Dick Van Dyke told his hardest story from a 75-year career

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on December 13, 2025. And he published a book with a series of stories titled 100 Rules for Living to 100: An optimist’s guide to a happy life. An article by Sarah Lemire at Today on November 18, 2025 is titled EXCLUSIVE: At Almost 100, Dick Van Dyke Won’t Sit Still – and Is Eyeing 1 More Big Role. She notes that he had a 75-year career. There is another article by Liz McNeil in People magazine on November 25, 2025 titled Dick Van Dyke ‘Feels Pretty Good for 100.’ Here’s Why He’s Optimistic About His Centennial Birthday (Exclusive).

 

 On pages 105 to 113 there is a great story, titled Tell Your Hardest Story:

 

“In December 1973, I found a seat in a circle of chairs in a grim, fluorescent-lit meeting room at the Brentwood Veterans’ Hospital. Around me were military vets, young and old, all hospitalized for drug and alcohol addiction and gathered for regular group therapy. I was there as a visitor, doing research for my role as an alcoholic in The Morning After, a TV movie being shot elsewhere in the facility.

 

It was weird for these guys to have a Hollywood actor eavesdropping on their raw, real-life stories of struggle, I could tell. Right off the bat, I needed to assure them that I would be a sympathetic listener. ‘The subject of my movie is very personal to me,’ I began, ‘because I myself am an alcoholic.’

 

Their faces flickered with surprise. At the time, only my family and a handful of other people in my life knew about my drinking problem.

 

‘So, I understand some of what you’re going through. But really, I’m here to listen and learn.”

 

Then Dick decided to go public.

 

“The story got picked up across the country. As expected, when Mr. Goody Two-shoes admitted his addiction to the world, the public was shocked. Friends and colleagues from wherever I’d lived and worked called to offer sympathy and encouragement, reporting that they, and everyone they knew could barely believe the news. Within a week, I was getting letters by the thousand – people were moved and incredibly understanding. Many detailing how alcoholism had impacted them and their loved ones.

 

That reaction spurred me to go even more public. I appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and I told my story onstage in Washington, DC, for a press conference with other celebrity alcoholics. I am told that rehab facilities still show The Morning After to this day.

 

…. Each time I put a new layer of it into words, I feel a release of the power that alcoholism had over me. I was separating myself from the disease, seeing my experience as a battle with the disease. Telling my story was giving me power and freedom.

 

Each of us has our own hard stories of crisis and struggle. When we hold them in, out of fear or shame, they control us. But when we tell our stories, we’re in the driver’s seat. And when we share those stories, even just among our friends and family, we are literally helping one another to survive, just like that brotherhood of vets.”  

 

Pages 9 and 10 have a story titled Make Your Own Rules. On page 10 Dick has the following weasel words about his rules and stories:

 

“I readily admit that you might find variations of the same rule emerging in multiple stories here. That’s because my life, like everyone else’s, has its personality-specific ongoing themes – questions that pop up, over and over again, in different contexts, old challenges that look different in each new light, wisdom learned and forgotten and learned again.

 

I might also add that, for some of these stories, there’s not exactly a rule or even a specific question. Sometimes that’s because I know there’s some nugget of meaning in the story, but I haven’t figured out what it is. Maybe you can! Other times, it’s just a funny story, plain and simple. Because don’t we all sometimes just need comic relief?

 

Finally, if you’re inclined to count up these rules to see if there are exactly one hundred, as advertised in the title, your math might disappoint you, just a little. Quality over quantity, as the saying goes, right? I can assure you that this book will deliver enough main rules, sub-rules, ancillary rules, and multipart rules to last you a lifetime, yes, all the way to one hundred!”    

 

His book doesn’t bother to number those stories or even give us a Table of Contents. I got suspicious about whether there really were a hundred, and then wrote down the following list of all the story titles (grouped ten at a time):  

 

Don’t Act Your Age

Make Your Own Rules

Examine Your Head

Learn to Fall

Find Your Passion in Your Past

Tolerate and Cherish Your Little Brother

Face Your Fear

Find “The New You” Inside “The Old You”

Find Your People – A Story in Several Parts

Figure Out Who You Aren’t

 

Don’t Litter: Tips for Safety and Hygiene on Family Road Trips in the 1950s

Don’t Count on “The Big Break”

Hone Your Bit (Every Job Is Training for the Next One)

Don’t Do Live Morning TV

Some Secrets You Shouldn’t Tell

Eggs Again? Some Failures Are Just That

Dance with Chita

Go Nuts (But Maybe Not That Nuts)

Suck Up to the Landlady

Speak Up for Your Family

 

It Doesn’t Take a Good Boss to Do Great Work

Accept Your Limitations

Win an Oscar

Stay on the Phone

Make Christmas with What You’ve Got

Don’t Trust Machines

Reconsider the Boogeyman

Tell Your Hardest Stories

Play Against Type

Retire on Your Own Terms

 

Remain Anonymous

Start a Band

Commit to Play

Save All That Artwork

Believe in Fate

Take Your Doubts to the Desert

Accept “Rescue” with Grace

See the Pattern to Get Past It

Help Someone Find Their Voice: Do’s and Don’ts

Reimagine Your Legacy

 

Read the Fine Print

Learn from Animals: 3 Species, 4 Rules

Get a Good DJ

Write It Down

Bond Through Crisis

Be Someone’s Baker

Get Frank: A Meditation on Old Rifts

Remember the Good Stuff, Leave the Rest Behind

Reminisce While You Can

Get a Great Sidekick

 

Clear the Air

Get a Second Opinion (and a Third and a Fourth…)

Learn from Teaching

Cross Off Regrets

Learn from Shame

Never Call “Cut”

Don’t Match Jimmy

Don’t Live in the Past

It Pays to Go to the Gym

Build a Slide and Grandkids Will Come

 

Transmogrify Halloween (On Family Traditions)

The Clothes Make the Gnome

Stay Tall Inside

Hand Over the Keys

Read While You Can

Do Get All Judgy (When You’re Watching TV)

Learn a New Way to Fall

Carpe Chita

Remember Honestly

Live with Regrets

 

Your Purpose Doesn’t Need to be Grand

You Will Not Be Alone

Save the Afterlife for After Life

You Can’t Protect Your Survivors

Find Your Arlene

 

As you can see, there are just seventy-five. The book could have more honestly been titled Seventy-Five Rules from My 75-Year Career: An optimist’s guide to a happy life.

 

The wreath was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.  

 

A decorated book drop at my friendly local public library

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I return books at the Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library I get a chuckle from using their decorated inside book drop. When I pull the handle on its drum, it rotates downward to reveal eight teeth, as is shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That library branch also has a drive-up book drop. Some book drops are more complicated than they appear. There may be a spring-loaded surface inside. As shown in this brief Reddit video, books do not drop all the way to the ground from the slot.  

 

There is an article by Dr. Steve Albrecht at Library 2.0 on April 5, 2024 titled Horror Stories from the Book Drop: A Recap of Items Found by Librarians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside book drops sometimes are vandalized. Back in 2010 a disgruntled patron threw mayonnaise and other condiments into the drop at the Victory Road branch of the Ada Community Library. Another Reuters article on January 29, 2011 described how a Woman who dumped condiments in book drop pleads guilty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that’s not the worst thing possible. Still another article by Chuck Knox in LIDAR Magazine on January 15, 2018 titled Future After Fire: The Renovation of the Eckhart Public Library said that:

 

“In the early morning of July 2nd, 2017 3 individuals were wandering the town of Auburn, Indiana looking to cause trouble. That trouble resulted in 1 of the 3 dropping a lit 1” mortar style fire firework in the return book drop box of the Eckhart Public Library. The result was an intense fire that caused an estimated 3.4 million dollars’ worth of damage to the building and its contents. The Auburn Fire Department was quickly on the scene and had the fire extinguished within 10 minutes of arriving. Even with their quick response the damage was horrific. Within a week of the fire the Auburn Police arrested Nykolas Elkin age 24 for the arson. He later admitted he placed the lit firework in the drop box; he was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the crime.”

 

Images of a mayonnaise jar and a fire truck came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Tips for tackling wordiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a brief article by Barbara Bashein on page 28 in the November 2019 Toastmaster magazine titled Shed the Dread of Business Writing. Her tips are to:

 

Eliminate wordiness. For example, change ‘at the present time’ to ‘currently’ or ‘now’.

 

Use clear and concise words. For example, change ‘utilize’ to ‘use.’

 

Use active rather than passive sentence structures. For example: ‘The team wrote the report,’ rather than ‘The report was written by the team.’

 

And there is a web page by Margaret Procter at University of Toronto: Writing Advice titled Wordiness: Danger Signals and Ways to React with tips about how to change:

 

Doubling of Words (choose one)

 

Intensifiers, Qualifiers (omit or give specific details)

 

Formulaic Phrases (use a one-word form or omit)

 

Catch-all Terms (can sometimes omit)

 

Padded Verbs (use a one-word form)

 

Unnecessary ‘to be’ and ‘being’ (omit)

 

Passive Verbs (change to active voice, if possible with a personal subject)

 

Overuse of Relative Structures (‘Who,’ ‘Which,’ ‘That’) (omit when possible)

 

And a four-page pdf article by Barb Every in Medical Writing magazine for March 2017, pages 17 to 20 (Volume 6, Number 1) is titled Writing economically in medicine and science: Tips for tackling wordiness. She says to avoid repetition, eliminate redundancy, and minimize purposeless words. Barb’s Table 1 on omitting redundant words is as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cartoon was modifed from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Use a glitch report to keep mistakes or failures from recurring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been skimming through a useful 2026 book by Jessica Weiss titled Happiness Works: The science of thriving at work. There is a preview at Google Books. Chapter 5, starting on page 85, is titled Trust and Happiness and subtitled An unbeatable team formula. An article by Julia Korn in Forbes on November 12, 2025 titled A Practical Guide to Being Happier At Work (From a Workplace Happiness Expert) discusses it as follows:

 

“Run a regular ‘Glitch Report’ with your team

 

Borrowed from the Four Seasons hotel, this simple ritual turns everyday frustrations into learning moments. A ‘glitch’ is any situation that didn’t go as planned – a missed deadline, a miscommunication or even a small annoyance. The goal isn’t to assign blame or complain, but to find solutions together.

 

Here’s how it works: each team member shares what went wrong during the previous day, week, or month – depending on cadence – and the steps that have been taken to fix it. The result? Everyone’s aligned, informed, and empowered to help address the glitch further.

 

Weiss says this practice builds:

   Transparency

   A focus on learning and improvement

   Inclusive participation

   Collaboration, particularly when problems surface

   Timely and constructive feedback.

 

In short, the glitch report creates a culture of psychological safety, where team members can speak up, take risks, and own mistakes without fear. This counts: when people feel psychologically safe, they’re far more resilient to burnout, even when their work environment isn’t perfect.

 

Try this practice with your team to see how problems turn into solutions.”  

 

The first note in the book for this chapter references a post by John Caddell in the FutureLab blog on January 10, 2015 titled Four Season Hotels Review a Daily Glitch Report:

 

“Next up [in our daily review] is a review of the previous day’s mistakes in something we call the Glitch Report. Every department in the hotel is represented at the morning meeting, and each has a printout detailing what has gone wrong and what steps may already have been taken to correct course. The Glitch Report ensures that every hotel department knows what happened and which guest it affected.

We might have missed a guest with something as simple as turndown service, and everybody listens to the department head responsible as he or she articulates what went wrong. That person will go to the root cause of the problem and tell everyone what will be done to fix it in that guest’s eyes. Whatever the issue, making it right starts with a sincere apology. It can also mean trying to do something else for them later on in their visit. It can mean an amenity such as flowers or fresh fruit skewers or a bottle of wine. It could mean an appropriate adjustment or consideration on their bill. For each guest, we strive to find the right approach in the apology.”

 

The cartoon was modified from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Speechwriters should mostly use active voice rather than passive voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On June 22, 2024 I blogged about how I write speeches in active voice – not passive voice. An article by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from The Writing Center – College of Arts and Sciences titled Passive Voice [Tips & Tools] explains:

 

“A passive construction occurs when you make the object of an action into the subject of a sentence. That is, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. Take a look at the passive reframing of a familiar joke [Why did the chicken cross the road?]:

 

‘Why was the road crossed by the chicken?’ “

 

On December 19, 2017 I blogged about More speechwriting resources from the Congressional Research Service. In that post I discussed a publication by Thomas H. Neale and Dana Ely from April 12, 2007, their CRS Report 98-170, titled Speechwriting in Perspective: A Brief Guide to Effective and Persuasive Communication.

 

Under Contemporary Style and Tone the fourth paragraph explains:

 

“Writers should generally use simple declarative sentence, preferably in the active voice, when making important statements of fact, assertion, or opinion. Use of the passive voice should not be dismissed out of hand, however; it is sometimes the more desirable form, and can lend grace and variety to the speaker’s flow of words that stimulates the listener. It is excessive use that should be avoided. Similarly, exclusive use of the active voice can impart a choppy, juvenile cadence to even a content-rich speech.”

 

A detailed article by Jacob M. Carpenter from 2022 in Legal Communication & Rhetoric titled The Problems and Positives of Passives: Exploring Why Controlling Passive Voice and Nominalizations Is About More Than Preference and Style states that you should use passive voice:

 

To emphasize something other than the actor

When the actor is unimportant or unknown

To improve cohesion and concision through dovetailing

To portray objectivity or deflect responsibility

To distance the reader psychologically

 

He also notes that:

 

“Passive voice at the beginning of a sentence may create an effective ‘dovetail’ connecting adjacent sentences….

 

In subsequent telephone conferences the defendant’s counsel promised to produces the documents within 30 days. The documents were never produced.”

 

My graphic uses a modified version of the man posting a sign from the Library of Congress.

 

 

A 270-page trainer’s guide for teaching how to write in plain language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Wikipedia page for Plain Language defines that:

 

 “Plain language is writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly, easily, and completely as possible. Plain language strives to be easy to read, understand, and use. It avoids verbose, convoluted language and jargon.”

 

Another Wikipedia page on Plain English elaborates that:

 

“Plain English (also referred to as layman’s terms) is a mode of writing or speaking the English language intended to be easy to understand regardless of one’s familiarity with a given topic. It usually avoids the use of rare words and uncommon euphemisms to explain the subject. Plain English wording is intended to be suitable for almost anyone, and it allows for good understanding to help readers know a topic. It is considered part of plain language.”

 

On December 4, 2022 I blogged about Advice from the U. S. National Institutes of Health on writing clearly using Plain Language and discussed a 13-page article.

 

Recently I found a 270-page pdf e-book from the Government of Canada in 1994 titled PLAIN LANGUAGE: CLEAR AND SIMPLE: Trainer’s Guide. It has the following sections for giving a two-day course:

 

Module 1: Introducing Plain Language [page 1]

Module 2: The Starting Point: Your Reader 

  and Your Purpose [page 13]

Module 3: Organizing Your Ideas [page 19]

Module 4: Using Appropriate Words [page 29]

Module 5: Writing Clear and Effective Sentences 

  [page 51]

Module 6: Writing Clear and Effective Paragraphs 

  [page 75]

Module 7: Presenting Your Message Effectively [page 81]

Module 8: Testing and Revising the Document 

  for Usability and Readability [page 89]

Module 9: Putting It All Together: Working 

  with Plain Language [page 101]

 

 

Excellent Tips and Techniques for Accelerating Your Writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a terse two-page article by Noe Lorona on pages 41 and 42 in the Spring 2025 issue of Army Communicator [professional bulletin] titled Tips and Techniques for Accelerating Your Writing. I found it in the MasterFILE Premier database in the EBSCOhost collection at my friendly local public library. You can download the entire issue here. Noe’s paragraph titles are:

 

Set Writing Targets and Deadlines

Take a Stroll in the Idea Phase

Write First, Edit Later

Leverage AI Tools

Find Your Flow

Embrace Collaboration and Accountability

Overcome Writer’s Block

Iterate and Refine

Final Thoughts

 

Both motivation and urgency are important, as is shown above in my colorized version of his table. Under Set Writing Targets and Deadlines he says that: 

“Deadlines create urgency, which helps overcome procrastination. Without clear goals, writing projects can linger indefinitely. To stay on track, set word count goals by breaking your writing into manageable word count targets per session. Use timers, such as the Pomodoro technique, to write for 25-30 minutes with short breaks to maintain momentum. Commit to a publishing date, even if self-imposed, as having a target completion date adds accountability. Writing with intent makes a difference, so align ideas with the format and audience.”

 And under Take a Stroll in the Idea Phase Noe says:

“Before you start drafting, invest time in generating and refining your ideas. Rushing into writing without a clear direction often leads to disorganized thoughts and multiple rounds of heavy revisions. Do not rush into drafting; instead, stay in the idea phase longer. Use mind mapping to create a visual representation of your ideas and their connections to ensure logical progression. Brainstorm by jotting down all your thoughts, no matter how scattered they may seem, and categorize them later. Backward planning is useful. Begin with the final goal in mind to make it easier to structure the supporting arguments or sections leading up to it. Sticky notes or index cards help by allowing you to write key points down and arrange them physically to sort and prioritize content.”