In college my sister, Roni, got a whispered call from a sweet friend. “Can I shower at your house? My roommate is taking a naked nap.” Apparently, the basic mandatoriness of clothes which had seemed so obvious to her had been interpreted rather differently by the young woman who had come to share the privacy of her bedroom by virtue of signing up in the housing office. She was happy to meet the public bits of her roommate, but found herself rather nonplussed at greeting the whole enchilada.

She was also Roni’s running buddy, who pointed out that their best route was to circumcise the campus, which, if you ask me, would have been an odd way to exercise, and not much of a timesaver. When she couldn’t run with Roni, she ran with her grandmother’s beloved dog, until the day the dog got loose and took off, nowhere to be found. Finally, she trudged to her grandmother’s home, sadly lumping down at the kitchen table, looking for words to break the news, and feeling soft fur at her feet. Just as she opened her mouth to confess, a tragic truth became apparent, tangling unfiltered into the whole fiasco.

“Grandma, I lost your dog . . . oh, and your cat’s dead.”

In retrospect she thought she could have handled that rather better, but once the words are out there’s nothing you can do but start there. Life truly is an ointment dotted with flies, and once you see the fly, it’s shockingly hard to see the salve it’s sitting in. Read More