Also, when on a campaign to convince a stranger that you aren't a few fries short of a Happy Meal, throwing around phrases like "tangentially Swedish" is not the best way to go.

It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.

I ran like a thing that runs.

I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.

Sometimes I even felt like he dated me as part of his plan, like they were going to have a checklist on the application, and one of the things to tick off was going to be, "Do you have a reasonably intelligent girlfriend who shares your aspirations, and who is fully prepared to accept your limited availability?

Top Trumps appeared to be a game in which you got cards, and the cards had a picture (in this case, of a horse), and told you all kinds of stats for that horse, how fast it was, how big it was, etc. Whoever had the better horse won both the cards. You repeated this until someone had all the cards. So, basically it was exactly like high school, except it only took three minutes. Which was really a bit more humane, if you thought about it.

Hot tea," he said, holding the cups. "It's just wrong.