I Meet A Person, And In My

It Was Like That Class At School Where The Teacher Talks About Realization, About How You Could Realize Something Big In A Commonplace Thing. The Example He Gave--and The Liar Said It Really Happened--was That Once While Drinking Orange Juice, He'd Realized He Would Be Dead Someday. He Wondered If We, His Students, Had Had Similar 'realizations.' Is He Kidding? I Thought. Once I Cashed A Paycheck And I Realized It Wasn't Enough. Once I Had Food Poisoning, And Realized I Was Trapped Inside My Body.

Sometimes I Can Better Describe A Person By Another Person's Reaction. In A Story In My First Book, I Couldn't Think Of A Way To Sufficiently Describe The Charisma Of A Certain Boy, So The Narrator Says, "i Knew Girls Who Saved His Gum."

Maybe This Is Not A Come-down-from-the-ledge Story. But I Tell It With The Thought That The Woman On The Ledge Will Ask Herself A Question, The Question That Occurred To That Man In Bogota. He Wondered How We Know That What Happens To Us Isn't Good?

When The Beer Is Gone, So Are They -- Flexing Their Cars On Up The Boulevard.

When My Mother Died, My Father's Early Widowhood Gave Him Social Cachet He Would Not Have Had If They Had Divorced. He Was A Bigger Catch For The Sorrow Attached.