Who knew that Tarzan lived in Wisconsin?

Parking increasingly requires us to go to one of those machines and buy a slip with a time printed on it to put on the car’s dashboard to show how long the car can be parked in that spot. With a parking meter, there was always a chance that time remained on the meter, and we might need fewer coins than we thought or, perhaps, none. It was not a huge joy when that happened, but it always made me feel at least a little bit lucky. But that happy moment is now gone. Or does anyone, when leaving a parking place, give the slip with time remaining on it to someone pulling into a spot on that block?

Will a new generation know what “Rita the Meter Maid” is about?

I had a heart incident a decade ago. In the days right before I landed in the emergency room, the strain of ordinary exertion must have shown, because, for the first time ever and to my dismay, a young woman offered me her seat on the subway. Luckily, she was not that good looking.

At this time of year, I remember the country song lyrics—“There are two things money can’t buy: true love and homegrown tomatoes.”

Why do we say something is “affordable”?  Isn’t anything bought, leased, rented, or bartered “affordable” for the one who got it?  And isn’t almost anything, no matter how “affordable,” not affordable for many?

 I recently met a couple.  He was six feet ten.  She was just shy of five feet.  What questions would you have liked to ask?

The only time I have been in one was in Baltimore while on a tour of baseball stadiums as a guest of a minister friend. He insisted he wanted to go to his first “Hooters.”

All those TV sports shows ought to interview college athletes about their favorite professors and then produce clips of those teachers in the classrooms and interacting with the athletes outside of classes.

I was on a park bench. Off to my left a man was ranting. Police were around the apparently mentally ill person dealing with him patiently. On the next park bench to my right were people who begged in the park and seemed to know the ranter. One of the them looked at the police, saw a blonde woman, and said, “Look at her. She doesn’t look like a cop. Why did she become a cop? She should have been, uh, uh, uh, a chemist, or something.”

I hope it was for a law firm, but it did not say so. The billboard read: “Medical malpractice is all we do.”

It was a remarkable sight, the man wearing sweatpants held up by suspenders.

“No one on earth—none that I had ever seen—is more polite than a person at a gun show: more eager to smile, more accommodating, less likely to step on your toe.” Paul Theroux, Deep South.