He told me that my dinner item came with my pick of potato. 
 
"Well let's go have a look then," I said, moving out of my chair. 
 
He shot me a puzzled "Sir?" 
 
"The potatoes?" I answered. "Am I not expected now to come make my choice? I am indeed ready to pick my potato." 
 
It was later explained to me, yet again, that this is why we just don't bother going to nice places.

The exercise was tiring and insipid. 
 
Corporate water-boarding and soul extinction carefully cloaked as affinity mapping and team-affirmation efforts. 
 
"If you could be a tree...," he started. 
 
Our task was to complete the thought incorporating all that we'd learned. 
 
Our entry: 
 
"If you could be a tree - any tree at all - what would be the cost and would you ever consider being a smaller, less ambitious tree? A ficus perhaps? The ficus needs little light and thrives in the fluorescent desert of hopelessness and neglect." 
 
There were no wrong answers.

They were really having quite the row outside of my door. 
 
Partly annoyed, partly intrigued I got up from my desk, popped my head in to the hall and asked the tall, tattooed one about the din. 
 
"Hey Val," I said, "what's going on out here?" 
 
"Necromancy," she replied. 
 
"So how are you doing?" I asked. 
 
"We're up two bodies," she answered without missing a beat. 
 
I like those odds.

"Sometimes I think you attack my faith just to get a rise out of me," he admitted. "I think you wish only to see how I choose to deflect your barbs." 
 
"No," I told him. "I attack your faith because you're wrong." 
 
"I'm wrong to have faith?" he pressed. 
 
"No," I assured him. "Faith is good. You're just doing it poorly is all." 
 
"Oh?" he asked. "Enlighten me please..." 
 
"There you go," I said. "That's the idea."

He asked me why I seemingly always felt that I had to be smug and condescending. 
 
I explained that I didn't really have to be either but that I didn't expect him to understand my answer.

She said that I had a kind way. She could see in my eyes that I'd been the gentle shepherd. 
 
One of us was wrong about me. 
 
The other still is.

She thought it was funny how people kept stealing her thoughts. 
 
I though it was odd how she consistently failed to tell the difference between neurosis and psychosis.

I opened the door and wondered aloud what could possibly be important enough for her to have disturbed my slumber on such a perfect day for solitude. 
 
She greeted me and explained how my vote in the following month's primary could shape the very destiny of our species. 
 
She asked if I planned to participate in the process. 
 
I told her absolutely not. 
 
She wondered if she could ask me why. She wondered if I would mind. 
 
I told her no, and then yes.

"Well that was a telling wind." 
 
Some thoughts hound me so loudly at night that they threaten any possibility of restful sleep. 
 
Why this phrase woke me in the night remains a mystery. 
 
It will probably come to me eventually. It usually does.

Yesterday evening the sun broke through the stormy sky just as the girl sang "Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?" 
 
I noticed. 
 
The sun and the banner.

They called some of our girls "Fence Jumpers"; they called another "Food Stamp"; they called one "Coon." 
 
I wasn't on the field to catch the exchanges firsthand but our girls aren't going to lie about this. You can't fake the hurt that they had in their young eyes. 
 
And this was a game. 
 
"Goddammit," I said through clinched teeth. "I wish I'd been out there to hear just one of them say those things." 
 
"Why?" she asked. "What would you have said? What would you have done?" 
 
I'd never felt more hopeless than at that instant. 
 
Hatred works that way. Doesn't it?

If I had to pick a word to describe her at that moment I would choose incredulous. 
 
She simply could not wrap her arms around the idea that I just don't dance more. 
 
"I know how the music feels from the other side," I told her. "I am content and very much at peace." 
 
She told me to live a little; that I could dance and still feel the music from the other side. 
 
"Perhaps," I said, "but why take a chance such as that?"

I'd settled in to spend the day at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal transcribing various unpublished fragments and correspondence penned by a nineteenth-century poet of particular relevance to my interests. 
 
My typing irritated the only other scholar in the salon. 
 
Indeed my tasks compelled the aged woman to express her discontent to the gloved attendant who stood behind me awaiting the safe return of the precious documents that I had in my possession. 
 
I wondered aloud if it were the technology or the manner in which I utilized it that vexed my neighbor so. 
 
Surely she would have been equally put-off in her youth by mechanical pencils and electric light.

He guaranteed that I would be surprised by the things that I could live without if only I were to apply myself. 
 
I conceded that he most likely spoke the truth but that, as a rule, I am not particularly fond of surprises.

She wondered aloud if all of this ever got any easier.  
 
She called me sir. 
 
"Does what get easier?" I asked. "Knowing that you'll probably die today or wondering when you'll die tomorrow?" 
 
"Actually I was just talking about the interviews," she admitted, somewhat meekly. 
 
"Oh," I replied. "Then no."

I asked what she was doing with her hands and she told me she was just feeling the music. 
 
I asked what the music felt like and she said that if I had to I ask then I could never understand anyway. 
 
I agreed that she was doing something with her hands that I could never understand.

"I hope you don't mind," she said, "but I told them that you and I are getting on swimmingly." 
 
"But I can barely stand to be anywhere near you," I replied, somewhat bewildered. "Surely they've noticed..." 
 
She confirmed that they'd touched upon the topic; something about our biting banter and the curious nature of our relationship. 
 
"So they don't know that you're basically a loathsome and insufferable bitch?" I asked. 
 
"No," she assured me. "To my knowledge you're the first to have picked up on that."

"I knew her when we were the same age," I told him. "I just didn't realize it at the time." 
 
"When did you last see her?" he asked. 
 
"Yesterday."

"Are you a spy?" she asked, carelessly and only half-expecting an answer. 
 
"Yes," I told her, "but I prefer to think of myself more as an interpreter." 
 
"Really?" she whispered. 
 
"Which part?" I wondered aloud. "Think about which answer you prefer."

In my rear-view mirror I could see him clapping and bouncing jubilantly. 
 
It's not often that we get to see ourselves through others' eyes. 
 
I'll admit to having been somewhat embarrassed by the applause.

He told me that it was probably time for me to take a good look at my priorities. 
 
I asked him where he might recommend that I start. 
 
"To begin with," he said, "you need to stop worrying about what other people think." 
 
"Hang on," I interrupted, "let me write this down."

"Nice try," she said, "but you're wrong." 
 
I wasn't and the question was put once again to the group. 
 
"Is this how you folks roll?" I asked. "Is this how you learn? Do you just keep asking the same question until someone produces a palatable answer?" 
 
"Oh, you're the new people, aren't you?" she responded. 
 
"New to you, I suppose."

We'd taken up chairs in the back garden to enjoy one of the first evenings of Spring. 
 
"That bird just flew over and pecked a squirrel on the ass!" 
 
He found more excitement in the encounter than I probably would have. 
 
"Why?" I asked, as if to pose a reasonable question. 
 
"Well why don't you just fly up there and ask her?" he replied. 
 
"What do you think she'd say?" 
 
"I don't think she'd say anything," he answered. "I think she'd simply fly away." 
 
"This isn't about the bird is it?" 
 
"No. It's about the squirrel."

He told me that they were expecting another little one in a few months. 
 
I asked him why. 
 
He told me that the customary reaction would have been to congratulate him upon hearing the news. 
 
I asked him why.

I fell asleep at my desk for just a few seconds and no-one noticed. 
 
This may be my biggest complaint. Few, if any, take note of the small miracles.

"God! I hate it when you do that!" 
 
"So is there where we trade tales on the things that we hate about one another?" I asked. "Let me know when it's my turn. I'll dial back in then."

She'd looked everywhere for the deck chair cushions and wondered if I might have an idea as to where they'd be hiding. 
 
"Oh, sure," I told her. "They're in the garage - under the cauldron." 
 
"You have a cauldron? What's with that?" 
 
I was sure that I didn't appreciate the spirit of her curiosity.

"Did you have a chance to clean out your wounds and to put on fresh bandages?" 
 
I hope that's the strangest thing that I have to ask my daughter for a while. 
 
We'll see.

"Is this chicken-fried steak or chicken-fried chicken?" 
 
"Is that what you really meant to ask?" I wondered aloud. "It didn't sound dumb in your head?"

"Where's your blue shirt?" 
 
I could tell that he was joking around but I haven't the attention span to excel in the field of pleasantry or platitude. 
 
"Which blue shirt would that be?" 
 
He made the face of a child who'd lost his only quarter in a flaky cigarette machine. 
 
"This is blue shirt day man! Didn't you get the memo?" 
 
He wanted to touch my shoulder with a pretend, office punch. Reconsidering, he chose instead to sway awkwardly with his arms dangling at his sides as if asleep or stricken by a sudden palsy. 
 
I'd worn a white shirt. I understood the playful interaction but had grown weary of the small talk seconds earlier. 
 
"Memo?" I asked. 
 
"Sure," he chuckled, "Everyone's wearing blue shirts today, dude." 
 
"Clearly not everyone," I told him. "I'm wearing a white shirt today. I imagine I'll wear a blue one tomorrow." 
 
He pretty well steered clear of me for the rest of the day. 
 
That was easy enough.