Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.

Roses are red, And ready for plucking, You're sixteen, And ready for high school.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but the living room in your fortified compound.

The big show is inside my head.

My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting.

Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained.