A beautiful summer day, sitting on a porch in Connecticut, looking at boats anchored in the cove, grateful that I don’t own one. It’s one foolishness I’ve avoided in my life: most of the other numbskull boxes I have checked, and as I sit here enjoying the breeze off the water, I torture myself with memories of dumbness, mistaken romances, real estate stupidity, as vivid as the incident on Wednesday when, stepping out of a New York subway car, I paused to make sure it was 42nd and the subway doors closed on my neck.
Yes, you read that right. I had bags in my hands and I dropped them to try to pry the doors open, my head poking out, and couldn’t, and then a man pulled them open and I got out, turned and said thank you. He was a construction guy in an orange vest. He looked concerned. Then I remembered that Penn Station is at 34th, so I had to catch the next train for one stop. I got on that train and got off without incident. So, I’m a man whose head is caught in the doors while getting off at the wrong stop. There are worse things. The guillotine, for one.
“I use the possessive pronoun in singing ‘My country, ’tis of thee’, which audiences in red states enjoy singing with me, and also our national anthem, ignoring the fact that Francis Scott Key did own slaves”
