“Look,” I said, staring at the dealer’s car-shaped name tag, “Doug. I’ll make this easy. I want you to sell me the biggest lemon on the lot.”

These people, these friends of ours, they are staring at me as if I’m a pharmacist. My drug of choice is music and for each of them I have a song, for every mood, for every moment, there is a song.

It’s just another burner. You need a vacation, old girl, relax and refresh. Read a book. Put in your time off. Hop a train up north.

She doesn’t expect him to jump up or anything, rush to her side, for God's sake; she knows that those days are over.

To live, truly live, is to forget more things than most people ever knew, to accumulate enough stories to revisit much later when such adventures are far less likely.