Theft by Finding

My 8 highlights

• Today the teacher told us that a ripe Camembert should have the same consistency as a human eyebrow. It was just a little something she threw in.

• Other people’s pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.

• I called Dad last night and he said, “If you’re riding a bike I’m hoping it has a big, wide seat, otherwise you’ll get testicular cancer like that Lance Armstrong.” I said I wouldn’t be riding a hundred miles a day for the next twenty years, and he told me it didn’t matter.

• The one thing they excel at here is stoking the furnace. It’s below zero outdoors, while inside our rooms we could roast chickens by leaving them on the nightstand.

• It’s scary, but when riding my bike I tend to think of all the people who are too lazy to exercise. I’ve become the exact sort of person I hate. The least amount of effort makes me self-righteous and I decide that everyone else should suffer just as I do. I’d probably be a monster if I ever quit smoking.

• Every man on the street was old and dirty and looked like he was on his way to an adult bookstore.

• A deliveryman brought the mattress at five thirty and the two of us spent the evening looking forward to bedtime. Hugh turned in at midnight and had a great night’s sleep. I went to bed at one and lay awake for hours, feeling as though I were stretched out on a length of pavement. The mattress is too hard for my taste and I woke up with a sore jaw, having dreamed I’d been hit by a car.

• Our waitress acted as though we’d singled her out for some terrible punishment, but then we noticed that she treated everyone the same way.