THE USUAL

Is anyone else embarrassed by a routine?

I frequent a coffee shop near my workplace. Not every day, but a few times a week I wander over and get a tall single latte and, often, two citrus almond biscotti. Not too long ago, one of the baristas looked up and saw me at the counter. "Your usual?" she asked.

My usual?

I almost fell over with embarrassment.

Yes, I always order the same thing, but someone noticed it and dubbed it my "usual"? Oh man.

I meekly assented as she turned her back to make a tall single latte, no sprinkles.

After that, I'd walk to the shop hoping there'd be a different barista on duty — one who'd ask my pleasure as though I might say anything at all. One who didn't have me pegged. A double iced Indonesian, for example, or a chocolate egg cream.

Probably half the time there was a different barista and I felt OK — unconstrained — ordering my usual. But then, another day, there she'd be. Recently, before she could say "the usual?" I blurted out, "I feel funny ordering the same thing all the time." She just waved her hand and said, "There's nothing wrong in knowing what you want."

I took some comfort in that, but nevertheless ordered a peach scone instead of the two biscotti — just to put her on notice that my usual could become unusual at any moment. I could throw her a curveball. She'd better be ready. But as I left the shop with my peach scone, my soul was crying for the biscotti. And, who was I kidding? I might bring myself to vary the snack, but I wasn't going to budge on the single tall latte. I would still have a usual — just a usual with insignificant variations. She knew it and I knew it.

And I also knew that she undoubtedly fixed "usuals" for people all day long, some maybe twice a day for years running, and no one batted an eye. The usual was usual.

The usual is even sort of enviable. I remember watching old movies and being impressed when the bartender knew a customer's usual. It denoted a familiarity, a special relationship, a belonging.

So why do I have a keen sense of embarrassment about being someone with a usual?

CLUELESS

I have this habit when reading to make a list of interesting words I encounter. Usually they are words I don't know the meaning of, like "embrocation" (the act of rubbing a part of the body with a liniment) or "susurration" (a whispering sound), and sometimes they are words that I know the definition of and really like but never think to use — words like "baleful," "asperity," "sang-froid." Writing them down is a reminder to look them up and/or to use them.

What I overlook is perfectly ordinary words that I say all the time but never think about. I've been reading this nonfiction book called "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective." It's about a famous 19th century murder case that inspired not only the development of modern detective work but also the creation of modern detective fiction. There's a great passage about mystery jargon that discusses the word "clue."

The word "clue" derives from "clew," meaning a ball of thread or yarn. It had come to mean "that which points the way" because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth. The writers of the 19th century still had this image in mind when they used the word. (such as the common image of "unraveling" a mystery).

Most people probably already know this, but it was new to me and is a reminder that occasionally I should investigate words that I imagine are completely familiar to me.

AN UNDERSTANDING

Today a student told me that he has two tests for whether a relationship with a girl can go forward:

(1) Is she OK with cats? She doesn't have to love them, but she can't hate them. A lot of girls, he said, make a point of saying that they HATE cats. These girls do not understand that after they have uttered those words that the rest of the date is just a polite formality with no chance of a future.

(2) Does she eat candy? She doesn't have to "stuff her face with sweets nonstop," but she has to enjoy candy. People who can't enjoy candy are lacking some fundamental appreciation of life's sweetness, which will surely show in other aspects of the relationship. I found this rather touching, as this kid is drop-dead handsome, the kind of guy you'd expect to have a real tall, skinny, knockout of a girlfriend, the kind who's constantly counting calories. But as gorgeous and svelte as she might be, it's a no-go if she doesn't eat a fair amount of candy.

I don't know how he came by this hard-won wisdom or why he felt the need to share it with me, but I found myself agreeing with him. I even offered, "I couldn't stand to be with someone who drank soda first thing in the morning. I really require a fellow coffee enthusiast."

"Oh yeah," he said, "I totally get that."

And I think he totally did.

HOLIDAY

I can never think of anything to say to my hairdresser, Ryan, and, luckily, we seem to have reached an understanding over the years that we won't struggle to drum up small talk. I can just sit in the chair and relax under his gentle attentions, and he can have a break from his occupational chitchat. Occasionally some topic presents itself — the lyrics of a song on the stereo, some dramatic weather visible through the windows, a snippet of conversation from elsewhere in the salon — and then we can chat easily and naturally. Sometimes he becomes quite carried away with an opinion and talks at length, halting his swift scissor-work to gesture broadly with both hands and to catch my eye in the mirror. He understands that I delight in gentle mockery of the salon culture, and he readily indulges me with whispered asides and raised eyebrows. But mostly we say very little and are happy that way.

Yesterday when I got there Ryan was busy highlighting a client's hair, a bizarre, almost medical-looking procedure involving big cardboard tabs and stained elbow-length gloves. So he instructed the new guy at the front desk to shampoo and comb me. I like how "shampoo" is used as a verb in beauty shops but not really anywhere else. The new guy's name was Todd and he had a tall blond pompadour that knocked me out. His eyes were big and blue and fairly bloodshot. He called me "sweetheart." And I knew right away that conversation was going to be expected of me. "What are you doing this afternoon, doll?" he asked as he squirted a blob of shampoo into his beefy palm. I'm never in the mood for a whole bunch of questions about myself, so I turned the tables and began interrogating him. When had he started at the salon? Where was he from? Etc. I found that a single question could launch him into a lengthy, florid monologue, so I was relieved of having to say anything myself beyond a monosyllable of polite interest and a quick follow-up question to instigate a fresh soliloquy. Todd's story was that he had been at the salon five or six weeks, beginning as a part-timer and then going full-time. When I asked, "Are you from here?" he said, "I'm from here now." And that made me laugh and suspect an illicit, colorful past, which maybe also explained the pompadour — an attempt at a bold new identity? This impression deepened when Todd mentioned his wife. It was hard to imagine Todd with a woman, frankly. Maybe this wife is just a beard for the new life? Or maybe not. I always enjoy when people who look totally gay aren't and vice versa. Especially vice versa. It keeps things fresh.

Todd told me how he had grown up in San Diego and still went "out there," with the wife of course, to see Mom. But he hated California and was always ready to get back on the plane after three days. Everyone there, he claimed, was rude and in a hurry and no one had time for anyone else. This is kind of my take on life in general, but I kept the observation to myself because I didn't want to get him on a tangent. "Rude" and "in a hurry" led to how California was also "way too expensive" and "plasticky." I was starting to really like Todd — a hairdresser with a giant bleached pompadour complaining earnestly about the superficiality of human existence.

When Todd was done shampooing and combing me out, he deposited me back with Ryan. We settled into our silent routine, but all that chat from Todd had made me feel a bit more social than usual, so I tried to think of something to say to Ryan. I asked him if he was going to do the Easter thing with his kids, and this turned out to be exactly the right thing to send him on a rant. Turns out he can't stand holiday traditions that are mainly commercial orgies, how all these religious holidays have a secular, Hallmark counterpart that is actually the REAL event, how grocery stores recolor and repackage the same stupid candy so that at any given time of the year there's the same crap with a different wrapper, how holidays are really just a goofy excuse to overindulge. I was voicing my agreement with "yeahs" and "sures." And this conversation took us all the way to the blowdry.

When Ryan clicked off the dryer, I heard Todd telling a customer that he was from San Diego but whenever he visited there now he was ready to get back on the plane after about three days. He didn't like it because everyone was always rude and in a hurry and didn't have time for anyone else.

FOUR AND COUNTING

Massachusetts

Connecticut

Iowa

Vermont

HARVEY THE CHEEWAWA

This is so I don't have to look at those underwear anymore.

Harvey the Cheewawa is the latest addition to the household — an unplanned one, as it were, but not unwelcome.

In this photo he is using Mabel, as he uses all of us, as a pedestal and lookout point. Haughtiness and Paranoia will be the twin towers of his personality, I predict — with a spectacular bridge of Charm connecting them.

I'm trying not to be one of those daft Chihuahua people. Trust me. There is minimal dressing up and even less carrying around in cute totebags. On one of the few occasions that I took him out in his chi-chi carrying case, which I did not buy but just happened to get as a gift years ago for a different dog, some dillweed said to me, "Hi, Paris." Oh brother. I do not consider Harvey an accessory just because he happens to be highly portable and feels like cashmere and matches everything.

More on the tiny guy later as I digest his emerging worldview and his impact on our domestic economy (so far, two towels shredded, one sweater sleeve unraveled, one bedspread corner tattered, some lost sleep and lots of stain removal. I'm sure Ben and Erin can add to this list as co-guardians).

THOUGHT-PROVOKING OR JUST THOUGHTLESSLY PROVOCATIVE?

Am I just too fussy, or is this trend of using female undergarments to "raise awareness" a little misguided?

I walked past a "Panty Line Project" today on campus that is meant to draw attention to sexual assault. As the name suggests, it was a bunch of women's underwear on a clothesline. I looked at it for a moment — and at the earnest young students behind the brochure-filled table — and walked away feeling a bit queasy. What, exactly, do underwear — or their word, "panties" — have to do with rape? I guess someone was thinking, "Underwear contain the genitals and the genitals are involved in rape, so let's use underwear as a symbol." Deep thinking, there.

But, come on. Are all the young college men passing this display of intimate apparel going to stop and think, "Hey! Rape is really horrible!" Or are they just going to snicker and experience that feeling they get when they walk by a Victoria's Secret window?

Underwear, especially women's, is so sexualized in our culture (not without reason) that when you see it, you tend to think sex, not sexual assault. Romance, not rape. And those aren't thoughts that you really want passing through someone's head in the context of violence, are they?

Then there's the use of the word "panties," which is probably even more highly sexualized than the garment itself — the way that it's ubiquitous in porn, the way that it sounds kind of icky on the lips of grown men as though they're talking about little girls, the diminutive, dainty "-ies," the infantilizing, fragile image it creates of women in certain contexts. I'm not opposed to all uses of this word. I'm just saying there's a time and a place and a way of saying it. And a display about rape ain't it.

The Panty Line Project reminded me of the recent "project" that stretched a line of colorful bras across the river in an attempt to raise awareness about breast cancer. I had the same feeling about that. What do sexy bras have to do with women dying of breast cancer? Does seeing a lingerie display really make people stop and think about the tragedy of cancer? What does the fact that a bra contains the breast have to do with anything? If we wanted to raise awareness about brain cancer, would we put up a bunch of hats, just because they're a garment associated with the head? If we wanted to raise awareness about a leg disorder, would we put up a bunch of pants? Or is it really just the sexualized nature of the bra that we're relying on here? The built-in provocativeness of it? And isn't the reaction you thereby provoke consequently kind of cheap? Bras are essentially about boobs. And breast cancer is only superficially so. Breast cancer is about life and death.

And more to the point, isn't there kind of an inherent sexism in all this? I mean, if we wanted to raise awareness about testicular cancer, would we put up a bunch of sexy men's underwear? Or if we wanted to raise awareness about priests assaulting little boys, how about a row of little-kid "undies"? Um, I don't think so. That would be freakin' creepy. So why is it deemed OK, or even clever, to use sexy undergarments to draw attention to deadly serious issues involving women? (Employing the tactics of the awareness-raisers, I include some gratuitous images of underwear to grab your attention and make you think seriously about this question.)

WORKING WITH THE ENEMY

Sometimes you overhear conversations that make you laugh, as in my last post, and sometimes you overhear conversations that make you want to cry, as in the one I overheard just now at work.

I don't work at a liberal or highbrow think tank by any means, but I usually assume a certain level of enlightenment and decency among my co-workers. I usually assume it is a safe and tolerable place to be gay.

Then someone casually lobs a staggeringly homophobic remark into the open, and — even more staggering — it is received with warm approbation.

I didn't hear the whole conversation because it took place on another floor among people I mostly know only by name. I could just hear voices coming over the balcony, some of which I could put faces to and some of which I couldn't. The gist of the conversation was that these guys were trying to figure out where to have dinner. One of them was naming restaurants, and when he got to a certain restaurant, another guy said "No! No way!" And the other guy said, "Why? Did you get some bad food?" And the guy just answered, "Never again!" Then a third guy, someone I actually know, said, "He got hit on there." Long pause, in which I could imagine the other guys thinking, "Awesome! He got hit on! What's the problem?" Then the guy I know continued: "By a guy."

Then followed a display of repulsion. Well, yeah, of course we won't go there now. We'd probably be anally raped as soon as we walked in the door. Whew! Dodged a bullet.

You would have thought the guy had said he was served a burrito filled with vomit, instead of that someone found him attractive and expressed interest in him that he was perfectly free to accept or decline.

I understand that some people are really uncomfortable with homosexuality and that they might not feel exactly flattered when someone who really turns them off makes a pass at them, but I don't understand feeling so outraged and appalled that you would "never again" patronize a good restaurant because of the fear that the same (highly improbable, when you think about it) homosexual might be there to prey on you again.

Or maybe you don't fear that exactly. Maybe you were just so traumatized by the gayness of it that you can't bear being in those four walls again. You can't bear any reminder of the faggotry that befell you. Your appetite for the restaurant's delicious food has been permanently lost.

And I don't understand why not a single one of the four or five guys involved in this conversation didn't speak up and say, "We can never eat at this restaurant because you're afraid that some gay guy will hit on you? Really? Isn't that kind of silly?" Instead they all just seemed to accept it as a perfectly rational, understandable response.

What if some female customer whom he found highly unattractive had hit on him? Would he let the fear of a repeat episode keep him from the restaurant? I doubt it. He'd probably politely tell her he wasn't interested and not give it another thought. He wouldn't flee the premises with a (flamboyant, don't you think?) cry of "Never again!"

Why does the unwanted attention from another man strike such a nerve?

I know that if you asked any of these guys if they were homophobic that they'd say no, that they'd insist they had "nothing against gays." But that's kind of the scary part, because they're just normal, average guys behaving like, well, normal, average guys who have nothing against anybody (as long as everything remains sort of "separate but equal"). They probably don't say "fag" in front of their kids — they're decent people, after all, not mean-spirited — but you don't really need to say "fag" when you otherwise manage to convey that a man being interested in another man is about the most appalling thing you can think of.

SWEET LITTLE LIES

I was at Half Price Books just now looking for Alice McDermott's "At Weddings and Wakes" (They had it. Yay!), and I overheard this conversation between a guy and his daughter, who appeared to be about 4.

Girl: Dad.

(silence)

Girl: (louder) Dad.

Guy: What is it?

Girl: Mom just got mad at me.

Guy: She did? (with a soothing tone of complete indifference)

Girl: Yeah. Really mad.

Guy: Why did Mom get mad?

Girl: I dunno.

Guy: What did you do?

Girl: I dunno.

Guy: She just got mad for no reason?

Girl: It looks that way.

(At what age does lying go from being cute and precocious to vile and manipulative?)

STORIES

Sometimes you read a book and wonder how the author survived the telling.

How did this person stare this thing in the face and grapple with it and pin it down? How did she take an amorphous mass of dark, swirling emotion and turn it into the hard, gemlike flame of a book?

It's a miracle to me: that there are people among us who devote their lives to telling stories, to observing facts big and small — how sunlight plays on a brick wall, how grief plays on memory — collecting and polishing the raw data of humanity and giving it back to us in a portable form.

Why do they do it?

The easier thing, by far, would be to not grapple, to not write, to let the butterflies — or predatory birds — of experience flutter by unexamined. Why this need to capture, categorize, contain?

I was thinking of this today while reading a beautiful book I can't imagine writing. Reading it was harrowing enough.

I told a friend it depressed the hell out of me, and she said, "This is two in a row for you! Let me pick out your next book, dear."

Her observation, referring to my last post, made me smile. I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't thought that it was something about the books, some gloomy common denominator. I had assumed it was something about the way I received them, something about my own state of mind.

I previously have had two notable experiences of being horribly depressed by books: one was Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" and the other was a book of Diane Arbus photographs. In both cases I didn't even want the books in my house, I found their content so bleak and sour. But I couldn't banish them from my soul, and, in both cases, I was able to re-examine them and where I remembered despair and the desire to avert my gaze I now found a surprising beauty and gentleness, even a delight in life. I can't explain the transformation. I would like to think I became braver.

Writing is about so much more than a gift of expression. It's about an extreme sort of courage. It's about a willingness to handle the mess, to give it shape, to endure the terrible loneliness of the task so someone else can pick up the book and feel a sense of recognition, even if horrible at times, and, in the process, feel less alone.

So here's to Alice McDermott, the author who made me feel terrible today. A great writer. If she has the courage to write it, I have the courage to read it.

SHOP OF HORROR

Wow. Here's a tiny, unassuming book that will chill your very soul: "The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald.

I was expecting a quaint story about a British widow who opens a book store in a seaside village in the 1950s. What else would you expect from a British author who didn't start writing until her late 50s? And that's certainly what I got — along with a disarming meditation on, well, pure evil.

Not the kind of evil where people get tortured and killed and whatnot. No. The kind of evil, rather, where people quietly have their souls crushed by their bland and boring neighbors.

It's a book about how we all are capable of screwing up one another's lives through laziness, indifference and a continuum of callousness ranging from self-centered insensitivity to cold-hearted calculation.

It's about how small things that could make a huge difference go unsaid. It's about the pitfalls of the path of least resistance that tempts us all. It's about plodding on even when defeat is a foregone conclusion. It's the maddening, but necessary, unhappy ending.

And it's a masterpiece of understatement, which makes it hurt and amaze all the more when you get knocked on your ass in the final scenes.

JOAN BAEZ

I saw Joan Baez this week with my friends Erin and Ben. I have seen her twice before, but this time was really special, not only because I got to share the experience with loved ones, but because we got to sit in the front row, where you can actually see every detail in the performer's face and body language and hear the band members interact with one another as they tune their instruments between songs. This was a new experience for me, at least with a performer of this caliber.

The thing that strikes me most about Baez is how she has this heart-breaking voice but is so damn humble about it. On so many songs she could really justify projecting her voice in a show-offy way and displaying her legendary range — and often you wish she would! — but mostly she avoids verbal acrobatics, or, when they're really called for, she performs them so effortlessly that it's like she's utterly unconscious that she's doing anything remarkable.

I also love her because she's always on the right side of history — and is always there before anyone else: with civil rights, war, the environment, poverty. She's famous for singing "We Shall Overcome" at Martin Luther King's 1963 march on Washington, but less well-known for fervently and very publicly supporting gay rights in 1970s San Francisco. What other celebrities were lending their voices to that cause? Even now.

True, it fits her role as the “Madonna of the disaffected,” but I’m nonetheless impressed when someone with advantages and talents who could easily have chosen a path of vast personal wealth and comfort — and a very different kind of career — opts for an alternative life. It's like in her adolescence it occurred to her that she had an exceptional voice and thought, not "Hey, I could be famous!" but "Hey, I could help some people!" (I read that when she was a kid she refused to take part in a Cold War air raid drill on the grounds that it was government propaganda. Thank God she never grew up.)

The other extremely cool thing about her is that after the show this week she wrapped herself in a flannel shirt and happily mingled on the sidewalk with fans, which is how we got the rockin’ photo above.

THAT KID

On the first day of class a student challenged me. It was odd because students are usually subdued on the first day. They mainly sit quietly, mentally calculating how much effort the course will require, how much class they can safely miss and how easy a grader I'll be based on whatever hints of personality I manage to reveal during that first presentation. Pushover, hardass or something in between?

This semester the first presentation was a little spiel about agreement — an area of grammar that can confuse even the most conscientious. Is it "The group of plumbers are" or "The group of plumbers is"? Is it "The couple have" or "The couple has"?

I was talking about how when you have a "neither/nor" construction the verb must agree with the noun closest to it. So, for example, it's "Neither the actors nor the director likes the theater." It sounds kind of wrong, but it's right.

A woman in the dead middle of the room barked, "That's stupid."

All 60 heads turned toward her, then toward me. Apparently I was supposed to passionately take up the "It's not stupid" side of the argument. I am familiar with the collective, expectant look in these situations. Usually it arises when someone throws down the heretofore unquestioned wisdom of his high school English teacher like a gauntlet. "I was always told never to split infinitives," he'll declare. Or "never to use contractions." Or "never to end a sentence with a preposition." Or "never to start a sentence with a conjunction."

The students don't usually tell me that what I'm saying is stupid per se, just that it's profoundly unorthodox and clashes violently with everything they've ever been told. I like how these challenges generally come in the passive voice. I was told. It makes it easier to pick up the gauntlet. Well, now you're being told something else. If "being told" is all the authority you require to cling to a belief, then "being untold" has a certain persuasiveness, too, provided the person doing the untelling has a mental stature in the ballpark of the original teller.

The "That's stupid" challenge is harder to answer, because in many cases I agree with the assessment. Part of me wanted to tell the woman, "You're right. That is stupid. Let's do it your way. Take home the grammar book and highlight everything that you believe to be stupid. Pencil in how you would handle the situation instead, and we'll adopt that as our text. OK?"

Instead, I said something to her along the lines of, "Well, it sounds stupid to our ears because we're so used to hearing it said incorrectly that when we hear it said correctly it just seems wrong and nonsensical. If you find it terribly grating, you can just switch the order and say "Neither the director nor the actors like the theater."

This seemed to mollify her — until I said the next "stupid" thing.

In class after class, she'd belt out her opinion, never bothering to raise her hand. "That's stupid." "That's lame." "Oh, that makes sense," meaning, of course, that it makes zero sense.

I honestly feared she would become a problem, a distraction, even as I started to become privately fond of her sauciness. On quizzes she would write things like "My girl Sebs! Woo-hoo!" (referring to Gov. Sebelius) or "The Hill!" (referring, affectionately, to Hillary Clinton). I have a big soft spot for a certain kind of zany, even if ill-informed, pertness, maybe because it's a quality I lack — or, if not lack exactly, then am unable to show. When the students had to write a haiku for a silly headline exercise, hers was about Ernest Hemingway's cats in Key West. And I knew she knew about them not from reading about Hemingway, but from partying in Florida. And that somehow made the poem even more endearing — to know that it came from life, not books.

Today in lab she started peppering me with challenging questions about the exercise. I was keeping pace with her demands, but my face, on the fourth or fifth question, must have betrayed the tiniest feeling of weariness, because all of a sudden, while I was in mid-answer, she relented. She just stopped. And she said, "I'm sorry. I'm being that kid." I said, "That's OK, what I was ..." And she interrupted me, a weird blankness on her face. "Nevermind. I don't want to be that kid."

So I didn't answer. I just sat there feeling kind of blue while they finished their exercises. Why didn't she want to be that kid anymore? I was getting so used to that kid. It made sense for her to be that kid.

I felt seriously down. Then as she was leaving class she turned in her exercise and asked me, "Are you going somewhere fabulous for spring break?"

"No," I said, sadly picturing myself in swimwear and hoping she and her classmates weren't doing the same. "I have to ..." but before I could get out the word "work," she barked, "You're not?! That's stupid!"

JANE OVERHEAD

My friend Erin made this cross stitch for me: a silhouette of Jane Austen. I hung it over my bed — the perfect talisman against banality, pettiness, boorishness and everything in life that militates against loveliness and grace and freedom.

REFRESHINGLY DESCRIPT

I wrote a blog post recently griping about my desire to read a good mystery and my inability to find one that truly satisfied.

Well, one came my way. And it was everything I wanted: well-written, with an intriguing story and elegant characters. And it happened to be British: Agatha Christie's "Funerals are Fatal."

This passage from it is one of the best scene-setters I've read lately:

Two elderly men sat together in a room whose furnishings were of the most modern kind. There were no curves in the room. Everything was square. Almost the only exception was Hercule Poirot himself who was full of curves. His stomach was pleasantly rounded, his head resembled an egg in shape, and his moustaches curved upwards in a flamboyant flourish.

He was sipping a glass of sirop and looking thoughtfully at Mr. Goby.

Mr. Goby was small and spare and shrunken. He had always been refreshingly nondescript in appearance and he was now so nondescript as practically not to be there at all. he was not looking at Poirot because Mr. Goby never looked at anybody.

Great, huh?

Next up, when the mystery lust overtakes me again:

SUPREME LUSH

This one is hard to beat. One of my quiz questions this morning was Who is Ruth Bader Ginsburg and why is she in the news?

Student wrote: Judge on Supreme Court who's been struggling with the bottle.

A LOFTY SURGE

I complain now and again about my students' general lack of knowledge, especially when it's of the truly appalling variety, like identifying someone as the "president of Africa." And indeed I had two students on this very first quiz of the semester say that Belgium was the capital of Germany (surely one of them cheated off the other). And I had four say that the capital of Afghanistan was Baghdad (mostly spelled Bagdad). Another wrote a few authoritative paragraphs about how the Taliban ruled Iraq with an iron fist. And another identified Caroline Kennedy as the widow of JFK.

But then there was this. Use the word "borne" in a sentence. And a student wrote:

"Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge."

Good grief. It's from Shakespeare's "Henry V." I nearly wept. Behold my cynical sails, borne with invisible and creeping hope.

"SORRY I'M UNHAPPY"

[I found this letter the weekend after Christmas in my front flower bed, which borders a sidewalk heavily traveled by homeless and low-income people on their way to and from a social service agency on my block. Someone dropped the letter — written in pencil on three pieces of folded-up notebook paper — unintentionally or maybe on purpose. I didn't change anything in it except to leave out the last name of a person near the end.]

Hey Buddie, it's x-mas-time not that it matter's send me a letter small money order sorry I'm unhappy, you see it takes 1 hour on the outside to send 5 or 10 $ to the inside But I'm gettin' no love hope you can get me some, I'm depending on you. Please don't let me down, so far everyone else has; And I've sent out alot of request's. I'm in medium. there are 3 or 4 here that think they run thing's you know how it is wannabe's, they censored my writing's about what real life and love are about. But they print homophobic dumass shit, and innercity rap and the n_____L____s eat it up. I can overlook it. But it test's my patcience


my bails only $750 but I'll be here at least 6 mo's oh well, I need my health back my physical health is very very important to me. Its how I've managed to stay alive. Alcohol effects the balance and equal Librium needed for proper self defense plus drug's and alcohol when done while homeless tend's to keep one homeless. I've felt alot of pain in my life greg but homelessness hurts the worst, I can't do it sober. I really appreciate you recognizing my talents; the ones you've seen so far. And I trust your not trying to patronize me when you give me compliment's I go to court 23 Dec 08; and 12 Mar 09, you must wright me back very soon, let me know you care, send me some love, I could sure use it Postcards are free at Jean Ann's or 25¢. A stamp is 42¢ or less, takes a few minutes out of your day to brighten up mine you know how it feels to be locked up and get 0 mail.

[Based on the page numbering — in Roman numerals — there might be a page missing here; I can't tell.]

Hold a sign the says "need help for my lover's inmate relief fund." Or "Gay activist jailed for defending himself, needed; closet case homo's to donate for bail." Or start passing out condom's there free at Jean Ann's. Help me Daddy, and I'll pull down my pants and lay on my tummy. Are you wearing old spice or AQUA Velva, want me to get it wet first?
P.S. Never ever trust Brian B_____'_. I did and, he had me arrested 3 separate times' I said I should have known the 1st time or even before but I fell for it like a fool. Drinking impairs your judgemen't and other's pray on you exploitation is what that's called and it comes in many form's enough of that. Merry x-Mas bro
Sincerly Chuck

DON'T FORGET

I found this grocery list in my shopping cart at Checkers. I find these pretty regularly. I have surely left my own for someone else to find, though mine tend to be one-sided and on the back of junkmail envelopes or on sketch paper, not on frugally torn two-sided scraps.

This one has a simple poignancy — maybe it has something to do with the word "cheap" in parentheses after "small white bread" — that got me thinking about the paper trails we all leave. Some of us write something nearly every day of our lives, whether it be an e-mail, a report for work or a comment on a student's paper. Some of us write hardly a thing — a grocery list, a signature on a Christmas card, answers to a crossword puzzle. It's funny how you can make a guess about what someone is like based on a few words: oleo squares, bleach, bacon, cottage cheese. And you can detail your guess even further by the handwriting. And you could be completely right. Or you could be completely wrong. There'd be a particular satisfaction in either (I was right! or A stereotype has been defied!). But you never get to know.

We write to remember: to get a loaf of bread, to record an appointment, to set down an event, to say I was here and this is what happened. All writing is a reminder, a shopping list with more or less detail between the parentheses.

EW

At trivia tonight, the guy at the table next to ours pulled out a string of dental floss and proceeded to extract the debris from between each and every tooth. Then he held the string out in front of him and examined the results. Not one of the eight people at his table said a word about what he was doing. I couldn't tell if they just didn't mind this nasty display or if they were simply too aghast to say anything. I don't know the guy, but I've deduced from comments he has made that he's surly and self-centered. He seems like the type of person who when asked to desist from a rude behavior would just intensify the behavior — someone eager to enhance the hostile nature of his relationship with the rest of the world. I have heard him belch loudly at trivia, and to the chorus of "oohs" and "yucks" that followed he made no excuse, except to belch louder the next time. A class act, in other words.

But here's the kicker. When I pointed out to my two trivia mates that he was flossing at the table, they both acted like it was no big deal. One of them shrugged and said, "If you gotta, you gotta." And the other echoed that sentiment. I was completely astounded.

I will grant that I can sometimes be finicky about behaviors that most people seem to find acceptable. For example, I've never been a fan of the toothpick-giveaway at some restaurants because I don't especially want to ride home in a car with a bunch of people who are picking their teeth. Teeth-picking is a private behavior in my book, like Q-tipping your ears or cutting your toenails, etc. But many people don't agree, and I can live with that. At least a toothpick, unlike dental floss, can be used relatively discreetly.

But, seriously, can a reasonable, well-mannered (or even average-mannered) person think it's OK to floss your teeth at a table and hold up the results for everyone to see? Really? Have the virtues of flossing been so successfully marketed that people think it's an acceptable personal hygiene to perform in public?