He says it so often you would think he invented the phrase: “Enemy of the people.” He says it every time he refers to the press, that most American of institutions that our Founding Fathers insisted on protecting when they drafted our First Amendment, the most urgent document of them all, guaranteeing our most important rights that most clearly define what it means to be an American.

Anyway, the deal went down the way it always does — Sue, the dental hygienist, asks me to open my yap, and after taking a gander she says: “Wow, wisdom teeth!”

Take his asparagus study, for example.

OK, I’m faking it, because I’ve only seen a couple episodes of GoT over the past seven years or so. But I’ve read plenty about it — or at least just enough to know that it’s cool to call it GoT.

It’s not that Easters didn’t “happen” for me over the past several years. But this was the first one in years that I spent in the good old-fashioned way: inundated by an infestation of kids.

My grandson Jack jumped immediately to telekinesis, the power to move objects with his mind. “Well,” I said, “of course we’ll have to have some limits to our powers, right? I mean, I’d hate to find that you plunked the moon into my back yard.”

“OK,” he said, “what are my limits?”

Or you might nail it when you’re still just a kid, and not know until much, much later in life that it’s the best you’ll ever do.

After all, I had plenty of practice when I was a kid growing up in Elmwood Park and had to go home after school at John Mills Grammar School to write 500 times on sheets of lined paper: “I promise I will never throw snowballs on the playground ever again.”

At first I couldn’t agree, because the world is filled with slackers, malingerers and lazy louts who are just getting by. You’ve seen them, right?

In any case, one of my favorite baseball metaphors keeps coming to mind these days: “Just because you were born on third base, it doesn’t mean you hit a triple.”

Dogs are better than cats.

I know, you might not believe in ghosts. I didn’t either, until an old Buick I once owned decided to lock and unlock its doors every now and then throughout the night. The garage was right beneath my bedroom, so I could hear it every time it happened.

On Christmas morning this year, I slipped my kayak into the water by the Jolley Bridge at Marco Island and paddled the Big Marco River westward toward the Gulf of Mexico, tugged by the falling tide. The wind was northerly — neither help nor hindrance just yet.

I have had them forever. (Well, for all of my life, which is forever to me.)

She laughed, but she also gave a sad nod, because she remembered.

Some agreed with me and dashed out to thank the nearest teacher they could find.

Some thought I hadn’t gone far enough, suggesting that we might also shower firefighters and police officers with thanks for their service.

And some thought I went too far, arguing that saying “Thank you for your service” to anybody but military personnel would diminish its impact.

Or… well… it’s not completely true. Not anymore.

I recently went to a family barbecue at a house with an Alexa in the kitchen, and every time somebody asked Alexa a question, my cousin Rich bristled. “I don’t like those things,” he said. “I don’t want The Man listening to everything I say.” And then he sat sphynx-like at the table, refusing to open his mouth as the rest of us chatted.

Alexa just sat and listened, her little lights glowing invitingly, despite Rich’s scowling at her whenever she did anybody’s bidding.

When I was a kid, my philosophy of life was: “Let Someone Else Break It.” It worked like this.

Keep in mind that this was in the mid-1950s, when snapping a photo was a big deal that required loading film into a camera, screwing on a single-use flashbulb, driving to a photo shop to have the film developed, and going back a week later to pick up the prints. It was faster to make a Thanksgiving turkey than a photo. I don’t think more than a dozen snapshots of me were taken before I entered high school.

But Erin isn’t in the military, as you might have surmised from my expression of gratitude for her service. No, Erin is a teacher, and her “re-deployment” would begin as soon as the new school year opened in mid-August.

“None,” I said.

She stared at me. “Blood pressure meds? Cholesterol?” She was just trying to be helpful, because geezers my age can forget.

“Nope.”

She gazed at the computer screen in front of her. “I don’t know what box to check,” she said.

I wish I could tell you each lily’s name, but I wasn’t paying attention when I was told.

Some of them turn their faces straight up to the sun and sky — the yellow one with the pale purple frill on the edges, the white one with the red blush around fiery orange stamens, the creamy one with the burgundy rim.

No, I’m not talking about Republicans and Democrats. True, they’re irreconcilable, but when it comes to politics there’s also a third group—Independents—who are also maddeningly irreconcilable.

Sure, you have those moments when you get upset with yourself for not following through with your plans to learn at least one other language, or maybe even three or four. By this point in your life, you thought, you would be able to take an around-the-world trip and chat with anybody you met.