Around Here

I t was a luminous autumn day, cloudless, in late September. It must have been one of the last weekends before the school year started in earnest, one of the last lazy weekends that Tom and I, both of us eighth graders, were to spend at the cabin. I was going to say that it was one I’d never forget. But I did forget. For decades, I had forgotten. I thought of Tom this morning for the first time in years. The cabin, surrounded by miles of Michigan wilderness, was a nice piece of family weekend and summer real estate, outings to which I divided amongst my three closest friends, Barry, Ken, and Tom, according to a metric that is lost to me now, most likely Tom’s availability. Of the three Tom was the brightest, the most fearless, the most doomed. My imagination found a playmate in his courage. There was scarcely a dare he would not take, but with the smarts to deftly turn the tables on, if I took it too far. We made crank phone calls. We philosophied and opined. We filched cigarettes. Tom...

I sat down at a sidewalk table at Starbucks and this girl was reading aloud from a newspaper to her two friends, college kids I would guess. It was some inane story about city council deliberations. But she was reading in a voice dripping with contempt and sarcasm, rendering the content hilarious. Think Angela Hayes in American Beauty describing Ricky Fitts to Jane Burnham. Her friends were laughing. People were auditing. I sipped my cappuccino and was entertained.