Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner.

Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?

For the first time I could remember, I felt weak, woozy and stupid— like a human-being. Like a very small and helpless human-being.

In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do The Thing for the first time, sanctioned by Almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, whole the other me crouched and growled. I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do. And I did.

But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.

What do you want a clock for?” “To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.