Sam Hedenberg

Nov 26, 2024 | thepromptmag.com | Sam Hedenberg

I turned 40 last month, and I’m not going to lie, it felt a little weird. I never really felt old in my 30s, but 40 hit different. It’s a milestone of sorts. This is 40, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It might also be because I was old enough to remember when my dad turned 40. His sister, my Aunt Sue, got him a signed picture of ’50s TV hostess Sally Starr and a coffee mug that read 40: Over The Hill. That old term that playfully hints at the mortality that awaits you at the bottom.

Jul 14, 2023 | thepromptmag.com | Sam Hedenberg

I’m sure you’ve heard the one about the dog owners who look like their dogs. Googling that phrase returns 192 million hits, including some hilarious images. But as I sit on the Capital Beltway each morning, measuring my life in highway exits, I realize in many cases car owners look a hell of a lot like their cars.

Apr 27, 2023 | thepromptmag.com | Sam Hedenberg

In the five years after college, I lived what you might call a transient lifestyle. I prefer to use that word—transient—because it sounds classier than saying I was a homeless loser, glomming off the kindness of my more stable and successful friends. But I guess that’s really what I was: a homeless loser. Furnishing a list of my prior residences would be like asking Robert Plant to name all the girls he slept with in 1971.