It doesn’t seem possible that my relationship with Twitter is nearing a decade-long existence, which I will achieve in July 2019. Now, other than my marriage and being a parent…and my affinity for Minnesota sports teams, I think it’s safe to say this is the longest relationship I have ever been involved with of my own volition. And, despite the recent negativity many social media platforms like Twitter have deservedly faced, I’m actually sort of enamored with the connection I have with this technological phenomenon that Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams created.

While many use Twitter as a pulpit to often share, sometimes forcefully, their views with their followers on the more serious issues of the world, I have generally shied away from that practice. My reasoning is I’m usually not rational enough nor clever enough to toss out arguments in a public setting with the hope of changing or influencing someone’ thought process. I more than likely would buckle under the first wave of rebuttals or, worse yet, resort to juvenile name calling any time I got cornered. Crap like that gets screenshot and can go viral in an instant…and, in my case, make me go down in infamy.

Don’t get me wrong. I have opinions. Strong opinions. However, somewhere in the rush to move those thoughts between my brain and my finger tips, I lose the sense of being able to communicate those effectively and I end up sounding like a 2 year old with orange dust all over his hands and face trying to deny having any knowledge about what happened to all the Cheetos.

I prefer a much simpler role on Twitter – treating it as a place to share light-hearted observations on life and/or simple anecdotes from my time as a parent, spouse, writer or jogging newbie; using it as an avenue to test out my latest cheesy puns and corny Dad jokes; or venting/raving about one of the aforementioned Minnesota sports teams. Sometimes all at once if I can summarize it in 280 characters or less.

My first foray into Twitter was originally for professional reasons; mainly to expand my horizons as a journalist in finding ways to disseminate information in a more efficient way than on a daily or weekly basis, and through one 50 gallon barrel of soy ink and monstrous roll of newsprint at a time. It wasn’t until I was a few years into my association with Twitter that I realized its potential as a vehicle to drive forward my desire for a career in humor writing…with the long-range goal of entertaining the masses. You could say it was my digital mullet – all business at the forefront, but mostly party in the back.

Much to my amusement, my Twitter handle (@KurtASees) has unintentionally become as much a small part of my identity these days as my perpetually receding hairline, gradually wrinkling skin or my recent weight loss. I’ve grown fascinated by the fact some people I know, including my own kids from time to time, will refer to me by my 10-character moniker in casual conversations or just passing by instead of my actual name…despite my actual name (Kurt) being only four letters long…or only three letters long (Dad) to my offspring.

For those who don’t know my past, my KurtASees handle is derived from the title of a feature I included at the end of a regular sports column I penned back in the late 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s during my days as a sportswriter. It usually included tidbits about local athletes, sports gossip, and other little bits of info or humor that weren’t column worthy but I still wanted to share with my readers. Little did I know how nicely the only piece of intellectual property I owned at the time would transition to the Twittersphere. Or, at least I feel it did.

Twitter has, at times, made me laugh hysterically, clench my fists in anger, and, on the rare occasion, forced my tear ducts into overdrive such as the time recently I used almost all 280 characters to inform my followers that my mother, my biggest writing influence and inspiration, had unexpectedly passed away in late December 2018. #EffYouLeukemia

While losing Mom was a gut-wrenching blow that has left a huge hole in my heart it also stripped me of the badge of honor of holding the self-dubbed title of being the oldest guy on Twitter whose Mom was also on Twitter.

Now, my dearly departed Mom was more than just one of my followers, she was my biggest Twitter fan, often liking my posts well before any of them really had a chance to breathe and gain momentum with the rest of the world. I admit, at times, she probably clicked “like” sooner than I may have wanted on some of them. However, the best part of her and my Twitter relationship were the phone calls/texts that would often arise between us because of a Tweet that either one of us had posted or about one from another party that had popped up on our timelines. I miss those days immensely.

I’d be a bit remiss if I didn’t mention, perhaps, my most shining moment on Twitter, which occurred  in mid-September 2016, was the time I won the moderately-famous Hashtag Wars during an episode of the Comedy Central show, @Midnight, for my submission of “Welcome Back Router” for #InternetTVShows. I was a regular submitter to that show and while @Midnight liked a few of my tweets out of the several hundred I submitted during the nearly four-year run of the show, that was my one and only win, which I still cherish to this day. 

That being said…or rather written…in commemorating my 10 years on Twitter, I took time recently to pore over my archive and decided to honor my long-standing relationship with my most-used social media platform and pay tribute to my later Mom but offering some of my favorites.  The following are 100 Tweets, which I gleaned from my Twitter archive of 8,100 overall Tweets in the past decade, and which I found to be, at the very least, mildly amusing. Enjoy!

• I hate winter days when it’s freaking cold but there’s no snow on ground and it’s sunny out. If I’m going to be miserable I don’t want to enjoy it.
• If someone steals one of my identities, I hope they’re stuck with that d-bag Billy who has bad credit & is considered a flight risk.
• Drunk time travel is going to be awesome…you know many will go expecting to be at the “I Have A Dream” speech but end up at the Reformation.
• Minnesotans walking on ice = herd of wildebeests crossing croc-infested river. You know you gotta do it, but at some point you just know some are going down.
• Motivational speaker is not a career choice but rather an epiphany you have when you realize your only real marketable skill is talking in public
• Dreamt last night the Grim Reaper was following me around with a box of sidewalk chalk. Thankfully when I woke up there was no trace of me anywhere.
• I hate when someone says to “shake what your Momma gave ya” because the first thing I usually reach for is a set of embroidered dish towels.
• If you can see the forest through the trees then you’ll have no trouble seeing my lawn through all the dandelions.
• I do find it funny my pronunciation of ‘mayonnaise’ is eerily similar to ‘man eyes’. I don’t find it funny, however, that at least one will probably be listed as my official cause of death
• They say you can drown in as little as an inch of water…so you’re taking life into your own hands with that whole eight glasses a day rule.
• Oh great, just sprayed some Febreze in the air that reminded me of Gloria Vanderbilt perfume that was popular back in the ’80s, and now I’ve suddenly relapsed to my youth where I can’t talk to girls. It’s gotten so bad I had to slide into my wife’s DMs at breakfast just to get her to pass the orange juice.
• It’s often not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s if you brought a dog at all when the signs clearly say ‘No Dogs’
• At some point it would be great if humans evolved to the point where they had a positive and negative nipple.
• If laughter is the best medicine then I want to come back someday as a hyena because those things must live forever.
• Had a friend in college who, whenever we’d go out, would always get the ‘beer boggles’…in that the more he drank the better looking he thought he was.
• It would be way more dignified if plastic surgeons referred to the stuff they suck out during liposuction as ‘after girth’.
• I’m now nearing the age as a golfer where grip, rip and championship are substituted by trip, slip and replacement hip.
• When Frosty the Snowman has to take a leak do you ever think he tries to write his name on himself?
• When life gives you lemons please know you got a good deal. Some guy named Freedom wants 10 bucks for a bag of them out on the highway.
• I don’t know how Kellogg’s keeps putting kids in commercials with Tony the Tiger, because it not a matter of if, but when he eventually mauls one of them.
• If I were on a deserted island the one person I’d wish for is someone with an iPhone so we could look up how to build a coconut radio.
• I used to have a fake friend named Who with lots of money. Then when kids would ask “hey, who’s your rich friend?” I would say “exactly”.
• My first experience with writing profanity was putting up glowing expletives on my sister’s Lite-Brite and then blaming it on my brother.
• When an Amish Mafia member rats out his fellow members he often has to be put into the Jehovah’s Witness protection program. But this protection program is different in that it encourages you to get out and meet new people.
• Fainting goats get way too much recognition for basically not being able to handle pressure situations.
• I have a friend who is both agnostic and a bit of a narcissist who spends an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that he is a god.
• It’s difficult to watch Rainman knowing no matter how good I feel at end of it that he still cheated Vegas…while wearing K-Mart underwear.
• Febreze lures strangers into vehicles by simply asking them to smell things…blindfolded. It’s surprising more adults aren’t abducted.
• Tuesdays seem like that uncle you have who never did much with his life except for having a seemingly endless supply of Jolly Ranchers & high fives.
• I’m going to start calling my kids Wikipedia because they are always asking me for 10 bucks.
• They say you only live once, but after that I want to know what the limit is on hauntings because I’d still like to keep annoying my kids.
• In my next life, I hope to not be continually disappointed in the fact that I often struggle pulling apart string cheese.
• The reason my generation struggles with today’s music is because it’s so vague. Like when it says “bring the action”, we want to know where.
• Heard a door slam last night and a voice told me it was a gust of wind, but I thought he said it was a ghost of wind. We had a big laugh.
• A brain freeze is nothing more than the mind’s natural ability to tell the rest of a Minnesotan’s body it wants to move to Florida.
• The movie “Taken” would have been more believable for me if what Liam Neeson’s character would have possessed was a particular set of steak knives.
• They keep telling us no two snowflakes look alike but my kids just made two snowmen that I swear are identical twins. #mindblown
• I have a fear of walking in the woods because I worry if a tree fell on me that no one will care because they can’t hear me screaming.
• If necessity is the mother of invention, how do you explain the melon baller? Cool garage band name aside, do we really need spheres of cantaloupe?
• Whenever one door closes & another door opens I pray it’s not my childhood pal Frankie on other side because I still owe him money.
• I hate it when the name of a band I might like suggests a task that’ll probably distract me from enjoying the music itself. #ImagineDragons
• If I were a hockey or soccer coach I’d always end my pre-game speech with, “we’re going to win this game…or tie trying!”
• Superman may leap over tall buildings in a single bound, but I challenge any super hero to be able to jump to conclusions faster than I do.
• I’m not the world’s worst cook but the spaghetti I made last night was so bad my kids began cussing hoping I’d wash their mouths out w/ soap.
• Spent one college semester in Australia learning how to juggle marsupials or what the natives liked to call it…hand-to-hand wombat.
• I’ve never seen my son as disappointed as he was this morning when I announced how relieved I was that I had remembered to “put product in my hair”.
• If the animals take over the Earth & want to hunt humans I’m guessing the easiest way they’d lure in bros is using an 8-foot basketball hoop as bait.
• Once had a girlfriend who was a screenwriter & a mime, but we broke up because she kept pitching me the silent treatment.
• I hate the fact a sheet of paper can be torn to shreds by a toddler but at just the right angle its edge can nearly severe an adult finger.
• I think one of the biggest reasons I wouldn’t be a good choice to be a super hero is the fact I’d drop anything to pop bubble wrap.
• There has to be a more effective way to tell drivers to “Don’t Text & Drive” than making them look 100 feet to their right at a billboard.
• As many times as I’ve operated a can opener in my lifetime, it’s a bit depressing know the most I’ve ever gotten out of it was a Manwich.
• I’m not 100 percent sure but with the noises my stomach is making this morning, I’m worried I may have eaten my spirit animal while I was sleeping.
• If I only teach my kids one thing it’s to never argue with a man in jorts because he’s already made it quite clear going in he doesn’t care what people think
• It wasn’t too long ago my bucket list included things like running w/ the bulls or getting a tattoo. Nowadays I’d settle for a sleep number.
• My day’s going so well right now that I’ve hit about 50 percent of the shots I didn’t take this morning.
• I hate it when people criticize me for being superficial. I challenge them to walk a mile in my Yeezys!
• The closest I’ve ever been to getting a tattoo is that one time I dropped a freshly toasted bagel on my foot….shiny side down.
• My wife knows to never wake a sleep moonwalker, because it only leads to a sleep dance off…and a no-win for her because even asleep I’ll still bring it
• I’ve reached that age where I feel like half my net worth is tied up in reading glasses. #HereAPairThereAPairEverywhereAPairPair
• Excited to learn I won the Self Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Unfortunately the big $1 million check I wrote out to myself bounced.
• When I was a kid we would build forts in snake & rodent infested woods. Nowadays I get the heebee-jeebies when crabgrass overtakes my lawn.
• Thinking of starting one of those escape rooms, but just for underachievers like myself where the main goal is to get out of a prior commitment
• Planning a vacation on the cheap & I’m considering a Eurostep Tour where it looks like you’re traveling to most people but you’re really not
• Love how long road trips often mirror life. Plenty of highs and lows, and at some point beef jerky evolves into a source of currency.
• I’m confident, if confronted by a gang of 7 year olds, I could get away on athletic ability alone…unless I’m forced to thumb wrestle
• Not sure which was more emotional to end the holiday season. Bringing the oldest back to college…or the end of my free trial of Amazon Prime.
• It’s amazing the power a parent can have over their kids with a simple threat to Dab in a public setting.
• Having Sirius ’80s channel in our van is like traveling w/ that cool DJ who rocked my high school senior prom…but without the second hand smoke.
• In my mind, I still have the hair of a much younger me until I encounter the perfect storm of a reflective surface & accidental backlighting
• Organized my closet recently & at some point it seems I decided to buy cargo shorts like they were going out of style. You’re welcome world!
• Sometimes I wonder if I’m from the future & this crazy world is all my fault because I chose to daylight drink sitting in my time machine.
• I used to dance like no one was watching, but stopped after being told, more than once, I looked like a drunk zombie turning a compost pile.
• My biggest fear as I get older isn’t dying. It’s a growing concern I have each year that each new mark/welt on my body contains spider eggs.
• At this point, the only way my life could be considered a failure is if it’s solely judged on my inability to neatly fold fitted sheets.
• They wouldn’t let Rudolph play any reindeer games because of a red nose. I shudder to think what chickens do to one of their own w/ boneless wings.
• It’s going to be so cold in these parts the next couple days that my plans are to Netflix and avoid windchill.
• Struggling with a cough last few nights, so my wife recommended an old South Dakota remedy…big shot of whiskey, a dab of hot water and a spoonful of sugar. Not sure if my cough is cured but I really love you, man.
• I think a big reason I’ve subconsciously sabotaged any chances I have of achieving success as a comedy writer is I’m afraid the world will eventually find out my biggest comedic influence as a kid was Hee Haw.
• I try hard to reduce my carbon footprint but I’m still haunted by the fact all those Toughskin jeans I wore as a kid are probably still intact in some landfill
• I sometimes feel like I should pursue a career creating balloon animals, because I usually have no problems making an ass out of myself.
• The only reason we have the fishing opener the day before Mother’s Day here in Minnesota is so Mom isn’t only one disappointed that weekend.
• It just dawned on me the reason Fred and Barney used their feet to start and stop their cars was because fossil fuels weren’t invented yet.
• Life was much simpler when I was a kid. It seemed like the toughest decision I had to make was…Who was hotter? Pinky or Leather Tuscadero?
• I’ve unknowingly used all of the Seven Dwarfs’ names to update my Facebook status…well, except Doc. I only used that one in pickup lines.
• My son went to school today in a black hoodie and skinny jeans. Kind of looked like a hiptster Grim Reaper on casual Friday.
• I’m so competitive that it angers me a little bit when I’m not the first in my neighborhood to fire up the snow blower in the morning after an overnight snowfall. #DangYouWadeAndGuyKittyCornerFromMe
• Using a “J” sound when saying the word GIF isn’t the most disappointed look I’ll probably ever create on my kids’ faces, but until I develop the business acumen to set up & eventually get caught running a Ponzi scheme it will have to suffice.
• Was asked recently why I started running…now…at my age & the answer was easy. To stay healthy in case I someday have grandchildren (but I’m in no hurry, kids!) & more importantly…to increase chances of survival in a zombie apocalypse because I think I can make a difference.
• Tried a little self-behavioral experiment this week by starting each morning by listening to “Let It Go” at least twice & I’ll be damned if I haven’t been at least 200% happier each day. Unfortunately, the cold now bothers me more than it ever did before.
• Can a Dad joke be possible grounds for sleeping on the sofa? Just yelled out to my wife from the kitchen, “Gonna fire up the dishwasher!” & then I quickly added, “C’mon, Kurt! You can do this!” I swear I heard my wife rolling her eyes…& her fluffing up the couch cushions.
• One of the biggest frustrations I have with aging is not being able to carry some things the older I get, most notably a tune.
• People have been stealing my dance moves for so long I’m surprised American Greed hasn’t devoted an episode to it.
• Getting older means I drink milk not so much for its nutritional value anymore but rather for its ability to keep me from choking on a Ritz
• Dying surrounded by family & friends seems way better than by strangers & enemies, but not as cool as being surrounded by animal crackers & gummy bears.
• The more I keep scrolling thru the apps on my iPhone the more convinced I only downloaded most of them to settle bar bets. 
• Me to all my guy friends: I see no reason why I would go to #MammaMia2. Me to my wife & daughter minutes later: I see no reason why I wouldn’t get the aisle seat
• Uttering “Hey you kids! Get off my snow bank!” from inside my house as I helplessly watched two unknown youths destroy a patch of my freshly cleared sidewalk hasn’t officially transitioned me from middle aged guy to grumpy old man, but it has fast tracked my application.
• About to indulge in bacon wrapped Brussel sprouts at Tavern on the Hill here in Duluth. It’s like my childhood visions of heaven & hell have collided.
• I recently started using self-checkout lines at the grocery store because, when the machines do take over, I want to have something to offer other than a handful of corny dad jokes, being able to bridge shuffle a deck of cards & a slightly above average ability to air guitar.