
I was in line waiting for admission into an amusement park. I’d been dragged there at the insistence of my friend, Todd, who had a disturbing infatuation with a rickety old roller coaster called the Mindbender. He was jumping up and down, chanting, “open, open!” Meanwhile, I rolled my eyes and stomped out a cigarette. The last thing I wanted to do was stand in line, over and over again, shuffled in with that segment of the human population who seem to perpetually have their shorts caught in the cracks of their ample haunches, kids on leashes, flip flops sloshing [...]