Table of contents for June 2020 in Reader's Digest

AFTER STOCKING up at the shopping center we both frequent, my friend John was half a mile up Danbury Road, at the mom-and-pop wine store he likes, when he reached into his pocket to pay. Uh-oh. No wallet. The stay-at-home order had just been issued in our state, and the last thing anyone needed was to be cut off from all bank and credit cards with no driver’s license. You can imagine how John felt. He retraced his steps. Car. Kohl’s. The Stop & Shop parking lot where he’d loaded everything up and then wiped it down because no way was the coronavirus getting near his 80-year-old mother. She has asthma, and he was headed to her home to deliver some goods. But the wallet wasn’t anywhere. He must have…

JEAN-PAUL “J.P.” LAPIERRE is no stranger to long, strange trips. When he was young, he worked as a master pastry chef, then as a real estate agent. But at age 30, he discovered crack cocaine. Within months, he went from living in a penthouse to sleeping under a Massachusetts bridge, a bridge that happened to be on the route of the Boston Marathon. LaPierre would watch the runners speed past, longing to take part, join the throngs, pull his life together. Marathons became a symbol and an inspiration—surviving for the long haul. When he got sober, about two decades ago, LaPierre started running in as many marathons as he could. To date, the 54-year-old storage facility manager has crossed the finish line 32 times. Without a doubt, his most recent…

1 Give Broth to Your Thirsty Pet PETS Some dogs and cats are too stubborn for their own good. If yours won’t stay hydrated, coax her to the water bowl by adding a teaspoon of low-sodium chicken or bone broth. Just be sure it’s free of onions and garlic, and change the water daily. *From RD.COM and THEHEALTHY.COM 2 Best Bleach Practices HOME Many of us recently rediscovered the versatility of this old-time disinfectant 0but might need a refresher on some basic dos and don’ts. Do dilute bleach with water before cleaning with it, but don’t keep your solution in a plastic bottle for more than a few days. The bleach can degrade some containers, and it can lose its potency when exposed to light. If your solution has no bleach…

✦ Somehow reassuring in the midst of coronavirus shopping frenzy to know that people still have the sense not to buy chocolate hummus and buffalo hummus. —@NOAHGO ✦ CDC: To prevent coronavirus, stay home, avoid physical contact, and don’t go into large crowds. Introverts: I’ve been preparing for this moment my entire life. —@CROWSFAULT ✦ Prediction: There will be a minor baby boom in nine months and one day in 2033, we shall witness the rise of the QUARANTEENS. —mustbethedragon on IMGUR.COM ✦ Due to local cases of #COVID-19, the Puyallup (Washington) Police Department is asking all criminal activities and nefarious behavior to cease. We appreciate your cooperation in halting crime & thank the criminals in advance. We will let you know when you can resume your normal behavior. Until…

Anybody want to buy some exercise equipment? I’m having a going-out-of-fitness sale.—@JohnLyonTweets My wife does this cute thing now and then where she goes out shopping for next year’s yard sale items.—@cravin4 Two salespeople approached me at the furniture store. I’m following the one who called me “miss.” The “Hello, ma’am” one should take note.—@AnniemuMary Accidentally went grocery shopping on an empty stomach, and now I’m the proud owner of aisle seven.—@DomesticGoddss One of the World’s Strongest Man events should be “Pulling apart two shopping carts that are stuck together.”—@Cheeseboy22 If I worked in a usedrecord store, I would tell every customer that “all sales are vinyl.”—@WoodyLuvsCoffee…

WHAT WAS IT THAT STOPPED THE TRAIN THAT DAY? Signal problems? Wet leaves? A body on the tracks? Whatever it was, the train was running late again. Which meant I’d be an hour, maybe two, maybe three, late to work again. Which meant I’d be staying late and not getting home until long after the kids had gone to bed. Again. I was well into my second year writing for the Washington Post, a dream job by any measure. Except for one tiny problem. The Post is based in Washington, DC. My wife, Briana, and I, along with our two-year-old twins, Jack and Charles, lived just outside of Baltimore. Between our home and the Post newsroom lay about 80 miles of commute, 90 to 120 minutes by car, train, subway,…

An Ode to Dad When I was a little girl, my father always let me help him with car and home repairs. Afterward, he used to say, “I couldn’t have done it without you!” If he deemed a job too dangerous, he would seat me out of harm’s way and have me read poetry aloud to him. He insisted this eased his work and would thank me just the same. I didn’t write my own poetry until my father’s last years. Now I have two published poetry collections and several awards. I couldn’t have done it without you, Dad! —Laura Grace WeldonLITCHFIELD, OHIO A Little Bird Told Me On a self-imposed COVID-19 isolation, I felt increasingly depressed from living alone. After a long, spiritless walk, I remembered to feed the…

1. affable adj. ('af-uh-bull) A easygoing. B humorless. C qualified. 2. filial adj. ('fih-lee-uhl) A ornamental. B of sons and daughters. C on horseback. 3. edifice n. ('eh-duh-fiss) A steep cliff. B inspiration. C large building. 4. calcified adj. ('kal-sih-fyd) A hardened. B wasted away. C rusted through. 5. malleable adj. ('mal-ee-uh-bull) A cruel. B sickly. C pliable. 6. Gallic adj. ('gal-ik) A Scottish. B French. C Roman. 7. allege v. (uh-'lej) A compare and contrast. B approach cautiously. C assert without proof. 8. fallible adj. ('fal-uh-bull) A autumnal. B fertile. C imperfect. 9. kalimba n. (kuh-'lim-buh) A tea service. B thumb piano. C motor scooter. 10. blackball v. ('blak-ball) A exclude socially. B demand money. C cancel without notice. 11. ebb v. (eb) A rise slowly. B decrease. C encourage. 12. jackal n. ('jak-uhl) A wild dog. B trickster. C thatched…

They Got Away with Murder I await each Reader’s Digest issue with the anticipation of a child awaiting Christmas. Seeing the April cover was tantamount to getting everything one wants for Christmas. The unsolved murders article was great. The detective work that goes into solving crimes amazes me. —Charles Dougherty Hicksville, New York How to Connect with Strangers As I worried about starting a 14-day quarantine (my son might have been exposed to COVID-19), I got a big laugh at this article. Thanks for always pulling me out of my funk. —Mary JensenWoodbury, Minnesota Heroes in the Heartland Thank you for your article on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City 25 years ago. I wondered if young victim Joseph Webber survived the bombing, so I went…

Tanned, relaxed, and unshaven, I landed at the Denver airport after returning from my bucolic Caribbean vacation. As the customs agent handed my passport back to me, she cheerily welcomed me home by declaring, “Back to reality for you!” —BRUCE NEALColorado Springs, Colorado My friend’s dad, a professor, travels a lot. Once, when returning from a conference in Australia, he spotted a familiar-looking man but didn’t know where he knew him from. So he confronted him. FRIEND’S DAD: You look familiar. Were you at the conference this week for international trade law? MAN: Uh, no, I wasn’t. FD: I definitely know you. Are you in law? MAN: No, I’m not. FD: Well, I must have seen you at a conference somewhere. Which university are you with? MAN: I don’t work…

YOU MAY THINK of me as palatable and bland, the sight of me packed into cans reminiscent of school lunches and childhood picnics. But here’s what they don’t tell the kids: There’s very little that’s tame about me. One of the ocean’s fastest fish, I can grow to be 1,500 pounds of pure muscle. I fetch millions at Japanese fish markets. Forget the “chicken of the sea” pabulum. I am the Schwarzenegger of the sea, superlative and dominant. Consider my body: My slick skin defines hydrodynamic elegance, my half-moon-shaped tail resembles a dragster’s, and my dorsal fin collapses into a pocket on my back just like the door handles on a Tesla. Given what a baller this all makes me, it should come as no surprise that I’m honored in…

At an event famous for giving out awards in bizarre categories, the emcee enthusiastically announces, “The next prize will go to the laziest person in the audience. If you think you qualify, raise your hand.” Everyone raises their hands except a middle-aged man who seems to show little interest. “Congratulations! You are the winner,” says the emcee to the man. “Your prize is this $100 bill!” Still showing no emotion, the man replies, “Would you mind coming over here and putting it in my pocket?” —Submitted by JOSÉ J. ZULUAGACanóvanas, Puerto Rico Gimme the Scoop ✦ Just saw a guy walking down the street eating a gallon of ice cream right out of the container. I hired him as my life coach. —@GOLDENGATE BLOND ✦ My husband just bought ice…

NOT LONG AGO, Linda Khan was sitting by a hospital bed in Houston, feeling ill at ease. Beside her lay her 88-year-old father. His heart was faltering. He needed surgery. What troubled her almost as much as his health was the fact that all day the two of them had engaged in nothing but depressing small talk. She and her father had always had good conversations, but now he seemed to be sunk in querulous contemplation of his predicament. He talked about the lousy hospital food, the tests, the doctors, the diagnosis, the potential outcomes. The scope of his once wide-ranging interests seemed to have shrunk to the size of the room. “It is really hard to sit with a person in a hospital,” Khan says. “It feels like there’s…

A NANNY TAKES A JOB at a seriously creepy manor house in the Scottish Highlands. A play-it-safe salesman embarks on a dangerous quest. A young woman aims to fulfill her mother’s dying wish. A small-town sheriff tracks a murderer. What do these intriguing scenarios have in common? They’re the plots of the four novels featured in the latest volume of Select Editions, our curated reading series celebrating its 70th birthday this year. Order at selecteditions.com/rdjune20.…

Crumb catcher: mouth Five-sided puzzle palace: the Pentagon Flight suit insert: pilot Football bat: an odd way of doing something Fruit salad: ribbons and medals worn on a uniform Galloping dandruff: lice Geardo: a soldier who obsesses about gear Gofasters: sneakers Ink stick: pen Jesus slippers: military-issued shower footwear Left-handed monkey wrench: a nonexistent item recruits are tricked into looking for Oxygen thief: someone who talks too much Soup sandwich: a situation that has gone horribly wrong Voluntold: forcibly volunteered for an assignment —military.com…

✦ Count your breaths from one to ten, and then start over. Breathe in, one, then out. Breathe in, two, then out, and so on. ✦ Some people like to recite a short phrase to help them stay focused. “Just this breath” is a good one. It reminds us not to start anticipating the next breath, or to think about the last one, or to imagine in any of the innumerable ways the mind can cook up that anything else is supposed to be happening—“just this breath.” ✦ Recruit an image. Sometimes I imagine the in breath as a gentle wave moving up the beach, pshhhh, and on the out breath, the wave recedes, sssssshh. Back and forth. Find an image that works for you. ✦ Give guided audio meditations…

BREAST CANCER MORE DEADLY FOR MEN THAN FOR WOMEN Of the approximately 279,000 breast cancer diagnoses in the United States each year, fewer than 1 percent are in men. But in a study of more than 1.8 million subjects, male patients had a 19 percent higher death rate than female patients. Researchers believe that undertreatment of the disease in men, along with differences in clinical characteristics between male and female patients, accounted for the higher mortality rate. Stressed Out? Fire Up a Game on Your Smartphone The Web is filled with programs designed to help ease your mind—mindfulness meditation apps, they’re called. But a British study suggests that playing an enjoyable game on your phone will help relieve work-related stress just as well. Participants in the study spent ten minutes…

In January 2018, I was commuting from Brooklyn to New Jersey. I have two little kids and a busy consulting business, so a quiet train ride felt like a mini vacation. Yet I found myself spending that precious time slack-jawed, scrolling through my social media feeds. One day, I put down my phone and started writing thank-you notes to people who had contributed to a fundraiser I had organized. When I got off the train that day, I was in a noticeably better mood. The next day, I wrote more thank-yous—and felt the same afterglow. When I finished writing the notes, I counted them up. There were 31—one for every day of the year so far. Something clicked. What if I kept it up? I decided to write one thank-you…

Maybe your feet have started to tingle every so often or you’ve developed a mild fever. Nothing to worry about, right? Maybe. But given the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, you don’t have to be a hypochondriac to think hard about whether a niggling symptom is a clue that something more serious is happening in your body. How can you tell when to shrug—and when to panic? These stories feature people who faced that quandary and discovered that their discomfort emanated from conditions far different from what they had suspected. The welcome result: After a proper diagnosis, they each got the treatment they needed. Consider their journeys to be a guide for all of us. ABDOMINAL PAIN “The Burning Sensation Turned Out to Be Colon Cancer.” When Amy Driben-Salcedo felt a…