.

  Now, that’s love.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Column Classic: Homey for the Holidays November 2, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  The holidays are coming.

  Do you feel happiness?  Or pressure?

  If the latter, you’ve come to the right place.

  Because Mother Mary has the cure.

  Let me explain.

  The horror begins at Halloween.

  And not the fun kind of horror, which involves kids in costumes and fun-size Snickers bars, but the kind that tells you you have to go apple-picking, then come home and make an apple pie, but you’re not allowed to eat it because it’s too fattening.

  Or the kind that tells you you have to visit a pumpkin patch, pick a pumpkin, then come home and carve it, then bake the seeds into snack that nobody wants.

  Mind you, I’m not putting any of these things down.

  I go by the motto, Don’t Yuck My Yum.

  The Internet definition of the term is, don’t hate on things that people love.

  And I totally agree with that.

  So if you want to go crazy on Halloween, decorate your house, wear funny costumes, and even throw a party, go for it.

  But I was in the mall yesterday, and everywhere I turned were signs for the holidays, and all of the signs were pushing one thing, but it wasn’t love, peace, or understanding.

  It was perfection.

  One sign said, MAKE YOUR HOME PERFECT FOR HOLIDAY ENTERTAINING!

  And another one promoted gifts that were “absolutely perfect for the holidays.”

  I even saw a display for candles that smelled “holiday-perfect.”

  That’s not even good grammar.

  Evidently, your house not only has to be perfect, it has to smell perfect.

  My house smells perfectly like dogs.

  Is that perfect enough?

  I want to talk to the people who feel the pressure for holiday perfection, beginning about now.

  Because you don’t have to be perfect.

  Instead, you can enjoy the holidays in a manner that doesn’t involve a glue gun.

  Again, I know lots of people who like to decorate their house for the holidays, and they should enjoy themselves.  But if you don’t enjoy that, you shouldn’t feel pressure to decorate.  And the last thing you need to worry about at the holidays is perfection.

  I’m here to tell you it’s okay to be lazy.

  Put your feet up.

  Make eggnog and drink it all yourself.

  Or better yet, buy eggnog and drink it all yourself.

  Because it comes down to the question of what you think is perfect in a home, and Mother Mary taught me that your home is already perfect.

  That is, if you’re in it, and so are the people you love.

  If there are people you hate in your home, you should divorce them.

  To return to point, Mother Mary did not do anything for the holidays except start cooking.  She loved to cook, and we loved to eat, so it worked out perfectly.

  She didn’t decorate for the holidays in any way.

  We got a Christmas tree only the night before, and you would have liked our tree, if you really like tinsel.

  Our tree was covered with tinsel.

  You would think Reynolds Wrap came over and threw up.

  And I remember the tinsel was super heavy, probably because it contained lead.

  And maybe even asbestos.

  I saw an ad for holiday candles, and it said: “Nothing is quite as cozy as a candle-lit abode, and the decadent aromas of the winter season should be embraced in your favorite spaces.”

  I’m so confused by this, I don’t know where to start.

  I love candles as much is the next girl, but who has a candle-lit abode?

  And what if your “favorite space” isn’t your candle-lit abode, but the crook of Bradley Cooper’s neck?

  It could happen, people.

  And as for decadent smells, don’t get me started.

  I remember with great nostalgia, the decadent smells of the holidays in our house, when I was growing up.

  The aroma of ravioli was in the air, and also the smoke of More 100 cigarettes, courtesy of Mother Mary.

  Bottom line, Christmas at the Flying Scottolines may have been carcinogenic.

  But there was love, and carbohydrates.

  And that was enough, and everything.

  Happy Holidays!

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2019