Around Here

M y  friend Carlos went to a “laughing yoga” class. He said it was hilarious. Laughter is contagious, and once someone starts it tends to spread. Soon the whole class, Carlos said, was in an uproar. Remember how when you were a kid being told to “Stop laughing!” was the funniest thing you ever heard? George Burns used to get a kick out of cracking up Jack Benny. One night at a charity event, an entertainer got up to sing at the piano. Burns whispered to Benny “Wouldn’t it be terrible if someone started laughing as soon as she started singing...” Of course, no sooner had she started, than Benny was on the floor. What is it about this prohibition that cannot withstand the seeds, once planted, of insurrection? I went to a Broadway show, I must have had comps, when I was a youth living in New York many years ago. I don’t remember the name of the play, some drama, that was in its fi...

O ne day in seventh grade I wore two different shoes to school. Sometimes teen sensitivity to appearance gets lost in an adolescent fog. They were, granted, the same color, brown, but two obviously different varieties of loafer. I didn’t realize it until I was sitting in my first class, looking down in disbelief, and gasping with silent horror. My feet immediately huddled together, for mutual protection , under my desk . What is more ridiculous than two different shoes? I might as well have dropped out of school and run away with the circus. I looked around. Nobody was pointing and laughing. I was swiftly punctual to every class that morning, quickly seated at my desk, and poring over a book. I was distant and socially unengaged. I was in a state of metaphysical teen dread.  At lunch, I hurried home and changed. To my great relief, and somewhat to my chagrin, nobody seemed to have noticed.

I met up with my old friend Robert from Washington (DC) who was in town to visit his mother in Naples. Rob is a rather patrician fellow, in a young Noel Coward vein, with a passion for experience. I’m an earthy sensualist with a taste for dawdling and speculation. The ensuing conversations are fun. We met at the yacht club and talked for a couple of hours over a pitcher of beer. We’re both in business and business, we confessed, is not great. Oh well. It was a partly cloudy April day in a tropical setting, with dawdling and speculation to be experienced. On to coffee at the mall and a browse at Saks. We sat under an umbrella in a courtyard cafe sipping lattes for a while. I took one of Rob’s Camels. “I like a smoke once in a while,” I said, inhaling, feeling the old catch in my lungs and nicotine buzz. “That ol’ devil nicotine...” “It’s in a lot of things, by the way, being a nightshade. Eggplant is loaded.” “Really...” “Tobacco is a New World botanical.” “The Indians smoked it.” “An...