By: Roz Warren (and Janet Golden)

I’m a humor writer. My work appears in magazines from The Funny Times to The Christian Science Monitor. Janet is a history professor whose writing was confined to academic journals and the occasional op-ed. Driving back from the Jersey shore one day, we were kibitzing and Janet had a funny idea.

“That would make a good essay,” I told her.

“You can write it,” she said.

“Let’s write it together,” I suggested.

We hatched a…

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When I was young and my friends asked what my father  did for a living, I’d say, “He’s a psychoanalyst.”     “What’s that?” they’d ask. I  wasn’t entirely sure. I knew people paid Dad to listen to them talk and that this helped solve their problems. It  could take years. It used up Kleenex. Sometimes a couch was involved. Even as I told them about it, it seemed pretty far-fetched. Not to mention that, unlike my friends, I never once got to see my father at work.  Dad had a home office. When… Continue

After yet another horrific shooting in which yet another troubled creep grabs an all-too-available gun (Thanks, NRA!) and kills a bunch of innocents,  I’d like to ask everyone to stop calling these jerks “ killers” and “shooters” which sounds macho and cool, as if they’re participants in some kind of kick-ass video game, and start calling them what they really are, which is  “schmucks.”



“Schmuck” is a fine Yiddish word which means  “a contemptible person.“ That’s more to the point,… Continue

My cholesterol numbers were always fabulous.  Why wouldn’t they be? I  ate healthfully, walked everywhere and swam almost every day. Was I just a tad smug? Did I look down at those ordinary, junk food-eating,  under-exercising pals who complained about their dangerously high levels while reaching for another piece of cherry pie? Well I got my comeuppance at my last doc appointment. Thanks to menopause and genetics, my numbers are now just as lousy as those of my friends who gobbled burgers and… Continue