You can be our critic. Would you dig that? (Yes, he was the last Man in America who could say “dig” with a straight face without referring to the process of using a tool to remove dirt from the ground.)

If you promise you will get better instead of dying, I promise I will, too.

And if there was one thing I'd finally figured out, it was that your mind is something you always CAN change.

Did you really JUST fall, Jeffrey? Why does everybody in my family talk in these dramatic CAPITAL LETTERS all the time? Why am I the only calm one?

Not, like, that, boychik, you sound like a herd of elephants charging through a music store.

I’ll probably just stand in a corner, trying not to be noticed, until the decoration committee accidentally packs me into a box at the end of the night. There I will lie, crammed in between rolls of crepe paper, until the New Year’s dance two months from now. Jeffrey thought about this for a moment and said, Won’t they notice the box is too heavy when they go to put it away?

Mr. Watras asked me whether I was practicing, and I told him I was practicing my tissue basketball skills.