Tyrades! How Is Your Self-Image This Christmas?

I distinctly remember what I ate for supper on Christmas Eve 50 years ago.

Not the entrée perhaps, but certainly the vegetable.

My mother served stewed potatoes (“potato slopters,” as she dubbed them).

I remember the potatoes because I was passionately reading my newly purchased 25-cent comic book (“Justice League of America” Vol. 1 #96, featuring the JLA versus Starbreaker the Cosmic Vampire) at the dining room table and splashed the food all over it.

That damaged comic book still has a place of honor in my old bedroom. And it serves as a metaphor for the extreme ways some people regard thems...