Everything I Believe About Shopping (In A Single Sentence)

I was recently asked whether I prefer to shop for clothes online than in stores and in some ways I do because clothes shopping seems like a completely frivolous activity that I never have time for (even though I regularly need clothes, and they do need to somehow be acquired) so if I’m looking for something in particular, I might go online and check out several different sources for the single item, or, like my recent Zappos experience, where I thought it would be more efficient to find a pair of summer sandals by ordering 40 pair of shoes in varying sizes and colors and having them spread out all over my living room (a phenomenon my husband described as a shoegasm) so I could walk around the house in them and try them on with some of my clothes and get the opinions of visiting friends (one of whom needed to return multiple times because my head was reeling with too many shoe choices and I was beginning to have an identity crisis), and then send back whatever I didn’t want (which was all but one pair – shoes that changed my life for a few weeks but that now feel a little too stretched out and which I may send back as well), a process that, at it’s completion, proved to be wholly inefficient and stressful in a different way than shopping in a store, where, yes, you can touch things and see true colors in real time, but where you also have the opportunity to be struck by a certain something that you may not have been looking for at all, a prospect that scares me because I spend so little of my life browsing that the sheer act of visually taking in all that’s available in the world sends me into a kind of manic state and I end up buying far more than what I was looking for – far more than what I need – and, like any kind of mania, leaves me feeling exhausted and blue after the climax has passed, so that, for me, any in-store clothes shopping is best accomplished the way I did it yesterday, which was like this: I wandered into a clothing boutique at the Jersey Shore (looking for something more interesting to wear over my bathing suit than the cargo shorts I currently had on) and quickly eyed all the racks for a starting point, landing on a long, flowy, blue-and-green batik slipover dress that was cut in a way that would accentuate my lean torso and de-accentuate my child-bearing-hips; I pulled it off the rack, took it into the dressing room, slipped off my shorts, slid the dress over my bathing suit, looked in the mirror, stepped out of the dressing room to look in another mirror and also to give a sales clerk or another customer the opportunity to see me in the dress and spontaneously offer that it was the perfect dress for me (which no one did), returned to the dressing room and into my regular clothes and headed for the cashier, dress over arm, quickly scanning the rest of the store, not so much to find a different dress, but in the way that some old philosopher I’d once read (Sartre? Kierkegaard?) described the act of looking for a friend in a coffee shop – how you see everyone’s face not for what it is, but only to determine that it’s not who you’re looking for – and then, after that brief 30-second scan, satisfied that there were no other contenders, I paid for the dress and left the store, the whole process taking under five minutes, and had only a slight amount of buyer’s remorse as I walked up the boardwalk, remorse that completely dissipated later when I put the dress on and my husband told me how awesome I looked, which is really all we’re looking for as the fruit of our shopping sprees – aren’t we – someone to think that we’re awesome.

Letting Go

I’m wondering why, on my morning walk, I even started thinking about a certain exclusive pre-school that sat atop a certain bluff in a certain riverfront town.  A preschool that, 14 years ago, decided that my then-three-year-old wasn’t advanced enough to join all of his friends that September in their hand-picked, crunchy granola classroom and benefit from the finest progressive pre-k education a co-op could offer.  I hadn’t thought about that school, or that incident, in over a decade – I had certainly stopped ruminating about it long before that.  But this morning, as I leaned down to pick up some discarded frozen yogurt cups on the corner – cups that I’d noticed on my walk the day before and now realized were not going to get into a trash container any other way – I felt very sorry for myself because it was so hard for me to bend forward to retrieve them. 

My stiff midsection made me think about calling my friend Suzanne, who happens to live in that certain riverfront town, and tell her about my body woes, because she is a massage therapist and acupuncturist and also because she understands my particular lot in life, which is that I hold my emotions so tightly in check that they wreck havoc on my musculoskeletal system.  If I called Suzanne, I would have told her about the woman I’ve been seeing who does “energy work” and how, after two sessions with her, having embarked on a process of (in her words) unfurling all the tension and stress within, I can now barely bend forward and do not feel in the least bit unfurled, but rather achy and stiff, as if I’ve aged 15 years in the last four weeks. 

But as I continued to walk, my mind quickly jumped from that Suzanne to a different Suzanne, one who also lives in that certain riverfront town, and whom I happened to run into a few weeks ago on a train ride into Manhattan.  I hadn’t seen This Other Suzanne for almost as long as the preschool incident, because her daughter was one of my son’s friends who did get accepted to that certain exclusive pre-school and not long after that, we moved.  This Other Suzanne’s daughter just finished her senior year in high school and was off to college somewhere, I forget where, but I’m sure it’s someplace fabulous, because This Other Suzanne’s daughter was fluent in two languages by age three and has a rather unusual name (after the wife of a famous painter), but most importantly, she attended a certain very exclusive preschool. 

I didn’t spend a minute of my walk trying to remember the name of the daughter’s college or the name of the painter for whose wife she was named, but instead turned my attention quickly to a certain exclusive college that The Teenager wants to apply to Early Decision, in the hopes that it might better the chance of his acceptance from under 10% to perhaps 12 or 13 percent.  This is exactly the type of college I have not wanted The Teenager to apply to at all because I have developed, over the years, a reverse prejudice about Schools Like That, and have deemed them, in my mind, haughty and elitist and basically just institutions that manufacture assholes.  I hold this opinion strongly and deeply, even though many, many of my close friends went to Schools Like That and not a one of them is an asshole. 

Yet, on my walk, I began to have a fantasy of The Teenager receiving an acceptance letter from a certain exclusive college and rather than worrying about whether or not he would turn into an asshole, I immediately imagined taking a picture of that acceptance letter and mailing it to a certain exclusive preschool along with a simple handwritten note containing only a certain vulgar two-word phrase that is meant to convey both disdain and superiority. 

And the prospect of that made me smile.

As I was replaying my fantasy over and over, imagining my note being read by the self-same woman who, 14 years ago, thought it was reasonable to judge three-year-old children on their “potential,” I found myself becoming really excited by the prospect of The Teenager getting into that certain exclusive college, largely so I could thumb my nose at a woman whose name I will never remember and whose face I wouldn’t recognize in a million years. 

And then I wondered whether, maybe, just maybe, the Energy Healer’s work isn’t working because I have a tendency to hold on so tightly to old resentments and wrongdoings.  Whether I can’t bend forward because there are too many things my muscles won’t let go of; that perhaps they’re forever tethered by my every longstanding rebuff. 

I had to wonder whether the frozen yogurt cups were left on my corner for A Reason.  Whether some cosmic force knew I would lean down to pick them up and they would remind me how easy it is to get rid of garbage that’s not your own, and how it really shouldn’t be any harder to get rid of your own garbage, but, damn, it sure is.

And how letting go of something that’s been a part of you for a long time, even something that you know doesn’t belong there anymore, feels a little like being broken.

Meta Physics

Yesterday I learned that The Teenager has a seemingly irreparable conflict in his schedule for senior year.  Two classes that he really wants to take meet only during the same period.  One of the classes is AP Physics C Part 2.  I’d certainly like him to get the classes he wants, but if I never have to know about another physics project for the rest of my life, I may possibly die a happy woman.

Physics projects have aged me.  Is that a Law of Physics?

The Teenager is driving home from the beach right now with a full sized catapult in the back of the car.  The catapult that was due last Friday and built, for the most part, Thursday night.  The catapult that needed to be designed and constructed to hurl an egg an unknown distance to hit the instructor.  A distance that could be anywhere from 20 to 50 feet.

The catapult was the final exam for AP Physics C Part 1.  The students had already spent the year designing and  building other irksome projects. A balsa wood tower that had to adhere to height, weight and girth requirements and also be able to sustain 30 lbs.  A mechanical helicopter that needed to fly and remain airborne for at least 60 seconds.

Both feats were miraculously accomplished by boys who, I’m fairly certain, have no idea how to make a bed.

I try not to get involved in these projects, but when the assemblage takes place in my home, the stress permeates the premises.  I am a sponge, and I absorb any and all angst within my purview. 

Unlike the tower, where I was called upon to fetch more balsa wood, replenish glue-gun glue and procure Venti Lattes, or, in the case of the helicopter, order a sanctioned building kit (replete with 23-page instruction manual) to be delivered overnight and secure three different types of modeling glue, I was not asked for any assistance at all with the catapult – a shame, really, because the project reeked of Monty Python to me, and, as a result, warmed my heart.  In fact, when The Teenager’s lab partner jokingly intimated that they were just going to buy a catapult and call it a day, I didn’t even try and dissuade them.  “I don’t want to spend countless hours building this thing . What a colossal waste of time,” he said.  And I was like, Yeah, I could think of better things to do.

So, wasn’t I surprised when, two weeks ago, they came lumbering in with two-by-fours (sorry, bad pun) and rope, and headed to the basement workbench?  They spent a chunk of time building the base that night and, once complete, left it, in typical teenager fashion, untouched for nine days until the eve of its due date. 

“It’s almost halfway built,” said The Teenager.  “We’ll be able to bang out the rest of it really fast.”

I won’t bore you with their hapless setbacks, I will just say this:  The whole point (it seems) of a physics project, is to give yourself time to make the types of modifications necessary when you can’t get your egg to sail more than 18 feet.  Time that simply does not exist when you begin the project in earnest at 7 o’clock the night before it’s due.

“Is it the torque or the trajectory?” I asked, pacing the basement and trying to sound helpful but, in truth, barely knowing what either of those things mean.  By this time it was almost 11 o’clock and I wanted to go to sleep.

Unfortunately, one of my many shortcomings is that I can’t sleep when a catapult is being built in my midst.

Every time they needed to test the catapult, they had to haul it up the narrow basement stairway and around the island in the kitchen, and out the back door to the yard.  They'd set it up on the driveway and let it rip.  The egg would barely make 20 feet.  They’d then haul it back down to the basement again to make adjustments.

The Teenager and his lab partner argue a lot. They’ve been friends for years and they’re like two old men on a park bench with nothing in the world better to do than contradict each other. Much of the building session was spent this way, with both of them taking seats on the patio, trying to reason and cajole each other to modify this way instead of that.

“We need a longer throwing arm.  We need to get to a lumber yard,” one of them finally declared.

“There are no lumber yards open at this time of night,” I told them.  “You’ll have to use what you can find around the house.”

They texted other classmates to check on their progress.  They replaced their wooden arm with a lacrosse stick.  They barreled through my ($5.99/dozen organic!) eggs.

Splat, splat, splat.  My driveway was full of yolk.  None of it landing further than 22 feet.

“Forget it,” said The Teenager. “Twenty-two feet will have to be good enough.  I’m going to bed.”

But his lab partner talked him into further adjustments and modifications while I lay tossing and turning on what may as well have been a bed of nails.  Is there anything in the medicine cabinet for a Catapult-Induced Sleep Disorder?

Eventually, they too called it quits.

Bleary the next morning, I asked him how it went.  My past experience with The Teenager is that things always seem to work out. I somehow let sleep overtake me and when I wake up, the thousand page paper has been written or the minutia-laden architecture model has been constructed.  I don’t ever believe these elfin surprises will materialize, but they always do.

“The egg never landed beyond 22 feet,” he said in his gloomy voice, a situation we both knew would not bode well for his grade.

Yet, six hours, eight two-by-fours, two bungee cords, one lacrosse stick and two fresh eggs later, catapult magic happened.  An egg was launched and landed inches before the teacher, a distance of over 49 feet. 

There is no scientific explanation as to how this was possible.  How someone can repeat a process dozens of times and get the same lousy outcome every time, and then, finally, that one time that it counts, everything falls into place.  Is that a Law of Physics, too?  Or is it something bigger, like a blessing, or just good old-fashioned grace?

I know it’s too much to hope that the schedule conflict magically resolves itself in a similar way.  I mean, it’s just not possible.  Everyone has already told me so.

"Happy Mother's Day"

“Please dress nicely.  If possible, please wear pink and/or green which are the Home Tour Colors.” 

These words were included in a last minute instructional email sent to me and all the other women who have volunteered to staff the House Tour.  Seven spectacular houses were opened to the public as a fundraiser for my younger son’s school.  I’d been asked to write descriptions of the homes for the program booklet and also to serve as a docent in one of the homes during the tour.  I’ve been working on this fundraiser for months, yet I still find it baffling that someone might send me an email suggesting I wear pink.

***

“Welcome! You can tour this house shoes-in-hand or you can slip those little booties over your shoes.”

This is practically all I say for the three hours of my shift. I say it over and over again, to the hundreds of women and the few brave men that I greet at the door of the Upper Mountain mansion.  I imagine that’s why my jaw aches so much right now but deep down I suspect it’s really because of The Teenager. 

Sometimes, to break up the monotony, I say to the guests, “This is a booty house,” and I point to the little wicker basket filled with blue crepe galoshes like the ones that operating room nurses wear over their white sensible shoes.  Although, in truth, I don’t need to break up the monotony much, because I have a teenager, and no matter how much I prepare otherwise, that teenager always seems to find a way to commandeer my day.

***

“Mom, I have this big architecture project due today and the teacher is letting me have the weekend to finish it because of the AP tests…”

This is the teenager, prattling on from his cell phone about his current crisis.  I have my iPhone up to my ear, half listening, while I smile at entering guests and point to the bootie basket, assuming that they’ll understand what I want them to do. 

He wants me to pick up his architecture project between 2:00 and 2:30 because he has to get on a bus to a track meet.

“I can’t,” I tell him. “I’m working.  Get someone else.”   I’m smiling and bootie-pointing while he tells me no one else can help him with this.  No one.  I listen to him longer than I should, mostly because my iPhone case is pink and I’m using it to comply with the dress code.

What the teenager doesn’t know – can’t know – is that my hot pink iPhone has been at my ear almost from the moment I arrived for my shift. I’m stationed in a big house with six volunteers slated to show guests around, but one volunteer was called away and another called in sick.  I’ve been handing out booties and fielding calls from event coordinators who have been trying to send me replacements but are instead calling with regrets.

***

“I can’t get anyone else to do this, Mom.  Please.  If you don't pick up this project,  I’ll get an F.”

When The Teenager calls on my hot pink iPhone, a picture of him comes up on the screen.  It was taken the day he got his driver’s license and it’s a sweet shot of a man-boy who is almost-but-not-quite smiling and looks almost-but-not-quite innocent.  It’s a picture in which you can see his underlying goodness and easily forget about his overarching disorganization. 

My heart warms ever so slightly as I regard this picture and I soon find myself calling and texting friends to cover my bootie-offering position while I dash over to the high school to retrieve The Teenager's work. 

***

I present the requisite picture ID needed to enter the high school and scurry to the main office to get a pass to the architecture studio.  I’m feeling buoyant and benevolent – new volunteers have been sent to the house; I’m able to help my son; and I’ll still be back to the house tour in time to close up and clean up for the homeowners. 

The High School Receptionist offers to walk me to the architecture studio, rightly prescient that I’d never be able to locate it in the bowels of the building on my own.  The studio teacher hands me a huge wooden board – a portable drafting table – with The Teenager’s drawings taped to it.  My keys are dangling from my fingers and my bag is slipping off my shoulder as I haul the unwieldy thing up the stairwell and call out to the kid ahead of me to please hold the door so I can manage through.

During our short walk together, I tell the High School Receptionist how The Teenager lets me know (as often as he can) that he thinks kids should be afforded more independence and that mothers really just get in the way and botch things up. Yet, here I am, dragging his work home for him.

This conversation takes place at 2:00, long before The Teenager will ask me to pick him up from his track meet 20 miles away and give me a snort and an eye-roll when I ask him if he’s sure he has everything as we get in the car.  Longer still before I drive him to his own high school’s field house, where he’s left his car, and where I watch him search, futilely, for his car keys, which must have fallen from his pocket at the track meet. Longer even still from the time when, back home, I scream every curse word I’ve ever learned at him because he is stomping and grousing about having to go back to the track meet to find the keys. 

If I had told the High School Receptionist any of that, she would not have been left with a particularly savory impression of The Teenager.  The High School Receptionist doesn’t have that pink iPhone picture to look upon and remind herself how The Teenager can light up a room with his giggle and his smile. 

And she herself might have found it even more wry, maybe even ironic, as I teetered through the door, off balance not only as a result of The Teenager’s architecture project, but perpetually off balance just by virtue of my ongoing proximity to teenagers in general, that her parting words to me still echo in my head: “Happy Mother’s Day!”

Mother Enchanted

“Don’t fall in love with your son’s girlfriend.”

This directive was recently offered up by Cathy, my best friend from high school.  We were together at a small reunion and we resumed our natural roles, me sitting at her feet as she dispensed advice.  Cathy married first and had children first, so she’s always been a bit of a mentor to me. 

Cathy was the one who, early in my parenting, told me, “You can’t force a child to eat or sleep or poop, so don’t even bother trying” – a piece of information that saved my sanity if not my life. 

In fact, I’ve taken to heart most of the mothering advice she’s handed down, so, I admit, her cautionary words did dance around in my head the first few times I met my son’s girlfriend. But I’m afraid, for the most part, Cathy, it’s too late.

Is that because The Girlfriend is fresh-faced and dresses like Stevie Nicks?  No.

Is it because she has an infectious smile and an easy laugh?  No.

And it’s not because she’s smart or funny or upbeat or urbane.  In fact, I don’t know if she’s any of those things, because I barely know her.  But what I do know is that she’s a girl – a commodity this household has been woefully under-stocked with in the last seventeen and a half years.

“Hi,” she says to me when she walks in the house.  “How was your day?”  (This is a sentence that has never been uttered by my own offspring.  No, not once.)

“My day was great,” I say, and I begin telling her about the jewelry show I’d been invited to that day.  I tell her how a woman in town makes interesting costume jewelry and sells it at a very reasonable price and that I normally would just go to look, but today I ended up buying five pieces and the whole experience made me downright giddy. 

I notice, as I tell her this story, that there’s a fluidity missing to my speech.  I hear myself deliver it in tentative chunks, waiting for her eyes to glaze, as my sons’ do whenever I offer more than two words of detail about anything that has to do with clothing. Or jewelry.  Or haircuts.  Or me. 

But there was no glazing.  Instead, she responded in a way that was so remarkable I found myself replaying it in my head for the rest of the day and even for days beyond. 

She said, “Really?  Can I see it?”

She just asked to see my jewelry!!!

I bounded upstairs and reemerged a minute later with a silly smile on my face and a fistful of baubles in my hand.  I showed her one piece at a time, offering detail after detail of the event itself – how three strangers told me that the turquoise piece was perfect for me, and how I just went ahead and bought it even though it was a little more of a “statement” than I was used to making. 

“Ohhh, it’s so pretty,” she said, in a sing-song girly way that couldn’t be more foreign in my burp-and-grunt home. 

Is she blowing smoke up my butt? I wondered.  Maybe.  I don’t even care.  In fact, like it. 

As a mother of boys I’ve told myself certain stories over the last many years: Girls are high maintenance. Girls have too much drama.  Girls are petty and bossy and mean.  As an ex-girl myself, I know all too well how vicious and rude girls can be to their mothers.  I tell these stories to feel ok about living in house full of boys – boys who don’t want to discuss the nuances of nail color or the finer points of feelings – and I’ve convinced myself that I’m somehow better off in the long run because I don’t have all that gooey girl stuff to deal with.

But I’d forgotten about this.  The authentic and palpable excitement about some very important aspects of life that, let’s face it, boys can’t even be bothered to feign. 

Am I really in love with my son’s girlfriend, Cathy?  No, of course not.  But I do have a wicked mean crush.

No Sorries

I played mixed doubles last night for the first time.

It wasn’t exactly an accident, but I didn’t know until I got on the court.  I’d gotten an email during the day from Rachel, a woman I usually only play with in the summer.  She told me to meet her at 6 p.m.  When I got there, she was standing next to a tall, slim guy in his forties.  “Do you know Peter?”

I actually did know Peter, as he’s the husband of a friend of mine.  “I usually play with him,” said Rachel.  “Is it ok if you play with Joel?”

I nodded, sure, but what I wanted to say is, “Really? We’re playing with guys?”

As it turns out, I knew Joel, too.  I had played with Rachel once last summer against Joel and his wife.  Aside from pros stepping in during clinics, that was the first time I’d played doubles with a man.  And it’s a little different.

First off, men hit hard.  Fortunately, my Friday group hits hard, so I’m somewhat used to it.  But there is something different, almost ineffable, about the slam of a man.  The power is similar, as is the satisfied afterglow.  But if you pried open a woman’s brains and could actually read the thoughts in her head, that slam of hers might be accompanied by a “Take that!”, whereas a man’s thought balloon is almost certainly, “Crush! Kill! Destroy!” 

A woman’s slamming face is full of retribution.  A man’s is filled with glee.  It takes a little getting used to.

However the biggest difference is this:  Men don’t say “sorry.”

I’ve always known this intellectually, but I had never experienced it firsthand. Starting with the warm-up, hitting gently to each other across the net, it’s commonplace, if you hit too high or too wide, to express regret to your hitting partner.  In women’s play, that is.  Here, that was not done.  I was “sorrying” all over the place, and other than that, the court was silent.

We gathered at the bench for a quick drink before starting the match and I mentioned the phenomenon.  “Y’all don’t ever say sorry, do you?” (Sometimes I talk like I’m from the Deep South.)

I may as well have been speaking in tongues.  I could see them both trying to figure out what there might be to be sorry about and they were simultaneously drawing blanks.

“Women say sorry all the time,” I offered. 

Joel said, “Well, maybe if I hit my partner, by accident, I might say sorry.  But to those guys over the net…?”

And with that, I commenced upon my very first, sorry-free game of tennis.

It was sort of remarkable.  I felt exhilarated afterwards in a way I haven’t in a long time.  It reminded me of when I first started playing and just being on the court created boundless energy.  There is something very liberating about not having to say you’re sorry.

What do we women mean when we apologize every time we hit a ball that’s too high, too wide, too short, too hard?  When we’re rallying and warming up, do we mean “I meant to hit it right to you but I didn’t execute properly (sorry)”?  When we’re playing a game, do we mean, “I feel sheepish and slightly undeserving of the fact that I just hit an amazingly good shot that there was no way you were going to get (sorry)”?

Or maybe in all cases, we mean, “I just acted careless/reckless/thoughtless/selfish; I hope you still like me.”

If that’s what we’re saying (and I think it might be), it is exhausting.  The feeling that you not only have to play good tennis, you also have to make sure you don’t offend anyone.  That dynamic was completely absent last night, as these guys hit one brutally aggressive shot after another and not only didn’t apologize – they rocked a little fist pump afterwards. 

Joel hit one shot from the baseline that whizzed past Peter and literally knocked him down.  We all stopped for a second while he got to his feet and regained his equilibrium. 

He wasn’t hurt, he’d just lost his balance.  At that moment, even in my apology-free jubilation, I said to my partner, “I think you could have said ‘sorry’ on that one.”

Ready for the Real World?

I hate so many things about this college search process, it makes my head spin.  I hate having too many choices.  I hate looking at schools (largely because I hate traveling).  I hate the guesswork involved in trying to figure out where The Teenager will be happy and thrive over four (or five, or six) years.  But the thing I hate most is the random, arbitrary feeling of it all. It seems like a process that lacks anything that even remotely resembles fairness or order.

You’re playing the odds in a game whose rules seem totally capricious and are likely to change from school to school. 

The teenager told his college counselor that he may be interested in a particular engineering school and she told him that as a white boy from New Jersey, his chances of being accepted were very slim.  He’s got the grades.  He’s got the scores.  He’s got the interest.  Not enough.  “It would be easier for you to get in if you were a girl,” she said to him.  And I start to wonder whether there’s enough money in his college savings for a sex change operation.

“The system is broken,” said a friend of my husband’s whose daughter applied early decision to a certain Ivy League school (his alma mater) and was wait-listed.  His daughter has excellent grades, great test scores, does lab work as in intern at Harvard, has her own research projects and is an accomplished equestrian.  Here’s what happened:  Her classmate’s dad is friends with the Ivy’s crew coach – good friends – and he called in a favor for his own daughter.  The coach spoke to the admissions office and the classmate was accepted early decision as a recruit for the crew team.

My friend’s daughter was devastated that she’d been wait-listed and to have a spot given to her classmate seemed beyond outrageous to her.  Why?  Because the classmate has never rowed crew a day in her life.

The classmate is apparently an ok student and a very good artist.  Perhaps an artist who would have thrived at an art school.  But maybe the art schools she was drawn to didn’t have a crew teams, or at least not teams that were coached by her dad’s friends, so she was better off, I guess, taking a spot the Ivy that her more qualified classmate could have had.

Who knows whether the our friend's daughter was next in line for that early decision slot.  Who knows whether the young artist will turn out to be a star coxswain. 

Deep down most of us just want our kids to spend time at a school that will prepare them for the real world. Still, to tell The Teenager a story like this, and then when he looks at me all mystified and full of disbelief, to simply nod my head and say, “I know.  That’s sometimes how the world works.”  Well, I hate that, too.