I used to attend a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. For those who aren’t familiar with the religion- I’m guessing that’s most everyone- UUs emphasize the spiritual process over particular theological conclusions, asserting that there is something spiritually meaningful about life, but relying on the idea that such conclusions are more meaningful when you come to them yourself. So, within some (very good) parameters like affirmation of the “inherent worth and dignity of every person,” UUs shift and differ. By asking you to take responsibility for the big issues yourself, practicing UUism is like having theology homework- but the sort of homework for a class you didn’t have to take and added because you wanted to.

I think there’s something deeply insightful about this approach and what I see as its implicit endorsement of intellectualism, but there were also things I didn’t like about being an active UU (I suppose I am now a latent one). Particularly, it seems to me that a lot of people take the idea of respecting individual conscience to mean that we ought not challenge and engage with each other’s religious ideas, as questioning them in such a way would be intolerant. As a result, there were a lot of conversations at the Fellowship where every sentence began with “This is just me, but…” suggesting that the best way to respect each other’s views was to leave them to each other. It strikes me that reducing beliefs to nonfactors in this way is the opposite of respecting them. I don’t believe that this is a problem within the religious framework so much as the social atmosphere of the place, but nonetheless, it was at times frustrating.

This is all background to set up a story about a particular sermon given at the Fellowship I attended. Given these ambiguities of faith and general uneasiness with challenging each other, UUs sermons are often purposefully vague. The minister will incorporate imagery from as many different traditions as possible, both to expose listeners to a wide array of wisdom, and, presumably, to make everyone feel included. This can lead both to apt metaphors and to awkward stretches.

The sermon in question dealt with Easter. A key image was Jesus hanging on the cross, and a key message was a reminder to keep his message in our minds. Toward the end, the minister urged us not to “leave him hanging,” meaning to suggest that we act on the content of the sermon, but also- if the metaphor is extended- urging us not to just leave him up there.

Now, I’m sure the extension of the hanging metaphor was unintentional. “Leave him hanging” is too casual to be applied to the image, and our minister was too good a speaker to do that on purpose. It’s a slang phrase, and how often do we really think about the metaphors we use in slang? Never, right? Her pacing didn’t indicate an intended connection either, and I don’t remember the congregation reacting like there was one. But nonetheless, what an accidental pun. Here we have Jesus dying for our sins, and here we are, neglecting to high five him for his efforts.

Despite the promotion, the stadium was relatively empty the day we went, and because it was a minor league game we were able to get seats right behind home plate for ten bucks or so. Given the lack of competition around us I was able to scurry a few rows over and catch a foul ball about halfway through the game- the only time I’ve ever managed that particular American dream.

The Smokies lost in a nail-biter, despite a 4 for 4 effort by their then-catcher Jayson Werth. After the game, I ran over to the seats by the dugout to try to get the ball I’d caught signed. None of the players were prospects I’d heard of, but having seen Werth’s 4 for 4, I figured he was the best candidate for a memorable souvenir.

Initially, Werth shrugged me off, but luckily a younger kid and his mom approached just as I turned away. The mom gave him a stern look, and he signed the younger kid’s ball. Now trapped, he signed mine too.

Werth has since bounced around the majors as a bench player, and now platoons right field for the Phillies. This season, as a result of injuries in the Philedelphia outfield, he started much of the season, and on May 16th hit three home runs in one game, tying the Phillies single game record with 8 RBI.

One Christmas, my mom gave me one of the several balls David Cone signed after his perfect game with the Yankees on July 18th, 1999. The balls were immediately sealed and sent off to be sold to fans. It’s one of my favorite gifts I’ve received, first because watching that game was such a special moment to be a young Yankee fan, and second because it symbolizes the gleeful absurdity of being a sports fan: somehow having an ordinary ball signed makes it magical.

The Werth ball is special too, for a different reason. Other than that 8 RBI night, Werth isn’t going to go on to break any records or have historical significance. But, actually being at the game and catching the ball and then getting him to sign it makes me inextricably a part of the event, however inconsequential and forgettable.

Both signed balls get at the joy of watching baseball: you find yourself believing that having a signed ball is having a part of history, and that catching one is being a part of history. You believe that if you only feel strongly enough or cheer loudly enough, then you are the reason your team rallies or that a home run ball stays fair, and I think it’s good to believe something that’s harmlessly not true every so often.

After one such party’s membership had dwindled, the remaining guests decided to make a trip to the local Applebees to take advantage of their half price appetizers after midnight promotion. I’m not sure if the promotion was local or national, but in any case it was particularly well crafted for New Jersey, where all social events from parties to poker nights to concerts lead to a diner at 2 AM. Restaurant entrepreneurs have recognized this phenomenon and given New Jersey the highest twenty four hour diner to resident ratio in the country.

Our waitress that night did a fabulous job. She was gracious about keeping separate checks for the large-ish group, didn’t get upset when our aimless chatting led us to take forever to decide on orders, was quick about refills, and dutifully recorded special requests, like extra bleu cheese dressing on the order of wings. This was particularly impressive, because as she confided when she introduced herself, this was her first night on the job.

Everything went smoothly until the checks came, and many of us found that our appetizers came to five dollars, more than half price. Politely, Jimmy asked the waitress what was up, and she said she wasn’t sure and that she’d get the manager for us. The manager explained that the deal we’d seen advertised did not include all Applebees locations, and that his establishment offered a notably different deal, half price or five dollars, whichever is higher. Knowing this, we pointed out, might have caused us to order differently. (Notably, even putting the orders on the same check would have brought the amount over the relevant minimum).

The manager insisted that his deal was posted at the entrance, but we checked; it wasn’t. As we paid, our newbie waitress was overly apologetic, as though it was her job to wonder if we were ordering based on a deal advertised on television and to suggest an alternate dining strategy. Worried that the combination of her unsure, apologetic nature and the manager’s bravado would lead her to take the blame for the mix up, we added two things to our payment and tip. The first was a series of haiku thanking her for her service in a poetic and memorable way; the second was a note to the manager defending her first day’s effort.

We hoped both were effective, or at least as effective as anything written on a napkin can be.

Bagel Trip

I’m not a big fan of breakfast food in general, but the bagel holds a special place in my heart, so I was feeling pretty good walking into downtown Maplewood, anticipating a visit to the Bagel Chateau. It was brisk that saturday morning, so I’d grabbed a hoodie as I walked out the door, and the night of poker that ended a few hours earlier accounted for the bagginess of my eyes, almost equal to that of my jeans. Still, I was excited for my bagel and the weekend, so my spirits were up, even if I didn’t look it.

The easiest walking path to the Bagel Chateau takes you past a park that features a Little League field and Maplewood’s unofficial dog walkers’ hang out, both of which also bolstered my mood. For me, dogs and baseball both symbolize youthful exuberence and a reminder to enjoy life, as well as being generally pleasing in their own right. Youthful exuberence probably did not need to be symbolized in this situation; there was a toddler skipping behind me and gaining fast, but I’m addicted to metaphor and don’t really know where I stand on toddlers as a group.

Had I been paying attention it would have confused me that there was no one who looked like a parent on the heels of the toddler in question. As it was, I didn’t start paying attention until she passed me and tripped over a patch of uneven sidewalk, just a few steps ahead. A quick look for her parents revealed that I was the only person around to take action.

My first instinct was to comfort the fallen, who was now crying and inspecting her skinned knee. I checked myself, though, imagining a scraggly teenager kneeling over a crying toddler and the doubled worry of a parent observing this stranger. As I wondered if my being there would comfort the girl or spook her further- and how all this might play to an imagined protective mother, her real mother rounded a corner, swept her up, and smiled at me as if to say “Thanks for looking out for her.”

The mother’s gratitude highlighted for me how silly it was to stop to consider what concern for the helpless looks like. What was I going to do, run home to shave before lending a helping hand?

I suppose we are all sometimes confronted with aspects of our nature that we’d like to change. That’s how we learn that we’d like to change them. The same situation hasn’t come up again (even given subsequent trips to the Bagel Chateau) but I know that now, several years later, I wouldn’t hesitate to help. Then again, I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve grown as a person or if it’s because I finally like my haircut.

I can only imagine the pizza bagels were there to target our market, but despite devoting a section of his store to us, the A&P manager seemed uncomfortable with having high school kids in his supermarket. His worries set the stage for the experience of your friend and mine, Buddy.

On one particular visit, Buddy placed one of the off brand soda cans in his pocket. It’s not clear to me whether he intended to steal it or, more benignly, to use the pocket as a means of carrying the can around while deciding what else he wanted to buy. Soda cans do have a way of attracting condensation and getting slippery in your hand, after all. The world never got a chance to know, as before Buddy could approach a cash register, the manager pulled him aside and informed him that the police were on their way.

The manager’s suspicion was probably reasonable, but it’s strange to me that he’d call the police before Buddy had a chance to actually do anything illegal. That seems to weaken his case unnecessarily. He might also have accosted him and said something like “I hope you’re planning on paying for that,” as a way of getting his point across and making sure he recorded the sale without complicating the situation further. Nonetheless, he went ahead and led Buddy to an office where he could wait.

As it turns out, when the police got there, they sided with Buddy, pointing out that he hadn’t done anything to warrant the call. It turns out that they’d been frustrated before with the A&P manager for having a quick trigger finger that both the school and police department saw as unjustified. Perhaps bound by some set of rules, they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything unless Buddy had actually stolen the soda.

Notably, all this happened as the result of deep pockets and a fifty cent soda. If the pockets were deep enough to fit the can, I’d think there’d also be fifty cents in there somewhere.

She greeted me by name, much to my surprise. Did show know me? “What are you looking for?” she then asked me, skipping all pleasantries. She hadn’t answered my question.

“I seek civilization; in walking I seem to have left it behind. I seek food but mostly shelter.” I was slightly unnerved, but saw little reason to not answer her.

Shifting her weight to one leg, bending the other slightly, and tilting her head, she said, “Now tell me something everyone else doesn’t.” My eyes widened at her newfound personality. She continued, “You have to be looking for more than that. You must want more than a tent and a potato. How should I know if you’d prefer steak to goose?”

This line of reasoning took me back. Beggars were not choosers so the cliché goes, but I didn’t want to lose face. At the same time, it took a fake confidence to say, “I’d take steak over goose, most days.” As I uttered my words, it felt like foolishness spilling over my lips. The look she gave me in return assured me of such. When presented with a choice, one has already stopped being the beggar. Yet we are doomed to unhappiness, even with choices, if we don’t know what we want. It isn’t about steak or goose. The tent would have been too little, and a palace would have been too much. Regardless of what I was really being offered, how could I get what is closest to what I want if I don’t know what that is?

“But you’ll take the tent then?” she squeezed the words out of her smirk. Putting her hand to her hip she added, “I’ll do my best to find you a good steak if it’s what you really want.”

What I really wanted. But was it? I found myself terribly uncertain. She had extended her hand to me, and I took it, charmed at her gesture. She took me back the way she had seemed to come from. Walking through the mist of the night, we came to a bazaar. It had an eerie air to it, but a strange charm to those offering it. A bazaar of wheeled kiosks with paper lanterns at night was something I had expected to unnerve or mesmerize me. It did neither to any extreme.

An old man sold boxes of various sizes and incredibly specific purposes. He called out softly, “utensil boxes, piano roll cartons, and more, dividers come free,” from beneath his short white beard. “I bet he has a special shaped box for his teeth,” I said to my young guide, and she made a face at me. A young girl had shelves filled with only creatures that kept well in fish bowls of different sizes. Fish, scorpions, turtles, beetles, frogs, and things I didn’t recognize moved about their respective bowls, to some extent reacting to one another. I joked in her ear, “I bet she kissed them all and was disappointed at the results.” She playfully hit me in the arm. A pale, thin fellow sold paper lanterns. They cast their colors upon him, and he changed with their luminescence. Some were for luck, others for attracting women, and just a few for communicating with the world beyond. Perhaps he was so frail because of all these forces constantly pulling at him. I wanted to make another joke but was distracted by a change in her warm grip. She hadn’t paid so much attention to the impressionable lantern man, she was looking for a good steak for me.

Approaching the butcher, I told my escort, “I can’t make fun of him, his knife is too big.” She suggested I try anyway. We reached the butcher, a hearty man with a dark beard and an apron. He had the ill placement of being next to a shrill woman who sold nothing but stone cats in many different cat poses. Despite what I viewed as his misfortune, he greeted us with a large smile and a question, “What are you looking for?”

I was looking. It was in looking over his goods I realized, I would know it when I saw it. In seeing it, was truly wanting it. Not how it seemed to someone else, or how it looked to someone else. Not what it might be, but what it was to me. She couldn’t have found it for me, but she knew how I needed to search. Maybe she even knew why. I couldn’t have described the steak, and I could have been happy with a lesser steak. It wasn’t about choosing for myself, though I was the happier for it. It was about connecting to the experience.

Had I been looking for her? I wouldn’t have known among the mists, I would not have known as we passed the first wheeled kiosks of the bazaar, but seeing her, the way she was in those moments, made me know. I didn’t know if she had been looking for me though, there was the trouble. I was sure however, that she knew, when she saw me.

The summer after my freshman year of college I got a job with Habitat for Humanity in Morris County. Having been a volunteer for HfH before and having done a little construction work in my own right, my job was to train and lead groups of volunteers, freeing up the construction manager to work with other volunteers or attend to more advanced details. Seeing progress on our various construction sites over the course of the summer was fun, as was teaching my volunteer groups, but the best thing about the job was that it meant I was home for the summer. That meant, of course, recreating the things that were fun about high school: seeing old friends, eating at all the old places, playing all the old games.

On my first day back in town, high school was still in session, so John, Max, and I went back to CHS to find Buddy. Somewhere in the nostalgia it came up that Buddy, when suggesting something to do, often said “Let’s just run this up the flagpole and see who salutes,” using it to mean “Does this idea sound good?”

When school let out and we got a hold of Buddy, John brought up the flagpole expression, and Buddy denied having ever said it. This turned into an argument, with both positions becoming increasingly radical. John ended up at “You said it every day,” and Buddy at “I’ve never even heard anyone say it.”

The only way to settle the question was to ask other people we’d known back then what they remembered. Amazingly, it turned out that they fell on roughly the same lines, not just failing to remember or thinking he might have said it once or twice, but consistently insisting that he either said it all the time or not at all. The polling numbers split perfectly. Only Max stuck to a moderate position: that Buddy said it sometimes.

My position was and continues to be that he must have said it. It’s easy to imagine someone forgetting a friend’s catchphrase after it falls out of use, or a phrase being used only in certain company, thereby accounting for the split polling. It’s comparably hard to imagine John, Max, and I all independently inventing the memory of its repetition.

The disagreement was eventually dropped, but not the idea. A few days later Max, John, Shawn, and I were at Max’s house for a poker game. One of us called Buddy to invite him, but he said he couldn’t make it. A while later, John suggested calling him back to find out whether he’d be around later that night. I did, and when he answered I started with “Hey Buddy, let me just run this up the flagpole and see if you salute, poker later tonight?”

Buddy explained that he’d be with his girlfriend (Megan), and I relayed that to the group. Not satisfied, John called him, said simply “flagpole,” and hung up.

As this was happening, Max’s sister Kate walked in. She asked what was going on, and we walked through the context. “I have Meg’s number,” she offered, and in so doing set off the flagpole experiment.

Kate called Megan and asked her to say flagpole to Buddy. Megan was baffled, but acquiesced, and when Buddy reacted she was able to honestly say that it was not any of John, me, Max, or Shawn who asked her to do it. He didn’t guess Kate.

As we were laughing about this, Max’s mom overheard us and volunteered that she and Meg’s mom were friends. So, she called and asked her to find the two of them, repeat “flagpole,” and report back. She was a good sport and played along.

At this point, the joke was put aside for the night, but we realized later that the last move was particularly good because it involved enough of a workaround (Buddy wouldn’t, previous to her being involved, suspect us to be in touch with his girlfriend’s mom, especially not in such a way that she’d help carry out a practical joke) to make him wonder how big the conspiracy was.

A few days later Max and I discussed ways to expand on this and to make the game more interesting. Over the course of the following few days, we got in touch with a teacher I’d gotten along with in high school who agreed to write flagpole on the board as Buddy was entering class. We got a few friends from circles Buddy didn’t run in to drive past him on his way home from school and yell flagpole out their window. We got his friends to make a big deal of standing around the flagpole in front of the school at lunch time.

Once school let out, we adapted to the summer. Jimmy, who Buddy has yet to meet, took a picture of a flagpole with his cell phone and texted it to him with a message asking if he would salute. Kate had an envelope with official CHS letterhead, so we addressed it to Buddy’s parents and mailed him a diagram of an idea being run up a flagpole and several stick figures saluting. Max’s mom used her office stationary to mail him a photocopy of the diagram. John and I bought some miniature flags from the dollar store, scrawled “Hey Buddy” on them, and slipped them through the mail slot at his house at night.

Eventually, the game was dropped, and I’ve never asked Buddy what it was like to experience it from his end. My hope is that what started out as an innocent (if stupid) running joke became an astonishment, each new mention leading him to wonder how far we were willing to go to make the word reoccur. I’d like to think that somewhere between text messages from numbers he didn’t recognize and the flags slipped through his mail slot, Buddy began to see flagpole references in places we didn’t or couldn’t plan- finding them in the clouds, his mind racing back to the expression whenever someone happened to mention one of its parts.

It turned out that the car’s driver was Dan. Once it was clear I was out of the way, he decelerated and veered back toward the middle of his lane. I smirked at him as he passed. He looked toward me and waved.

As this was happening, an old woman who was walking on the other side of Sixth Street stopped to watch the scene unfold. I like to think that she muttered something about whipper-snappers and shenanigans, but that’s just wishful thinking. What makes her important to the story is that when I did eventually get to the other side of the street, she was mad at me.

I didn’t think this was fair, given that I wasn’t the one who initiated Dan’s swerve, nor had I really participated except to react to it. Nonetheless, she was mad that I was amused.

A better person would have simply acknowledged her point and moved on, but I, as I always do, felt the need to equivocate. “I know Dan,” I explained, “He’s harmless.” After all, it’s not like he was just going around scaring random street-crossers.

She didn’t buy it. She chose these words: “All I know is, one day there will be a monetary penalty for that sort of behavior.”

It is worth noting that we do not need to wait for such a Utopian day; reckless driving is a ticketable offense in our very own time. Still, what’s more interesting about her response is what she could have said instead. Particularly, she could have gone with “one day he’ll end up hurting someone.”

One reason to prefer the response she didn’t choose is that it better expresses the reason she was upset. When she first saw Dan’s car speed up and swerve, I doubt she grew concerned that he’d get pulled over, imagining him writing a check and cringing. Rather, I’m sure she thought she might be seeing a violent accident, a car out of control and a helpless bystander. These are the gut, human reactions that make us stop, watch, and condemn, not concern about other people paying fines.

The other day I had lunch with my friend David, who majored in philosophy and minored in economics at Clark University. He explained that he had intended to do a full double major, but backed off of the economics in light of a particular frustration. It was one that I share: that often theories that are controversial in philosophy and politics are presented as economic fact. For example, people will say that economics indicates that it is better for the government to adopt a certain policy, simply assuming that the single goal of government is to promote aggregate economic growth. This may be true (I don’t think it is), but the overriding point is that it is a philosophical claim, not an economic one, and thus one that economics cannot evaluate. Nonetheless, without background in political philosophy, people often miss that part of the debate.

That brings me to the second thing that’s funny about the old woman’s response to Dan’s driving. It implies that a “monetary penalty” is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Clearly the comment was meant to be forceful, so why not mention the scariest consequence you can? She might have mentioned the potential danger to Dan himself, but went with the ticket reference instead. The economic results were closer to the front of her mind than the human ones. That’s, I think, what David was worried about.

A lot of us took to using this lunchtime freedom to eat outside, rather than simply buying food and returning to the cafeteria as CHS’ policy architects had intended. I don’t know if it was the dirty cafeteria that drove us out, or just the allure of the tree that the security guards would shoo us away from if we waited there for friends after school, but whatever the cause, we’d eat under the tree. We modified the plan slightly for rain or snow, huddling under the school’s arching entrance instead. To go back inside would be to give up our hard earned freedom, and even those who brought lunch from home or preferred the cafeteria prices agreed that the stoop was better.

Even though the actual eating took place outside, there was still occasionally reason to buy lunch from the school. Their lines were shorter, prices were lower, and, notably, prices were more convenient. That is to say, a $2.50 sandwich did not become $2.65 after tax, and didn’t leave your pocket full of useless pennies. Nonetheless, given the choice, I was a pizza bagel or J&J’s man, so I’d often leave lunch with a tax-induced jingle in my step. Usually I waited until I got home and tossed the coins in a tin I told myself I’d one day take to the bank, but on one occasion I decided to put them to use.

“A penny for your thoughts?” I asked the nearest person.

“Are you really going to give me a penny?” she asked, reasonably. I had to concede that that was in fact a thought, so I tossed her one and moved on.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

“I want a penny.”

That was undeniably a thought too.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

“Uhm, I like your hair.”

That might have been a lie for the sake of a free penny, but this was a fun game so I let it go. Mostly, I appreciated that this result was not directly related to the expression I began the exchange with. This confirms, I think, why the expression is a dumb one, because as soon as one mentions the potential contract, that replaces whatever the thinker might otherwise be thinking about. We should say, “a penny for your previous thoughts” or maybe the more specific “a penny for what you thought just now.”

Eventually, I ran out of pennies, and had to try a nickel. This struck me as a better deal, because each subsequent thought can follow from the first one, so it’s a proportionally large reward for proportionally less effort. It’s also a better deal for the thought-purchaser, as you’re more likely to get beyond the initial skepticism. No one wanted to take me up on it though, perhaps because at lunchtime no one is in to thinking that much.

As it turns out, both of those guesses would be wrong. I’ve never been to the Caymans, nor has anyone in my immediate family (at least not while they were a part of my immediate family). In fact, I’ve never been scuba diving anywhere (though my stepdad likes it a lot). Instead, I got the shirt as a hand-me-down when I was little. At the time, it was huge on me, but I’ve since grown into it and wear it on laundry days.

One such laundry day, I happened to be at the movie theater at the Headquarter’s Plaza in Morristown, New Jersey. Headquarter’s Plaza used to be a busy mall, but has since emptied and seen storefronts bought up and turned into office space for low budget law and realty firms. Still, the building has the structure of a mall, complete with a parking structure connected to the building with an elevator.

The movie theater is pretty much the only reason to go to Headquarters, so after a movie lets out (in the case in question, the Tim Burton remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) the crowd leaving the theater will walk together through the non-mall to the elevator. The halls are wide enough that people spread out in the way they do when walking near other people, but want to make clear they are not affiliated with them. These divisions are then challenged at the elevator, when people cram together, recognizing each other as those they’ve been walking within a few feet of without acknowledging.

Usually this results in elevator silence, but sometimes it’ll lead to forced conversation: about the movie, or the weather, or what’s happened to the Plaza. This time, after an initial elevator silence, an old man in a suit looked me over and asked “How were the Caymans?”

“I’ve never been,” I began. I’d intended to leave it at that, but realized that this was unfair to my would-be conversational partner. It sounded curt, and his shirt-based assumptions were completely reasonable. “This is a hand-me-down,” I explained.

I immediately regretted that one too. After my initial response, he probably expected me to say the shirt was a gift, and here I was challenging that assumption too. Who was I to make this guy uncomfortable? All he’d wanted to do was talk about my vacation.

The image must have jarred him, because he paused for a moment. Here he was, asking about expensive vacations to a guy wearing beat up, laundry day jeans and a hand-me-down shirt; he might have worried that he was flaunting his wealth. None of that was true, of course; we’ve been to Italy twice, and one of those trips could have been to the Caymans if I’d had a different heritage or if the Caymans were higher on the family destination list. Still, at this point, I was beyond correcting the guy. What was I going to say? “But I could have been, just in case you were feeling awkward about bringing up expensive vacations. Sorry to have been unclear.”

Anyway, after his pause, the suited man tried to salvage the conversation. “Well, have you been out of the country at all, at least?” I’m not sure what the “at least” was supposed to mean in this context, like somehow wearing a misleading shirt was okay so long as I’d done something approximating what it suggested I had.

“Yeah, I’ve visited family in Italy,” I reassured him as the elevator reached my parking level.

“That’s good,” he said.

I told this story to Max on a New York subway the other day. He was wearing a shirt that proclaimed that life was simple: one must merely eat, sleep, and go caving. Max has never been caving, nor does he like the idea of it, but he does believe that life is simple and involves eating and sleeping. He expressed that he doesn’t like the shirt because of this discrepancy, and a woman sitting near us responded, “But is it really lying to someone to wear a misleading shirt?”

She’s right, of course; it’s not. There’s nothing malicious in making people think you’ve been somewhere you haven’t or like subterranean adventures when you don’t. There’s no duty to make the details of one’s life easily interpretable. I shouldn’t have felt bad about misleading the man in the elevator (several times), but the fact the remains that I did. In part, I think it’s a recognition of having made him uncomfortable, but I also think there’s a universal desire to be understood; it’s a prerequisite for being accepted. Wearing a misleading shirt and saying misleading things about it makes that marginally harder.